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Jayme’s Biography

I was born in England.
Since I was little I’ve always been interested in music. When I was eighteen months old I knew how to work our cassette player and would spend hours with my ear against it, listening and rewinding it when it stopped. And listening again, and again and again.

There are lots of musicians in my family. My brothers play the guitar and my parents used to play in a band so there have always been guitars and other instruments at home. Also, my cousins have a recording studio at home.

Ever since I can remember I’ve known how to play the guitar. When my brother was learning to play I would watch his fingers, especially when he was learning a new chord but he would always turn his back so I couldn’t see.

At 7 I started to learn to play the piano. At 8 or 9, I was having piano lessons after school and learning to read music. I was never interested in scales and so I used to cheat. I would listen to the teacher playing and memorise the song and then pretend to read the notes while I was looking at the sheet. I stopped doing classes when I was 11.
When I was 12, we moved to Spain.

I carried on playing the piano and the guitar, teaching myself, and when I was 14 my eldest brother put together a small recording studio as it was something that he was interested in. It had a bigger piano/keyboard than the one I was using, of course I was really jealous and wanted to use it but as it was new, he didn’t let me. So I just ended up sneaking in when he wasn’t there!

When I was 15 my cousins sent us a mixer, microphones and a computer that they didn’t use anymore and with that we made a small recording studio that we could all use. I started to compose songs with midi sounds and when my uncles came they showed me how the Blues scale works.

When I was 16 my grandma bought me a drum kit and, along with my two brothers and one of my cousins, we formed a band. We played in local bars and discos. We also sent a CD to competition called ‘Lagarto Rock’ in Jaen but we didn’t get anywhere and after that we gave up.

When I was 17 I went to England with my Dad to do some building work on my cousin’s house. I had a good time because they had a much better recording studio than mine and I recorded two songs in my free time with my cousin Helen Monks who is a level 2 Speech Level Singer.

Then I returned to Spain and at 18 started work in a “Tapiceria” (furniture factory) and used the money I earned to buy cymbals for my drum kit.

I formed another rock band with my brothers and a friend and we recorded another cd for Lagarto Rock but nothing came from it. We lost our bass player when he got a girlfriend.

When I was 19 I started working with my Dad in building again. In my free time I would write music for my brother’s (Joe!) videos which he sent to competitions. One day a friend’s girlfriend who was working for a local tv cannel “Localia” asked me to write a piece that lasted five minutes for a video she was doing for a competition or something, can’t remember. I wrote and she used it.

I was twenty when I showed that piece of music to my cousins and they asked me if I would be interested in working in their cantata project in England. I accepted and started writing.

Every year they would do another cantata and for three years I took part, writing, recording and mixing the melodies for the songs but not the words. The lyrics were all written by another friend who would work on the projects. At twenty two I bought a digital piano (Yamaha Clavinova)

Later when my cousins stopped doing cantatas, I started writing for myself.

I was trying to find a style that I liked in the hopes of selling the songs on internet and playing them in gigs.

As I didn’t have a band and one of my brothers was no longer interested in playing I was left a little short on instruments to be able to play the style I’d developed. So I tried to find a way to play live without having to use a backing track. I had the idea of using a loop machine and set about finding a way of putting all the instruments on it. It was very complicated and the songs had to be written specifically to work with that method of playing, and, although it all worked, I couldn’t see myself preparing and setting all that up every time I had a gig and then packing it back up again so I discarded the idea.

Some time later I saw a competition on internet for “Guitar Rig Hero” by the “Native-Instruments” company, which makes the guitar effects software that I had been using for my loops. So I knew exactly what to do for the competition. My brother and I did a video of me making a loop. I won the competition and the first prize of a Les Paul Standard guitar. And it is cool.