Martin Schmidler

Growing up. Growing annoyed.

I listened to music before I was even born. Both my parents are lovers of music (classical and traditional austrian folk music¹) and play instruments themselves, though not professionally. I started playing piano at the age of 6 and I was kinda good at it. When I was eleven I somehow started to hate the ever growing amount of notes that piled in front of my eyes. I even remember crying because of that one day. For reasons unknown I then quit with piano and moved on to learning french horn, which would eventually become the main occuption in my leisure time over the next ten years. Again, I was kinda good at it and I had one of the best teachers in upper austria². I never was a real striver, so to say, at no point did I invest the plethora of hours in practice that I could have – and should have to not only be pretty good but one of the best. After about seven years I moved on to take lessons at university (only the actual music lessons, not as a real university student). While I didn’t like my teacher from the beginning I sort of tried to adjust and kept practicing. I stayed three years – then the consideration of devoting myself to a career as a pro was gone, at last.

An undiscovered land.

Besides the classical music I listened to (partly because I had to, partly because I liked it³) I always listened to pop  music though the years. For some reason though I never really spent time discovering artists and the kind of music that, today, I refer to as real music. It was only in 2009 when I was driving home⁴ and the austrian radio station FM4 played “White Winter Hymnal” by Fleet Foxes.

I was in shock. How could something, amongst all the other shitty, artificial stuff, be that pure, pristine, honest, filled with emotion and at the same time on a really high level technically? I downloaded their debut album and probably became became a life-long fan⁵. From that moment on I started to realize that there was a whole land filled with music, just waiting to be discovered. This process of discovering still goes on⁶ and it is likely never to end. Which is awesome. If you think I’m kinda late to the party, well, I don’t care⁷.

Striving to create.

From that day on I somehow knew that I wanted (and was able to) create songs as well. But as with most stuff it takes me incredibly long to actually achieve something. I bought my first guitar only in January 2011. And I wrote the first song I am slightly satisfied with only yesterday. At 2am in the morning. The euphoria resulting from it is a completely insane feeling. One thing that proved invaluable for achieving that was my songwriting diary, where I keep collecting chords, melodies that come to my mind as well as lyric parts.

I got an exam the day after tomorrow and I didn’t really study hard for it. I will probably fail at it. But right now I don’t care about anything at all. I write songs. And as I’m typing this my iPod⁸ is on shuffle. Fleet Foxes are playing.