1.1.2 - Part II (1991 - 2002)
1991
A very important year in a lot of different ways
Senior Year of High School
1991 was my Senior year of school, form class 12.3. I ended up with 4 A's, a B and a C; the C for English was my best ever result for that subject. I got a TE score of 875 (approximately equivalent to an OP of 8, I think).
The chartological odyssey continues
Musically, 1991 was very full. I was still actively engaged in chartology; the weekly chart recital had gained a sort of cult status outside the computer lab every Friday morning (first period Friday was computers). "1, 4, 8, 1" was followed by "Joyride, Roxette, EMI, 2547-7".
d-Wizz investigates membranophonics
1991 saw the biggest change in my life. I began seriously contemplating studying membranophonics, especially after hearing and watching one of the Year 9 students play at school one lunchtime. I asked the music teacher if I would be allowed to have a go on the school drum kit, and she said that only students who were having lessons were allowed to play it. So I thought about that for a while. Because it was May, it was too late to join the school music program. Then, on 1991-05-30 I was in the city after school and suddenly I had a thought - how much would private lessons cost? I remember the details very clearly. I went to the phone box on the corner of Edward and Charlotte Streets. The time was 1702hrs. I called a music shop on the southside of town called Go Music. I asked about drum lessons and I was told to rock up at 2000hrs for a free introductory lesson. So I went to Garden City (a shopping centre across the road) to do some shopping and kill time. Then I went to have my first lesson. I learnt how to play this:
Apparently I caught on very quickly, because I was also shown how to play a few variations of that beat at the time. My "membranophonics professor's" name was Mark Charters. After the lesson, I bought a pair of Linko 5A drumsticks for $6 and went home. I kept the sticks in my schoolbag because I didn't want Mum finding out - I was a little nervous about it all. The next morning, I remember walking down the science block corridor practicing in the air with a pair of test tubes what I had played about 14 hours earlier. At lunchtime I told the music teacher I was getting lessons and she let me use the school drum kit. Mission accomplished!
So, I started to practise at school. I arrived early, usually about 0800. I got about 40 minutes in the morning, plus another 40 minutes at lunch time, and about an hour after school. I loved it. It was about this time that most of the school discovered that the new "soundproof" music practise rooms built in 1990 were not! Most of my tuition was focused on rock patterns, consisting of a straight-eight on the hi-hat, and steady 2 and 4 on the snare, with various bass drum patterns and the occasional ghosting added for variety! The large part of it was in strictly eighth note timing. In the practise room at school, I would play along with a tape deck connected to a guitar amplifier. I made up some tapes with simple songs on them and I played them over and over again. Some of the songs on the tape included:
* Addicted to Love - Robert Palmer
* Ghostbusters - Ray Parker, Jr.
* Joyride - Roxette
* Black Betty (Rough n' Ready Remix) - Ram Jam
* Tom's Diner - DNA featuring Suzanne Vega
* Ooops Up - Snap
* You Keep Me Hangin' On - Kim Wilde
* Peter Gunn - Art of Noise featuring Duane Eddy
* West End Girls - Pet Shop Boys
I continued getting lessons at Go Music every Thursday night. As I learned new stuff, I put different songs on the tape.
Eventually Mum found out that I was studying membranophonics, but I persuaded her not to tell Dad, because we didn't think he would approve of it, given his dislike of pop music and "all that beat stuff". Indeed, Dad believed that music with a beat was from the devil. Fortunately, he appears to have changed his philosophy since then, although he still doesn't like rock music.
Anyway, following the advice of my "professor", I was looking for a drum kit in the Trading Post. In 1991-09, I found an ad which simply read "drum kit, 3 piece GC $150". I showed the ad to Mum, and we both knew the only way we would get that kit would be if Dad paid for it as it was 10 days until our next Social Security payment, by which time it would probably be sold. So, Mum had a very long discussion with Dad, the end result of which surprised everyone - Dad agreed to buy the drum kit! So we went to Greenslopes to have a look at it. We got there and the vendor opened his garage and pulled out scattered, cobwebbed pieces of this really old drum kit (I later discovered the kit was a John Grey). It was covered in red velvet material, and was actually a 4-piece. The cymbals were a little bent, and the drums only had one head on them, except the snare, which was a steel Pearl 6" x 14". I didn't mind - I just wanted a drum kit so badly, so we took it. When I got it home, I remember using a rubber mallet to try getting the cymbals flat again - especially the hi-hats. Definitely hand-hammered! Because the drums only had one head, it made packing up very easy because the drums all fit inside each other. This was especially important because at the time I was sharing a 3m x 3m room with my brother. Being able to put the drum kit under the bed when I wasn't using it was very convenient. I had to raise the bed about 4 cm to make the drum kit fit underneath.
1992
d-Wizz Goes to University
I couldn't get into a Bachelor of Commerce course because my TE score wasn't good enough; instead I won a place at Queensland University Of Technology to do an Associate Diploma in Business (Computing). This course was definitely more an IT course than commerce. I learned COBOL and PASCAL programming, among other things. Surprisingly, I passed everything EXCEPT maths and accounting in this course, but I got enough credit to do the Bachelor of Commerce course at Griffith University in 1993.
Solo membranophonic study
I continued my study of membranophonics, even though I was no longer under professional instruction. I usually practised when the most of the family was not home. I still used tapes to play along with. Sometimes I would get bold enough to play unaccompanied and sing some of the songs we usually sang at church. I wasn't very good at this though; most times I just sang "in my head" while playing. I investigated how to use the cymbal and tom-toms when playing also.
1993
d-Wizz Fails University
1993 was a very "nothing" year really, for the most part. I failed first year B. Com. quite miserably, with seven fails and one pass. The university wouldn't enrol me in 1994 either, so my CPA plans were put on hold. Although I have not gone back to university to date, I have not given up on the idea of further study in this area at a later time.
A new musical direction
On 1993-09-18, I wrote my first song. In fact I wrote two on that date. They were "Burn Me Up", and "Feel The Heat". Many of my songs are written in pairs, or even threes at a time. By the end of the year, I had written about a dozen songs. Mum gave me some lyrics she had been working on in 1991, bringing the total to 21. I began composing music for these songs. To this day, some of them are not yet finished! I did not know much about music, save what I had learned in the course of playing the drums, which counted for little when trying to write melody lines. And I knew nothing about chords! In the beginning, all I was able to write down was a set of lyrics with rhythm notation, sort of like rap, even though most of the songs were not rap songs (one or two were - but that's another story). I have written to date about 80 originals of my own (although a large number of them are in various stages of completion).
1994
Another "nothing" year. I went on the dole and tried looking for work, but it was very hard. Moved out of Mum's house. Moved back 'cos I ran out of money. Wrote a few more songs, too.
I realised I needed to learn more about music in order to write good music for these songs, so I started reading music theory books, through which I learnt about such musical concepts as chords, phrasing and keys. To help me work out melodies for my songs, I bought a cheap keyboard (all were written in the key of C!) and started playing around with it.
1995
d-Wizz - The letterbox man
Having been unable to find work for more than a year, I decided to try letterbox (junk mail) distribution for additional cash flow. I had previously delivered newspapers while at high school, so I knew what to expect.
I started delivering newspapers and junk mail in the Toowong area in April, 1995, but on a major scale. We're talking in thousands here, not hundreds; my first delivery was 1,200 copies of the "Brisbane News", a 36-page glossy magazine issued every Wednesday. I did the whole lot in just over one day and got $60 for it I think. It was hard work, and I told my supervisor I wouldn't do the Brisbane News again, because they were very heavy, and I had no car. I stuck to leaflets and catalogues only, because they were much lighter. Not long afterwards, my supervisor stopped giving me material to deliver, and having received a copy of the catalogue in my letterbox, I assumed he had replaced me without warning (a common practice in the industry), and so I started looking for someone else to work for. I found an ad in the local paper for letterbox walkers, so I rang the number, and we had a 40-minute chat on the phone. Michael, the supervisor I called, has become one of my friends now, we know each other very well. I started walking for Michael in June, 1995. Most of his work was on the northside of Brisbane, and I remember how he would deliver the material to me (not the usual thing, most of the walkers picked up their own material themselves), I would fold it at Toowong, and go out on the buses and trains to the area and deliver it, using a trolley and a cardboard box. I quickly became one of Michael's best walkers, and he started giving me big jobs, like 2 - 3,000 to be done in 4 days. To put it in perspective, the money in this was not all that great. The 3,000 job was worth $52, and however fast I did it made no difference to how much I would get. I averaged 250 - 300 letterboxes per hour, which is very fast (most walkers can only get 180 - 220), but even that rate only gets me $6 per hour. Not big money by any means. If I had 3 or 4 different leaflets at the same time, then I could really cash in at $20+ per hour, as I could deliver all at once on the same walk. This was the exception, not the rule, however. Most weeks there was only 1 or 2. Michael was really impressed with my work, and passed on positive comments about me to the manager of the company responsible for distribution in Queensland. They had a vacancy in the Indooroopilly area coming up, so Michael invited them to try me out as a supervisor in that area for a while, and they agreed. On October 14, 1995, I received my first supervisor's load of 8,325 Woolworths Supermarket brochures, and a number of other smaller clients. I managed to get all of it delivered on the weekend, with the help of my walkers, who I had contacted and introduced as their new supervisor. Being a supervisor means you are personally responsible for getting all the houses in your area covered, either by yourself, or with the help of other people. I had a team of about 15 people to help me, and there was still plenty of work left for me to do, as well as helping Michael with some of his excess. One month later, the office added the Toowong area on to my Indooroopilly area, giving me a total coverage of some 18,000 houses. I added another 10 walkers on to my team.
d-Wizz' Music goes electronic
In 1995-12, after discovering the capabilities of MIDI systems, I bought a computer and synthesizer and started programming my songs in MIDI. This allowed me to experiment on the drums with them. Buying the computer really made a big difference to the way I wrote music. I started exploring bass lines, and chords, and started adding them to the songs. Being a machine, the computer didn't mind playing endless bass loops to accompany my membranophonic experimentation (some of this stuff even sounded good!).
Also in 1995, Mum dug deep into her accordion case and pulled out some music manuscript books with songs she had written in 1966-67, and gave them to me to interpret.
1996
Still walking
The letterboxing continued in 1996, with the status quo remaining until 1996-08. Between 1996-08 and 1996-10, I was shuffled around between areas, with the office adding areas and taking away others. When this all settled down, I ended up with 4 supervising areas: the two I previously held, plus Chapel Hill (past Indooroopilly), and The Gap (past Toowong). My total coverage now approached 40,000 households, with over 70 walkers. Not long afterwards, problems with payment started to become evident, with the large amount of paperwork being processed, and up to a quarter of a million leaflets going through my unit in some weeks, things started to get really slow. I was coping with the paperwork, but it seems the head office wasn't, and they started to get further and further behind with the payments. Eventually I had walkers starting to call me asking when they were going to get paid. To cut a long story short, I could see the end coming, so I stopped supervising in early 1996-12.
1997
My decision to stop supervising was prophetic, because in 1997-09, the company went bankrupt. Michael lost at least $5,000. I wasn't immune from financial loss; they owed me about $2,000, and my walkers a further $3 - 4,000 when they went under. I returned to walking for Michael after I stopped supervising, as he also did a lot of private work outside the company for smaller clients (eg real estate agents), so when the company folded, Michael went out alone.
A change in direction
I had considered driving taxis for a number of years before I actually decided to get off my backside and do something about it. Getting a "Public Vehicle" licence in Queensland is easy, and I got mine on 1997-06-13. It involved doing a course which runs for one week, but I did it in four, because I was still walking for Michael and couldn't afford to take a whole week off. As long as I did Monday first, and Friday last, it didn't matter how long I took to finish the course. After they briefly assess your driving ability, and you pay $120 to do the course, you are put into the classroom for a series of lectures. At the other end, you sit for a multiple choice exam of 51 questions; you must get 41 or more correct to pass. It's amazing how many get all 51 correct - I only got 50! The exam is just a general knowledge exam. Once you get your certificate, off you go to the Department of Transport, pay the relevant fee, and you get instant authorisation to drive any taxi in Queensland. I did my first shift on Monday night, 1997-06-27. I took $198, and kept $89 for myself. My first fare was from the Cricketers' Club at the 'Gabba to Creek St in the city - I think the fare was $6.50.
