Author: Zsolt Némethy

People keep asking me, how is it that a neuroscientist with a satisfying 9-5 job unexpectedly decides to become an independent/self promoted guitar player and composer at a certain point of his life. Well, there are no short answers to this question, but I cannot deny that it may look strange from the viewpoint of someone who doesn’t know me in person since my childhood.

The main point is that it wasn’t unexpected at all. As a music enthusiast, I’ve been playing the guitar since my childhood and I even participated in ad hoc formations earlier – but to be honest, these efforts never succeeded, due to the lack of motivation, dedication and time. I always had various other duties and playing the guitar in a regular metal band was never a real option for me. Not that I’m antisocial or something like that (I’m an introvert, but I do love the company of like-minded people…) – it’s just I never had the chance (or courage…?) to come forth with my own compositions, and ended up losing my interest in the process of realization of someone else’s musical ideas. Anyway, it was hard for me to believe in my own musical imagination so much as to push my ideas through those brick walls that probably I myself had built around me. Also – stepping out from the personal side towards the technical aspects – playing in a band on a regular basis would have put such a burden on me that I simply wasn’t prepared for. Working on my own professional career rendered my “hobbies” like music or rock climbing as second priority.

It was actually intentional that I put the word “hobbies” between apostrophes. All my life I’ve been primarily and above all a music maniac: I listen to music six-eight hours a day and play the guitar also on a regular basis, following a quite strict schedule. Whatever I became later was (and is) of course also an integral part of my personality: my job is great, satisfying and full of intellectual challenges – still, music has always been there in my life behind everything I did and became the backbone of my identity. It’s definitely not “just a hobby” for me. For those who know me it’s not a surprise that I’m a dedicated metalhead, but besides being a music fan I’m also someone who’s always been full of musical ideas. On one hand, I’ve always wanted to bring them forth, work them out and show them to others, but at the same time I’ve – of course – always been full of doubts, insecurities and fears, too. It’s amazing and terrifying at the same time that the world is full of excellent artists who compose excellent music and play the guitar in a virtuoso way – and in this context it needs some explanation, why I finally came to the decision to start composing and recording music.

The question is always somewhere around one’s identity. Oscar Wilde once wrote: “Be yourself; everyone else is already taken” – and I think, this is the basis that I built this little musical experiment on. I slowly realized that I don’t need to compose songs that are more complex than everyone else’s – I am simply unable to do so, and I don’t even want it either. Also I don’t have to play faster than the iconic guitar heros in the vast rock/metal scene – it’s also impossible and I also don’t intend to. I just want to be myself, and I want my music to reflect the person who I am. During the lockdown I had plenty of time to think about these questions, and I came to the conclusion that there will always remain a place for genuine music and genuine musicians in the music market. I simply don’t want to put my decade-long need for self-expression aside: in a world full of insecurities the best thing that one can do is to avoid any further delays.

To cut a long story short, this is the reason, why I started to realize this project.