My Short-Lived Music Career (Part 3)

At this stage in the game, we were communicating fairly regularly with the record label. Because of my proximity, I was able to visit more often than the other members, which led to some interesting projects.

Often times I'd show up with a blank 1GB Jaz disk (remember those things?), and Nick (the main guy at the label) would send me away with a dry vocal track, and sometimes also a skeleton MIDI file that I could get the base chord progressions out of. The project would involve creating a remix of a song that I'd not heard before—because it didn't really exist.

These projects were the most fun. I'd figure out a progression (if I didn't already have one) that fit over the vocals, and build a song around it. The results were pretty good, and listening to some of these tracks today still brings a smile to my face.

In one instance, I actually got to work on-site at the studio on a remix. I was left alone with a room full of expensive equipment, complete with some awesome vintage synths, and a Mac running Cubase. I was given a half-done project on the Mac, and I was tasked to finish it off. It was a ton of fun, and the remix turned out great.

Shortly after that project, my thoughts had turned to post-secondary education. I was checking out the CS program at the University of Waterloo, and I wanted nothing more than to get into the program there. I studied hard for the Descartes math contest (used in conjunction with your high school grades to help your admission), worked on my programming skills, and generally didn't have much time for music anymore.

Needless to say, my visits to the record label were less frequent. I think I had run a few of my own new tracks by Nick on two separate occasions, but he wasn't overly interested. Frankly, neither was I at that point.

Once I started at the U of Waterloo, life had changed completely. I had no free time to play with my music setup, and communication with my group-members grew thin. Most extra-curricular activities were social in nature, and any other spare time would go into developing my coding skills.

After completing my first co-op job (at ATI, working on Windows NT/2K 2D graphics drivers), I wrote one last song in my dorm. Beyond this point, my Roland XP-50 simply accompanied me to and from school, and didn't get a whole lot of play time. I managed to dig it out once again for use with a music theory course I took in my second year, but I only used it as a piano to practice intervals with.

My music career officially ended with the sale of my Roland XP-50 in my third year of school. I had just moved into my new condo, and Be informed me that my contract wasn't going to be renewed after the sale to Palm. I needed some cash, and I hadn't really pulled my keyboard out in months. So I eBayed it, found a job shortly thereafter, and went on with my life.

(Stay tuned for the epilogue…)