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Welcome to Martin Bailey Music!

As a successful photographer, I am way out of my comfort zone sharing my music online, but here it is, warts-and-all.

I have been creating music, like most people, since I was a kid. I love music, and I love making music, but without any formal training, I know that I’m still not that good at it.

Learn more about me under the About section and I’ll try to post updates under the Blog section as time allows. For now, here is a playlist of all of the tracks that I’ve been happy enough with to share, in a compilation that I’m calling PHOTOGRAPH. My earlier tracks came into being mostly as background music for photo slideshows and videos, but more recently I just get inspired by something and pull tracks together purely for the fun of it.

My Music History

I had a guitar as a kid, and I actually sang and played sax in a band in my late-teens, We had a two-hour set and played some local gigs, and I really enjoyed it, but as is often the case, the ego of the guitarist quickly brought the band to its knees, and I left.

Continuing to yearn to make music, I bought a didgeridoo around 2002, and got pretty good with it, but living in Tokyo, an instrument that cannot be played quietly puts you in an awkward position, so I gradually stopped playing.

In 2010 I ditched my day-job in IT to pursue my passion for photography as a full-time career, and I’ve been successful in that, now living a dream life traveling around the planet photographing it’s sheer beauty and sharing my knowledge and experience with my tour guests.

In my first year as a professional photographer, we found out that I had a brain tumor, which I had surgery to remove, and as part of my rehabilitation, I bought an 88 key electric piano from Yamaha. I still have it and love it. Trying to learn to play the piano and struggling but gradually learning to read music became another passion.

I found that once photography became my career, I needed another creative activity to pursue outside of my photography, and music quickly filled that space. The electric piano now sits behind me when I’m at my desk, and I often spin my chair around and play a few tunes during my work-day, which helps me to relax and refocus sometimes.

I’ve had a number of instruments (a few too many) over the last eight years or so, including an electronic MIDI wind instrument, and a plethora of MIDI keyboards. I feel most comfortable now with the keyboard.

My two main instruments are the incredibly expressive ROLI Seaboard RISE 49 and a Native Instruments Komplete Kontrol S61 keyboard. I love them both equally for what they bring to my musical creativity and inspiration.

ROLI Seaboard Rise 49 with other ROLI Controllers and Bitwig Studio as I worked on Funky Falcon
ROLI Seaboard Rise 49 with other ROLI Controllers and Bitwig Studio as I worked on Funky Falcon

My DAW of Choice

Way back, I started to make music with Apple’s Logic Pro, but my passion really started to feel more like my own after I started using Ableton Live 9, probably around five years or so ago now. After starting to use the ROLI Seaboard I switched to Bitwig Studio for a year or so, for its full MPE support, but with Live 11 bringing MPE to Ableton I have pretty much moved back to Ableton, although I now miss some of the amazing features of Bitwig Studio as well.

Anyway, that pretty much sums up who I am, with photography remaining my main creative pursuit, but music taking up the role of my release, my way of winding down. I feel that the two complement each other, and I look forward to the day that I can start to feel as confident and accomplished in my music as I do my photography, but I have a saying:

“Let’s not rush to arrive, it’s all about the journey”

Meaning that we don’t necessarily need to reach our goal, or “make it” in a particular field, rather we should relish the experiences that we have on the journey to our goal.

The journey continues…

Martin Bailey