"Why not give it a try ?" I think that it would be the sentence better summerizing Terry A. Somebody who allways considers that nothing is impossible, only a matter of commitment.
Also somebody who explored his limits a big part of his life...
Music has allways been a passion since he was a kid and, here also, he make music in most of the genres from folk, irish folks, bossa nova, rock, hard rock, rockabilly, funk, soul, blues even some touch of metal here and there... and now increasingly approaches jazz...
What was allways the point in all those experiences was the artistic pursuit, already when he played music as an amateur in those days, it was allways to create songs, to express this magic thing, while often it was only a time-passing hobby for the most of the people he played with...
"Some people make the courageous choice to commit as full time artists. The positive side is that they make progress fast. For me, it took 7 years to achieve the sound, the arrangement, the mixing, the instrument playing I wanted for my songs, being said that all my music is self-produced in a studio mainly built by myself, even some of the equipments inside, not mentionning the building itself ! (lol)"
"To be very honest, I had a very common path:
300 BC: becomes an EPICURE follower in ATHENS
2 BC: joins the Jesus group, extols love and practices it. Recurrent issues with Romans
5: takes its distances from the Christian Church, begins to read the Greeks again
62: emigrates in England. Interesting people piling up huge stones named “dolmen” or “menhir”... that’s not Acropolis, but they make a good wine
995: Absolutely not believes in the end of the world. Buys violins and luths at cheap price
1492: longing for travel, real need of renaissance
1898: starts its first psychoanalysis
1943: never trust a guy with a mustache
1968: barricades himself in bed with Lisa et Julia
1981: a big party with disenchantment
2007: creates the MIDNIGHT STREAMS
2008: as a pure optimist, says; “ the crisis will not last, I foresee that the economy will recover at short notice, as soon as the Third World War will be announced”.
"Well, for a self-produced project like yours, with a very modest promotion, how is it going on the business side ?"
"Let say it friendly: I can't figure out music as a job !
Don't take me wrong, I have a great respect for the people who dedicate themselves to this profession. It's a huge risk nowadays with the Major Labels holding all the market and their policy out there: for 10.000 people trying, only one will hardly make a living from it !"
"But if it's not a job how do you consider yourself ?"
"Never think about doing music professionaly.
The little I see from my experience is that it is a hard living: bad income, a constant struggle to protect your rights, no stability at all. Never want to be dependant, waiting for the telephone to ring all day long, Oh no !...
Furthermore, music has allways be my secret garden, allways will. The field where I can be myself, doing what I like. Don't want to bother whith people telling me what I must do because of the market or whatever..."
"If music is a secret garden, why expose it ? What is your purpose then ?"
"First, music is a need. It's a part of me as human being. It is my way to be happy, to communicate with the world, to express my feelings, to find my inner balance... exactly as yoga for instance for some others.
My purpose doing all this is to share with people all the melodies I created along the way, which gave me happiness during the good and the bad episodes of my life.
People like Createspace (Amazon) and Tunecore (distributor to Itunes, Emusic, ...) completely change the landscape for self-produced artists and it's great.
But it definitely seems that people are not ready anymore to pay for music (or at least a lot of them). It's sad that nobody seems to understand anymore that producing a nice record means a lot of hard work and money... and that without support, it is not possible to continue."
"For the Midnight Streams Project, I first tried to involve the musicians who joined me in the composition in a collective way."
"It has given our first album called "Sentimental Lovers" that poped out the box on summer 2009.
It is a eclectic album where I have tried to find my way..."
"Now I'm taking a different direction focusing on my own compositions, involved in more instruments. Midi guitar gives access to the possibility to actually play thousand instruments with a guitar ! and I use it for most instruments except... guitar of course.
This includes Bass, the colour being more acoustic in my new material more jazz oriented.
On most new songs, keyboards remains involved and Nico performs them all."
"The funky box is a personal custom design, it's a dream delivering from clean tone to over-the-top full tilt tone allways in a very tubey way."
"It's not tube though... It is top secret !...
What is sure is: it's direct in the console, no mic involved and that's a true happiness now to hear a real good tone in the headphones !
I cannot stress enough how I look forward to express the full energy of this box in a song. Actually, I wrote a song exclusively for that purpose, it will be a surprise on the second album..."
"But beyond this caprice, my source of inspiration is on the jazz position nowadays and I play mostly on a GB10 Ibanez."
"I played years on a "Parts-O-Caster", actually a Stratocaster that I improved and tuned myself: Wilkinson bridge, Lolar pick-ups, Mighty Mite neck... among others details."
"I really think that it's the best Strato in the world ever (except the day I think it's the worst) and of course still use it for funk and overdrive sounds... but the GB10 is unbeatable for jazzy clean chorus..."