1998
Booming times
I continued to drive taxis into 1998 - I was having heaps of fun. I usually worked about 16 hours on Monday - Friday and about 13 hours on Saturday night.. The long hours did not bother me at all.
The music continues... then stops
On 1998-01-09, a very important transaction took place, involving my purchase of a second-hand MIDI sound module, the KORG X5-DR. This little black box, when driven by sequencing software, allowed me to further enhance my musical creations. I obtained such software and very quickly learnt how to drive the module. Within a few months, I was producing high-quality MIDI songs, which I recorded onto tapes for practice on the drums, and also for listening to in the taxi while driving, although I usually played them only when my taxi was vacant.
Disaster struck in 1998-11, when my 386 decided not to boot anymore. I lost about 75 MIDI songs, a large number of them originals. Recently I've been re-programming them, but they don't seem to be as good as the originals. Fortunately, a lot of my songs were recorded on tape, so I can listen to my arrangements while I try to reconstruct them.
1999
Turbulent times
Without a computer, I was unable to create any more music, but I still wrote a few songs. I focussed more on the taxi driving, but eventually I racked up too many points and lost my license, and thus, the party was over. The government pulled the plug on 1999-10-04.
2000
A new lease of life
Things were looking pretty bleak for me as the last year of the century began, but they soon took a turn for the better. Frustrated by not being able to find another job, I managed to scrape together enough money to buy another computer on 2000-04-15. The next day I went and bought Cakewalk sequencing software, and I was all set up again to make more music. I worked quickly. I remember on one day I did seven songs! In just over one week, I had produced a CD, and two weeks later I finished a second one... I decided to call them "Y2k Demos", in keeping with all the hype surrounding the millennium at the time.
2001
The calm before the storm...
I was going to eventually produce 6 CDs in the Y2k series, but somehow I never got around to doing any more work on them. I made a few new recordings, and even wrote a couple of new MIDI programs, but the only material that came out on CD was an album of covers and MIDI files downloaded from the Internet, which I remixed, and 2 CDs of Hillsong MIDI songs I made for drum practice. Other than that, 2001 was a rather flat year. But in 2001-12, the seeds were sown for a big explosion, when a friend suggested remixing the Y2k Demos so that, if the opportunity arose, I could sing with them karaok?style.
2002
d-Wizz explodes!
I thought about the karaok?idea, and decided to give it a go. The result... 5 CD singles in 2002-02, 5 more in 2002-04, and yet another 5 by 2002-06-30. I then packaged all this material into 4 full-length CD compilations in early 2001-07, eventually bringing the total to 19 CDs. A couple of months later, and I'm getting restless again; planning and preliminary MIDI is already underway for yet another 13 CD singles - and probably a few more compilations as well. A lot of the songs have never been presented in this way before - many are making their CD debuts, and certainly all of them are making their first appearances with real vocals. It is an exciting time at the moment in the history of d-Wizz Music, and now the latest event is the establishment of this web site.
As history unfolds, I will be updating the pages, so make sure you keep coming back for more news.
2007
d-Wizz.com gets a makoever
After many years of neglect, I'm finally getting myself into gear and upgrading my website. there's so much to do... so many things have changed in the five years since I launched my presence in cyberspace. Please be patient, and come back often, as there will be more changes in the coming weeks and months...
1.1.1 - Part I (1974 - 1990)
1.2 - d-Wizz Family
1.3 - d-Wizz Today
1.4 -
d-Wizz E-mail Newsletters
0 - Home Page
A very important year in a lot of different ways
Senior Year of High School
1991 was my Senior year of school, form class 12.3. I ended up with 4 A's, a B and a C; the C for English was my best ever result for that subject. I got a TE score of 875 (approximately equivalent to an OP of 8, I think).
The chartological odyssey continues
Musically, 1991 was very full. I was still actively engaged in chartology; the weekly chart recital had gained a sort of cult status outside the computer lab every Friday morning (first period Friday was computers). "1, 4, 8, 1" was followed by "Joyride, Roxette, EMI, 2547-7".
d-Wizz investigates membranophonics
1991 saw the biggest change in my life. I began seriously contemplating studying membranophonics, especially after hearing and watching one of the Year 9 students play at school one lunchtime. I asked the music teacher if I would be allowed to have a go on the school drum kit, and she said that only students who were having lessons were allowed to play it. So I thought about that for a while. Because it was May, it was too late to join the school music program. Then, on 1991-05-30 I was in the city after school and suddenly I had a thought - how much would private lessons cost? I remember the details very clearly. I went to the phone box on the corner of Edward and Charlotte Streets. The time was 1702hrs. I called a music shop on the southside of town called Go Music. I asked about drum lessons and I was told to rock up at 2000hrs for a free introductory lesson. So I went to Garden City (a shopping centre across the road) to do some shopping and kill time. Then I went to have my first lesson. I learnt how to play this:
Apparently I caught on very quickly, because I was also shown how to play a few variations of that beat at the time. My "membranophonics professor's" name was Mark Charters. After the lesson, I bought a pair of Linko 5A drumsticks for $6 and went home. I kept the sticks in my schoolbag because I didn't want Mum finding out - I was a little nervous about it all. The next morning, I remember walking down the science block corridor practicing in the air with a pair of test tubes what I had played about 14 hours earlier. At lunchtime I told the music teacher I was getting lessons and she let me use the school drum kit. Mission accomplished!
So, I started to practise at school. I arrived early, usually about 0800. I got about 40 minutes in the morning, plus another 40 minutes at lunch time, and about an hour after school. I loved it. It was about this time that most of the school discovered that the new "soundproof" music practise rooms built in 1990 were not! Most of my tuition was focused on rock patterns, consisting of a straight-eight on the hi-hat, and steady 2 and 4 on the snare, with various bass drum patterns and the occasional ghosting added for variety! The large part of it was in strictly eighth note timing. In the practise room at school, I would play along with a tape deck connected to a guitar amplifier. I made up some tapes with simple songs on them and I played them over and over again. Some of the songs on the tape included:
* Addicted to Love - Robert Palmer
* Ghostbusters - Ray Parker, Jr.
* Joyride - Roxette
* Black Betty (Rough n' Ready Remix) - Ram Jam
* Tom's Diner - DNA featuring Suzanne Vega
* Ooops Up - Snap
* You Keep Me Hangin' On - Kim Wilde
* Peter Gunn - Art of Noise featuring Duane Eddy
* West End Girls - Pet Shop Boys
I continued getting lessons at Go Music every Thursday night. As I learned new stuff, I put different songs on the tape.
Eventually Mum found out that I was studying membranophonics, but I persuaded her not to tell Dad, because we didn't think he would approve of it, given his dislike of pop music and "all that beat stuff". Indeed, Dad believed that music with a beat was from the devil. Fortunately, he appears to have changed his philosophy since then, although he still doesn't like rock music.
Anyway, following the advice of my "professor", I was looking for a drum kit in the Trading Post. In 1991-09, I found an ad which simply read "drum kit, 3 piece GC $150". I showed the ad to Mum, and we both knew the only way we would get that kit would be if Dad paid for it as it was 10 days until our next Social Security payment, by which time it would probably be sold. So, Mum had a very long discussion with Dad, the end result of which surprised everyone - Dad agreed to buy the drum kit! So we went to Greenslopes to have a look at it. We got there and the vendor opened his garage and pulled out scattered, cobwebbed pieces of this really old drum kit (I later discovered the kit was a John Grey). It was covered in red velvet material, and was actually a 4-piece. The cymbals were a little bent, and the drums only had one head on them, except the snare, which was a steel Pearl 6" x 14". I didn't mind - I just wanted a drum kit so badly, so we took it. When I got it home, I remember using a rubber mallet to try getting the cymbals flat again - especially the hi-hats. Definitely hand-hammered! Because the drums only had one head, it made packing up very easy because the drums all fit inside each other. This was especially important because at the time I was sharing a 3m x 3m room with my brother. Being able to put the drum kit under the bed when I wasn't using it was very convenient. I had to raise the bed about 4 cm to make the drum kit fit underneath.
1992
d-Wizz Goes to University
I couldn't get into a Bachelor of Commerce course because my TE score wasn't good enough; instead I won a place at Queensland University Of Technology to do an Associate Diploma in Business (Computing). This course was definitely more an IT course than commerce. I learned COBOL and PASCAL programming, among other things. Surprisingly, I passed everything EXCEPT maths and accounting in this course, but I got enough credit to do the Bachelor of Commerce course at Griffith University in 1993.
Solo membranophonic study
I continued my study of membranophonics, even though I was no longer under professional instruction. I usually practised when the most of the family was not home. I still used tapes to play along with. Sometimes I would get bold enough to play unaccompanied and sing some of the songs we usually sang at church. I wasn't very good at this though; most times I just sang "in my head" while playing. I investigated how to use the cymbal and tom-toms when playing also.
1993
d-Wizz Fails University
1993 was a very "nothing" year really, for the most part. I failed first year B. Com. quite miserably, with seven fails and one pass. The university wouldn't enrol me in 1994 either, so my CPA plans were put on hold. Although I have not gone back to university to date, I have not given up on the idea of further study in this area at a later time.
A new musical direction
On 1993-09-18, I wrote my first song. In fact I wrote two on that date. They were "Burn Me Up", and "Feel The Heat". Many of my songs are written in pairs, or even threes at a time. By the end of the year, I had written about a dozen songs. Mum gave me some lyrics she had been working on in 1991, bringing the total to 21. I began composing music for these songs. To this day, some of them are not yet finished! I did not know much about music, save what I had learned in the course of playing the drums, which counted for little when trying to write melody lines. And I knew nothing about chords! In the beginning, all I was able to write down was a set of lyrics with rhythm notation, sort of like rap, even though most of the songs were not rap songs (one or two were - but that's another story). I have written to date about 80 originals of my own (although a large number of them are in various stages of completion).
1994
Another "nothing" year. I went on the dole and tried looking for work, but it was very hard. Moved out of Mum's house. Moved back 'cos I ran out of money. Wrote a few more songs, too.
I realised I needed to learn more about music in order to write good music for these songs, so I started reading music theory books, through which I learnt about such musical concepts as chords, phrasing and keys. To help me work out melodies for my songs, I bought a cheap keyboard (all were written in the key of C!) and started playing around with it.
1995
d-Wizz - The letterbox man
Having been unable to find work for more than a year, I decided to try letterbox (junk mail) distribution for additional cash flow. I had previously delivered newspapers while at high school, so I knew what to expect.
I started delivering newspapers and junk mail in the Toowong area in April, 1995, but on a major scale. We're talking in thousands here, not hundreds; my first delivery was 1,200 copies of the "Brisbane News", a 36-page glossy magazine issued every Wednesday. I did the whole lot in just over one day and got $60 for it I think. It was hard work, and I told my supervisor I wouldn't do the Brisbane News again, because they were very heavy, and I had no car. I stuck to leaflets and catalogues only, because they were much lighter. Not long afterwards, my supervisor stopped giving me material to deliver, and having received a copy of the catalogue in my letterbox, I assumed he had replaced me without warning (a common practice in the industry), and so I started looking for someone else to work for. I found an ad in the local paper for letterbox walkers, so I rang the number, and we had a 40-minute chat on the phone. Michael, the supervisor I called, has become one of my friends now, we know each other very well. I started walking for Michael in June, 1995. Most of his work was on the northside of Brisbane, and I remember how he would deliver the material to me (not the usual thing, most of the walkers picked up their own material themselves), I would fold it at Toowong, and go out on the buses and trains to the area and deliver it, using a trolley and a cardboard box. I quickly became one of Michael's best walkers, and he started giving me big jobs, like 2 - 3,000 to be done in 4 days. To put it in perspective, the money in this was not all that great. The 3,000 job was worth $52, and however fast I did it made no difference to how much I would get. I averaged 250 - 300 letterboxes per hour, which is very fast (most walkers can only get 180 - 220), but even that rate only gets me $6 per hour. Not big money by any means. If I had 3 or 4 different leaflets at the same time, then I could really cash in at $20+ per hour, as I could deliver all at once on the same walk. This was the exception, not the rule, however. Most weeks there was only 1 or 2. Michael was really impressed with my work, and passed on positive comments about me to the manager of the company responsible for distribution in Queensland. They had a vacancy in the Indooroopilly area coming up, so Michael invited them to try me out as a supervisor in that area for a while, and they agreed. On October 14, 1995, I received my first supervisor's load of 8,325 Woolworths Supermarket brochures, and a number of other smaller clients. I managed to get all of it delivered on the weekend, with the help of my walkers, who I had contacted and introduced as their new supervisor. Being a supervisor means you are personally responsible for getting all the houses in your area covered, either by yourself, or with the help of other people. I had a team of about 15 people to help me, and there was still plenty of work left for me to do, as well as helping Michael with some of his excess. One month later, the office added the Toowong area on to my Indooroopilly area, giving me a total coverage of some 18,000 houses. I added another 10 walkers on to my team.
d-Wizz' Music goes electronic
In 1995-12, after discovering the capabilities of MIDI systems, I bought a computer and synthesizer and started programming my songs in MIDI. This allowed me to experiment on the drums with them. Buying the computer really made a big difference to the way I wrote music. I started exploring bass lines, and chords, and started adding them to the songs. Being a machine, the computer didn't mind playing endless bass loops to accompany my membranophonic experimentation (some of this stuff even sounded good!).
Also in 1995, Mum dug deep into her accordion case and pulled out some music manuscript books with songs she had written in 1966-67, and gave them to me to interpret.
1996
Still walking
The letterboxing continued in 1996, with the status quo remaining until 1996-08. Between 1996-08 and 1996-10, I was shuffled around between areas, with the office adding areas and taking away others. When this all settled down, I ended up with 4 supervising areas: the two I previously held, plus Chapel Hill (past Indooroopilly), and The Gap (past Toowong). My total coverage now approached 40,000 households, with over 70 walkers. Not long afterwards, problems with payment started to become evident, with the large amount of paperwork being processed, and up to a quarter of a million leaflets going through my unit in some weeks, things started to get really slow. I was coping with the paperwork, but it seems the head office wasn't, and they started to get further and further behind with the payments. Eventually I had walkers starting to call me asking when they were going to get paid. To cut a long story short, I could see the end coming, so I stopped supervising in early 1996-12.
1997
My decision to stop supervising was prophetic, because in 1997-09, the company went bankrupt. Michael lost at least $5,000. I wasn't immune from financial loss; they owed me about $2,000, and my walkers a further $3 - 4,000 when they went under. I returned to walking for Michael after I stopped supervising, as he also did a lot of private work outside the company for smaller clients (eg real estate agents), so when the company folded, Michael went out alone.
A change in direction
I had considered driving taxis for a number of years before I actually decided to get off my backside and do something about it. Getting a "Public Vehicle" licence in Queensland is easy, and I got mine on 1997-06-13. It involved doing a course which runs for one week, but I did it in four, because I was still walking for Michael and couldn't afford to take a whole week off. As long as I did Monday first, and Friday last, it didn't matter how long I took to finish the course. After they briefly assess your driving ability, and you pay $120 to do the course, you are put into the classroom for a series of lectures. At the other end, you sit for a multiple choice exam of 51 questions; you must get 41 or more correct to pass. It's amazing how many get all 51 correct - I only got 50! The exam is just a general knowledge exam. Once you get your certificate, off you go to the Department of Transport, pay the relevant fee, and you get instant authorisation to drive any taxi in Queensland. I did my first shift on Monday night, 1997-06-27. I took $198, and kept $89 for myself. My first fare was from the Cricketers' Club at the 'Gabba to Creek St in the city - I think the fare was $6.50.
1998
Booming times
I continued to drive taxis into 1998 - I was having heaps of fun. I usually worked about 16 hours on Monday - Friday and about 13 hours on Saturday night.. The long hours did not bother me at all.
The music continues... then stops
On 1998-01-09, a very important transaction took place, involving my purchase of a second-hand MIDI sound module, the KORG X5-DR. This little black box, when driven by sequencing software, allowed me to further enhance my musical creations. I obtained such software and very quickly learnt how to drive the module. Within a few months, I was producing high-quality MIDI songs, which I recorded onto tapes for practice on the drums, and also for listening to in the taxi while driving, although I usually played them only when my taxi was vacant.
Disaster struck in 1998-11, when my 386 decided not to boot anymore. I lost about 75 MIDI songs, a large number of them originals. Recently I've been re-programming them, but they don't seem to be as good as the originals. Fortunately, a lot of my songs were recorded on tape, so I can listen to my arrangements while I try to reconstruct them.
1999
Turbulent times
Without a computer, I was unable to create any more music, but I still wrote a few songs. I focussed more on the taxi driving, but eventually I racked up too many points and lost my license, and thus, the party was over. The government pulled the plug on 1999-10-04.
2000
A new lease of life
Things were looking pretty bleak for me as the last year of the century began, but they soon took a turn for the better. Frustrated by not being able to find another job, I managed to scrape together enough money to buy another computer on 2000-04-15. The next day I went and bought Cakewalk sequencing software, and I was all set up again to make more music. I worked quickly. I remember on one day I did seven songs! In just over one week, I had produced a CD, and two weeks later I finished a second one... I decided to call them "Y2k Demos", in keeping with all the hype surrounding the millennium at the time.
2001
The calm before the storm...
I was going to eventually produce 6 CDs in the Y2k series, but somehow I never got around to doing any more work on them. I made a few new recordings, and even wrote a couple of new MIDI programs, but the only material that came out on CD was an album of covers and MIDI files downloaded from the Internet, which I remixed, and 2 CDs of Hillsong MIDI songs I made for drum practice. Other than that, 2001 was a rather flat year. But in 2001-12, the seeds were sown for a big explosion, when a friend suggested remixing the Y2k Demos so that, if the opportunity arose, I could sing with them karaok?style.
2002
d-Wizz explodes!
I thought about the karaok?idea, and decided to give it a go. The result... 5 CD singles in 2002-02, 5 more in 2002-04, and yet another 5 by 2002-06-30. I then packaged all this material into 4 full-length CD compilations in early 2001-07, eventually bringing the total to 19 CDs. A couple of months later, and I'm getting restless again; planning and preliminary MIDI is already underway for yet another 13 CD singles - and probably a few more compilations as well. A lot of the songs have never been presented in this way before - many are making their CD debuts, and certainly all of them are making their first appearances with real vocals. It is an exciting time at the moment in the history of d-Wizz Music, and now the latest event is the establishment of this web site.
As history unfolds, I will be updating the pages, so make sure you keep coming back for more news.
2007
d-Wizz.com gets a makoever
After many years of neglect, I'm finally getting myself into gear and upgrading my website. there's so much to do... so many things have changed in the five years since I launched my presence in cyberspace. Please be patient, and come back often, as there will be more changes in the coming weeks and months...
1.1.1 - Part I (1974 - 1990)
1.2 - d-Wizz Family
1.3 - d-Wizz Today
1.4 -
d-Wizz E-mail Newsletters
0 - Home Page
1991 was my Senior year of school, form class 12.3. I ended up with 4 A's, a B and a C; the C for English was my best ever result for that subject. I got a TE score of 875 (approximately equivalent to an OP of 8, I think).
The chartological odyssey continues
Musically, 1991 was very full. I was still actively engaged in chartology; the weekly chart recital had gained a sort of cult status outside the computer lab every Friday morning (first period Friday was computers). "1, 4, 8, 1" was followed by "Joyride, Roxette, EMI, 2547-7".
d-Wizz investigates membranophonics
1991 saw the biggest change in my life. I began seriously contemplating studying membranophonics, especially after hearing and watching one of the Year 9 students play at school one lunchtime. I asked the music teacher if I would be allowed to have a go on the school drum kit, and she said that only students who were having lessons were allowed to play it. So I thought about that for a while. Because it was May, it was too late to join the school music program. Then, on 1991-05-30 I was in the city after school and suddenly I had a thought - how much would private lessons cost? I remember the details very clearly. I went to the phone box on the corner of Edward and Charlotte Streets. The time was 1702hrs. I called a music shop on the southside of town called Go Music. I asked about drum lessons and I was told to rock up at 2000hrs for a free introductory lesson. So I went to Garden City (a shopping centre across the road) to do some shopping and kill time. Then I went to have my first lesson. I learnt how to play this:
Apparently I caught on very quickly, because I was also shown how to play a few variations of that beat at the time. My "membranophonics professor's" name was Mark Charters. After the lesson, I bought a pair of Linko 5A drumsticks for $6 and went home. I kept the sticks in my schoolbag because I didn't want Mum finding out - I was a little nervous about it all. The next morning, I remember walking down the science block corridor practicing in the air with a pair of test tubes what I had played about 14 hours earlier. At lunchtime I told the music teacher I was getting lessons and she let me use the school drum kit. Mission accomplished!
So, I started to practise at school. I arrived early, usually about 0800. I got about 40 minutes in the morning, plus another 40 minutes at lunch time, and about an hour after school. I loved it. It was about this time that most of the school discovered that the new "soundproof" music practise rooms built in 1990 were not! Most of my tuition was focused on rock patterns, consisting of a straight-eight on the hi-hat, and steady 2 and 4 on the snare, with various bass drum patterns and the occasional ghosting added for variety! The large part of it was in strictly eighth note timing. In the practise room at school, I would play along with a tape deck connected to a guitar amplifier. I made up some tapes with simple songs on them and I played them over and over again. Some of the songs on the tape included:
* Addicted to Love - Robert Palmer
* Ghostbusters - Ray Parker, Jr.
* Joyride - Roxette
* Black Betty (Rough n' Ready Remix) - Ram Jam
* Tom's Diner - DNA featuring Suzanne Vega
* Ooops Up - Snap
* You Keep Me Hangin' On - Kim Wilde
* Peter Gunn - Art of Noise featuring Duane Eddy
* West End Girls - Pet Shop Boys
I continued getting lessons at Go Music every Thursday night. As I learned new stuff, I put different songs on the tape.
Eventually Mum found out that I was studying membranophonics, but I persuaded her not to tell Dad, because we didn't think he would approve of it, given his dislike of pop music and "all that beat stuff". Indeed, Dad believed that music with a beat was from the devil. Fortunately, he appears to have changed his philosophy since then, although he still doesn't like rock music.
Anyway, following the advice of my "professor", I was looking for a drum kit in the Trading Post. In 1991-09, I found an ad which simply read "drum kit, 3 piece GC $150". I showed the ad to Mum, and we both knew the only way we would get that kit would be if Dad paid for it as it was 10 days until our next Social Security payment, by which time it would probably be sold. So, Mum had a very long discussion with Dad, the end result of which surprised everyone - Dad agreed to buy the drum kit! So we went to Greenslopes to have a look at it. We got there and the vendor opened his garage and pulled out scattered, cobwebbed pieces of this really old drum kit (I later discovered the kit was a John Grey). It was covered in red velvet material, and was actually a 4-piece. The cymbals were a little bent, and the drums only had one head on them, except the snare, which was a steel Pearl 6" x 14". I didn't mind - I just wanted a drum kit so badly, so we took it. When I got it home, I remember using a rubber mallet to try getting the cymbals flat again - especially the hi-hats. Definitely hand-hammered! Because the drums only had one head, it made packing up very easy because the drums all fit inside each other. This was especially important because at the time I was sharing a 3m x 3m room with my brother. Being able to put the drum kit under the bed when I wasn't using it was very convenient. I had to raise the bed about 4 cm to make the drum kit fit underneath.
1992
d-Wizz Goes to University
I couldn't get into a Bachelor of Commerce course because my TE score wasn't good enough; instead I won a place at Queensland University Of Technology to do an Associate Diploma in Business (Computing). This course was definitely more an IT course than commerce. I learned COBOL and PASCAL programming, among other things. Surprisingly, I passed everything EXCEPT maths and accounting in this course, but I got enough credit to do the Bachelor of Commerce course at Griffith University in 1993.
