Short version:
*Homo sapiens
*Writes music, plays guitar
*From Mallorca, now based in the South East of the UK
Long version:
A very handsome man - not me, somebody else - expressed an interest in interviewing me. The interviewer - definitely not me, a different person - wanted to remain anonymous and I promise I'm not interviewing myself.
Childhood
Interviewer: Hello, good to meet you.
Lluís: Thank you for having me.
Interviewer: Let's start at the beginning, shall we? How did your relationship with music come about? Do you come from a musical family?
Lluís: Neither of my parents were musicians but I suppose music was always present in the house.
My father had a respectable collection of CDs which I mainly got to hear in his car and occasionally around the house. Throughout my childhood and teenage years I recall hearing a lot of The Who, The Clash, The Yardbirds, Talking Heads, Blur, Them, The Stranglers, Joy Division, Canned Heat, Richie Havens, Country Joe and the Fish, Ten Years After, Jefferson Airplane, Frank Zappa, Kevin Ayers, Nirvana, David Bowie, and others I can't remember right now.
My mother also had her own collection of CDs of questionable artists, such as Tom Jones and Buffy - Duffy? - but also ABBA, The Animals, and a compilation of Cuban music. She also had a classical guitar in the house which rarely got played. In fact, the only memory I have of her playing it was when she picked it up and sang American Pie by Don McLean.
Guitar
Interviewer: Did your mother teach you to play guitar?
Lluís: No, although I do recall her showing me a couple of chords. I remember loving the sound of the open B7 chord; it was so different from the others, the beginner ones, you know: C, G, Em, etc.
Interviewer: So how did you start with the guitar? Did you pick up the one in the house one day?
Lluís: No. In my teenage years I began to discover new music, bands such as Billy Talent, Sum 41, System of a Down, Marilyn Manson, Cradle of Filth, Slipknot and Linkin Park.
Interviewer: Uh, are you being serious?
Lluís: Yeah, why?
Interviewer: I don't know, it's just… Seriously? Cradle of Filth? Aren't those the guys that wrote a song called Gilded Cu-
Lluís: As I was saying, I was really into those artists and I remember watching Linkin Park's Live in Texas album on repeat and being envious of how much fun they seemed to be having. If I'm not misremembering, it was around that time that I begged my parents to take me to a music shop to buy me an electric guitar. They did, and at 11 or 12 I got a Gibson Les Paul imitation and a small solid state Marshall amp for 100€ or so.
After some futile attempts at playing it, I quickly became overwhelmed by all the strings and frets and I gave up.
Interviewer: I bet your parents regretted buying you the guitar.
Lluís: I would have.
Interviewer: So then what? You obviously picked it up again.
Lluís: I did but I don't remember why. I guess that because I still loved music and the guitar was sitting in my room, it was inevitably going to happen sooner or later.
Interviewer: Did you sign up for lessons?
Lluís: No. Frankly, my first years with the guitar were incredibly chaotic, disorganised and inefficient, but I wouldn't have wished for anything different because of how much fun I had.
Interviewer: It must have helped that your parents were both into music.
Lluís: Yeah, but I didn’t get the good genes. My mother has an incredible ear and she can figure out the chord progressions of songs on the guitar and piano without being able to explain how. I never inherited my mother's ear, which contributed to my early struggles... It makes me think of a quote by Phil Collins, which I can't really remember, but I think he was joking that if he - and Genesis - had been a bit more talented, they might have actually been good. Something along those lines.
Interviewer: But how d-
Lluís: I was really into Billy Talent and I was determined to learn their songs, but I just didn't know how to. Thanks to friends and the Internet, words such as "tablature" came into my vocabulary and I eventually struck gold by finding a tab for Devil in a Midnight Mass, but there was another problem: I couldn't read tab and I couldn't figure out what the hell the numbers meant. I have a funny memory of being in my room with a friend, both of us looking at the tab like a pair of troglodytes trying to decipher it. Through trial and error I eventually got it and, whilst I couldn't play the riff up to speed, I recognized that what I was playing matched the notes of the song.
