My musical history
Music
has always played a big role in my life. As a child I loved to sing
nursery songs. When I was five or six years old my cousin gave me my
first keyboard.
It was quite small, only four octaves. But I tried to play it and my parents began to think that maybe that could be a good hobby for me, because my hobby possibilities were limited.
I went to the
music school at the age of seven in 1991. I spent there 13
years altogether. The natural choice for my instrument was piano.
I love piano because there are so many possibilities in it. You can play with band or you can have your "own orchestra". Piano doesn’t need the help of other instruments inevitably.
At music school I
had a 45-minute
playing lesson every week and also lessons of musical theory. I studied
classical music and playing technique which has been very beneficial
also later. That was the time when the foundation for
my current music hobby was built.
My piano teacher was Polish. He was enthusiastic to win the challenge
to teach me. He searched for information about how it is possible to
teach
a blind student.
The answer was: recording. He recorded melodies to cassette, first right hand alone, then left hand and then both hands together. I have absolute pitch so I was able to copy those melodies from cassette to my memory.
With that method I eventually studied even such masterpieces as Rondo a la Turka (made by Mozart) and Moonlight Sonata (made by Beethoven). Also during these years I completed four examinations, all of which are possible to complete in that school.
The time at music
school also taught
me to play for public. Each year they arranged many student concerts in
which I played almost every time. I also had the privilege to perform
in
some bigger occasions in other towns.
About one and a half years ago I became interested in making music by means of a computer. The problem was that we were not able to find a music program that would have been accessible enough for a blind user. All the programs we tried (like Cubase and several others) were far too graphical in nature.
A turning point came when my friend Petteri, who has some experience in programming, made a program specially designed for my needs. It gives me a simple text-based user interface for one sophisticated music program, so that I can control all it's basic functions just by typing commands.
(If you want to read more technical details about the software and equipment I use, click the link "My equipment").
Now I create music
by means of a computer and a midi keyboard connected to it. That has
brought a new dimension to
my music.
You can listen some of the results in this website.
If you want to visit also my piano teacher's home page, here is the link: