Opener

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For a music lover like me, contests about music is definitely regarded as something exhilarating. Therefore, thanks to @wakeupkitty.pal for hosting this contest, Contest | A Better Life - Music (15 Steem/UVF). All Steemians are invited to participate. Entries can be submitted before the payout deadline of the contest article. On this occasion I would like to invite @rayfa to participate. I'd also like to invite @isabelpena, @sofian88, @liasteem, @caringmanasseh.

I, My Father, and Music

My contact with music probably started from the early days of my life, meaning maybe even when I was a baby, because as far as I can remember, my father was a music fan.

During my childhood, when I was in elementary school, my father had a collection of cassette tapes with various types of songs. At that time, the medium for storing music was cassette tapes, not like today when music is digital and sometimes stored in the “cloud”. My experience with music began with this cassette tape technology. The oldest cassette player that I can remember that my father had at that time was the one with one cassette player compartment. Apart from that, this device also has the ability to capture radio broadcasts on MW and SW frequencies. FM waves became popular years later.

The illustration of cassette tape player / recorder, similar to the ones we used to have at home. The image was created by me using Adobe Photoshop 2021 and a companion of Gayonese Arabica coffee.

Apart from music, my father also collected plays, both regional and national plays. And some of religious lectures from famous preachers. But here we will focus on music only. My father's musical taste vary from dangdut, pop, slow rock, traditional music, from within and outside the country, with artists such as d'Lloyd, Panbers, Edie Silitonga, Rhoma Irama, Aishah, Ebiet G. Ade, Gombloh, Ibnu Arhas, Bob Rijal, and so on. It influenced my musical taste in some ways and amount.

Kids these days wouldn't understand the pain! Image source: Pixabay. May the creator live a happy and joyful life.

New Chapter (For Me)

My taste in music found a new path when I was in junior high, where I first encountered DeWA which has been my first contact with alternative pop music and all the genres that followed after that. At that time, the band DeWA had just released their first album entitled “19”, precisely on October 7, 1992. The album tile “19” itself referred to the average age of its members at that time. The song “Kangen” from the album was very popular amongst young people and was often played on radios, especially upon request. To date, it has been covered several times by various artists, whether in collaboration with DeWA or independently.

Since then DeWA has become one of the most successful bands in Indonesia and remains active to this day. The album “19” became a kind of opening for me to exposure to many different musical genres from those that had influenced me at home. I even started to get to know foreign music since then.

The essence of what I want to say about music, my feelings about it, and what it means to me, has actually been said brilliantly by the German rock / metal band, Helloween, in a song entitled "Music". This song first appeared on the album entitled Chameleon, which was released on May 31 1993, under the label of EMI. Let me quote a verse from the song.

Music is like sunrise for me
It's joyful like a trip in a time machine
Music is like sunrise for me
It's like coming home

The image started as a pencil scratch on a paper before went to editing on Adobe Photoshop 2021. I did it with the companion of Gayonese Arabica coffee.

I think, the perfect heaven for me (which could be a kind of reference to a "better life") would be a plot consisting of long hallways lined with shelves containing books about philosophy, novels by John Grisham, Dan Brown, Agatha Christie, and a music room equipped with an unlimited collection of songs and a satisfying sound system. Having neighbors like MetallicA and Black Sabbath would certainly be delightful. Ah!

Making A Singer Out of Me

Loving music so much, there were times when I used to hum in the bathroom often, finding it relaxing and I think it made showers more enjoyable. However, for some time now, I've been regularly singing to backing music tracks on YouTube, despite my not-so-easy-to-listen-to-voice.

The latest development, in my spare times, I have been looking for minus one musics (the ones without vocals), then I combine them with my voice and save them as .mp3 files. I do this using Audacity, an audio editor application, that runs smoothly on my Windows 10 system. On it’s website, the developers describe it as “the world's most popular audio editing and recording app”. It does those things (edits audio and records voices / sounds), and also able to mix several sounds files in to one file, also lets users add some effects. The developers also deliver this message on the website, “Audacity is for anyone who wants to get creative with sound. It’s also the perfect tool for anyone who needs to quickly edit or export audio, for any reason.” I agree, but, keep in mind, I don’t think it is a professional audio mixer that can be used to create commercial musics. And they also say ...

Screenshot from Audacity official website

Commercial Break Alert (You Can Skip It But Please, DON’T)

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So far, I have covered 17 songs and saved them in mp3 format, and I have several more in progress. Most of them are Indonesian songs, some Acehnese pop songs, some are English language songs and a few of Malaysian songs. It might sound funny, but is the fact: the first time I listened to my mixing result of a song named "Wonderful Tonight" popularized by Eric Clapton in 1977 which is still famous to this day, I felt like, "Oh! That's why my friends used to say that my voice sounds more enjoyable when I'm silent."

But over time, my feeling became, “Great! Now I can listen to what my friends have been listening to all this time.” I now have a playlist in the music players on my digital devices that specifically contains the songs I cover, and the list keeps growing. How can people idolize you if you yourself won't, right? I think so.

The Audacity interface when I was doing a cover mixing for Deep Purple’s Soldier of Fortune.

We Reached the Bottom, Time For Me To Wrap It All Up And Speak Like One Wise Person (Which Is Not Me)

But this is not at all about becoming an idol. It's about enjoying life, appreciating the time borrowed from God well, and being grateful for His (or Her) blessings. Because fundamentally, there's so much to be grateful for rather than to complain about. And that gratitude certainly brings happiness and a BETTER LIFE, but pleasure and abundance do not necessarily bring gratitude and happiness. So, in my opinion, happiness is a decision, not an achievement.

Enuff Talk, Time To Enjoy The Noise