What was your earliest audio memory?

[Jay Kahrs]

I started thinking about it today while driving. What was the first audio related thing you can remember doing? And how old were you at the time?

[Drumsound]

There was a lot of music listened to at my house growing up. My Mom still turns up the stereo up so you can hear it in every room when she's cleaning (a habit I picked up from her). I would say my earliest musical memory is listening the Chicago. My folks were huge fans early on (another trait I picked up).

My earliest audio "event" if you will involves a toy called the "Close-N-Play." It was a little red plastic record player with a speaker. It only played 45s. The needle and tone arm were built into the top, andwhen you closed it, it would play the record. The first record I had to play in it was "Radar Love" by Golden Earring. I was probably three, and I couldn't read yet. My Dad put an X on the side with "Radar Love" so I could play it. I think it was a Sunday. He and a friend (or maybe an Uncle?) were carpeting the stairs.

Er, related....

I would make up mini 'guitars' out of rubber bands and cigar boxes - aged 6

I would "tune" the various "strings".

[Renie]

Following Jules comment
I remember asking for a drum kit aged 8. I saw one in the Co-op shop window. I was DEVASTATED with disappointment when I got it because of it's sound. Very rubbery and quiet and nothing like what I'd hoped for!

The 'skin' was great fun for felt tip pens though..

Poor Mum and Dad!!

[neopotato]

I have some recordings of me recording myself on a tape recorder, it says age 3 on the tape. I sing some aussie folk songs and little red rooster
(didn't quite know all the words to that one) I just got to keep it away from my family so they dont play it at my twenty-first birthday. I hope to be out of the country for this event ;)

My other memory is making mix tapes of music video clips using the same tape recorder sitting in front of the tv. Not very good signal path. TV speaker -> ) ) ) ) ->tape recorder mic ;)

[Mike Rhys]

Age 9 or 10.

I used to save my pocket money and buy those old BBC sound effects records. I'd borrow my dad's portable cassette deck and mic and narrate little made up stories while dropping in the SFX. Last year I found the mic in my parents loft. It now hangs proudly on my studio wall.

Things haven't changed much over the years as I still do the same thing...only now I get paid for it.

Mike

[VagrantSt]

Earliest audio memory is going to sleep to the strains of my mother's records coming from the living room. The two I remember are Vivaldi's The Seasons and Duke Ellington Blues In Orbit. (still have that original album) First audio event was my mother (again) bringing me a single of a band I'd been hearing a little about at school. It was I Want To Hold Your Hand backed with I Saw Her Standing There by The Beatles. I listened to it on my little suitcase type record player and by the end of the tune my life had changed irrevocably. My timeline gets a little less specific after that. Maybe the drugs...?!

[alphajerk]

somewhere @ 6 years old. a mono reel to reel that was my moms, i recorded me playing piano.

[3rdpath]

my first audio memory was sitting next to my grandmother while she played and sang gospel hymns on the piano. i was probably 2 or 3. years later i would be playing ELP tunes on that old kimball...

second memory was when i was maybe 5 or 6, listening to beatles records and saying things like " paul, the bass needs to be louder"...

i don't remember doing this but my mother told me the story of watching me "play" my grandparents piano when i was around 4. she said i'd stop and rustle this piece of paper next to me and then begin playing again. when she asked me what i was doing, i told her i was writing music...

must be genetic...

[Jax]

A few memories tied together from when I was around 4 or 6, in no particular order:

Bright orange Fisher Price keyboard, about the same footprint as a shoebox. I remember noodling around on that when I was probably 4. Still around somewhere I think.

Playing my Dad's drums with him holding me to make sure I didn't thwack either of us with the sticks. There are pics of this from when I was around 2, but I wouldn't remember the earlier episodes.

Playing the Coasters (?) 'Charlie Brown' with the flip side being the Jackson 5's 'ABC, 1-2-3' on a toy bright orange plastic 45 player. I remember listening to the songs over and over and over.

Not much has changed except now I can play drums by myself. lol

GO GIANTS!

[Lord Alvin]

I remember going into a studio in Portland to sing an intro to a song on one of my dad's records when I was about eight. He used to tell me "I don't care what kind of board they use at the studio. I care who they have sitting behind it."

