Trying to write this makes me feel the same as at a job orientation or something similar where you’re sitting in a circle and told, “we'll go around the circle and everyone will introduce themselves and say an interesting thing about them" and suddenly every interesting or even uninteresting thing about yourself flies out of your mind. Thankfully I’ve had a bit more time to think about this than you get in those situations.
I started taking piano lessons at the beginning of high school aged about 11, which is pretty old to start that kind of thing. I’d wanted to learn previously but we never had a piano at home for practicing and no other instrument ever took my interest the same way. But thankfully I was able to eventually start lessons and over the next 7 years took exams up to Grade 6 which I always found extremely stressful. Learning the pieces and scales always took a lot of practice and work but worse were the other parts of the exams: sight reading – just being given a piece of music and a couple of minutes to read it over and practice it then being asked to play it, and the aural tests – listening to pieces and identifying musical descriptors that might be written on it and...the dreaded singing. The examiner would play a short melody and you had to sing it back. I hated it. Always made me feel super awkward and I still get nervous singing in front of basically anyone. But I stumbled my way through them somehow (once passing by literally 2 marks) and have been playing pretty steadily since.
Beginning my piano lessons also came when I started to get really into music in general. Before then it had never been something I was very into (which sounds absolutely crazy now). I’d only really been exposed to pop music on the radio (I grew up in the 90's) which wasn’t really my cup of tea so genuinely until around my early teens I didn’t know there was music that I actually liked and enjoyed. So when I did I dove into it with gusto, I distinctly remember an almost religious moment when a friend introduced me to some old blues and jazz artists like Charlie Parker, Louis Armstrong, John Lee Hooker and Muddy Waters. I loved the way jazz and blues pianists would race up and down the keys and always wanted to have even a fraction of their ability. One of my exam pieces for Grade 5 was a song called Jackson Street Blues by Martha Mier which I would’ve learned around 2006 and I was so excited at being able to play a cool, bluesy song I’ve never let myself forget it and can still play it by muscle memory.
I found learning piano actually quite difficult, it took a lot of work and practice. I feel like with artistic skills like music or drawing or painting, people will often feel that they’re reserved for people with innate talent and skill. While I definitely think that’s a factor, I think musical ability is a skill like any other, if you practice enough anyone can good at it. As I practiced I think I achieved a pretty decent level of skill and can eventually learn most pieces I want to with a bit of work and play them to a decent standard. But I’ve never really been able to write songs past little melodies and when I’d attempt to I'd often realise what I’d come up with was ripped off from a popular song (this has even happened since joining the band, when trying to come up with a keyboard line for a new song I thought I’d got something pretty cool before realising it was a bit of a rip off of Where It’s At by Beck). And I think the fact that this is something I struggle with is why I so admire and respect those who can. The reason I would say artists like Bob Dylan, Tom Waits and Leonard Cohen (what my friends call the “dad music" I love) are among my favourites and most listened to of recent years is because of their amazing and creative song-writing ability, both lyrically and musically. And this admiration for song-writers absolutely extends to Nic, Holly, Glen and the other members of the Sages too.
As soon as I first heard the tracks '(Your Love Makes Me) Happy', 'Destiny' and 'I was Wrong', I knew this band was something different and special and that I was going to see if they’d be interested in having me join. In the months I’ve been in the band as I’ve learned the back catalogue, the various genres the band straddles and seen the new musical directions the band is going in my excitement has only grown and grown.
Hopefully, my old man's taste in music can bring a few new ideas into the mix that we can share with you soon.
Cheers
Daniel
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