The First Post

I’ll start from the beginning, shall I?

I was born in 1985, and I suppose then I probably had some sort of knack for music. Or at least, I’d like to think so. Perhaps I would cry with perfect intonation… or pump my small, chubby fists to Pink Floyd. Unlikely, really. My intonation is questionable, at best, and it took me several years of constant metronome use to learn how to stay on beat.

So where to start? As with everything, there are a million beginnings, some so far away they are taken for granted, as if they were always there, mired in the non-linear.

I shall start in two places. The death of my grandmother, and my love of music. My mother says I inherit all my talent from my grandmother, which I have to believe seeing my father’s side of the family is completely devoid of anything musical except a somewhat questionable respect for the strangest singers*.

My grandmother died before I was born. When I was sixteen, I inherited her sheet music, which she inherited from her mother. At the time, I was into playing Beethoven, and I cursed the fact that, while I loved Chopin, I had difficulty playing his music due to their flat-ridden key signatures, and counterintuitive rhythms. Then, I was listening The Smashing Pumpkins on repeat, and admiring the orchestrations of Elliott Goldenthal in Interview with a Vampire. I had no interest in old music. But if I must be frank, the truth was that I liked having it. It gave me status.

How is that for beginnings?

After about eight or nine years, I found my sheet music and started going through it. Then, I was hit with a bit of inspiration.

So, this is the Appleton Sound Project. I’m not entirely sure what it is yet, but I know it has to do with the archival of all my sheet music, and learning the history of people that are no longer remembered. It is my research project, and my chance to connect with music I had never heard before.

Welcome.

* My dad, rather inexplicably, likes Yes and Rush.