Introduction

(December 2024)

 

Hi, I'm John Riedel (Rē'del, he/him). Music has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember. I've been improvising on the piano since I was a kid and started piano lessons sometime around the age of seven. I took a liking to classical music at an early age and enjoyed music produced during the Baroque, Classical, and Romantic periods. I felt the deepest connection with music from the Baroque period.

Throughout middle school and high school, I played various instruments in the schools' music ensembles, including alto saxophone, keyboard, marimba, euphonium, tuba, and viola. After high school, I attended a small liberal arts school initially as a music major. However, by the end of my sophomore year, other ambitions led me to switch my field of study to computer science and sign-up for military service. Upon graduating college with a degree in computer science, I entered into the military and served for seven years. When I returned to civilian life, I began working as a software engineer.

Over the years, the musical instruments from my youth that I stuck with were the piano and viola. The piano was always my primary instrument, as I had a higher level of proficiency on it. I was less proficient on the viola, but I got a strong sense of enjoyment playing in various orchestral and smaller ensembles.

Fast-forward to today, I don't play the piano nearly as much as I used to and I haven't played the viola in several years. As I get older, though, I'm gaining a renewed interest in devoting more time to music. Music has brought me so much joy over the decades. During the COVID-19 pandemic, I decided to create a YouTube channel (@ThinkBaroque) to share some original music and improvisational tips with the wider public. I've also been making a concerted effort to compose more, which is something I did very little of in my past. All of my music, whether improvised or composed, regardless of style, has its foundation in my understanding of the Baroque style of music.

Originally from the Northeastern United States, I'm a former independent software engineer. I retired in 2025 and am currently traveling around the world.