I ,Timo Cook, (or Timo Kok if you want to refer to me by my unfortunate birth name) am a 22 year old musician born and raised in the glamorous fields of North Shropshire.

I grew up in a very musical household where my Mum sang in choirs and my Dad played boogie-woogie and rock on piano. My Dad would have music playing through the house most of the day which presented me with my early interest in 60s/70s artists such as The Beatles, Pink Floyd, David Bowie and Supertramp to name a few. Oh and The Beatles… did I mention The Beatles?

Due to the strict, traditional rules of my household, I was forced to learn an instrument once I hit the age of 10. Me being the cool and collected guy I am, I picked the saxophone and promptly began lessons with a fantastic teacher who inspired and drove me towards my musical life. The beginnings were not easy though, as a child, being forced to learn classical pieces on a jazzy instrument made me discouraged and unwilling to practice. Eventually my parents gave up one summer and told me that I no longer had to take lessons. Being the defiant little deviant I was, I obviously responded by saying I DID want lessons now. What a problematic child I was… and still am.

Once grade 1 was over for me, my teacher gave me two options; continue down the same, classical path I was doing now or do the non-graded, jazz and rock stuff. The choice was easy for me.

There would now be a point where I would go down the recording route and although this story is rather embarrassing for me, I’m prepared to finally say it so here we go. Imagine yourself as a young lad in secondary school, life is going alright, you’re doing okay in your studies and making new friends along the way. At some point, you meet a girl you really like and she’s into a band that you also like.

What do you do?

Do you talk to her about it? Maybe chat about other music you might like? Invite her out to go see a band?

No. You decide recording a cover of her favourite song would be the way to show your dedication… except you don’t know how to record or sing. My Dad gave me a piano amplifier and a 1/4″ jack to 3.5mm jack that I could plug straight into a computer and record using Audacity. It was the most crude way to do it and of course it sounded like s**t.

Well turns out, despite the low production and lack of equipment, something fascinated me about recording… and I promptly forgot about that girl and fell in love with sound recording instead.

Well since that point, I started working, bought some actual recording equipment and started to learn how to record, mix and master. Most of this learning was from trial and error as well as learning tricks from my music teacher and from manuals and books. I would record cover songs and also started to write my own music to record and produce as well.

Because of this, I applied to a sound engineering course at university. This was a very broad sound engineering course that would give me wide knowledge in: acoustics, sound recording, live sound, electronics, digital signal processing, broadcast and some others.

Since then I have continued to write music and used the knowledge from my university course to expand on the stuff I learnt when I was working in my bedroom on small, little Beatles covers that I did (which are still up on YouTube).