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.