About Music Electronica
Local repairs & service for musicians and performers
Music Electronica is an independant, part-time business I run from my home in Upton-Upon-Severn, Worcestershire. As such I have minimal overheads and this means you get servicing and repairs for your music equipment at affordable prices, and as a sole trader you also get a more personal service. I have clients from Cheltenham & Tewksbury to Worcester & Redditch and everywhere in between, many of whom come back to me time and time again to repair or service their gear.
I started my professional career in electronics when I was seventeen (I am in my early fifties now) working for an energy management company as a humble electronic test technician while spending four years (day release) at college studying C & G 224 Electronic Servicing (Parts I, II & III), and yes, I passed with flying circuit boards! I then worked in a variety of roles for a company designing and manufacturing fire alarm and nurse call systems, and for the last thirteen years I have worked in the oil industry, firstly for a large U.S. multi-national company starting in their technology (R & D) department and later moving to manufacturing as a manufacturing engineer. In my current day-job I am employed as a Product Engineer by another small multi-national company manufacturing directional tools.
So where does Music Electronica fit in with my professional career you may ask? It's a good question that deserves a good answer and for that we need to go back to my youth, and a song called "I Feel Love"...
In my youth, I discovered electronic music and the world of synthesizers and drum machines through a pop hit by Donna Summer released in May, 1977. The first time I heard "I Feel Love" (produced by Giorgio Moroder) it knocked my socks off. At the time (I was nine years old), I had never heard anything like it and I was immediately hooked. I was fascinated by the sound and how it was made. I was already interested in electronics, largely due to my uncle (he had his own TV & Radio repair shop on the Dudley road in Wolverhampton). Then I discovered a band called "Kraftwerk" and as the eighties arrived and electronic music really started to take off in popularity, I was right there at the right time, ready and willing to soak up the new sound and new ideas - to my ears, it was heaven.
In 1982, I was able to use my savings to buy my first synthesizer, a Moog Rogue; a thirty two note, monophonic synthesizer with two oscillators and a noise generator and it was my pride and joy, despite its limitations. Then (with the advent of MIDI) I acquired and repaired an Atari 1040STf that I used with Cubase V2.0, a Kawai K4 to use as a controller, a Korg Poly 800, a Kawai RY50 rhythmn composer. I then spent the rest of my teens and early twenties emulating the artists and bands I loved (Gary Numan, Kraftwerk, Depeche Mode, Human League, OMD, Art Of Noise et al.) experimenting and composing my own tunes. I even had piano lessons to learn more about music and keyboard technique.
By the time I finished college, I was working with a mobile disco and through the rest of those years I was repairing electronic equipment; anything from HiFi's and computers, to keyboards and VHS video recorders, usually for friends and family. I also designed and built my own MIDI controller interface with independently assignable MIDI Tx/Rx channels, eight inputs for triggering MIDI events, and sixteen outputs controlled via MIDI Note On/Off messages. It worked very well and I intended to develop a "Mark II" with analogue outputs controlled by note velocity. But by then music had taken a back seat - at least for a while...
In the late 1990's I joined a local drama group and in addition to acting, producing, set building etc., I became a member of its committee as General Secretary and their (ad-hoc) I.T. man. On top of that, I also did a lot of their production sound. Again, it was something that appealed to me, and I worked on many productions with the combined roles of sound designer, audio engineer and sound operator. My association with the drama group sadly ended in 2007 when I moved to Worcestershire. But at around this time, my interest in music was peaked again by a friend. He and a few others had begun singing at open mic nights and I got involved. I could play a little bit of guitar, and so I decided to practise guitar more seriously and I started accompanying my singing friends at open mic nights and parties. I then made the leap to singing myself. I played at a number of open mic nights and I also played guitar for a number of local performers.
When my U.S. employer closed their Tewkesbury facility (where I worked) in 2017, making me redundant, I decided to setup as a sole trader doing music equipment repairs. It was never going to make enough money for me to earn a living full time, but that didn't really matter to me. I have always enjoyed working with electronics and music equipment, so it seemed logical to combine the two, and if I can make enough to at least break even and maybe even make a small profit, then I'm happy.
So here I am, at your service. My name is Chris Hale and I am Music Electronica.