In an unpretentious home unit in a quiet Milford Street, Steve McDonald sits surrounded by an array of musical technology he couldn’t imagine existing when he joined his first band in 1962.
The Roland keyboards, 16 track recorder, DAT mixer and sound desk hem the composer in until he looks like just another piece of the furniture.
He flicks a switch and out it comes, pumping, rolling like the sea. It’s a piece of theme music — McDonald’s bread and butter.
He’s a long way from the 1960s and Miramar Peninsula youth clubs and coffee lounges where the Stiangers and Dizzy Limits played Beatles, Rolling Stones and Shadows covers. Even further from the Karori cemetery where Timberjack shot the sleeve for their 1971 hit “Come To The Sabbat” or the video in which, dressed as monks, they chased a naked girl through the woods.
McDonald played drums in those bands, then switched to keyboards in the early 1970s with Taylor, Distillery and a late version of the Human Instinct. Now he’s paying the bills composing theme music for Television New Zealand.
Past credits include TV2 logo music, incidental music for documentaries on Jean Batten and Sir Bernard Freyberg, the 1992 America’s Cup campaign and World Cricket Cup of 1991, and a Murray Hancox interpretation of “God Defend New Zealand” during the 1991 Rugby World Cup.
More McDonald music will be bouncing the waves behind the Whitbread Challenge coverage this year.
McDonald says it’s “challenging work... Ideally I’d like to sit in my room recording for my own release. But you have to pay the bills.”
Still, his own work remains important as he continues on the tenacious path on which he started at age four when he decided music would be his life.
In 1981 he released his first solo album The Riddle And The Rhyme, only to be met with mass indifference by New Zealand radio stations.
Four years later he won the Song of ‘85 with “No More Tomorrows”, and in 1986 the South Pacific Songwriting contest where Bunny Walters sang a McDonald composition “Taken By Love”.
Another success of sorts came in 1989 with the release of an instrumental album of ambient music released on the Californian New Age label Hearts of Stone. It sold 17,000 copies in the United States.
He has just completed the album Sons Of Somerled, a Gaelic excursion through the history of the Clan Donald which he is releasing himself. A Scottish record company has already expressed interest in releasing it in Scotland.
McDonald is philosophical about his 32-year personal odyssey through the New Zealand music industry: “All those years in your life are more a journey than a destination. If you get there and maintain your identity, good on you — it’s certainly a bonus.”
The Roland keyboards, 16 track recorder, DAT mixer and sound desk hem the composer in until he looks like just another piece of the furniture.
He flicks a switch and out it comes, pumping, rolling like the sea. It’s a piece of theme music — McDonald’s bread and butter.
He’s a long way from the 1960s and Miramar Peninsula youth clubs and coffee lounges where the Stiangers and Dizzy Limits played Beatles, Rolling Stones and Shadows covers. Even further from the Karori cemetery where Timberjack shot the sleeve for their 1971 hit “Come To The Sabbat” or the video in which, dressed as monks, they chased a naked girl through the woods.
McDonald played drums in those bands, then switched to keyboards in the early 1970s with Taylor, Distillery and a late version of the Human Instinct. Now he’s paying the bills composing theme music for Television New Zealand.
Past credits include TV2 logo music, incidental music for documentaries on Jean Batten and Sir Bernard Freyberg, the 1992 America’s Cup campaign and World Cricket Cup of 1991, and a Murray Hancox interpretation of “God Defend New Zealand” during the 1991 Rugby World Cup.
More McDonald music will be bouncing the waves behind the Whitbread Challenge coverage this year.
McDonald says it’s “challenging work... Ideally I’d like to sit in my room recording for my own release. But you have to pay the bills.”
Still, his own work remains important as he continues on the tenacious path on which he started at age four when he decided music would be his life.
In 1981 he released his first solo album The Riddle And The Rhyme, only to be met with mass indifference by New Zealand radio stations.
Four years later he won the Song of ‘85 with “No More Tomorrows”, and in 1986 the South Pacific Songwriting contest where Bunny Walters sang a McDonald composition “Taken By Love”.
Another success of sorts came in 1989 with the release of an instrumental album of ambient music released on the Californian New Age label Hearts of Stone. It sold 17,000 copies in the United States.
He has just completed the album Sons Of Somerled, a Gaelic excursion through the history of the Clan Donald which he is releasing himself. A Scottish record company has already expressed interest in releasing it in Scotland.
McDonald is philosophical about his 32-year personal odyssey through the New Zealand music industry: “All those years in your life are more a journey than a destination. If you get there and maintain your identity, good on you — it’s certainly a bonus.”
Highland Farewell ~ Steve McDonald
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