Ciro Santilli's musical education

Ciro's parents put him to play the piano. This is partly influenced by Ciro's paternal grandfather, an energetic Italian descendant who liked music

The piano was fine, but a bit boring due to how it was taught.

The teachers were nice old ladies who followed a very traditional and methodic approach which was just like regular school, instead of doing what actually needed to be done: inspire kids into becoming creative musical geniuses that can compose their own stuff.

While in Santos, before going to university, Ciro somehow got into acoustic and electric guitar.

The electric guitar environment was much less formalized in general, and he took courses with an awesome teacher (archive), who actually tried to inspire his students to create their own music and improvisation.

And so a young teenage Ciro once seriously considered becoming a professional guitar player.

In his early teens, Ciro listened to the usual canned music his friends listened to: music teenager Ciro Santilli liked to listen to, until he started to stumble upon jazz.

Ciro remembers clearly rainy weekend days where he would go to a run down second hand shop near his home in someone's garage (Sebo do Alfaiate, R. Frei Francisco de Sampaio, 183 - Embaré, Santos - SP, 11040-220, Brazil :-)), and buy amazing second hand Jazz CDs. It was just a matter of time until he would start scouring the web for "the best jazz albums of all time" and start listening to all of them, see e.g. the best modern instrumental Western music. digitaldreamdoor.com/index.html was a good resource from those times!

Ciro ultimately decided his bad memory and overwhelming passion for the natural sciences would better suit a scientific carrier.

He also learnt that the computer is also an extremely satisfying artistic instrument.

Also, with a computer, boring dexterity limitations are no more: you can just record perfect played segments or program things note by note to achieve whatever music or action you want!

Although Ciro quit playing musical instruments, his passion for the music has remained, and who knows how it has influenced his life.