My wife suggested to share with you something more about “the person” beyond the conventional biographical framework. She encouraged me to tell you my story of how I became a musician and a electroacoustic music composer without even knowing it and how a series of “piccoli, grandi passi,” (small great steps) shaped who I am.

As a child, I loved writing stories, dreaming endlessly, and watching movies. I memorized every line and every frame of the films I watched, and I imagined that one day I would become a director, screenwriter, writer, or even an archaeologist, thanks to my fascination with pyramids and ancient Egypt. On the other hand, I had fun assembling and dismantling speakers, radios, turntables, TVs, reel-to-reel tape recorders, and cassette players (I destroyed quite a few!). I enjoyed playing with 9-volt batteries, wires, various light bulbs, and magnets, and I even experimented with car batteries that my father often left within reach. I have always been a careful child, aware of dangers in general, but looking back, I’m amazed I survived those experiences and all the electric shocks I regularly received—not to mention the countless times I short-circuited the house’s electrical system. But hey, it was the ’80s, and everything seemed perfectly normal.

The first experience I can clearly remember of being in first contact with music was when I was about 7 or 8 years old. I went with my father to the home of a veterinarian who was supposed to spay our dog. I don’t remember exactly why we were there, but while exploring the house on my own, I noticed a piano in the living room. I immediately went over, opened it, and naturally began pressing the keys. It was an unforgettable feeling for me. I distinctly remember the powerful and vibrant sound resonating, triggered by my own hands. I have this flashback of my father coming closer and standing next to me, observing me, and I think the veterinarian was saying something kind about me. From that moment, I decided I would learn to play the piano.

I started piano lessons when I was about 9 years old with a woman named Beatriz Bricchi, who lived just a few meters from my house and was the daughter of Italian immigrants. At the time, however, I didn’t own a piano. Beatriz had me practice fingerings for the sheet music at home on a keyboard drawn on a piece of cardboard.

In addition to teaching me the basics of classical piano repertoire, she also introduced me to Latin American folk music. To be honest, I was never a great pianist. I always played sheet music differently each time, and it took very little for me to start improvising. The moment I played a passage, I would immediately stop thinking about the performance itself because I could hear variations or new musical ideas in my mind. It was clear that I had a compositional approach rather than a player one.

Beatriz was very patient with me, and she was an important figure for me as both a musical guide and a teaching role model.

I remember I was about 10 years old, and I used to go with my parents to the Carrefour shopping center, not exactly close to home, in the Vicente López area. I couldn’t wait to go because I was fascinated by the large TV screens of that time and the clean, powerful sound coming from the speakers of the hi-fi audio systems on display in one of the hi-fi audio shops. Time didn’t exist for me in that place—it was pure amazement.

Meanwhile, in the mid-1980s, thanks to my grandmother Nylda (also the daughter of Italian immigrants), Commodore computers—the 16, 64, and 128—arrived at my house. Between one video game and another, I found myself at 8 years old typing out pages of Basic code from the instruction manual for games and apps, trying to compile them with terrible and frustrating results. I could never figure out whether the errors were mine or if the code itself was buggy. In middle school, I spent countless hours playing computer games and hunting for new programs to copy from anyone I could. I remember always having a tiny screwdriver at hand because I frequently had to adjust the head of the DATASET (the tape recorder for the Commodore) to read the borrowed, copied, or purchased game tapes. My friends and I would marathon sessions, trying to beat the glitchiest and buggy video games in personal computer history. In short, I was a typical kid in love with computers and video games. Despite this, I always did well in school and earned high grades.

I think I was 11 or 12 years old (around 1987) when, again thanks to my grandmother Nylda, I got my first decent electronic keyboard — a Yamaha PSR-500. With that keyboard, in 1992, I became the first student in my high school to perform, along with a classmate, an original composition commemorating the 500th anniversary of the discovery of America (Christopher Columbus and so on… you know, things of that time). I was dying of embarrassment, but I was unstoppable. The older and younger classes listened in surprise and astonishment, with some giggles and some silence, as two awkward kids performed with two microphones and a keyboard, playing a new song with original music and lyrics in the style of a pop-rap tune. From that moment on, though, something changed. Many other students copied the idea and began asking the school administration to let them perform with their rock bands during school events. And so, my first attempt at staying low-profile failed. Go on kid!

A year earlier, my uncle Jorge Merzari (another son of an Italian immigrant) who worked as a theater lighting technician, told me one day that at his workplace—the Recoleta Cultural Center in Buenos Aires—there was a rather peculiar group of people who made music on computers, and that I should visit him one day so he could take me to see what they were doing. I went without any expectations but very curious. The thing is, when I arrived, my uncle was very busy and told me to go on my own and knock on the door of the famous LIPM (Laboratorio de Investigación y Producción Musical). I knocked at the door, and a rather tall, thin man with a drooping eye and a strange accent greeted me. Four years later, I would learn his name.

