Beth Schafer Project

I started gravitating toward musical toys at age 3. Once my grandmother bought me my first toy guitar, I was hooked. After a multi-year begging campaign, my parents finally started me on guitar lessons at 6.

My first teacher was a Portuguese classical player, so that's the style I learned first. But it was the '70s, and I wanted to play like my heroes: Eric Clapton, Robert Plant, B.B. King, George Benson, Al Di Meola, and later James Taylor and Melissa Etheridge. I moved from nylon string to steel string and electric guitar. High school opened the door to jazz — I switched teachers, tried out for all-shore, regional, and even some college jazz bands, and won a spot in each. I loved playing big band music, and I was often the only woman in the room. I took that as a point of pride.

I also loved writing music, and by high school I had my sights set on becoming a film composer. Some kind of career in music was clearly my calling. I earned a Bachelor of Music in Theory and Composition from the University of Miami's School of Music, with classical and jazz guitar as my principal instrument. Most of what I wrote in those years was experimental 20th-century and cinematic music — guitar-driven material was a sideline.

In the '80s, I got acquainted with computers and started using them to notate and compose. MOTU's Pro Composer and Performer (before it became Digital Performer) were my earliest tools, and I beta-tested the now-defunct Finale.

Out of college, I worked at Full Sail Center for the Recording Arts, running a computer lab and designing their interactive media degree program, along with sound design for corporate video and CD-ROM projects. When I left, I ran my own interactive media company for a couple of years, building corporate websites as the internet became part of business life.

But I missed creating and performing. I combined my performing skills with my compositional skills, and a career writing and touring original music was born — visiting communities across the country and sharing what inspired me with like-minded audiences.

Thirty years and ten albums later, I'm returning to some of my earliest motivations as a composer. With new tools at my disposal, composing electronica has yielded a completely different kind of music. It's been liberating to write away from the guitar, free of typical musical forms. What's emerging is a new expression: sounds shaped by the infinite sonorities of electronic instruments, a new way of capturing and using my voice, and musical and lyrical themes that reflect my curiosity and my restlessness to keep exploring.