Jan Seides

I first felt the pull of music when I was three. My mother would always turn on the radio while we ate dinner, and one day I surprised her by singing to her by heart one of the songs we had heard. She was pretty excited about that, so I immediately learned another.When I was four, my parents bought a piano, but it was my older sister that was supposed to get the lessons. Well! I wasn't having any of that! So I would go to the piano after she was done practicing and pick out and play her songs. By the time I was four and a half, her teacher was convinced I needed lessons too -- especially when it turned out I had "perfect pitch" (I can tell which note it is in the same way that most people can identify colors)Later on, I turned that into a way to make money, as songwriters used to need a written copy of their songs in order to copyright them. I would transcribe the songs of writers around me, and it turned it a kind of crash course in song-writing for me. I took piano lessons for 14 years and then studied piano and composition, exploring folk, classical, jazz, pop, rock and country at the University of Texas School of Music, where I graciously accepted my musical degree.

Show less