James Kiely
Hello! I reside with my family in a small Suffolk village with lots of old people holding plant sales and not much else. I have a real interest in music and music technology, having taken it for GCSE alongside acting, history and art. Since I was about seven a good proportion of my life has been spent with a piano originally learning those twenty second, single finger pieces about the day of a postman or a frog. Within the last couple of years I have started playing drums as well and, more recently, have been becoming continuously more interested in synthesized sound and recording. One of the huge problems that had faced me when learning was my inability to read music. I never fully enjoyed piano playing until I could escape the boundaries and begin to improvise. I still don’t read music at all and cannot decipher even single notes without difficulty. I can teach myself so much more efficiently by reproducing the hand movements of another due to learning mostly kinesthetically.
Having decided my first piano teacher wasn’t the biggest inspiration, due to being told I would have great difficulty in putting two hands together, I moved on to another who really was. She helped me move on considerably from the physiological barrier I had hit, introducing me to boogie-woogie in the form of a nearby Daniel Smith concert. This guy is an actual legend and he taught me most of the techniques I know today, having the odd lesson whenever he isn’t in Scotland.
Although it isn’t ‘hip’ and ‘rad’ (words my parents seem to believe are still in use today) to play boogie woogie, I really do love it and am surprised anyone will put up with my constant undiverse playing.
My family is pretty music obsessed too, all of them playing instruments of some form and some time.
Email me at james-kiely@hotmail.co.uk if you so desire or we can make conversation on the Forum
Other than this I’m on a lot of social networking sites and YouTube, greasycookingpot, with a good few videos of my playing.
I will eventually get around to making some MP3s and will let anyone who shows an interest know about their availability. Cheers, James."