Solo membranophonic study
I continued my study of membranophonics, even though I was no longer under professional instruction. I usually practised when the most of the family was not home. I still used tapes to play along with. Sometimes I would get bold enough to play unaccompanied and sing some of the songs we usually sang at church. I wasn't very good at this though; most times I just sang "in my head" while playing. I investigated how to use the cymbal and tom-toms when playing also.
1993
d-Wizz Fails University
1993 was a very "nothing" year really, for the most part. I failed first year B. Com. quite miserably, with seven fails and one pass. The university wouldn't enrol me in 1994 either, so my CPA plans were put on hold. Although I have not gone back to university to date, I have not given up on the idea of further study in this area at a later time.
A new musical direction
On 1993-09-18, I wrote my first song. In fact I wrote two on that date. They were "Burn Me Up", and "Feel The Heat". Many of my songs are written in pairs, or even threes at a time. By the end of the year, I had written about a dozen songs. Mum gave me some lyrics she had been working on in 1991, bringing the total to 21. I began composing music for these songs. To this day, some of them are not yet finished! I did not know much about music, save what I had learned in the course of playing the drums, which counted for little when trying to write melody lines. And I knew nothing about chords! In the beginning, all I was able to write down was a set of lyrics with rhythm notation, sort of like rap, even though most of the songs were not rap songs (one or two were - but that's another story). I have written to date about 80 originals of my own (although a large number of them are in various stages of completion).
1994
Another "nothing" year. I went on the dole and tried looking for work, but it was very hard. Moved out of Mum's house. Moved back 'cos I ran out of money. Wrote a few more songs, too.
I realised I needed to learn more about music in order to write good music for these songs, so I started reading music theory books, through which I learnt about such musical concepts as chords, phrasing and keys. To help me work out melodies for my songs, I bought a cheap keyboard (all were written in the key of C!) and started playing around with it.
1995
d-Wizz - The letterbox man
Having been unable to find work for more than a year, I decided to try letterbox (junk mail) distribution for additional cash flow. I had previously delivered newspapers while at high school, so I knew what to expect.
I started delivering newspapers and junk mail in the Toowong area in April, 1995, but on a major scale. We're talking in thousands here, not hundreds; my first delivery was 1,200 copies of the "Brisbane News", a 36-page glossy magazine issued every Wednesday. I did the whole lot in just over one day and got $60 for it I think. It was hard work, and I told my supervisor I wouldn't do the Brisbane News again, because they were very heavy, and I had no car. I stuck to leaflets and catalogues only, because they were much lighter. Not long afterwards, my supervisor stopped giving me material to deliver, and having received a copy of the catalogue in my letterbox, I assumed he had replaced me without warning (a common practice in the industry), and so I started looking for someone else to work for. I found an ad in the local paper for letterbox walkers, so I rang the number, and we had a 40-minute chat on the phone. Michael, the supervisor I called, has become one of my friends now, we know each other very well. I started walking for Michael in June, 1995. Most of his work was on the northside of Brisbane, and I remember how he would deliver the material to me (not the usual thing, most of the walkers picked up their own material themselves), I would fold it at Toowong, and go out on the buses and trains to the area and deliver it, using a trolley and a cardboard box. I quickly became one of Michael's best walkers, and he started giving me big jobs, like 2 - 3,000 to be done in 4 days. To put it in perspective, the money in this was not all that great. The 3,000 job was worth $52, and however fast I did it made no difference to how much I would get. I averaged 250 - 300 letterboxes per hour, which is very fast (most walkers can only get 180 - 220), but even that rate only gets me $6 per hour. Not big money by any means. If I had 3 or 4 different leaflets at the same time, then I could really cash in at $20+ per hour, as I could deliver all at once on the same walk. This was the exception, not the rule, however. Most weeks there was only 1 or 2. Michael was really impressed with my work, and passed on positive comments about me to the manager of the company responsible for distribution in Queensland. They had a vacancy in the Indooroopilly area coming up, so Michael invited them to try me out as a supervisor in that area for a while, and they agreed. On October 14, 1995, I received my first supervisor's load of 8,325 Woolworths Supermarket brochures, and a number of other smaller clients. I managed to get all of it delivered on the weekend, with the help of my walkers, who I had contacted and introduced as their new supervisor. Being a supervisor means you are personally responsible for getting all the houses in your area covered, either by yourself, or with the help of other people. I had a team of about 15 people to help me, and there was still plenty of work left for me to do, as well as helping Michael with some of his excess. One month later, the office added the Toowong area on to my Indooroopilly area, giving me a total coverage of some 18,000 houses. I added another 10 walkers on to my team.
d-Wizz' Music goes electronic
In 1995-12, after discovering the capabilities of MIDI systems, I bought a computer and synthesizer and started programming my songs in MIDI. This allowed me to experiment on the drums with them. Buying the computer really made a big difference to the way I wrote music. I started exploring bass lines, and chords, and started adding them to the songs. Being a machine, the computer didn't mind playing endless bass loops to accompany my membranophonic experimentation (some of this stuff even sounded good!).
Also in 1995, Mum dug deep into her accordion case and pulled out some music manuscript books with songs she had written in 1966-67, and gave them to me to interpret.
1996
Still walking
The letterboxing continued in 1996, with the status quo remaining until 1996-08. Between 1996-08 and 1996-10, I was shuffled around between areas, with the office adding areas and taking away others. When this all settled down, I ended up with 4 supervising areas: the two I previously held, plus Chapel Hill (past Indooroopilly), and The Gap (past Toowong). My total coverage now approached 40,000 households, with over 70 walkers. Not long afterwards, problems with payment started to become evident, with the large amount of paperwork being processed, and up to a quarter of a million leaflets going through my unit in some weeks, things started to get really slow. I was coping with the paperwork, but it seems the head office wasn't, and they started to get further and further behind with the payments. Eventually I had walkers starting to call me asking when they were going to get paid. To cut a long story short, I could see the end coming, so I stopped supervising in early 1996-12.
1997
My decision to stop supervising was prophetic, because in 1997-09, the company went bankrupt. Michael lost at least $5,000. I wasn't immune from financial loss; they owed me about $2,000, and my walkers a further $3 - 4,000 when they went under. I returned to walking for Michael after I stopped supervising, as he also did a lot of private work outside the company for smaller clients (eg real estate agents), so when the company folded, Michael went out alone.
A change in direction
I had considered driving taxis for a number of years before I actually decided to get off my backside and do something about it. Getting a "Public Vehicle" licence in Queensland is easy, and I got mine on 1997-06-13. It involved doing a course which runs for one week, but I did it in four, because I was still walking for Michael and couldn't afford to take a whole week off. As long as I did Monday first, and Friday last, it didn't matter how long I took to finish the course. After they briefly assess your driving ability, and you pay $120 to do the course, you are put into the classroom for a series of lectures. At the other end, you sit for a multiple choice exam of 51 questions; you must get 41 or more correct to pass. It's amazing how many get all 51 correct - I only got 50! The exam is just a general knowledge exam. Once you get your certificate, off you go to the Department of Transport, pay the relevant fee, and you get instant authorisation to drive any taxi in Queensland. I did my first shift on Monday night, 1997-06-27. I took $198, and kept $89 for myself. My first fare was from the Cricketers' Club at the 'Gabba to Creek St in the city - I think the fare was $6.50.
1998
Booming times
I continued to drive taxis into 1998 - I was having heaps of fun. I usually worked about 16 hours on Monday - Friday and about 13 hours on Saturday night.. The long hours did not bother me at all.
The music continues... then stops
On 1998-01-09, a very important transaction took place, involving my purchase of a second-hand MIDI sound module, the KORG X5-DR. This little black box, when driven by sequencing software, allowed me to further enhance my musical creations. I obtained such software and very quickly learnt how to drive the module. Within a few months, I was producing high-quality MIDI songs, which I recorded onto tapes for practice on the drums, and also for listening to in the taxi while driving, although I usually played them only when my taxi was vacant.
Disaster struck in 1998-11, when my 386 decided not to boot anymore. I lost about 75 MIDI songs, a large number of them originals. Recently I've been re-programming them, but they don't seem to be as good as the originals. Fortunately, a lot of my songs were recorded on tape, so I can listen to my arrangements while I try to reconstruct them.
1999
Turbulent times
Without a computer, I was unable to create any more music, but I still wrote a few songs. I focussed more on the taxi driving, but eventually I racked up too many points and lost my license, and thus, the party was over. The government pulled the plug on 1999-10-04.
2000
A new lease of life
Things were looking pretty bleak for me as the last year of the century began, but they soon took a turn for the better. Frustrated by not being able to find another job, I managed to scrape together enough money to buy another computer on 2000-04-15. The next day I went and bought Cakewalk sequencing software, and I was all set up again to make more music. I worked quickly. I remember on one day I did seven songs! In just over one week, I had produced a CD, and two weeks later I finished a second one... I decided to call them "Y2k Demos", in keeping with all the hype surrounding the millennium at the time.
2001
The calm before the storm...
I was going to eventually produce 6 CDs in the Y2k series, but somehow I never got around to doing any more work on them. I made a few new recordings, and even wrote a couple of new MIDI programs, but the only material that came out on CD was an album of covers and MIDI files downloaded from the Internet, which I remixed, and 2 CDs of Hillsong MIDI songs I made for drum practice. Other than that, 2001 was a rather flat year. But in 2001-12, the seeds were sown for a big explosion, when a friend suggested remixing the Y2k Demos so that, if the opportunity arose, I could sing with them karaok?style.
2002
d-Wizz explodes!
I thought about the karaok?idea, and decided to give it a go. The result... 5 CD singles in 2002-02, 5 more in 2002-04, and yet another 5 by 2002-06-30. I then packaged all this material into 4 full-length CD compilations in early 2001-07, eventually bringing the total to 19 CDs. A couple of months later, and I'm getting restless again; planning and preliminary MIDI is already underway for yet another 13 CD singles - and probably a few more compilations as well. A lot of the songs have never been presented in this way before - many are making their CD debuts, and certainly all of them are making their first appearances with real vocals. It is an exciting time at the moment in the history of d-Wizz Music, and now the latest event is the establishment of this web site.
As history unfolds, I will be updating the pages, so make sure you keep coming back for more news.
2007
d-Wizz.com gets a makoever
After many years of neglect, I'm finally getting myself into gear and upgrading my website. there's so much to do... so many things have changed in the five years since I launched my presence in cyberspace. Please be patient, and come back often, as there will be more changes in the coming weeks and months...
1.1.1 - Part I (1974 - 1990)
1.2 - d-Wizz Family
1.3 - d-Wizz Today
1.4 -
d-Wizz E-mail Newsletters
0 - Home Page
d-Wizz Goes to University
I couldn't get into a Bachelor of Commerce course because my TE score wasn't good enough; instead I won a place at Queensland University Of Technology to do an Associate Diploma in Business (Computing). This course was definitely more an IT course than commerce. I learned COBOL and PASCAL programming, among other things. Surprisingly, I passed everything EXCEPT maths and accounting in this course, but I got enough credit to do the Bachelor of Commerce course at Griffith University in 1993.
Solo membranophonic study
I continued my study of membranophonics, even though I was no longer under professional instruction. I usually practised when the most of the family was not home. I still used tapes to play along with. Sometimes I would get bold enough to play unaccompanied and sing some of the songs we usually sang at church. I wasn't very good at this though; most times I just sang "in my head" while playing. I investigated how to use the cymbal and tom-toms when playing also.
1993
d-Wizz Fails University
1993 was a very "nothing" year really, for the most part. I failed first year B. Com. quite miserably, with seven fails and one pass. The university wouldn't enrol me in 1994 either, so my CPA plans were put on hold. Although I have not gone back to university to date, I have not given up on the idea of further study in this area at a later time.
A new musical direction
On 1993-09-18, I wrote my first song. In fact I wrote two on that date. They were "Burn Me Up", and "Feel The Heat". Many of my songs are written in pairs, or even threes at a time. By the end of the year, I had written about a dozen songs. Mum gave me some lyrics she had been working on in 1991, bringing the total to 21. I began composing music for these songs. To this day, some of them are not yet finished! I did not know much about music, save what I had learned in the course of playing the drums, which counted for little when trying to write melody lines. And I knew nothing about chords! In the beginning, all I was able to write down was a set of lyrics with rhythm notation, sort of like rap, even though most of the songs were not rap songs (one or two were - but that's another story). I have written to date about 80 originals of my own (although a large number of them are in various stages of completion).
