Mike Coombs

About Me

My early exploration of music was as a triangle player in my primary school band. However, I found the triangle's melodic properties to be sadly limited. A little later I discovered that I could vary the pitch of a vacuum cleaner by putting my hand over the pipe and using it as a drone I sang a tune with it. This was my first foray into the realms of electronic music!

Piano

My parents thought I should learn piano.  An old upright player piano was obtained and, under the tutelage of Miss Austin, I began to learn to play it. Although I was learning classical piano, (Beethoven and the like) I loved to improvise, though I was told it wasn't proper music! 

I continued to learn the piano, until when I was about 15, I requested a guitar for his Christmas present. This was of course in the sixties, the age of CND, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the folk movement and protest singers - most notably Bob Dylan who is a hero of mine to this day. My father, somewhat reluctantly it must be said, did buy me a nylon strung classical guitar saying (and probably hoping!) that it would be a Nine Day Wonder. There began the longest nine days ever - hopefully there's many years left to go!

Guitar

I began to study with a local classical guitar teacher, a move which, although it didn't turn out to be a long lasting relationship, I am now very thankful for the basic technique that I learnt in the first few months of lessons. However, the sound of nylon strings didn't keep my attention. I wanted to play Blues and therefore wanted a steel string. Not understanding how a guitar was constructed, I thought that the thing to do was to buy and fit a set of steel strings to my classical guitar. Classical guitar necks are made of wood, as are steel string guitar necks, however, the steel string guitar necks are reinforced with a metal rod to counteract the extra tension of a set of steel strings, thus keeping it straight. Needless to say my guitar neck ended up banana shaped and in addition the belly of the guitar became slightly distended and the joint result of this demonstration of tensile forces produced a horrifically high action - that's the distance from the strings to the fretboard. This of course made the guitar extremely difficult to play. Most people would have found it impossible and would have given up there and then, but I was determined to confound my father's prediction. 

My 

Mike was unable to do music at his school as, for some reason which he finds entirely mystifying,  was in the A stream for French. This made it compulsory for him to study a second language, German. However, he enjoyed his music lessons greatly and this was the last straw as far as he was concerned and decided to put even more time into his guitar playing, and used much of his French and German lessons to work at his maths homework, thus leaving a bit of extra time to play the guitar.

His music teacher, Mr Brenchley organised monthly trips to hear the Croydon Symphony Orchestra at the nearby newly completed Fairfield Halls, as well as visits to the Proms so although not interested in playing classical orchestral music he has remained fond of it all his life.

This concentration on his playing meant that Mike did little or no academic work other than Maths, Physics and English the only subjects (apart from chemistry) that he enjoyed and could do with little or no effort. Consequently these were the only O levels he attained and left school at 16. 

Jamming...

His parents were not particularly happy with him and in an effort to placate them he enrolled at Ewell Technical College to do an OND in Physical Sciences. However, as fate would have it, on this same course he met a fellow guitar enthusiast Ed Quick. Although they both enjoyed the subjects they had enrolled to study, Mike and Ed spent a large amount of time bunking off lessons to go and jam  together. 

Coming Soon...

Well done, you're still reading - I must be doing something right! However, there is a lot more to come but you'll have to wait for the next instalment as I wanted to get this new site online as soon as I could. If you know (or think you know) anyone mentioned in this article please let them know and get them to email me as I've lost touch with a lot of people from my past who it would be good to see again. Join my mailing list to be informed when I add the next section of my Bio.