FAQ: When did you start making music and which instruments do you play?

FAQ

Here are some of the questions answered that I get asked the most, probably. ;) Each one answered in a different post to keep the visibilty and make navigation to the stuff that interests you the most as easy as possible...

Q: When did you start making music and which instruments do you play?

A: I first got in contact with live music at around 4 years old. My dad took me to one of his few daytime shows - he used to be a sound engineer - and I immediately got "infected" by the bass or kick drum punching my guts :)

Later then, when I was around 7 my dad's band would do "family & friends" gigs and party and us kids would gather around the intruments. I mostly wanted to play the keyboards but that was short fun, literally. I couldn't really reach up to the keys :D

The other kids would pile up at the drums and this drummer patiently explained to them and sat them at the kit and let them play. He then grabbed me and sat me on the chair, although I wasn't into the drums and just stood around. He explained the 1234 thing and Kick on 1 and 3, Snare on 2 and 4 and the right hand all the way on the Hi-Hats. Somehow I managed to play like this right away and he said "Son, you'll become a drummer, one day!".

This didn't make any sense to me, as I wanted to play keys, that day.

So 1987 at the age of 8 I had nagged my parents so much they would finally sign me up at the local music school in the then socialist GDR (East Germany). I learned classical piano there for two years. That didn't go anywhere far, since I have very short fingers in first place, but most importantly I was ALL into Rock music and didn't get anything from the classics back then!

They (the classics department at the music school) actually kind of "fired me" as they said my musicality is there, but piano is obviously not my instrument.

At the age of 10 I then "switched" to the drums and was lucky, that this music school had just started a new branch called "dance music department" (I kid you not!) so I didn't need to start with the Snare drum alone but could start with the big rock drum set and was hooked ever since! :)

Later, at around 15, I had to find out that being at camp fires, trying to get in contact with girls, playing drums wasn't a good deal. But the guys just holding(!) a completely de-tuned(!) guitar would get them! I decided to learn the guitar myself and by asking fellow musicians and also by looking at pictures of Kurt Cobain playing the guitar, I learned some chords and spent hours in my room torturing my sister's old guitar. Needless to say that I also had to find out, that you need to be a good guy as well, not only holding guitars... ;)

So yes, I'm a quite decent drummer, but also play some guitar (which is hard with my short fingers, but bass is much harder!) and piano.