1994
Another "nothing" year. I went on the dole and tried looking for work, but it was very hard. Moved out of Mum's house. Moved back 'cos I ran out of money. Wrote a few more songs, too.
I realised I needed to learn more about music in order to write good music for these songs, so I started reading music theory books, through which I learnt about such musical concepts as chords, phrasing and keys. To help me work out melodies for my songs, I bought a cheap keyboard (all were written in the key of C!) and started playing around with it.
1995
d-Wizz - The letterbox man
Having been unable to find work for more than a year, I decided to try letterbox (junk mail) distribution for additional cash flow. I had previously delivered newspapers while at high school, so I knew what to expect.
I started delivering newspapers and junk mail in the Toowong area in April, 1995, but on a major scale. We're talking in thousands here, not hundreds; my first delivery was 1,200 copies of the "Brisbane News", a 36-page glossy magazine issued every Wednesday. I did the whole lot in just over one day and got $60 for it I think. It was hard work, and I told my supervisor I wouldn't do the Brisbane News again, because they were very heavy, and I had no car. I stuck to leaflets and catalogues only, because they were much lighter. Not long afterwards, my supervisor stopped giving me material to deliver, and having received a copy of the catalogue in my letterbox, I assumed he had replaced me without warning (a common practice in the industry), and so I started looking for someone else to work for. I found an ad in the local paper for letterbox walkers, so I rang the number, and we had a 40-minute chat on the phone. Michael, the supervisor I called, has become one of my friends now, we know each other very well. I started walking for Michael in June, 1995. Most of his work was on the northside of Brisbane, and I remember how he would deliver the material to me (not the usual thing, most of the walkers picked up their own material themselves), I would fold it at Toowong, and go out on the buses and trains to the area and deliver it, using a trolley and a cardboard box. I quickly became one of Michael's best walkers, and he started giving me big jobs, like 2 - 3,000 to be done in 4 days. To put it in perspective, the money in this was not all that great. The 3,000 job was worth $52, and however fast I did it made no difference to how much I would get. I averaged 250 - 300 letterboxes per hour, which is very fast (most walkers can only get 180 - 220), but even that rate only gets me $6 per hour. Not big money by any means. If I had 3 or 4 different leaflets at the same time, then I could really cash in at $20+ per hour, as I could deliver all at once on the same walk. This was the exception, not the rule, however. Most weeks there was only 1 or 2. Michael was really impressed with my work, and passed on positive comments about me to the manager of the company responsible for distribution in Queensland. They had a vacancy in the Indooroopilly area coming up, so Michael invited them to try me out as a supervisor in that area for a while, and they agreed. On October 14, 1995, I received my first supervisor's load of 8,325 Woolworths Supermarket brochures, and a number of other smaller clients. I managed to get all of it delivered on the weekend, with the help of my walkers, who I had contacted and introduced as their new supervisor. Being a supervisor means you are personally responsible for getting all the houses in your area covered, either by yourself, or with the help of other people. I had a team of about 15 people to help me, and there was still plenty of work left for me to do, as well as helping Michael with some of his excess. One month later, the office added the Toowong area on to my Indooroopilly area, giving me a total coverage of some 18,000 houses. I added another 10 walkers on to my team.
d-Wizz' Music goes electronic
In 1995-12, after discovering the capabilities of MIDI systems, I bought a computer and synthesizer and started programming my songs in MIDI. This allowed me to experiment on the drums with them. Buying the computer really made a big difference to the way I wrote music. I started exploring bass lines, and chords, and started adding them to the songs. Being a machine, the computer didn't mind playing endless bass loops to accompany my membranophonic experimentation (some of this stuff even sounded good!).
Also in 1995, Mum dug deep into her accordion case and pulled out some music manuscript books with songs she had written in 1966-67, and gave them to me to interpret.
1996
Still walking
The letterboxing continued in 1996, with the status quo remaining until 1996-08. Between 1996-08 and 1996-10, I was shuffled around between areas, with the office adding areas and taking away others. When this all settled down, I ended up with 4 supervising areas: the two I previously held, plus Chapel Hill (past Indooroopilly), and The Gap (past Toowong). My total coverage now approached 40,000 households, with over 70 walkers. Not long afterwards, problems with payment started to become evident, with the large amount of paperwork being processed, and up to a quarter of a million leaflets going through my unit in some weeks, things started to get really slow. I was coping with the paperwork, but it seems the head office wasn't, and they started to get further and further behind with the payments. Eventually I had walkers starting to call me asking when they were going to get paid. To cut a long story short, I could see the end coming, so I stopped supervising in early 1996-12.
1997
My decision to stop supervising was prophetic, because in 1997-09, the company went bankrupt. Michael lost at least $5,000. I wasn't immune from financial loss; they owed me about $2,000, and my walkers a further $3 - 4,000 when they went under. I returned to walking for Michael after I stopped supervising, as he also did a lot of private work outside the company for smaller clients (eg real estate agents), so when the company folded, Michael went out alone.
A change in direction
I had considered driving taxis for a number of years before I actually decided to get off my backside and do something about it. Getting a "Public Vehicle" licence in Queensland is easy, and I got mine on 1997-06-13. It involved doing a course which runs for one week, but I did it in four, because I was still walking for Michael and couldn't afford to take a whole week off. As long as I did Monday first, and Friday last, it didn't matter how long I took to finish the course. After they briefly assess your driving ability, and you pay $120 to do the course, you are put into the classroom for a series of lectures. At the other end, you sit for a multiple choice exam of 51 questions; you must get 41 or more correct to pass. It's amazing how many get all 51 correct - I only got 50! The exam is just a general knowledge exam. Once you get your certificate, off you go to the Department of Transport, pay the relevant fee, and you get instant authorisation to drive any taxi in Queensland. I did my first shift on Monday night, 1997-06-27. I took $198, and kept $89 for myself. My first fare was from the Cricketers' Club at the 'Gabba to Creek St in the city - I think the fare was $6.50.
1998
Booming times
I continued to drive taxis into 1998 - I was having heaps of fun. I usually worked about 16 hours on Monday - Friday and about 13 hours on Saturday night.. The long hours did not bother me at all.
The music continues... then stops
On 1998-01-09, a very important transaction took place, involving my purchase of a second-hand MIDI sound module, the KORG X5-DR. This little black box, when driven by sequencing software, allowed me to further enhance my musical creations. I obtained such software and very quickly learnt how to drive the module. Within a few months, I was producing high-quality MIDI songs, which I recorded onto tapes for practice on the drums, and also for listening to in the taxi while driving, although I usually played them only when my taxi was vacant.
Disaster struck in 1998-11, when my 386 decided not to boot anymore. I lost about 75 MIDI songs, a large number of them originals. Recently I've been re-programming them, but they don't seem to be as good as the originals. Fortunately, a lot of my songs were recorded on tape, so I can listen to my arrangements while I try to reconstruct them.
1999
Turbulent times
Without a computer, I was unable to create any more music, but I still wrote a few songs. I focussed more on the taxi driving, but eventually I racked up too many points and lost my license, and thus, the party was over. The government pulled the plug on 1999-10-04.
2000
A new lease of life
Things were looking pretty bleak for me as the last year of the century began, but they soon took a turn for the better. Frustrated by not being able to find another job, I managed to scrape together enough money to buy another computer on 2000-04-15. The next day I went and bought Cakewalk sequencing software, and I was all set up again to make more music. I worked quickly. I remember on one day I did seven songs! In just over one week, I had produced a CD, and two weeks later I finished a second one... I decided to call them "Y2k Demos", in keeping with all the hype surrounding the millennium at the time.
2001
The calm before the storm...
I was going to eventually produce 6 CDs in the Y2k series, but somehow I never got around to doing any more work on them. I made a few new recordings, and even wrote a couple of new MIDI programs, but the only material that came out on CD was an album of covers and MIDI files downloaded from the Internet, which I remixed, and 2 CDs of Hillsong MIDI songs I made for drum practice. Other than that, 2001 was a rather flat year. But in 2001-12, the seeds were sown for a big explosion, when a friend suggested remixing the Y2k Demos so that, if the opportunity arose, I could sing with them karaok?style.
2002
d-Wizz explodes!
I thought about the karaok?idea, and decided to give it a go. The result... 5 CD singles in 2002-02, 5 more in 2002-04, and yet another 5 by 2002-06-30. I then packaged all this material into 4 full-length CD compilations in early 2001-07, eventually bringing the total to 19 CDs. A couple of months later, and I'm getting restless again; planning and preliminary MIDI is already underway for yet another 13 CD singles - and probably a few more compilations as well. A lot of the songs have never been presented in this way before - many are making their CD debuts, and certainly all of them are making their first appearances with real vocals. It is an exciting time at the moment in the history of d-Wizz Music, and now the latest event is the establishment of this web site.
As history unfolds, I will be updating the pages, so make sure you keep coming back for more news.
2007
d-Wizz.com gets a makoever
After many years of neglect, I'm finally getting myself into gear and upgrading my website. there's so much to do... so many things have changed in the five years since I launched my presence in cyberspace. Please be patient, and come back often, as there will be more changes in the coming weeks and months...
1.1.1 - Part I (1974 - 1990)
1.2 - d-Wizz Family
1.3 - d-Wizz Today
1.4 -
d-Wizz E-mail Newsletters
0 - Home Page
1993
d-Wizz Fails University
1993 was a very "nothing" year really, for the most part. I failed first year B. Com. quite miserably, with seven fails and one pass. The university wouldn't enrol me in 1994 either, so my CPA plans were put on hold. Although I have not gone back to university to date, I have not given up on the idea of further study in this area at a later time.
A new musical direction
On 1993-09-18, I wrote my first song. In fact I wrote two on that date. They were "Burn Me Up", and "Feel The Heat". Many of my songs are written in pairs, or even threes at a time. By the end of the year, I had written about a dozen songs. Mum gave me some lyrics she had been working on in 1991, bringing the total to 21. I began composing music for these songs. To this day, some of them are not yet finished! I did not know much about music, save what I had learned in the course of playing the drums, which counted for little when trying to write melody lines. And I knew nothing about chords! In the beginning, all I was able to write down was a set of lyrics with rhythm notation, sort of like rap, even though most of the songs were not rap songs (one or two were - but that's another story). I have written to date about 80 originals of my own (although a large number of them are in various stages of completion).
1994
Another "nothing" year. I went on the dole and tried looking for work, but it was very hard. Moved out of Mum's house. Moved back 'cos I ran out of money. Wrote a few more songs, too.
I realised I needed to learn more about music in order to write good music for these songs, so I started reading music theory books, through which I learnt about such musical concepts as chords, phrasing and keys. To help me work out melodies for my songs, I bought a cheap keyboard (all were written in the key of C!) and started playing around with it.
1995
d-Wizz - The letterbox man
Having been unable to find work for more than a year, I decided to try letterbox (junk mail) distribution for additional cash flow. I had previously delivered newspapers while at high school, so I knew what to expect.
