Am I a musician?

When I was in my early twenties I was playing around with a tracker software on my Amiga 500. I was stunned by the possibility to create music with the computer. And I built a little piece with some kind of melody and rhythm. When I played it to my colleagues I didn’t receive the feedback I wanted. This ended my career as an aspiring electronic musician.

There is no one to blame about that but myself. And I don’t even blame myself. I started a wonderful career as a writer and later as a video producer. No regrets, no self blaming. I made that decision: I am not a musician. And every now and the I confirmed myself: no, not a musician.

30 years later I started watching some online video courses. I wanted to see Werner Herzog and some other courses about filmmaking. But I got stuck with Deadmau5 and Armin van Buuren. And so it began: I started playing with Logic Pro, then I discovered VCV Rack 0.6 and from there I started with Eurorack.

When I bought my A-100 system at Thomann’s the guy said “you know, this is only the beginning”. And he was so right. But GAS is another topic.

I just made some kind of structured noise in the beginning with my Eurorack. Beautiful noise, textures, some rhythmic patterns, lots of reverb.

When I posted a first synth video on my facebook account one of comments was “i prefer real music on real instruments”.

I wasn’t angry about that comment. Sure, he was an experienced musician with musical and technical skills. I wasn’t. Not a musician.

But this is not about music. This is a journey exploring a sonic realm I have never been in before.

Synths opened the world of sounds and music for me. I am happy to be here, to explore and discover new sounds and harmonics. And to find people who are on the same journey.

Does that make me a musician? I don’t know. But also, I don’t care. By the way I started to learn about music theory and acquired some knowledge about scales and chords on the keyboard. The journey continues.