I don't think I put the guitar down after that. I remember I spent an entire summer playing along to all of System of a Down's 5 albums back-to-back, daily. To say I had a blast would be an understatement. I also tried to write some of my own music in tablature on Word documents. The tunes were incohesive and worthless and will never see the light of day, but they're a fond memory to have.
Interviewer: …? Oh, I see, you couldn't notate sheet music.
Lluís: Yeah, exactly. I couldn't read or write. Years later I realised this was unacceptable, so I bought Learning to Read Music by Peter Nickol and, once I knew the basics, I decided to try out Bach's BWV 1000 Fugue. I played the first note of the score - a B - which matched the first note of the recording, and the rest followed. I was lucky, though, because both the score and the recording I had were in E minor, whereas I think many other recordings are in G minor, so that could have gone horribly wrong!
Influences
Interviewer: You've told me about your early influences and other… questionable… artists that you liked, but you're also into classical music and jazz, right?
Lluís: You're a funny guy, huh? Well, being a guitarist and a moody teenager, I was naturally into rock and metal. As for classical music, I knew of the usual suspects (Bach, Mozart and Beethoven) but the music just didn't stick.
I can't remember why but one day my mother suggested that I buy a CD of Romani music. I really liked the virtuosic violin playing and I began searching for more Eastern European music, which led me to discover Bartók's Second Violin Concerto. I was instantly hooked but I only liked the first 10 bars! The musical language was too alien for me and I just couldn't follow what was happening, but I came across other more "accessible" works, such as his Three Folksongs from the Csík District.
Interviewer: So was Bartók your true entry point into classical music?
Lluís: Yes. From that point on the floodgates were opened and my adoration of 20th-century classical music began. I was discovering so much new music that the excitement I felt around that time was something special. I felt like I was breathing air from another planet - if you excuse the cheeky reference!
Interviewer: What?
Lluís: Nothing…
Interviewer: Any composers in particular?
Lluís: Hmm, the Second Viennese School, the Darmstadt guys, Bartók, Messiaen, Takemitsu, Saariaho, Vivier, Lou Harrison, Ingram Marshall, Piazzolla, Ives, Schnittke, Scriabin, Leo Ornstein, Babbitt, Henry Cowell, Feldman, Ruth Crawford Seeger, and others. Bartók also introduced me to, and opened my mind to, music of other cultures; I owe so much to him.
Interviewer: And how did you get into jazz?
Lluís: Frankly, I don't remember, but I imagine that musical curiosity is the answer. If I had to narrow it down, I'd probably say that post-bop has had the biggest influence on me, but not exclusively of course. Musicians like Jackie McLean, Eric Dolphy, Bobby Hutcherson, Don Ellis, Horace Silver, Carla Bley, Mingus, Jaki Byard, Tyner, Henderson, Coltrane, Shorter, Hōzan Yamamoto, Terumasa Hino, Jean-Luc Ponty, Woody Shaw, Roland Kirk, and others.
Composing
Interviewer: How did you get into composing?
Lluís: In my mid-20s I went through some sort of musical crisis. I'd spent 10+ years playing guitar and I felt like I had nothing to show for it...
…I could play some songs but, whatever, who can't?
…I liked rock and had written some tunes, but I wasn't in a band.
…I liked jazz, but I wasn't happy with my improvisation skills.
…I liked classical music but, as an amateur guitarist, I felt like I would be an outsider in that world, a world of which I also knew nothing.
Life was also getting in the way and I found myself with less time to play guitar, which fed into a downward spiral of dwindling motivation. I felt like everything I had done in my life had been for nothing... like I was back at the beginning of it all.
I eventually had the realization that I'd been writing music almost since the beginning, and I liked being able to look back to the past to compare where I was and how far I'd come, and compositions were a pretty good way of doing this. After all, they have a beginning, an end, and a date, so they're essentially a snippet of you at a given time in your life. Also, they will outlive you, which I think is a big part of the reason why I preoccupied myself with them.
Interviewer: Oh, look at the time! I’m going to miss my train. Is it OK if we leave it here?
Lluís: Yeah, of course. I was more or less finished anyway.
Interviewer: Thanks. It's been great talking with you and, uh, I’ll invoice you tomorrow.
Lluís: What?
Interviewer: Just kidding. By the way, we look quite similar, don’t you think?
