Here are my answers, in the usual excess length that I write things with...
At 2/24/11 10:20 PM, The-Great-One wrote:
Q: How did you discover music?
Well obviously since music is all around us and we probably can't spend a day without hearing some form of music, I discovered it inevitably.
If you mean, 'how did you discover music and began to like it?', then that's pretty recent. I started liking it at around 9, and I discovered that I liked it because I realised 'hey, music sounds awesome with video games'. I began playing games for the sole purpose of listening to their music sometimes, and if the music is really good it inspired me to play through a game more than once rather than let it gather dust as I move on to another game.
Most of my liking in music, however, came when I discovered the Audio Portal, and proof of this can be the 500+ Audio Portal songs I still have, downloaded onto my computer. When I got my mobile (which was at about 12-13 years old I believe) I used it solely for listening to music and the occasional necessary SMS or phone call I needed, and I still do today.
This is weird because before, when I was younger, I would refuse to ever start using headphones, listen to music by famous people, etc... Simply put I found music and any other arts (except writing) incredibly boring.
Q: What first inspired you to make music?
Before I ever got FL Studio, I used to make music with Echo with trial versions of notation software such as Finale, when I was 11. I'd mess around on the piano, and when I make a nice melody, I go to the computer, add some piano accompaniment to the melody and give it to Echo, where he'd give it different instruments with Cakewalk (all MIDI, don't forget), maybe add a few of his own things to the song here and there, and produce the final MP3.
I think the main inspiration to start making music like that came from different places. It might have come from my piano lessons, which, at the time, I'd been going to for about a year, and it could have come from the ambitions that my friends of school and I had to make music and play it in front of the school (which never actually happened, but hey, we were young and overambitious).
Still, what actually got me to start making listen-able music was FL Studio, and the music in the Audio Portal did this. At first I thought that I should give Flash a try because at the time I found that my interests were more on the visual side rather than the aural side, but I knew that I was hopeless at drawing. I heard about many different softwares to make music with, but eventually I settled with FL Studio.
I believe my inspiration to get FL Studio was this song... I was like 'whoa, you can make music like this with FL Studio?' :D.
Q: What is in your opinion, the definition of music?
My definition is going to be like the definition of most of the people in this thread; it's sound, interpreted as art, and is created with the initial aim of making people find it pleasant/interesting to listen to. That being said, music is, like, the only thing (other than deeply emotional events such as deaths of family members or some very important exam results) which makes me feel emotions more than I usually do (which isn't much), and there are only a few things, such as making music itself, that I enjoy more than finding a spot alone and listening to some well-written and emotional music.
Conclusion: in its concrete definition, music is an art in the form of sound, but it's very subjective and to everyone it serves a different purpose.
Q: When it comes to writing your music without really much to inspire you, where does it start?
It starts with doodling and ends with doodling. I can't write music without inspiration and expect it to sound good. In some rare occasions I write without any inspiration, and what I write, despite sounding like crap, inspires me to write something better. But never have I had a time when I started a song without inspiration, ended it without inspiration, and it sounded good.
Where does the first note come down and where does the song end?
The first definable note of a melody when I don't have any inspiration comes down immediately when the song starts. I don't manage to make a decent intro without inspiration and so, I just write what I can and it usually either ends with a half-assed ending or me deciding to give up on it.
That's about it. Sorry for the large amount of text.