About Marcel Mignot

I learned to play the piano at a very young age. My father would tell me fairy tales and stories; I then had to come up with and play music on the piano myself. That usually started with "in a large dark forest there was a large castle... and a little princess lived in the tower..." and so on, and many other stories. I often think that when I sit at the piano and simply play something in front of me, those same images still play a major role in the melodies that I think of and play. That's partly why I still enjoy it best when I can make music in response to an event, a certain emotion or even a person.

From the age of 14 I also played in all kinds of bands, where (it was the 1960s) we saw the Dutch Swing College as our greatest heroes. Later we also played other styles; but when I play Jazz now it always has an “old style” connotation! Gradually I also started to find it interesting to make the music myself with which I could also give my own expression in the music. This first happened with tape recorders and a bunch of tools, until I finally had a good studio with which you can create the entire orchestral image with virtual instruments. However, for me the piano always remains the leading figure, often accompanied by a guitar, bass and the rest of the orchestra. Depending on my mood, this can lead to jazz music, romantic piano music or even “classical-like” motifs that actually stem from my early classical piano lessons.

I could continue in this way, but at a certain point my good friend Tom Bakker said “what you make is all very nice, but you should make something that you play with a real orchestra”. That led to my first real CD “Ma Vie, mon Amour” which was released in 1999, and in which all pieces were composed by myself. This very romantic CD was presented with a performance in the church in Kortenhoef with a large group of orchestra members from the Metropool Orchestra. Of course that was very exciting, but it was a fantastic experience. The orchestra leader, the well-known bassist Harry Emmery, said to me during the training sessions when we also played jazz for fun, “shouldn't we also make a fast swinging jazzy CD? “. Naturally I was delighted with this invitation and a year later we made a 2nd CD “Irresistible Love” with piano, combo and strings from the Metropool orchestra and the arrangements were made by Gé Vrijens.

Time passed and the “virtual instruments” became better and better; reason why I put several collections of various styles of my music on the internet a few years ago. At the moment I have a number of new melodies and pieces ready that can be listened to via Spotify, among other things.

How do Virtual Instruments work?

“Once upon a time” there was a piano around which 10 microphones were placed. One person played one note, from very soft to very loud. Then a second tone… and then all the tones; with or without a pedal. All those tones were recorded separately and then digitized. Then all those notes were put into a digital program so that when you press a certain note on a keyboard… you hear the original piano note!
And this softly or loudly or with and without a pedal... exactly as it was originally played when recording the notes on the piano. In short, when you play the keyboard, you hear the original piano...! How beautiful can it be! This can also be done with a violin, guitar, wind instrument, etc. All instruments!

This is the principle of Virtual Instruments. The nice thing is that more and better Virtual Instruments are coming onto the market. These are also increasingly expensive; but always much more beautiful. And I can make my music with that.