As a child of about 6, My first ever cassette was Mike Oldfield’s Orchestral Tubular Bells. It was given as a present by my parents who thought that the style of music Mike made was something I would enjoy – they were very right…
I also had a small keyboard with which I could play around with, I guess it was the combination of exposure to the complex arrangements of Mike’s music and the ability of mine to replay that myself on the keyboard that gave me the feel for his music up until this day. You may notice that in a lot of my music, I have orchestral influences and occasionally repetitive arpeggios, well this is probably the manifestation of these influences.
I suppose this is an ideal moment to mention that I cannot read, or write musical notation, so everything I have learned is by ear alone.