It cannot be underestimated the importance of my very early childhood on my musical development. Before beginning school, and even probably before I took my first breath, music was all around me. Naturally I cannot remember any of it affecting me consciously while I was as yet unborn, and I cannot claim to have felt a profound love for that which I heard as a baby, then as a toddler, and then as a young child; but unconsciously though it happened, I feel that all this music has affected me and contributed to my development.

My dad, you see, is a musician, and as a child (me being the child) he would play his guitar, playing what I think are old folk songs, and music by people like John Denver. Now, I can't claim now to be the founder or leading figure of any John Denver appreciation groups - not because I don't like the man, but because I haven't actually heard him play, apart from the odd snippet I might have seen of him in a music documentary - but I feel that this simple act of my dad's, of playing his guitar within my earshot, did spark my interest in the instrument, and provided the foundation for my great love (some generously disposed people may say 'talent') for music.

Further to my dad's playing, I seem to remember there being music on regularly in the house. There wasn't a profusion, mind you, and it certainly wasn't playing every waking hour of the day, but I remember it being around. However, I cannot remember exactly what music I was hearing back then, but I can safely say that, like my dad's playing, the music I listen to and love now bares little resemblance to the music I heard as a child. But the same principal applies, I think: the mere existence of music around me, whatever it was, so long as it was music - rhythms, melodies, textures, harmonies, etc. - has had a lasting, albeit possibly indirect/inactive, effect on me and my life.

It wasn't till I went to school that I was introduced more fully to the joys of learning and creating music.

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