Alex Ball

Alex Ball– It was the summer of 1993 and I visited my friend’s house. His older brother had just bought an electric guitar and I was transfixed by it. He taught me how to play a one-string version of “Wild Thing” using a 5p as a plectrum and I was hooked. I got a cheap acoustic guitar from the second-hand shop and learned some chords.

I took guitar, bass, drum and keyboard lessons, formed a band and we started writing and recording our own music on tape decks, four-tracks and then ultimately 16-track tape. In 2000 I first experienced a digital audio workstation when we recorded on an early Pro-Tools rig at an old BBC studio in Bristol. I was amazed by the potential of hard disk recording without the limits of physical mixing desks and tape tracks.

I wanted to set up my own studio and was interested in composing music for film and TV, so I enrolled on a BA in Music Composition for Professional Media 2004. I got the best computer I could afford, a cheap sound card, a pair of speakers and a microphone and setup a “studio” in the bedroom of a flat. From there the long journey began.

In 2016 I took my passion onto Youtube and began creating videos about music production, composition, and arranging. This evolved into synthesizer documentaries and film score breakdowns which have proved popular and had recognition from the subjects of the films leading to collaborations with Roland, Arturia, Project SAM, Alan R Pearlman Foundation, GForce Software, Expressive-E and ISLA Instruments.