As the writer/producer behind Marble Hill, Richard Anthony Jay has grown from a child fascinated with hi-fi music equipment to a grown-up that has mastered all of those knobs & buttons.

“My Dad has always liked hi-fi equipment so he always had the latest gadgets,” Richard says. “In the late 1970s, he had a reel-to-reel tape recorder which allowed you to record sounds on top of other sounds, which I had a lot of fun messing about with.”

Richard says his first attempts at recording came about by teaching himself how to work the recorder and graphic equalizers, and as Hip Hop and Rap music started to hit the mainstream, Richard says he “unsuccessfully tried to learn to scratch records on the turntable while my father was at work.”

The turntable was very expensive, and Richard says his father never did figure out why his high-end needles were wearing out so quickly. Ruining his father’s stereo equipment wasn’t the only foray into learning music young Richard would undertake. He started taking acoustic guitar lessons in grade school, and later began teaching himself piano.

Richard took steps to beginning his journey from music-obsessed child to working independent professional musician when he got a job as a trainee tape operator at a local recording studio. One evening while playing some of his own music, another studio engineer told Richard that Richard himself should be the artist, and not recording other artist’s music.

“Up until this point I had never seriously thought about concentrating on music itself rather than the technical job of recording other people’s music,” he says about one of the pivotal music moments in his life. “A year later, a recession hit, and the studio closed.”

For most people, Richard confides, losing a job is a terrible thing, but for him, it was “one of the best things that could have happened to me.”

Thanks to unemployment benefits, Richard devoted 100 percent of his time in London absorbing music, going to shows and sometimes staying up until 5 a.m. working on his songs. With a particular affinity for contemporary composers like Michael Nyman, Richard spent a year writing nothing but modern Classical music.

When the unemployment benefits ran out, Richard placed an ad in a local music paper offering his producing and arranging services. He spent the next five years producing demo recordings for a wide range of music artists. After working with two up-and-coming female artists – and then having their record deals tantalizingly close and having them both fall through – Richard grew weary of relying on the talents of others and started targeting his music for film, television and advertising licensing. For the first time in his life, the money was good, but happiness eluded him.

“Music had become a job. I only turned on my studio equipment if I knew I was likely to be paid for doing it,” Richard confesses. “I wrote all kinds of music in a short time – Jazz, Chinese, Celtic, Latin, R&B, Rock & Dance – but they were all just pastiches. I had turned into a hack with no voice of my own. Worse than that, I wasn’t even listening to music unless I had to for my job.”

Richard says it was the worst creative and inspirational spot in his 30 years. He knew a change was needed, and with the support of his wife, he walked away from writing commercial music and bought a building near their home and turned it into a studio “filled with the kind of studio toys I dreamed of having 10 years earlier.”

The new music Richard was discovering in that time also inspired him to get back to his roots. Artists like Dead Can Dance and other adult-oriented, often instrumental artists made him realize that if they could do it, then he could too.

“I spent 10 years working with singers because I thought I had no choice, but in fact I did. I’m not somebody’s engineer, somebody’s producer or somebody’s co-writer – I am the artist,” Richard says with a newfound confidence.

Richard says the melodic and melancholy mood of Marble Hill, “Cause emotions in the listener. Music can be like a drug and, like drugs, the reactions aren’t always easy to deal with, but emotions are a part of being alive.

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