[alphajerk]

my kid has a knack of whacking me in the head with the drum sticks when he plays... always when he is going for the big crash hit. he has been playing the drums since he could hold sticks.

[Jax]

That's a good sign!

At least he won't be a guitartist!!

[alphajerk]

he wants to play guitar also but isnt big enough to even hold one yet.

[sonic dogg]

...ahhh....memories...my dads old stereo!(at least it had two speakers)...laying on the floor with my head between the boxes and listening to classical music....tchaikovsky's concerto in D major for violin and orch.....kinda high-brow for a six year old but its what i loved to do...i also listened to all his sinatra and mario lanza...and all the beethoven and mozart and ella....he had a huge record collection and i loved it all...we parted ways though in 1961 when i discovered a pirate radio station broadcast from mexico that played bebop and country blues and that dredded 'negro' blues....and then the ed sullivan show with first elvis and them beatles...been tryin to emulate that stuff ever since....i got $12 for playing bass at a cotillion dance when i was 14...i was proud...he told me to turn that crap down....i never did

I made a record aged about 9 with my dad in one of those soundproofed booths where you talked or sang while the red light was on and then a few minutes later a 7" 45 rpm record dropped out of the slot.

It was a lot of fun, I think I still have it somewhere, we did a DIY stand up comedy scketch and freaked out when we ran out of things to say so just shouted dumb stuff!

[Kris]

When I was around 4 yrs old I vividly remember getting a spanking (the only one I can actually remember) for putting a Beach Boys record on the record player...of course I wasn't allowed to TOUCH the records...

I also remember loving a KISS tv show around this same time (1978?)

I remember I used to cry every time I saw The Yellow Submarine and Puff The Magic Dragon.

[wurly]

At the ripe old age of two or three I would take the little folding suitcase record player and put in in an open window inside the front porch of our house so that I could share the beauty of "How Much is That Doggie in the Window?", Winnie the Pooh, and other childhood hits of the early 1950's with anyone within earshot.

At age 10 I recorded my first rock band on a stereo Wollensak reel to reel. I also made my first "professional' speaker cabinet at ten. Two 15" speakers in a 3/4" plywood cabinet braced with 2x2's and screwed and glued.

When I was 13 years old the city attorney sent a letter to my parents about loud band practices at the house. I was managing a band of college students at the time. I also brought sound systems into my junior high for dances.

Now I have a 40,000 watt sound system in a warehouse and can do anything I want with it, but recording is my first love.

Considering that I still like to share my love of music with others does this mean that I haven't grown any in the last 48 years?

wurly
in autumn

[Steve Smith]

Waiting next to a shortwave radio ( just cause my dad had one) with a portable cassette recorder on rec-pause for half a day so i could record UB40's "red red wine" ( hey I was real young.. )

Also, My dad used to DJ ( not in the hip hop sense ) , and would set the pa up in the house when i was a little kid... I would crank the volume whenever he played it so I could see the VU meters "move" ( the amp inputs! ) Nothing like George Jones and Hank Jr at 110db when you are 5 yrs old :)

[joeq]

I was 12. For helping my father paint THE ENTIRE HOUSE (!) I received the princely sum of $20 which I used to purchase a little battery operated tape recorder. The kind that used to self destruct on Mission Impossible. It had 3" reels and a little ceramic mic.

The first sound I recorded was the wind whistling through a railroad tunnel near my house.

Besides collecting sound effects I also used it to record the great Doubletalker Al Kelly every time he appeared on TV (Soupy Sales, Candid Camera etc,) By playing the tapes over and over I learned to be able to say that the svaden is in the twill of contwortment on to the proper bandollating of the closbies.

[6X2]

A few memories:

I can't exactly remember this, but when I was 4, I used to listen to water running from the tap at different pressures, really low... then full blast! Then medium... etc. 19 years later I discovered that Terry Riley and LeMonte Young started their minimalist/experimental careers like that...

The first recording I did was singing something on a tape that got sent to my grandpa, some 500 miles away. I used to do it every few months or so. I also sang some bizarre French christmas carol so that my little brother (then 1 year old, maximum) could listen to it when he went to sleep...

