Camilo Bravo 
Let's try something today. What's the story of when you first dabbled in music-making?
Let's use the hashtag #FirstDabble to find all of your stories.
I'll go first.
I was 5 years old and my family's living room basically doubled as rehearsal space for my dad's bands. I remember it as a happy time, which I think was for everyone (even mom, sans living room!)
Dad bought this awesome drum machine, which also had bass notes (and a couple of other instruments), the ability to change the pitch of notes, and a rudimentary sequencer. AND I was lucky enough that he let me use it! I know its sounds and demo songs by heart: https://youtu.be/7ydbk_oCl9A
Yamaha RX8 Drum Machine
Later, as a teenager, I made the decision to follow the "software programming" route, which I respected when it was time to decide after high school.
I never studied music (not yet at least!), but it's always been around and, after a long time coding for a living and raising a family, it's become a necessity for my mental stability.
Last year I found a way to integrate it into my routine.
Every two weeks, my productive-dad-mode goes "out of service" for a few hours, and I sit down to record new music. No plans, just shower-induced inspiration, and I force myself to package it and release it into the world without much editing (I also record myself on video and capture the computer screen, and do some rough video editing).
The project is called #Volatil, and after 25 iterations it's still going strong.
Anyway... YOUR TURN, FOLKS!
Smaller Animals@cambraca #musician
i was probably 7 when i recorded a song called "Red Whiskey and Wine" into a portable cassette recorder.
i don't remember where those words came from - especially "red whiskey". what would i know about whiskey at 7? but a few years ago i noticed that the Dead have line in Dire Wolf "T'was a bottle of red whiskey" . so now i assume that was probably it.
wasn't until college (1990) that i bought a 4-track cassette recorder and really started.
@smalleranimals omg I remember singing some awful stuff out loud as a child, unaware of its meaning. "Red whiskey" ain't nothing!
I have a 7-yr old now who does the same, by the way. It's hilarious but really tricky to record (she'll get so mad if she catches you with the phone).
Christoff Humphries@cambraca I ended up doing the programming route, too. I had to whiteboard C and assembly for my first programming job as an actual employee and not a contractor.
20+ years later I left programming, sysadmin, and dba (all was senior lead roles) to move to pentesting in 2020.
Going to get into recording and producing music or noise, either way, doing it anyway :)
Working on sausage finger fretting without accidental muting now, newb mode. Focusing on grateful dead/jam band stuff as lead.
@cambraca it's a strange thing to have your hands be familiar with playing guitar, like I don't even have to think about my picking hand, it just does it, but fretting is different coming from the bass for a while (got a fender jazz bass during COVID lockdown). A much tighter window for fingers with a electric guitar, heh.
Thanks to the ones who responded with your beautiful #FirstDabble stories. They all resonated in some way and I was reminded of many things from my own childhood.
🎵 Keep 'em coming!
Andy Steele@cambraca I had started taking piano and violin lessons around age 4 or 5 and was exposed to a lot of music by my parents, who were both in the music department at our local university.
But my #FirstDabble into actually making music was when my friend Brad and I wrote some lyrics and accompanied ourselves by banging on couch cushions. Pretty sure we recorded it on my fisher price tape deck.
@drummmerandy my sister and I did that "drum with whatever you can find" experiment too!
What I wouldn't give to listen to the first stuff I ever made...
A.W.Ford, the Curious Curator@cambraca #FirstDabble #MusicRecording
Wow, there was a lot of childhood playing with the #RadioShack cassette recorder. #Sang in church, took #violin & #piano in grade school, started learning #guitar at 13.
Guess my first serious attempt at recording was when I was 15, saved & bought a #Tascam 8track recorder, taught myself how to layer & bounce tracks from articles in Gig magazine. I filled in all the parts but #percussion. On some instruments I have #rhythm for days, but beats? Nope! Lol
@awford woah, you were a busy kid!
@cambraca Have any of you tried doing online collaborative recording? Been really intrigued by the idea of finding others here to try some things with, but at a loss for where to start.
Since everything went digital I have yet to get even a basic multitrack studio going that isn't a total pain in the arse. I miss analog so much! Carried that Tascam in a bag, plugged in, hit record, done.
Now I lose all inspiration dealing with USB buffers or because someone's patch broke the software.
@cambraca So for now I settle for ping-ponging individual tracks using two old Samsung phones LOL
Sad to think I made my living for 30 years in tech, but refuse to cooperate with the fancy new recording methods 😂
@awford lol fancy new methods are not all terrible ;)
@cambraca I actually love working in Audacity after tracks are recorded, tweaking the audio engineering, etc. But every since they switched from using RCA audio inputs to routing through some kind of USB interface I just hit one constant snag after another
I had a Fostex MR8 that worked great because it was all self contained with no interfaces. That also made it portable independent of a laptop. Transferred tracks later into Audacity thru the audio inputs
Once it died the tech had 'improved'🫣
Twang Darkly@awford @cambraca Tascam still makes multitrack recording devices that retain much of the direct spontaneity of the cassette multitrackers from back in the day, ranging from small battery-powered devices to the wonderful Model 12 and its siblings. You can export individual tracks and mix on a computer, or you can even do mixdowns on these devices...