I started delivering newspapers and junk mail in the Toowong area in April, 1995, but on a major scale. We're talking in thousands here, not hundreds; my first delivery was 1,200 copies of the "Brisbane News", a 36-page glossy magazine issued every Wednesday. I did the whole lot in just over one day and got $60 for it I think. It was hard work, and I told my supervisor I wouldn't do the Brisbane News again, because they were very heavy, and I had no car. I stuck to leaflets and catalogues only, because they were much lighter. Not long afterwards, my supervisor stopped giving me material to deliver, and having received a copy of the catalogue in my letterbox, I assumed he had replaced me without warning (a common practice in the industry), and so I started looking for someone else to work for. I found an ad in the local paper for letterbox walkers, so I rang the number, and we had a 40-minute chat on the phone. Michael, the supervisor I called, has become one of my friends now, we know each other very well. I started walking for Michael in June, 1995. Most of his work was on the northside of Brisbane, and I remember how he would deliver the material to me (not the usual thing, most of the walkers picked up their own material themselves), I would fold it at Toowong, and go out on the buses and trains to the area and deliver it, using a trolley and a cardboard box. I quickly became one of Michael's best walkers, and he started giving me big jobs, like 2 - 3,000 to be done in 4 days. To put it in perspective, the money in this was not all that great. The 3,000 job was worth $52, and however fast I did it made no difference to how much I would get. I averaged 250 - 300 letterboxes per hour, which is very fast (most walkers can only get 180 - 220), but even that rate only gets me $6 per hour. Not big money by any means. If I had 3 or 4 different leaflets at the same time, then I could really cash in at $20+ per hour, as I could deliver all at once on the same walk. This was the exception, not the rule, however. Most weeks there was only 1 or 2. Michael was really impressed with my work, and passed on positive comments about me to the manager of the company responsible for distribution in Queensland. They had a vacancy in the Indooroopilly area coming up, so Michael invited them to try me out as a supervisor in that area for a while, and they agreed. On October 14, 1995, I received my first supervisor's load of 8,325 Woolworths Supermarket brochures, and a number of other smaller clients. I managed to get all of it delivered on the weekend, with the help of my walkers, who I had contacted and introduced as their new supervisor. Being a supervisor means you are personally responsible for getting all the houses in your area covered, either by yourself, or with the help of other people. I had a team of about 15 people to help me, and there was still plenty of work left for me to do, as well as helping Michael with some of his excess. One month later, the office added the Toowong area on to my Indooroopilly area, giving me a total coverage of some 18,000 houses. I added another 10 walkers on to my team.
d-Wizz' Music goes electronic
In 1995-12, after discovering the capabilities of MIDI systems, I bought a computer and synthesizer and started programming my songs in MIDI. This allowed me to experiment on the drums with them. Buying the computer really made a big difference to the way I wrote music. I started exploring bass lines, and chords, and started adding them to the songs. Being a machine, the computer didn't mind playing endless bass loops to accompany my membranophonic experimentation (some of this stuff even sounded good!).
Also in 1995, Mum dug deep into her accordion case and pulled out some music manuscript books with songs she had written in 1966-67, and gave them to me to interpret.
1996
Still walking
The letterboxing continued in 1996, with the status quo remaining until 1996-08. Between 1996-08 and 1996-10, I was shuffled around between areas, with the office adding areas and taking away others. When this all settled down, I ended up with 4 supervising areas: the two I previously held, plus Chapel Hill (past Indooroopilly), and The Gap (past Toowong). My total coverage now approached 40,000 households, with over 70 walkers. Not long afterwards, problems with payment started to become evident, with the large amount of paperwork being processed, and up to a quarter of a million leaflets going through my unit in some weeks, things started to get really slow. I was coping with the paperwork, but it seems the head office wasn't, and they started to get further and further behind with the payments. Eventually I had walkers starting to call me asking when they were going to get paid. To cut a long story short, I could see the end coming, so I stopped supervising in early 1996-12.
1997
My decision to stop supervising was prophetic, because in 1997-09, the company went bankrupt. Michael lost at least $5,000. I wasn't immune from financial loss; they owed me about $2,000, and my walkers a further $3 - 4,000 when they went under. I returned to walking for Michael after I stopped supervising, as he also did a lot of private work outside the company for smaller clients (eg real estate agents), so when the company folded, Michael went out alone.
A change in direction
I had considered driving taxis for a number of years before I actually decided to get off my backside and do something about it. Getting a "Public Vehicle" licence in Queensland is easy, and I got mine on 1997-06-13. It involved doing a course which runs for one week, but I did it in four, because I was still walking for Michael and couldn't afford to take a whole week off. As long as I did Monday first, and Friday last, it didn't matter how long I took to finish the course. After they briefly assess your driving ability, and you pay $120 to do the course, you are put into the classroom for a series of lectures. At the other end, you sit for a multiple choice exam of 51 questions; you must get 41 or more correct to pass. It's amazing how many get all 51 correct - I only got 50! The exam is just a general knowledge exam. Once you get your certificate, off you go to the Department of Transport, pay the relevant fee, and you get instant authorisation to drive any taxi in Queensland. I did my first shift on Monday night, 1997-06-27. I took $198, and kept $89 for myself. My first fare was from the Cricketers' Club at the 'Gabba to Creek St in the city - I think the fare was $6.50.
1998
Booming times
I continued to drive taxis into 1998 - I was having heaps of fun. I usually worked about 16 hours on Monday - Friday and about 13 hours on Saturday night.. The long hours did not bother me at all.
The music continues... then stops
On 1998-01-09, a very important transaction took place, involving my purchase of a second-hand MIDI sound module, the KORG X5-DR. This little black box, when driven by sequencing software, allowed me to further enhance my musical creations. I obtained such software and very quickly learnt how to drive the module. Within a few months, I was producing high-quality MIDI songs, which I recorded onto tapes for practice on the drums, and also for listening to in the taxi while driving, although I usually played them only when my taxi was vacant.
Disaster struck in 1998-11, when my 386 decided not to boot anymore. I lost about 75 MIDI songs, a large number of them originals. Recently I've been re-programming them, but they don't seem to be as good as the originals. Fortunately, a lot of my songs were recorded on tape, so I can listen to my arrangements while I try to reconstruct them.
1999
Turbulent times
Without a computer, I was unable to create any more music, but I still wrote a few songs. I focussed more on the taxi driving, but eventually I racked up too many points and lost my license, and thus, the party was over. The government pulled the plug on 1999-10-04.
2000
A new lease of life
Things were looking pretty bleak for me as the last year of the century began, but they soon took a turn for the better. Frustrated by not being able to find another job, I managed to scrape together enough money to buy another computer on 2000-04-15. The next day I went and bought Cakewalk sequencing software, and I was all set up again to make more music. I worked quickly. I remember on one day I did seven songs! In just over one week, I had produced a CD, and two weeks later I finished a second one... I decided to call them "Y2k Demos", in keeping with all the hype surrounding the millennium at the time.
2001
The calm before the storm...
I was going to eventually produce 6 CDs in the Y2k series, but somehow I never got around to doing any more work on them. I made a few new recordings, and even wrote a couple of new MIDI programs, but the only material that came out on CD was an album of covers and MIDI files downloaded from the Internet, which I remixed, and 2 CDs of Hillsong MIDI songs I made for drum practice. Other than that, 2001 was a rather flat year. But in 2001-12, the seeds were sown for a big explosion, when a friend suggested remixing the Y2k Demos so that, if the opportunity arose, I could sing with them karaok?style.
2002
d-Wizz explodes!
I thought about the karaok?idea, and decided to give it a go. The result... 5 CD singles in 2002-02, 5 more in 2002-04, and yet another 5 by 2002-06-30. I then packaged all this material into 4 full-length CD compilations in early 2001-07, eventually bringing the total to 19 CDs. A couple of months later, and I'm getting restless again; planning and preliminary MIDI is already underway for yet another 13 CD singles - and probably a few more compilations as well. A lot of the songs have never been presented in this way before - many are making their CD debuts, and certainly all of them are making their first appearances with real vocals. It is an exciting time at the moment in the history of d-Wizz Music, and now the latest event is the establishment of this web site.
As history unfolds, I will be updating the pages, so make sure you keep coming back for more news.
2007
d-Wizz.com gets a makoever
After many years of neglect, I'm finally getting myself into gear and upgrading my website. there's so much to do... so many things have changed in the five years since I launched my presence in cyberspace. Please be patient, and come back often, as there will be more changes in the coming weeks and months...
1.1.1 - Part I (1974 - 1990)
1.2 - d-Wizz Family
1.3 - d-Wizz Today
1.4 -
d-Wizz E-mail Newsletters
0 - Home Page
I realised I needed to learn more about music in order to write good music for these songs, so I started reading music theory books, through which I learnt about such musical concepts as chords, phrasing and keys. To help me work out melodies for my songs, I bought a cheap keyboard (all were written in the key of C!) and started playing around with it.
1995
d-Wizz - The letterbox man
Having been unable to find work for more than a year, I decided to try letterbox (junk mail) distribution for additional cash flow. I had previously delivered newspapers while at high school, so I knew what to expect.
I started delivering newspapers and junk mail in the Toowong area in April, 1995, but on a major scale. We're talking in thousands here, not hundreds; my first delivery was 1,200 copies of the "Brisbane News", a 36-page glossy magazine issued every Wednesday. I did the whole lot in just over one day and got $60 for it I think. It was hard work, and I told my supervisor I wouldn't do the Brisbane News again, because they were very heavy, and I had no car. I stuck to leaflets and catalogues only, because they were much lighter. Not long afterwards, my supervisor stopped giving me material to deliver, and having received a copy of the catalogue in my letterbox, I assumed he had replaced me without warning (a common practice in the industry), and so I started looking for someone else to work for. I found an ad in the local paper for letterbox walkers, so I rang the number, and we had a 40-minute chat on the phone. Michael, the supervisor I called, has become one of my friends now, we know each other very well. I started walking for Michael in June, 1995. Most of his work was on the northside of Brisbane, and I remember how he would deliver the material to me (not the usual thing, most of the walkers picked up their own material themselves), I would fold it at Toowong, and go out on the buses and trains to the area and deliver it, using a trolley and a cardboard box. I quickly became one of Michael's best walkers, and he started giving me big jobs, like 2 - 3,000 to be done in 4 days. To put it in perspective, the money in this was not all that great. The 3,000 job was worth $52, and however fast I did it made no difference to how much I would get. I averaged 250 - 300 letterboxes per hour, which is very fast (most walkers can only get 180 - 220), but even that rate only gets me $6 per hour. Not big money by any means. If I had 3 or 4 different leaflets at the same time, then I could really cash in at $20+ per hour, as I could deliver all at once on the same walk. This was the exception, not the rule, however. Most weeks there was only 1 or 2. Michael was really impressed with my work, and passed on positive comments about me to the manager of the company responsible for distribution in Queensland. They had a vacancy in the Indooroopilly area coming up, so Michael invited them to try me out as a supervisor in that area for a while, and they agreed. On October 14, 1995, I received my first supervisor's load of 8,325 Woolworths Supermarket brochures, and a number of other smaller clients. I managed to get all of it delivered on the weekend, with the help of my walkers, who I had contacted and introduced as their new supervisor. Being a supervisor means you are personally responsible for getting all the houses in your area covered, either by yourself, or with the help of other people. I had a team of about 15 people to help me, and there was still plenty of work left for me to do, as well as helping Michael with some of his excess. One month later, the office added the Toowong area on to my Indooroopilly area, giving me a total coverage of some 18,000 houses. I added another 10 walkers on to my team.
d-Wizz' Music goes electronic
In 1995-12, after discovering the capabilities of MIDI systems, I bought a computer and synthesizer and started programming my songs in MIDI. This allowed me to experiment on the drums with them. Buying the computer really made a big difference to the way I wrote music. I started exploring bass lines, and chords, and started adding them to the songs. Being a machine, the computer didn't mind playing endless bass loops to accompany my membranophonic experimentation (some of this stuff even sounded good!).
Also in 1995, Mum dug deep into her accordion case and pulled out some music manuscript books with songs she had written in 1966-67, and gave them to me to interpret.
1996
Still walking
The letterboxing continued in 1996, with the status quo remaining until 1996-08. Between 1996-08 and 1996-10, I was shuffled around between areas, with the office adding areas and taking away others. When this all settled down, I ended up with 4 supervising areas: the two I previously held, plus Chapel Hill (past Indooroopilly), and The Gap (past Toowong). My total coverage now approached 40,000 households, with over 70 walkers. Not long afterwards, problems with payment started to become evident, with the large amount of paperwork being processed, and up to a quarter of a million leaflets going through my unit in some weeks, things started to get really slow. I was coping with the paperwork, but it seems the head office wasn't, and they started to get further and further behind with the payments. Eventually I had walkers starting to call me asking when they were going to get paid. To cut a long story short, I could see the end coming, so I stopped supervising in early 1996-12.