+ I remember my mum reading out C.S. Lewis' books on tape and she held the mic in her hand and it started feeding back... I still have that mic and I use it... Veeeery lo-fi :)

When I first wanted to listen to an album, I was too short to reach the record player, so my dad had to put it on for me... It must have been one of these three: Bob Dylan At Budokan, Slow Train Coming (Dylan) or Darkness on the edge of town by Bruce Springsteen...

6X 2

[C.Lambrechts]

Landmarks in my life :


Nana Mouskouri ...... my mom used to play that 450 db loud in our livingroom.

That and Mireille Mathieu ....


Then one day I got 3 singles and 1 LP from an aunt for my birthday :

- G-L-O-R-I-A .... GLOOOOOOOOOORIA .....

- CHIIIIIIIIRRRR EEEP ..... CHIRPE CHIRPE CHEEP CHEEP ... CHIRPE CHIRPE CHEEP CHEEP

and

- TAA TAA TAAAAAA .... TAA TAA TA TAAAAA .... TAA TAA TAAAAAAA TAA TAAAAAAAA (distortion guitar played by Richie Blackmore for the connaisseurs amongst you)

The LP was a live double from Neil diamond .... only one song on there that I liked .... one that featured the one and only "THE FONZ" can't remember the title though.

[mixer]

recorded alan ginsberg doing a poetry reading at the university of miami in 1968..used 6 reels of ampex..he did hare krishna for 20 minutes....still have the tapes....never listened to them.......

[BevvyB]

I used to jump up and down on the bed listening to Stravinsky 'The Rite Of Spring' and 'The Firebird', and occasionally West Side Story when I was 4 or 5. To date, still three of my favourite pieces of music ever.

My grandad was a crackpot inventor of electronic organs, I remember twiddling all the ridiculous buttons when I was 3-ish. He only died recently, and the organ he was building never did get finished (afetr 30 years of tinkering)

Pop didn't get a hold of me till I was 9, when I used to listen to the Bee Gee's saturday night fever album and Sheer Heart Attack by Queen and Discovery by ELO and wonder what a mellotron was and what a producer was and what an engineer was. This is when I realised that my classical upbringing and early training couldn't teach me how to create what I was hearing in the headphones!

[Jay Kahrs]

bump

[mersisblue]

i dont know about first audio memory but the first song that caught my ear was twist and shout by the beatles I heard it on ferris buellers day of

I didnt learn who sang for some time after that
the next song that really made an impact was losing my religion rem

[RichT]

Earliest song I can remember hearing was Stevie Wonder 'I Just Called To Say I Love You', I think my mum had bought the single and played it continually.

Another musical memory was making 'tunes' along to the sound of the drone of my mum's hoovering.

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
Neeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
Ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Still great fun even today

[RobMacki]

I think I was 5 maybe and I got a Fireman's helmet with a mic and and speaker attached to it. I remember being facinated about how it would feed back. I used to find just the spot where it would begin to feed back and listen to the different freq. I had no idea about polar patterns and rejection but I was learning something.

The other was about the same age. I loved to play with my Slinky after all "Everyone wants a Slinky" I didn't care as much about how it would move as much as how to hold it to make it ring out.

I think "Summertime Blues" was playing in the background.

[Sharp11]

My Dad had a background as a radar technician during ww2, so many years later, in the early 60's, he had many radios in pieces in our basement. I remember the open chassis with tubes and speakers everywhere.

Around that time, just before the Beatles broke, I'd stand in front of the mirror with an old Harmony guitar mimicking Roy Orbison's "Pretty Woman".

Those two events plus all the cool tv shows of the day (Ed Sullivan, Shindig, Hullabaloo, etc) pretty much hooked me into a world of music.

I was about six or seven at the time.

[Brenton]

My grandmother bought me a crystal set in the mid sixties, I was about 6 or 7 and laid in bed at nights seeing what I could pick up.

Later got the old family mono valve radio and took off the back and put wires on to the speaker terminals, with insulation tape of course (I am a professional) and added lots of wire and collected old radios that people through out in the trash, ripped out their speakers and added them on. I used to set it up in the back yard and run speakers in the trees around the back yard and walk around checking the sound. (I didn't know then that if I actually put the speakers in boxes I would have gotten a lot more level).


Next saved up for one of those new fangled cassette thingamees and cut the mic cable and added extra wire in so I could put the mic in another room and record people with out them knowing.