He looked at me curiously, waiting for me to say something. So, I told him I was “Merzari’s” nephew, that I wanted to study Computer Music (even though I had no idea what that was), and that I’d like to see what they were doing in there. Surprised, he said, “Ah, eh, okay, muchacho, come on in.” And so, we went on a brief tour of the old LIPM facilities, passing through mixing consoles, studios, control rooms, an ARP 2600, and a Synclavier II. I particularly remember the room with two NeXT computers—they had greyscale monitors, but the resolution seemed incredibly high at the time.

After the visit, having said goodbye and been gently ushered out, I still didn’t understand what they were doing in there, but I was utterly convinced that it was my world.

At 15, in 1990, without knowing if anyone in Argentina could teach me how to use a computer for my personal pop music projects, I decided to write to the U.S. Embassy to ask for information about universities that taught “Computer Music.” I don’t even remember where I’d heard that term, which I didn’t fully understand, but it seemed to be the closest thing to my passion.

One day, a package arrived at my house from the University of Illinois. Opening it with great excitement, I pulled out a large booklet, some brochures about their educational programs, and some shrink-wrapped boxes. Inside them, I found CDs. But at the time, I didn’t even own a CD player…

Months later, almost 16 years old, I still had those CDs from the University of Illinois, staring at them and trying to imagine what could possibly be on them. One day, I went to visit one of my mother’s students who had recently returned from the States and had bought a desktop CD player. I remember how thrilled and excited I was. I arrived, pulled one of the CDs out of my bag, it says: “Scott Wyatt – Collections II: Chamber Music with Electronics”, by the then-director of the Experimental Music Studios at the University of Illinois. I

I absolutely loved it. There was one track that struck me, called “Real Illusion.” I remember that at 1:13, it began with such an unexpected montage of overlapping multilingual voices that continued until 3:03, and then, from 5:23 to the end, there was processed vocal material that I had ever heard before at the time. I thought, “Hmm, these sound effects are really interesting.” I still didn’t fully understand the sense of form or composition, but this was definitely the path I wanted to follow — I wanted to become a sound designer and create my own “sound effects”!

At the time, I used to frequent a very simple recording studio near my house to record my compositions: a microphone, a keyboard, and off we went. The cassette recordings they gave me sounded so bad, with such compressed dynamics, that I was annoyed and frustrated. I wanted to achieve the sound quality of the pop mixes of that era, but of course, I didn’t have the means to do so. Additionally, starting in the 1990s, digital sound was slowly filling the shelves of music stores, and cinema was innovating with sonic experiences that had never been heard before. I think of the audio quality of the soundtracks and special effects in Terminator 2 (1991) and The Matrix (1999). It’s worth noting that everything was changing profoundly with the advent of CDs, which were soon followed by DVDs and Super Audio CDs.

By 1993, I was about to finish high school. At a family party, a cousin of mine named Paula, whom I rarely saw and who was a year older than me, said something that sounded very familiar: “You know, at the new Universidad Nacional de Quilmes, where I study genetics, there’s a group of strange people making weird sounds—I think it’s on computers. Every time I walk past their door, I hear things I don’t understand.” Needless to say, writing these lines I’ve felt back a sense of emotion, because at that moment, I immediately realized that place in Quilmes University had something to do with those CDs from the University of Illinois. But this time, I didn’t rush to the Universidad Nacional de Quilmes because I had another question to resolve first.

So, I applied to study computer science at UTN (Universidad Tecnológica Nacional), but after just one month, I realized I wasn’t happy dealing with functions and mathematical analysis — I missed music so much. In February 1994, I finally began my journey into Electronic Music at UNQUI.

In the following five years, I had already gained significant knowledge about electroacoustic music composition, both with and without instruments, as well as orchestration, harmony, counterpoint, electroacoustic equipment, and so on. However, I had no experience to mixing, as it was not part of any academic program. That was when I approached mixing and mastering engineer Walter Guth, marking a pivotal moment in quality of layering sounds.

In the meanwhile, elements and particular gestures had begun to emerge in my compositions, gradually shaping my style. However, it wasn’t until 1999, when I attended a concert at the Alliance Française in Buenos Aires and heard Phonurgie by Francis Dhomont for the first time, that everything changed suddenly and forever. That’s when I realized it was possible to manipulate sound objects to the point of making them so emotionally powerful that they could convey life through electroacoustic music. Pop came back to life inside of me!

Phonurgie is the first piece I play in my introductory classes on electroacoustic music composition.

Ah, the rather tall, thin man with a drooping eye and a strange accent was named Fernando von Reichenbach. He was an inventor of analog equipment from the era of the famous Instituto Di Tella (in the 1960s) and the technical director of the LIPM (Laboratorio de Investigación y Producción Musical). Exactly four years after that metting, I found myself face to face with him in my first university class, where he was the professor for the course “Taller de Instrumentación y Equipos.”

I still remember that day as if it were yesterday: the first thing Fernando did was put us (the pretty new students) in front of a video camera to conduct a small interview and have us introduce ourselves. Fernando loved to document everything — he always carried his video camera with him. He would even record acousmatic music concerts, where naturally, there was no one on stage.

Over time, we became very good friends, and I even became his young teaching assistant — a role that lasted only a few years but left me with countless life lessons. I will always miss his tireless, eternal childlike curiosity.

© Gustavo Delgado. All rights reserved.