As
this is the very beginning I should start at the very first step of my path as
a musician: the bass or: my father’s old Framus Jazz Bass copy. I wanted to
play this instrument but I was told by him that I had to learn guitar first. So
I bought a classical guitar right after Christmas 2004 and began practicing. A
few months went by and I decided to buy an electrical guitar. And so I got my
Ibanez RG in May 2005 and played almost every day – and didn’t think about the
bass for a while. Within the first weeks I also began looking for musicians to
form a band and although we didn’t met on a regular basis we still managed to
play some songs by Rammstein.
From
the very beginning of playing guitar I also began writing songs. I still got the
Guitar Pro-file of my 1st song and although it’s nothing special
it’s not bad either. It even includes a guitar solo, a part I later ignored
completely. But my ambitions to become a skilled guitar hero died off when my
abilities wouldn’t improve no matter how hard I practiced. I’m quite sure that I
did something wrong back then – but that doesn’t matter now. I began focusing
on songwriting and discovering new genres (not just on guitar). The Rammstein
cover-band ‘dissolved’ (although we even played one of my own songs we never agreed
on ‘Last Aid Kit’ or something else that would justify calling it a real band)
and I began looking for new musicians.
I
found a very talented bass player at my school who knew a drummer and so a
group, later almost officially named ‘Red Collars’ was founded. We played some
covers too (e.g. Static-X – The Only, The Strokes – Reptilia, Farin Urlaub - OK)
but I already had some britpoprock-indie-like stuff ready that we used. Just
FYI: this was the point when I first noticed that it is almost impossible to
categorize your own music when it’s not intentionally matching a specific
style. Not because you think of your own stuff as the most genuine ever but
because the lack of distance to compare it to the stuff you listen to. After
rehearsing every week for a while we began to intensify our search for a lead
singer but no candidate matched our expectations. I tried to sing sometimes but
I had zero experience and practice so it sounded reeeaaally awful. During this
phase I noticed that I miss it a little bit to write and play Metal/Industrial
like music and that’s when I first had the idea to make stuff like that on my
own. I looked for a drummer and named this ‘side project’ Polymetric (later
Polymetrix). Calling The X was written was this project – it just sounds very
different now. Just before I graduated from high school I met my now-fiancée in
January 2007 and was so frustrated by the real band not moving forward that I
decided to leave it.
Someone
convinced me to play two songs as a guitarist at my graduation but after that I
had no plans for making music outside my home. Together with my fiancée I
sometimes played Johnny Cash’s cover of ‘Hurt’ – with her playing the piano and
me playing acoustic guitar. I sometimes even sang and she encouraged me to sing
more often. After I gave her an electrical violin as a Christmas present we
planned to found a medieval-themed folkrock band – and we did. That launched a
bigger chapter of my biography as a musician – one that I will address in the
next (hi-)story entry.
Remembering
all that reassured me on giving the advice to play with other musicians as soon
as possible to every beginner. You just get a way better understanding of how
instruments work together, that each instrument can take the lead part and that
playing perfectly isn’t really the point of making music with others. Although
accurate playing is indeed the goal you should strive for being able to play as
you and not as a machine. As long as your intonation and timing aren’t way off
it can be a characteristic to lead the rhythm group with the bass or maximize
the ‘laid-back’-feel of a guitar melody. Your inner sense for something
sounding and feeling good doesn’t develop by practicing alone or with a perfect
backing track.
PS:
before the search for musicians for the band in the next chapter began I bought
a bass…
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