My Life on Wikiloops in Chapters

So, I`ll be entering my 5th year on Wikiloops soon … time for reflection on the good, the bad and the downright weird paths that have taken me to the Loops and the Loops have taken me to.

Note of warning to those unfamiliar with how my mind works, please do ensure that you`ve set up the next appointment with your therapist. Other than that, grab a beverage of choice, settle in and start reading.

Chapter 1: Creeping up to Wikiloops

In the distant past there was an unavoidable infusion of music.

Young MySounds wasn’t really given a choice to avoid music. Apparently, I featured on the title page of a national magazine as a 3-year-old to promote early music education at the Hamburg University of Music and Drama. I can only apologize if this has led to kids later becoming musicians and producers connected to the whole Stock, Aitken, Waterman clusterfuck that ruined music for a whole generation, but any blame must lie exclusively with Mr. and Mrs. MySounds senior.

On that note, try as they might to deny it, it was they who also made the decision that yours truly should over the next 17 years develop a close relationship with the piano. What they hadn`t counted on was that the piano teacher they chose in London – where we were living at the time – was not only very good (a former concert pianist with the Royal Symphony Orchestra) but also ambitious for me. 2 to 3 hours of piano practice every day were not uncommon and to this day I can still hear her voice telling me in no uncertain terms that my future would be touring the world as a renowned pianist.

Moving away from London after some years liberated me from that particular ambition but by then I had enough piano chops up my sleave to serenade girls and to start gigging in various bands and on my own while still being in college. Great times, joining Champion Jack Dupree on stage for a 2 hour jam session, then wondering how to get home at 3 in the morning only hours before taking (and failing) at a french language test.


The emergency brakes called Real Life

Picture the 18-year-old MySounds receiving the letter informing him that just like everyone else he should do his compulsory 15 months military service stint. I smell opportunity as the army has a marching band and a pretty decent big band. But that imagined opportunity would put an immediate stop to any musical activity for the next 35 years.

“Dear Mr. Fourstripes, I feel I would make a much better contribution to the safety of my country rolling up and down chromatic scales than rolling in the mud.
Sincerely MySounds”

“Dear Mr. MySounds, we do not allow grand pianos in our marching band as the potholes in the streets would make a mockery of the whole thing. But you`ll love the mud.”

So, mud, girls, university, job, family … no time and really no interests outside of that. Music was just gone … and I didn’t even notice it.


Covid: The high point with the low-end

With Covid everything changed. Whereas in the 20 years before, when my life was mostly spent working in foreign countries, living in hotels and and on airplanes, I suddenly found myself in lockdown and feeling a need to do something new and creative. A counterpoint to homeoffice work. Music, well, that might do the job, but piano after all these years?

I suddenly understood how much music and piano playing had meant to me, but I also understood that I could never stop benchmarking myself against my irretrievably lost abilities from all those years ago.

So why not try something completely new? Drums were discussed and dismissed (“you do realize that we have kids in the house who need to sleep at night?”), the traditional swiss alphorn never even made it to be a topic and somehow I knew deep down that the Glockenspiel wasn`t really the thing for me.

So I went and bought a bass guitar and an amp (with a headphone socket!). Interesting, boomy, not without challenges, but boring after a couple of weeks. So I went searching for some backing tracks to play to and (big drum roll please) found Wikiloops. Great, tons of tracks with drums and guitars, download, download, download and start playing some boomy notes to the tracks.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t giving the downloads the right amount of attention, as one of the tracks already had a bass add by Ernie on it. Big mistake. Very much like just having had your face reshaped with a generous helping of Botox and then running into a lamp post. Truly a lesson in being humble enough to accept that you can`t reach the sky because it`s already occupied.

But hey, the track wasn`t bad but it was missing something in the keyboard department. Hmmm. A day later I was fully equipped with an audio interface, a DAW, a Midi Controller, a set of speakers and a load of virtual instruments. But now what? It was only then that I started to try to understand what Wikiloops was all about, how it worked and why. (Still haven’t fully worked it out, but I`m getting there.)

So inside a month I went from “Give me something to play to” to

“what is a bass and why?”
“why is 10dB plus not a good thing?”
“are flames coming out of the mixing console an optional extra?”
“who the fuck are all these great musicians and why haven`t I heard of them before?”
“can you build an escape tunnel inside a pyramid of sounds?”

Important questions, as I`m sure you`ll agree. And so, for the past 5 years I`ve been looking for answers on Wikiloops.

Now, Wikiloops, once you abandon any sense of pride, lose your musical inhibitions and glide into a mindset of just having fun making music, is a great place to be. But it can also force you on occasion to take a step back and rechart your musical journey.

(To be continued)

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