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Dave Freeman
Dave Freeman is a retired engineering manager, who is devoted to caring for his lovely wife Carole. His musical interests have taken him a variety of places in life, and he currently spends most of his time singing bass and putting together "part CDs" for the Peterborough Singers.
My formal introduction to music started at the tender age of 4 years, when I began my first piano lessons. However long before that, I was immersed in music since my father was a very accomplished baritone, and sang in men’s choirs, mixed church choirs, and with the Vancouver Bach Choir in Vancouver British Columbia, Canada. He was also a self taught pianist, and in his younger days played in dance bands, and served as organist and choir master for a small town church in the interior of BC.
I grew up with music around me; both live and recorded, as my father had some of the highest quality stereo sound equipment available at the time (50 and 60s).I continued piano lessons until I had achieved the grade 6 level established by the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto, Canada. The piano however, wasn’t the instrument I wanted to play at that time in my life. It was my dream to play the violin. Eventually in High School grade 7, I had the opportunity to join the first string instrument class to be offered in the school district and after passing the required ear test, I was invited to become a student in the string program. I eventually reached the grade 8 level of proficiency in viola with the Conservatory of Music in Toronto. It was then that university attendance intervened. I did play with the University of British Columbia orchestra for a year or so, but my engineering curriculum, demanded too much time so I had to discontinue playing until after graduation and with a move to Peterborough, Ontario, I joined the Peterborough Chamber Orchestra. This group later became the Peterborough Symphony and Choir. I continued as principle viola for about 7 years.
Even though I was heavily involved in instrumental music I managed to continue singing, and was a member of a number of community choirs including church choirs in Peterborough and in Holland. During my time in Holland I joined the Sacramentskoor in Breda . I am now continuing my singing as a bass in the Peterborough Singers, and the Trinity United Church Choir.
In the early days of "portable" computers, I began to work with what music software was available. I added midi interfaces to my early machines, and one machine (8086) which was labeled as portable (small suit case size with a 8” monitor built in and running DOS from a 5 ½” floppy", became the start of my work in digital music. Later in early Windows days, I had Cakewalk, and Finale, and settled for a while on Musicator 1.0 and followed Musicator software right up to Musicator Delta. I also acquired Cubase SX 3 and that became my software of choice until by accident I discovered Notation Composer, which I now use exclusively for my music production work.
I spend a lot of time now producing individual part dominant CDs for the Peterborough Singers covering the repertoire for the four concerts of our yearly season. I’m also involved in producing classical music CDs as fundraisers for local organizations, and recently produced a 2 DVD set recording of Handle’s Messiah, sung by the Peterborough Singers. Recently I have been working with a local singing teacher in Peterborough, Ontario and together we have produced a step by step guided vocal warm up exercise CD. We call it Vocal-EASE® by Crane. We set up a partnership company and a corresponding web site www.kizumusic.com to promote the CD. We hope lots of choral singers will take seriously the need to properly warm up their voices before rehearsals and concerts.
To read all of Dave's story, click here.
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