1997
My decision to stop supervising was prophetic, because in 1997-09, the company went bankrupt. Michael lost at least $5,000. I wasn't immune from financial loss; they owed me about $2,000, and my walkers a further $3 - 4,000 when they went under. I returned to walking for Michael after I stopped supervising, as he also did a lot of private work outside the company for smaller clients (eg real estate agents), so when the company folded, Michael went out alone.
A change in direction
I had considered driving taxis for a number of years before I actually decided to get off my backside and do something about it. Getting a "Public Vehicle" licence in Queensland is easy, and I got mine on 1997-06-13. It involved doing a course which runs for one week, but I did it in four, because I was still walking for Michael and couldn't afford to take a whole week off. As long as I did Monday first, and Friday last, it didn't matter how long I took to finish the course. After they briefly assess your driving ability, and you pay $120 to do the course, you are put into the classroom for a series of lectures. At the other end, you sit for a multiple choice exam of 51 questions; you must get 41 or more correct to pass. It's amazing how many get all 51 correct - I only got 50! The exam is just a general knowledge exam. Once you get your certificate, off you go to the Department of Transport, pay the relevant fee, and you get instant authorisation to drive any taxi in Queensland. I did my first shift on Monday night, 1997-06-27. I took $198, and kept $89 for myself. My first fare was from the Cricketers' Club at the 'Gabba to Creek St in the city - I think the fare was $6.50.
1998
Booming times
I continued to drive taxis into 1998 - I was having heaps of fun. I usually worked about 16 hours on Monday - Friday and about 13 hours on Saturday night.. The long hours did not bother me at all.
The music continues... then stops
On 1998-01-09, a very important transaction took place, involving my purchase of a second-hand MIDI sound module, the KORG X5-DR. This little black box, when driven by sequencing software, allowed me to further enhance my musical creations. I obtained such software and very quickly learnt how to drive the module. Within a few months, I was producing high-quality MIDI songs, which I recorded onto tapes for practice on the drums, and also for listening to in the taxi while driving, although I usually played them only when my taxi was vacant.
Disaster struck in 1998-11, when my 386 decided not to boot anymore. I lost about 75 MIDI songs, a large number of them originals. Recently I've been re-programming them, but they don't seem to be as good as the originals. Fortunately, a lot of my songs were recorded on tape, so I can listen to my arrangements while I try to reconstruct them.
1999
Turbulent times
Without a computer, I was unable to create any more music, but I still wrote a few songs. I focussed more on the taxi driving, but eventually I racked up too many points and lost my license, and thus, the party was over. The government pulled the plug on 1999-10-04.
2000
A new lease of life
Things were looking pretty bleak for me as the last year of the century began, but they soon took a turn for the better. Frustrated by not being able to find another job, I managed to scrape together enough money to buy another computer on 2000-04-15. The next day I went and bought Cakewalk sequencing software, and I was all set up again to make more music. I worked quickly. I remember on one day I did seven songs! In just over one week, I had produced a CD, and two weeks later I finished a second one... I decided to call them "Y2k Demos", in keeping with all the hype surrounding the millennium at the time.
2001
The calm before the storm...
I was going to eventually produce 6 CDs in the Y2k series, but somehow I never got around to doing any more work on them. I made a few new recordings, and even wrote a couple of new MIDI programs, but the only material that came out on CD was an album of covers and MIDI files downloaded from the Internet, which I remixed, and 2 CDs of Hillsong MIDI songs I made for drum practice. Other than that, 2001 was a rather flat year. But in 2001-12, the seeds were sown for a big explosion, when a friend suggested remixing the Y2k Demos so that, if the opportunity arose, I could sing with them karaok?style.
2002
d-Wizz explodes!
I thought about the karaok?idea, and decided to give it a go. The result... 5 CD singles in 2002-02, 5 more in 2002-04, and yet another 5 by 2002-06-30. I then packaged all this material into 4 full-length CD compilations in early 2001-07, eventually bringing the total to 19 CDs. A couple of months later, and I'm getting restless again; planning and preliminary MIDI is already underway for yet another 13 CD singles - and probably a few more compilations as well. A lot of the songs have never been presented in this way before - many are making their CD debuts, and certainly all of them are making their first appearances with real vocals. It is an exciting time at the moment in the history of d-Wizz Music, and now the latest event is the establishment of this web site.
As history unfolds, I will be updating the pages, so make sure you keep coming back for more news.
2007
d-Wizz.com gets a makoever
After many years of neglect, I'm finally getting myself into gear and upgrading my website. there's so much to do... so many things have changed in the five years since I launched my presence in cyberspace. Please be patient, and come back often, as there will be more changes in the coming weeks and months...
1.1.1 - Part I (1974 - 1990)
1.2 - d-Wizz Family
1.3 - d-Wizz Today
1.4 -
d-Wizz E-mail Newsletters
0 - Home Page
Also in 1995, Mum dug deep into her accordion case and pulled out some music manuscript books with songs she had written in 1966-67, and gave them to me to interpret.
1996
Still walking
The letterboxing continued in 1996, with the status quo remaining until 1996-08. Between 1996-08 and 1996-10, I was shuffled around between areas, with the office adding areas and taking away others. When this all settled down, I ended up with 4 supervising areas: the two I previously held, plus Chapel Hill (past Indooroopilly), and The Gap (past Toowong). My total coverage now approached 40,000 households, with over 70 walkers. Not long afterwards, problems with payment started to become evident, with the large amount of paperwork being processed, and up to a quarter of a million leaflets going through my unit in some weeks, things started to get really slow. I was coping with the paperwork, but it seems the head office wasn't, and they started to get further and further behind with the payments. Eventually I had walkers starting to call me asking when they were going to get paid. To cut a long story short, I could see the end coming, so I stopped supervising in early 1996-12.
1997
My decision to stop supervising was prophetic, because in 1997-09, the company went bankrupt. Michael lost at least $5,000. I wasn't immune from financial loss; they owed me about $2,000, and my walkers a further $3 - 4,000 when they went under. I returned to walking for Michael after I stopped supervising, as he also did a lot of private work outside the company for smaller clients (eg real estate agents), so when the company folded, Michael went out alone.
A change in direction
I had considered driving taxis for a number of years before I actually decided to get off my backside and do something about it. Getting a "Public Vehicle" licence in Queensland is easy, and I got mine on 1997-06-13. It involved doing a course which runs for one week, but I did it in four, because I was still walking for Michael and couldn't afford to take a whole week off. As long as I did Monday first, and Friday last, it didn't matter how long I took to finish the course. After they briefly assess your driving ability, and you pay $120 to do the course, you are put into the classroom for a series of lectures. At the other end, you sit for a multiple choice exam of 51 questions; you must get 41 or more correct to pass. It's amazing how many get all 51 correct - I only got 50! The exam is just a general knowledge exam. Once you get your certificate, off you go to the Department of Transport, pay the relevant fee, and you get instant authorisation to drive any taxi in Queensland. I did my first shift on Monday night, 1997-06-27. I took $198, and kept $89 for myself. My first fare was from the Cricketers' Club at the 'Gabba to Creek St in the city - I think the fare was $6.50.
1998
Booming times
I continued to drive taxis into 1998 - I was having heaps of fun. I usually worked about 16 hours on Monday - Friday and about 13 hours on Saturday night.. The long hours did not bother me at all.
The music continues... then stops
On 1998-01-09, a very important transaction took place, involving my purchase of a second-hand MIDI sound module, the KORG X5-DR. This little black box, when driven by sequencing software, allowed me to further enhance my musical creations. I obtained such software and very quickly learnt how to drive the module. Within a few months, I was producing high-quality MIDI songs, which I recorded onto tapes for practice on the drums, and also for listening to in the taxi while driving, although I usually played them only when my taxi was vacant.
Disaster struck in 1998-11, when my 386 decided not to boot anymore. I lost about 75 MIDI songs, a large number of them originals. Recently I've been re-programming them, but they don't seem to be as good as the originals. Fortunately, a lot of my songs were recorded on tape, so I can listen to my arrangements while I try to reconstruct them.
1999
Turbulent times
Without a computer, I was unable to create any more music, but I still wrote a few songs. I focussed more on the taxi driving, but eventually I racked up too many points and lost my license, and thus, the party was over. The government pulled the plug on 1999-10-04.
2000
A new lease of life
Things were looking pretty bleak for me as the last year of the century began, but they soon took a turn for the better. Frustrated by not being able to find another job, I managed to scrape together enough money to buy another computer on 2000-04-15. The next day I went and bought Cakewalk sequencing software, and I was all set up again to make more music. I worked quickly. I remember on one day I did seven songs! In just over one week, I had produced a CD, and two weeks later I finished a second one... I decided to call them "Y2k Demos", in keeping with all the hype surrounding the millennium at the time.
2001
The calm before the storm...
I was going to eventually produce 6 CDs in the Y2k series, but somehow I never got around to doing any more work on them. I made a few new recordings, and even wrote a couple of new MIDI programs, but the only material that came out on CD was an album of covers and MIDI files downloaded from the Internet, which I remixed, and 2 CDs of Hillsong MIDI songs I made for drum practice. Other than that, 2001 was a rather flat year. But in 2001-12, the seeds were sown for a big explosion, when a friend suggested remixing the Y2k Demos so that, if the opportunity arose, I could sing with them karaok?style.
2002
d-Wizz explodes!
I thought about the karaok?idea, and decided to give it a go. The result... 5 CD singles in 2002-02, 5 more in 2002-04, and yet another 5 by 2002-06-30. I then packaged all this material into 4 full-length CD compilations in early 2001-07, eventually bringing the total to 19 CDs. A couple of months later, and I'm getting restless again; planning and preliminary MIDI is already underway for yet another 13 CD singles - and probably a few more compilations as well. A lot of the songs have never been presented in this way before - many are making their CD debuts, and certainly all of them are making their first appearances with real vocals. It is an exciting time at the moment in the history of d-Wizz Music, and now the latest event is the establishment of this web site.
As history unfolds, I will be updating the pages, so make sure you keep coming back for more news.
2007
d-Wizz.com gets a makoever
After many years of neglect, I'm finally getting myself into gear and upgrading my website. there's so much to do... so many things have changed in the five years since I launched my presence in cyberspace. Please be patient, and come back often, as there will be more changes in the coming weeks and months...
1.1.1 - Part I (1974 - 1990)
1.2 - d-Wizz Family
1.3 - d-Wizz Today
1.4 -
d-Wizz E-mail Newsletters
0 - Home Page
A change in direction
I had considered driving taxis for a number of years before I actually decided to get off my backside and do something about it. Getting a "Public Vehicle" licence in Queensland is easy, and I got mine on 1997-06-13. It involved doing a course which runs for one week, but I did it in four, because I was still walking for Michael and couldn't afford to take a whole week off. As long as I did Monday first, and Friday last, it didn't matter how long I took to finish the course. After they briefly assess your driving ability, and you pay $120 to do the course, you are put into the classroom for a series of lectures. At the other end, you sit for a multiple choice exam of 51 questions; you must get 41 or more correct to pass. It's amazing how many get all 51 correct - I only got 50! The exam is just a general knowledge exam. Once you get your certificate, off you go to the Department of Transport, pay the relevant fee, and you get instant authorisation to drive any taxi in Queensland. I did my first shift on Monday night, 1997-06-27. I took $198, and kept $89 for myself. My first fare was from the Cricketers' Club at the 'Gabba to Creek St in the city - I think the fare was $6.50.
1998
Booming times
I continued to drive taxis into 1998 - I was having heaps of fun. I usually worked about 16 hours on Monday - Friday and about 13 hours on Saturday night.. The long hours did not bother me at all.
The music continues... then stops
On 1998-01-09, a very important transaction took place, involving my purchase of a second-hand MIDI sound module, the KORG X5-DR. This little black box, when driven by sequencing software, allowed me to further enhance my musical creations. I obtained such software and very quickly learnt how to drive the module. Within a few months, I was producing high-quality MIDI songs, which I recorded onto tapes for practice on the drums, and also for listening to in the taxi while driving, although I usually played them only when my taxi was vacant.
