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BIOGRAPHY

Hi! My name is John Macdonald and I was born over 60 years ago in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. Currently I live in Perth, Western Australia where I have lived for the best part of 30 years with my wife and family.

My musical career showed an early start and my father tried to teach me the piano at six years of age. I composed my first nocturne at 12 and my father bought me a piano and along with it some instruction from a local music teacher.

By the time I was 20 I was composing many pieces mainly for piano and also for voice. Voice training was another aspect of my studies. I spent some time studying with several different teachers privately and at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music.

About this time I realised that music 40 to 50 years ago was not a happy medium for most musicians to earn a living so having worked in an office for a while while studying I decided to take up primary teaching. At that time you only had to complete a 2 year certificate course at a recognised teachers’ college to become a certified primary teacher.

After having completed my course I taught in a number of primary schools in the state system before transferring to private schools where I rose to the position of a school principal. Later I tutored and ran quite a large tutoring college for a living while my wife and I raised a large family ( 6 boys and 2 girls ) and I composed many pieces of music on the side. During my course of teaching I enjoyed grooming choirs for parent days and other special events.

Finally our family had grown up and I retired from full time teaching and am now able to concentrate on my great love of composing. I am principally a composer rather than a performer.

Above all I delight in writing melodies. Of course I consider harmony and rhythm important but not too many loud crashing cymbals and drum rolls.

The music I write is essentially for piano and voice and the electronic keyboard as well as a variety of electronic interpretations of numerous musical instruments. Over the years I have composed several thousand pieces some of which I used in the classroom.

My music is created for relaxation and for involvement particularly to sing or hum a delightful melody. I am not constrained by too many specific genres but generally it could be called classical, contemporary, easy listening, lounge, Celtic, meditation, inspirational or worship music.

Clips of some of my works are available by going to my website at beautiful-cd-music.com I have a number of CD’s for purchase from the website.

My aim in composing is to try to reach as large an audience as possible. Most pieces are generally short about 3 or 4 minutes but some are longer, up to fourteen minutes.

I love listening to a variety of music from Chopin nocturnes and Beethoven symphonies to folk tunes and large panoramic orchestral pieces, particularly those of the epic film variety.

I hope you sincerely enjoy this new music that has been composed over recent years.

Please contact me if you so desire.