I Am Byron: The Musician

I Am Byron

I Am Byrron is a poetic series inspired by the unique personalities who live and breathe Byron Shire values, either residing here or holding it strong in their hearts. Get to know the quirky, down-to-earth and inspiring humans ditching the nine-to-five and exploring a new way of being. Our in-house storytellers share tales straight from the lives of quintessential Byronites, be they long-time locals, new residents or those simply passing through.

I Am Byron: Nico
Story by Rebekah Reeve

Ever since I was about 17, I started hearing music in my head.

I was always in my bedroom playing guitar, cranking out riffs after listening to stuff like Black Sabbath and Soundgarden, Nirvana and Jimi Hendrix. 

It was just something that I did. I learned by ear as opposed to looking at guitar tabs. I would sit there for hours and work it out, listening to the music and then slowing it down. 

Sometimes it works like that, you can slow it down and just figure it out chord by chord.  

Whether that did something to my mind or not - I don't know. But after a while I started to make up my own riffs.

I remember being in my bedroom one time cranking out this riff and I thought ‘yeah, there’s a song there’ and then a couple of weeks later I turned on the radio and Silverchair was playing my riff! It was a Pure Massacre riff. 

I thought – ‘You just stole my riff!’

That happened twice with Silverchair songs. After that, I kind of dismissed them, I thought ‘well, they’re not my ideas, I don’t know where they’re coming from’.

Then years later I was playing in grunge bands in Brisbane and I got a free ticket to one of their shows and the next thing I was backstage with Daniel Johns from Silverchair. 

I really wanted to talk to him, I went up to him and I asked: ‘How did you get those riffs?’ 

And he had had the same experience as me. He said, “Oh, I was just sitting in my room listening to this stuff and it was like, the ideas were just in the air and I grabbed them and I could hear them and then I just started playing them.” 

I think that I became aware at a young age that ‘there was something else going on.’ I started spiritual practice and because I was interested in song writing, I wondered whether I could tap into that collective consciousness and communicate with it around what I should be writing.

Whether I'm delusional about that or whether my mind just isn’t neurotypical, I don't really know.

And I can see music too, it's quite often a colour. When I go to mix a song, I close my eyes and I try to match the colour to the title or lyrics. 

Most people can match a colour to a piece of music. If you put a blindfold on a heap of people in a theatre and play pieces of music to them and ask them what colour it is, you’d probably find that 60 - 70% would pick the same one. 

Some music feels steely blue, some music feels as dark as anything. Some is blaring red and some – you know, songs like Walking on Sunshine are definitely yellow.

I think there are different types of musicians. 

There’s different ways of interpreting the music but I personally think that people who are creative that really hear things – it’s like pulling things out of the sky almost, out of the ether, out of the collective conscious or whatever - I’m not sure what it is but it’s real and it’s there. 

You just have to slow down enough to be able to access it.