Becoming a One Person Band
About this ebook
What do you need? A recording studio of course. But also a desire to become your own one person band as a hobby or even more than a hobby. And while a musician who only plays guitar or non keyboards may go a distance into becoming your own band, keyboard background would be even more helpful. What kind of keyboard background would a person need? If a person has experience with piano, organ or accordion or simply a modern day keyboard or keyboard controller and has one already, that would be a great start. Why the emphasis on keyboards? Modern day midi systems or DAW (Digital Audio Workstations) often take their inputs from keyboards and with that can create many sounds and also sound effects. Yes, much can be done with guitars and perhaps just writing notes in for other parts, but keyboard experience is a great help.
What talent is needed? It would be hard for me to define that. I never felt that I was anything special and yet I have accomplished a number of one person band songs with as many as 15 parts, and also enjoyed doing it. Of course if you have something of a music and band background and also some music theory background it is of course a big help. I do wish you the very best in your music endeavor, and hope that this book is at least a little helpful to you and your dreams or hobby.
Ron Plachno (author)
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About the author
The author of this book, Ronald J. Plachno, was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1945. He graduated with a Bachelors Degree in Electrical Engineering from IIT in Chicago, and took 6 graduate courses at the University of Illinois. Beginning as an Electronics Engineer, Ron worked his way up in leadership and became a VP at the Fortune 500 Motorola Corporation and later a Sr. VP at Novatel Wireless, a technology startup company in California. Ron was also listed at one time in the "Who's Who of America". He now has a lovely family of four and his two sons now also have families of their own.
As for music, Ron was given accordion lessons beginning at age 5 for a number of years, and then clarinet and saxophone lessons. Learning on those musical instruments, Ron was in at least 4 school bands. After that he self taught on guitar and bass guitar and played in several neighborhood bands. For two years a more serious band did dances the first year and the second year played nightly in lounges about five nights a week. After that beginning his career in Engineering, Ron felt the loss of fun and satisfaction from playing in a band, and then began to put together home recording studios. And of course that meant first an organ and then new keyboards as well as recording equipment.
A first home recording studio he put together in the mid to late 1990's and he did more than 40 songs, all "covers", and some as many as 15 parts. Ron has replaced that system with a newer home recording studio and has done more than 12 songs with that new recording studio. And his latest fun thing is doing two home music videos which he also does all the parts of - all musical instrument sounds, vocals and video editing. These home recording studios and one person band setups have been so much fun that now Ron wishes to try and share what he has learned, as best as he can, with others.
