S.D. Cisco

About me:

.. I edited my profile with Thomas' Myspace Editor V4.4 I remember the first time I made the connection between the physical object, known as the Upright Piano, and what the thing could do when someone sat down to play it. This first exposure to a piano, didn’t occur at home, but at church and later at school. At about the same time, when I was maybe 4 or 5, I had the slightly subversive notion, that, if given the chance and the time, I could play it. You may wonder why I say “subversive”, but you should remember, that little children are often told, “...now don’t touch it” So, you might say that I partially grew up with the notion that if I reached out and actually made the depressed key make the sound of a musical note, that by so doing, I was giving evidence of a rebellious spirit that would not be tamed. All of that was finally turned around when, at age 10 or 11, my family bought their first piano, a dark finished old war-horse of an instrument, which my parents bought so that my younger sister Cynthia, could take lessons. Well, on top of that, because they put the piano in her bedroom, and everything else in the room was pink, so they painted the piano pink From these humble beginnings, I was able to learn my first piece of music by ear, not something by the pop stars of the day,no, the first thing I learned to play, was the firmly ingrained melody and harmony, of the church hymn, “What a friend we have in Jesus”, just because it was a commonly sung hymn and I’d heard it many times. I know now, that the key I played it in was E Flat, which has got to be tougher on the piano than figuring it out in the key of C. Anyway, it was a great song to play and after that, I continued to learn, not just intellectually, but physically as well. Through experiment and exercise, I gradually expanded my repertoire and skill set. I began to purposefully compose little pieces of music, based on something I had been thinking about. But, as a kid, I had other things to do with my spare time as well, yet, I had established that I was a friend of music, and music was a friend of mine. The first time I had the chance to listen to pieces of music, like classical music, was by listening to the one and only family record we had that would fit into the category, a very scratched LP of Strauss Waltzes. For playback, I had the venerable Sea Breeze record player. I would listen to that record over and over, I was enchanted by the power, the sounds of the orchestra had over me. Once I was 13 or 14, I would scrape together enough money, go to big department stores and scour the racks for classical LP’s. I indulged myself repeatedly, and soon had a pretty good collection. It was the emotions which were unleashed by this music, it seemed that I was able to relive and understand some part of the composers life experience. After that first piano, there was almost always one in my life. I left home when I was 18, and often had no fixed address during the first year or so, but I remember owning a couple of pianos even then. After a while, with the advent of electronic keyboards, not so much electric organs or pianos, although I had some of them too, but, more the increasingly sophisticated synthesizers and related gear that became available, I became a user and creator of electronic music. After a time, I got a lucky break when photographer and film maker, Irwin Karnick asked me to create the musical soundtrack to his environmental film, “Lake Odyssey”. The film was half an hour long and the amazing thing was Irwin made it with funding coming from one or more government agencies. But then, when he had the completed film in hand, he licensed it to Paramount Pictures, for worldwide distribution No doubt, I gained confidence with this success and so a couple of years later, after I purchased a 4 track tape deck, and after I had written and recorded quite a lot of music, I put together and released my LP “Ämanita”. It was all electronic music. In 1998, I made my first film, just dubbing back and forth with VCR’s, then adding the music, but it taught me that a magic can occur when combining music with motion graphics, and once I made the first one, there was no turning back. Pretty soon, I owned a computer that could do computer video editing, and I have upgraded several times. I somehow got into using the video editor as an animation tool. Before long, I started experimenting with 3D software, and the next thing you know, I am making musical animations