Hello from a new member

[Aaron Bitman]

Hi. I'm here to invite you to listen to my latest album, The One Note.

 

And now that I got my main message out, I should probably follow the "Introduce Yourself" protocol and answer some of those questions.

 

My music experience so far?  I've played the piano for many years, mostly classical music. But I enjoy electronic music, and lately, I've been composing on MuseScore. I'll say more about that later.

 

My musical interests?  I've enjoyed music from many genres, ranging from Bach to Eminem. As my favorite musician alive (whom I'll mention later) likes to say, "The music I like is GOOD music."

 

What do I hope to get out of the Songstuff forum, and contribute to its community?  My dream is to write music that touches people - or even just ONE person - the way so many other people's music touches me.

 

How did I find this site?  With a search engine.

 

Now for my long ramble, because you may wonder why I've been presenting my music through MuseScore, which was really intended for scoring, not for listening. Actually, I like MuseScore BECAUSE of its limitations. Limitations provide an interesting challenge. (Of course, it helps that MuseScore is free.) I love electronic sounds. I remember, back in the 1980s, listening to the Kawasaki Synthesizer on my Commodore 64. It amazed me that this machine with such limited, artificial sound could make... jazz music!  If you, too, remember the Kawasaki Synthesizer program, then listen to my album carefully, and you may detect some suspiciously familiar-sounding passages; in fact I challenge you to figure out which passages.

 

But my biggest musical influence by far - my favorite living musician I mentioned earlier - is Herb Alpert. I loved his Tijuana Brass records from the 1960s in my childhood. Back in the twentieth century, I would compose a little ditty here and a piece there... and then I got stuck, not knowing what else to write. For roughly 18 years, I had a composer's equivalent of writer's block. (Composer's block?) Then in 2014, I happened to get back into Herb Alpert's music in a big way, and I finally realized what I was missing all those years: I had no vision. I had no idea of what kind of music I wanted to write. Now I know, and I started composing music like never before!

 

And once I tired of composing, I decided it was time to publish, which is why I'm here.  Maybe one day I'll feel like composing again. I certainly have many ideas for more songs to write, when that day comes.

 

In summary: Hi there.
 

Edited March 8, 2018 by Aaron Bitman
I changed link to start the first song right away.

[john]

Hey Aaron, welcome to Songstuff. Good to have you with us

[RealKevM]

Welcome Aaron

[Aaron Bitman]

I've been directed to a list of questions.  I've answered some of them already, so here's more about me:

 

I started piano lessons at the age of 7. At around 14, I got pretty good at it, if I may say so. I started composing at the age of 8.

 

I was never in a band. The closest I came was playing duets with my father, who plays the violin.

 

I used to write lyrics to songs. However, when Herb Alpert made me figure out what kind of music I wanted to write, I realized that one important part of it was that it should have no lyrics.

 

I'm too cheap to buy real recording equipment, but when I happened to get a laptop with a built-in microphone, I recorded myself playing piano many times (and once I recorded a duet my father and I played). I even posted some of those recordings to YouTube, to share with a few friends on another website. I got compliments for some of those performances.

 

Am I a tech head? Heh. I've been working in the software industry for over 22 years now - the first 16 years as a developer and then in Quality Assurance - and yet I'm technically inept. I sometimes get teased for that.

 

As for other creative pursuits, my dream used to be to write a novel and get it published. I've tried to write a novel many times. I even managed to finish a rough draft of a couple of them. But while revising, I felt that my novels were awful, beyond the point where they could be salvaged. So I transferred my dream to music.