Disaster struck in 1998-11, when my 386 decided not to boot anymore. I lost about 75 MIDI songs, a large number of them originals. Recently I've been re-programming them, but they don't seem to be as good as the originals. Fortunately, a lot of my songs were recorded on tape, so I can listen to my arrangements while I try to reconstruct them.
1999
Turbulent times
Without a computer, I was unable to create any more music, but I still wrote a few songs. I focussed more on the taxi driving, but eventually I racked up too many points and lost my license, and thus, the party was over. The government pulled the plug on 1999-10-04.
2000
A new lease of life
Things were looking pretty bleak for me as the last year of the century began, but they soon took a turn for the better. Frustrated by not being able to find another job, I managed to scrape together enough money to buy another computer on 2000-04-15. The next day I went and bought Cakewalk sequencing software, and I was all set up again to make more music. I worked quickly. I remember on one day I did seven songs! In just over one week, I had produced a CD, and two weeks later I finished a second one... I decided to call them "Y2k Demos", in keeping with all the hype surrounding the millennium at the time.
2001
The calm before the storm...
I was going to eventually produce 6 CDs in the Y2k series, but somehow I never got around to doing any more work on them. I made a few new recordings, and even wrote a couple of new MIDI programs, but the only material that came out on CD was an album of covers and MIDI files downloaded from the Internet, which I remixed, and 2 CDs of Hillsong MIDI songs I made for drum practice. Other than that, 2001 was a rather flat year. But in 2001-12, the seeds were sown for a big explosion, when a friend suggested remixing the Y2k Demos so that, if the opportunity arose, I could sing with them karaok?style.
2002
d-Wizz explodes!
I thought about the karaok?idea, and decided to give it a go. The result... 5 CD singles in 2002-02, 5 more in 2002-04, and yet another 5 by 2002-06-30. I then packaged all this material into 4 full-length CD compilations in early 2001-07, eventually bringing the total to 19 CDs. A couple of months later, and I'm getting restless again; planning and preliminary MIDI is already underway for yet another 13 CD singles - and probably a few more compilations as well. A lot of the songs have never been presented in this way before - many are making their CD debuts, and certainly all of them are making their first appearances with real vocals. It is an exciting time at the moment in the history of d-Wizz Music, and now the latest event is the establishment of this web site.
As history unfolds, I will be updating the pages, so make sure you keep coming back for more news.
2007
d-Wizz.com gets a makoever
After many years of neglect, I'm finally getting myself into gear and upgrading my website. there's so much to do... so many things have changed in the five years since I launched my presence in cyberspace. Please be patient, and come back often, as there will be more changes in the coming weeks and months...
1.1.1 - Part I (1974 - 1990)
1.2 - d-Wizz Family
1.3 - d-Wizz Today
1.4 -
d-Wizz E-mail Newsletters
0 - Home Page
1998
Booming times
I continued to drive taxis into 1998 - I was having heaps of fun. I usually worked about 16 hours on Monday - Friday and about 13 hours on Saturday night.. The long hours did not bother me at all.
The music continues... then stops
On 1998-01-09, a very important transaction took place, involving my purchase of a second-hand MIDI sound module, the KORG X5-DR. This little black box, when driven by sequencing software, allowed me to further enhance my musical creations. I obtained such software and very quickly learnt how to drive the module. Within a few months, I was producing high-quality MIDI songs, which I recorded onto tapes for practice on the drums, and also for listening to in the taxi while driving, although I usually played them only when my taxi was vacant.
Disaster struck in 1998-11, when my 386 decided not to boot anymore. I lost about 75 MIDI songs, a large number of them originals. Recently I've been re-programming them, but they don't seem to be as good as the originals. Fortunately, a lot of my songs were recorded on tape, so I can listen to my arrangements while I try to reconstruct them.
1999
Turbulent times
Without a computer, I was unable to create any more music, but I still wrote a few songs. I focussed more on the taxi driving, but eventually I racked up too many points and lost my license, and thus, the party was over. The government pulled the plug on 1999-10-04.
2000
A new lease of life
Things were looking pretty bleak for me as the last year of the century began, but they soon took a turn for the better. Frustrated by not being able to find another job, I managed to scrape together enough money to buy another computer on 2000-04-15. The next day I went and bought Cakewalk sequencing software, and I was all set up again to make more music. I worked quickly. I remember on one day I did seven songs! In just over one week, I had produced a CD, and two weeks later I finished a second one... I decided to call them "Y2k Demos", in keeping with all the hype surrounding the millennium at the time.
2001
The calm before the storm...
I was going to eventually produce 6 CDs in the Y2k series, but somehow I never got around to doing any more work on them. I made a few new recordings, and even wrote a couple of new MIDI programs, but the only material that came out on CD was an album of covers and MIDI files downloaded from the Internet, which I remixed, and 2 CDs of Hillsong MIDI songs I made for drum practice. Other than that, 2001 was a rather flat year. But in 2001-12, the seeds were sown for a big explosion, when a friend suggested remixing the Y2k Demos so that, if the opportunity arose, I could sing with them karaok?style.
2002
d-Wizz explodes!
I thought about the karaok?idea, and decided to give it a go. The result... 5 CD singles in 2002-02, 5 more in 2002-04, and yet another 5 by 2002-06-30. I then packaged all this material into 4 full-length CD compilations in early 2001-07, eventually bringing the total to 19 CDs. A couple of months later, and I'm getting restless again; planning and preliminary MIDI is already underway for yet another 13 CD singles - and probably a few more compilations as well. A lot of the songs have never been presented in this way before - many are making their CD debuts, and certainly all of them are making their first appearances with real vocals. It is an exciting time at the moment in the history of d-Wizz Music, and now the latest event is the establishment of this web site.
As history unfolds, I will be updating the pages, so make sure you keep coming back for more news.
2007
d-Wizz.com gets a makoever
After many years of neglect, I'm finally getting myself into gear and upgrading my website. there's so much to do... so many things have changed in the five years since I launched my presence in cyberspace. Please be patient, and come back often, as there will be more changes in the coming weeks and months...
1.1.1 - Part I (1974 - 1990)
1.2 - d-Wizz Family
1.3 - d-Wizz Today
1.4 -
d-Wizz E-mail Newsletters
0 - Home Page
Turbulent times
Without a computer, I was unable to create any more music, but I still wrote a few songs. I focussed more on the taxi driving, but eventually I racked up too many points and lost my license, and thus, the party was over. The government pulled the plug on 1999-10-04.
2000
A new lease of life
Things were looking pretty bleak for me as the last year of the century began, but they soon took a turn for the better. Frustrated by not being able to find another job, I managed to scrape together enough money to buy another computer on 2000-04-15. The next day I went and bought Cakewalk sequencing software, and I was all set up again to make more music. I worked quickly. I remember on one day I did seven songs! In just over one week, I had produced a CD, and two weeks later I finished a second one... I decided to call them "Y2k Demos", in keeping with all the hype surrounding the millennium at the time.
2001
The calm before the storm...
I was going to eventually produce 6 CDs in the Y2k series, but somehow I never got around to doing any more work on them. I made a few new recordings, and even wrote a couple of new MIDI programs, but the only material that came out on CD was an album of covers and MIDI files downloaded from the Internet, which I remixed, and 2 CDs of Hillsong MIDI songs I made for drum practice. Other than that, 2001 was a rather flat year. But in 2001-12, the seeds were sown for a big explosion, when a friend suggested remixing the Y2k Demos so that, if the opportunity arose, I could sing with them karaok?style.
2002
d-Wizz explodes!
I thought about the karaok?idea, and decided to give it a go. The result... 5 CD singles in 2002-02, 5 more in 2002-04, and yet another 5 by 2002-06-30. I then packaged all this material into 4 full-length CD compilations in early 2001-07, eventually bringing the total to 19 CDs. A couple of months later, and I'm getting restless again; planning and preliminary MIDI is already underway for yet another 13 CD singles - and probably a few more compilations as well. A lot of the songs have never been presented in this way before - many are making their CD debuts, and certainly all of them are making their first appearances with real vocals. It is an exciting time at the moment in the history of d-Wizz Music, and now the latest event is the establishment of this web site.
As history unfolds, I will be updating the pages, so make sure you keep coming back for more news.
2007
d-Wizz.com gets a makoever
After many years of neglect, I'm finally getting myself into gear and upgrading my website. there's so much to do... so many things have changed in the five years since I launched my presence in cyberspace. Please be patient, and come back often, as there will be more changes in the coming weeks and months...
1.1.1 - Part I (1974 - 1990)
1.2 - d-Wizz Family
1.3 - d-Wizz Today
1.4 -
d-Wizz E-mail Newsletters
0 - Home Page
The calm before the storm...
I was going to eventually produce 6 CDs in the Y2k series, but somehow I never got around to doing any more work on them. I made a few new recordings, and even wrote a couple of new MIDI programs, but the only material that came out on CD was an album of covers and MIDI files downloaded from the Internet, which I remixed, and 2 CDs of Hillsong MIDI songs I made for drum practice. Other than that, 2001 was a rather flat year. But in 2001-12, the seeds were sown for a big explosion, when a friend suggested remixing the Y2k Demos so that, if the opportunity arose, I could sing with them karaok?style.
2002
d-Wizz explodes!
I thought about the karaok?idea, and decided to give it a go. The result... 5 CD singles in 2002-02, 5 more in 2002-04, and yet another 5 by 2002-06-30. I then packaged all this material into 4 full-length CD compilations in early 2001-07, eventually bringing the total to 19 CDs. A couple of months later, and I'm getting restless again; planning and preliminary MIDI is already underway for yet another 13 CD singles - and probably a few more compilations as well. A lot of the songs have never been presented in this way before - many are making their CD debuts, and certainly all of them are making their first appearances with real vocals. It is an exciting time at the moment in the history of d-Wizz Music, and now the latest event is the establishment of this web site.
As history unfolds, I will be updating the pages, so make sure you keep coming back for more news.
2007
d-Wizz.com gets a makoever
After many years of neglect, I'm finally getting myself into gear and upgrading my website. there's so much to do... so many things have changed in the five years since I launched my presence in cyberspace. Please be patient, and come back often, as there will be more changes in the coming weeks and months...
1.1.1 - Part I (1974 - 1990)
1.2 - d-Wizz Family
1.3 - d-Wizz Today
1.4 -
d-Wizz E-mail Newsletters
0 - Home Page
d-Wizz explodes!
I thought about the karaok?idea, and decided to give it a go. The result... 5 CD singles in 2002-02, 5 more in 2002-04, and yet another 5 by 2002-06-30. I then packaged all this material into 4 full-length CD compilations in early 2001-07, eventually bringing the total to 19 CDs. A couple of months later, and I'm getting restless again; planning and preliminary MIDI is already underway for yet another 13 CD singles - and probably a few more compilations as well. A lot of the songs have never been presented in this way before - many are making their CD debuts, and certainly all of them are making their first appearances with real vocals. It is an exciting time at the moment in the history of d-Wizz Music, and now the latest event is the establishment of this web site.
As history unfolds, I will be updating the pages, so make sure you keep coming back for more news.
2007
d-Wizz.com gets a makoever
After many years of neglect, I'm finally getting myself into gear and upgrading my website. there's so much to do... so many things have changed in the five years since I launched my presence in cyberspace. Please be patient, and come back often, as there will be more changes in the coming weeks and months...
1.1.1 - Part I (1974 - 1990)
1.2 - d-Wizz Family
1.3 - d-Wizz Today
1.4 -
d-Wizz E-mail Newsletters
0 - Home Page
I thought about the karaok?idea, and decided to give it a go. The result... 5 CD singles in 2002-02, 5 more in 2002-04, and yet another 5 by 2002-06-30. I then packaged all this material into 4 full-length CD compilations in early 2001-07, eventually bringing the total to 19 CDs. A couple of months later, and I'm getting restless again; planning and preliminary MIDI is already underway for yet another 13 CD singles - and probably a few more compilations as well. A lot of the songs have never been presented in this way before - many are making their CD debuts, and certainly all of them are making their first appearances with real vocals. It is an exciting time at the moment in the history of d-Wizz Music, and now the latest event is the establishment of this web site.
As history unfolds, I will be updating the pages, so make sure you keep coming back for more news.