Author: andrew

A CV of a sort…

For as long as I remember I have been fascinated by music.  I was only just tall enough to look down on the keys of a piano when my parents realised that I could name a note they played without seeing them play it.  I was told that meant I had “perfect pitch”.  

I took piano lessons from an early age and ended up years later getting (Associated Board) Grade VI piano which includes Grade V Theory of Music.  I remain a very poor sight reader and fairly good at playing anything I hear or jamming along.  

As a child I won a singing competition, the following year I came second , and third year I came third.  In the fourth year my voice started to break and I didn’t enter.  Since then I’ve not been happy with song contests or so called battles of the bands. Beyond simple technique, what is better or worse is a matter of taste as well as the complex context in which music is heard.  Therefore judgement is arbitrary. Music competitions be damned – especially if I don’t do well!  

In my early teens I learned to play bassoon and played in the school orchestra.  Later I played timpani which was more fun and would sometimes involve a hundred and twenty eight bars rest.  

I got a nylon stringed guitar and learned some chords and also bought a perspex bass guitar.  I never became properly good at either but enjoyed tinkering.  

I managed to get a job in a sound studio that made adverts and not long after in a proper sound studio that made records.  It was hardly possible to survive on the low pay.  

I worked on a number of projects as assistant including with Vapour Trails. I was house engineer for ‘Broken English’ engineered by Bob Potter before going freelance.  Later I co-produced many recordings.  

I recently found that someone has created a discography for me (known as ‘Andy’) in discogs.com. It’s not all inclusive but looking there did bring back some half forgotten memories.

I fondly remember recording ‘I.O.U.’ by Allan Holdsworth and having the odd sense that [this track] was being performed for me.  I least fondly remember the “Class of ’81“.  I turned the work down at first since the production concept was poor, but I relented when they agreed not to put my name on it; and then they put my name on it 🙁

Sound engineering is a young man’s job.  Older engineers from the 50’s could end up making tape copies in the 70’s.  Boring!  – and not for me. So when it looked like I’d hit a glass ceiling I stopped sound recording professionally.  I had also realised that I was enjoying music less due to becoming hyper critical.  Automatically thinking of what could be improved gets in the way of appreciation.

In the mid eighties I spent a brief time working in Good Earth studios for Tony Visconti and memorably was roped in to playing a harmony keyboard part on a Moody Blues record.    

I got hold of a Fender Strat decent Japanese copy and managed to learn enough so that on one occasion, and unrehearsed, I joined in with the live band playing at the wedding of a friend (and didn’t F it up!).  By this time I could play a tune rather than just strum chords, so from then on I have enjoyed the electric guitar properly.  

I then came across an extraordinary innovative musical keyboard design with hexagonal keys. Everyone said it should be patented, and it already had been.  At that stage I believed like most people that patents were there to protect small inventors against the large corporations.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  The main beneficiaries of that monopoly system are large corporations and lawyers.  

I helped with patent costs and formed C-Thru Music Ltd to build and sell those keyboards.  We called the products AXiS.  It was hard to design a quality keyboard in a reasonable cost. I was not competent at evaluating suppliers and so not good at avoiding getting ripped off or becoming part of someone else’s drama.

We finally released a keyboard in the early 2000s and had a modicum of success.  We then released a cut down version with some shared parts to make a smaller more affordable device.  The launch was badly timed to coincide with the financial crisis. 

At C-Thru neither quality nor organisation were a problem thanks to the great Jacqueline Kandalaft.  As far as I know we never had a single dissatisfied customer. However our volume of sales meant that we were not a viable enterprise.  I still keep the legacy website for ol’ times sake where you can see some of the comments and quotes that people gave.   

Looking back now I’m grateful for my time spent in music related endeavours and for the chance to meet or help some of my musical heroes.

I now enjoy listening to other people’s music on my nice stereo system, and occasionally reflect on the fact that I did all the above whilst almost entirely unqualified*.

* other than Grade VI piano