@TwangDarkly @cambraca awesome, have to look at those!
@awford ooooh have I got the thing for you. Check out this hashtag: #MastoMusicCollab, you should be able to find a Google spreadsheet with an ongoing project. I believe the Orange team is understaffed, feel free to send a message to their director.
@cambraca That is awesome, you rock, thanks! 🎸
@cambraca
Just finished reading those threads. I love this, it's exactly what I was thinking of!
Some 💬s
-Dont think I have the recording capabilities to join in directly and meet the standard
-But some of my strengths are guitar composition, arrangement, and lyrics. (2 of my 🎵 were NAMMY nominated)
-I'd be happy to contribute to any of those teams at that level & pass the final playing/recording off to them.
Is that useful?
(Meanwhile I'm reinspired on recording again. I'll get there.)
@awford I'm sure there's a way to include you, my team (Purple) may need some help with writing lyrics (we're not there yet though), maybe other teams could use help too?
Jazzaria@cambraca @awford @audiodude @CharmingDolphins @convolution
Orange team here, and you're definitely welcome to join us if you'd like. Right now it's just me and @Johnny, though three others are invited and might join.
Johnny is guitar/vocals, so I defer to him on specifics of collaboration here (I'll be the one playing some post-modern bass clarinet or something). But if you want to hop on the Discord feel free to hop onto our channel and we'll take it from there!
@Jazzaria @cambraca @audiodude @CharmingDolphins @convolution @Johnny
Thanks, happy to jump in wherever it's he helpful just point me 👉
@cambraca @audiodude @CharmingDolphins @Jazzaria @convolution
Cool. Will get Discord set up and figured out.
Do I need to add/introduce myself on the Google doc somewhere?
@awford @cambraca @audiodude @CharmingDolphins @convolution I wouldn't sweat the doc right off, it's meant to be useful for coordination, not a gate. Discord is probably the best place to introduce yourself, once you're on there.
Kernel Bob 
@cambraca There was an old piano in our house as early as I can remember. I probably started banging out notes as soon as I could reach the keyboard. My parents started me on lessons when I was six. Piano wasn't my instrument (then), but it got me ready for school band in third grade.
It was a player piano! I only saw it read a piano roll a couple of times, but I loved to play with the mechanism.
Hy Vyb@cambraca my #FirstDabble was an mystifying encounter with a DX7.
I was 16 I'd moved to Wales to live with my dad and most of his friends were musos. I'd said I wanted to learn keys, mostly cos back then A-ha and Peter Gabriel were big favs.
So, a friend of his lent me his DX7 and I could not do anything with it completely defeated.
Luckily my Dad had a couple of Nylon Stringed guitars and the Complete Guitarist book laying about. Over the next couple of years I taught myself the basics.
@cambraca The same guy who brought round the DX7 would later loan me an excellent Gibson SG for a few months. 16 year old me didn't appreciate how lucky he was in that respect. It was a beautiful guitar to learn on.
Doug 🌈🇨🇦 
@cambraca
A neighbour talked me into paying $8 for an Akai keyboard at her yard sale so with such an investment I was determined to learn to play it. I'm now on my 3rd keyboard. This one has hammer activated keys so it feels like a real piano. It also has synthesized voices for every instrument. I love it, lots of fun. Casio CDP-235R
A neighbour talked me into paying $8 for an Akai keyboard at her yard sale so with such an investment I was determined to learn to play it. I'm now on my 3rd keyboard. This one has hammer activated keys so it feels like a real piano. It also has synthesized voices for every instrument. I love it, lots of fun. Casio CDP-235R
EDVARDS@Oldfartrant
I've heard you play before.
I don't remember where... maybe your YouTube page? I think I remember Bagatelle No. 25 in A minor?
Just terrific!
I've heard you play before.
I don't remember where... maybe your YouTube page? I think I remember Bagatelle No. 25 in A minor?
Just terrific!
@EDVARDS
Thank you! Wait till you hear me sing. (Bring old furniture, my voice can peel paint!)
Thank you! Wait till you hear me sing. (Bring old furniture, my voice can peel paint!)
elsemusic@cambraca I’d had piano lessons since I was eight years old, but it wasn’t until friends introduced me to pop music when I was about eleven that I started playing by ear, and then writing tunes myself. The big leap forward came when I saved up for my first guitar at age fifteen, a nylon-string Suzuki.
@cambraca I was in a psych hospital at age 12, one of the activities they had was music class, I got "stuck" with the bass and so learned to play the bass, and it was kind of boring so I learned some music theory so I had more notes to play. It was a pepto bismol pink bass, probably a p-bass clone.
I got an acoustic guitar when I was 17ish and had a fender strat in my early 20s, but they both got stolen, and I just became a workaholic.
Now 45 and got a guitar again :)