Joakin Mac Auliffe López

About Me

Hey! I’m Joakin Mac Auliffe, I was born on April 16, 2005 in the city of La Serena.

My interests span from music and photography to math and programming, even though I’m not that advanced in the last two ones but I think math is the way to understand how the world works, and also the language of the future, as the world is slowly evolving into a software ruled kind of thing.

Social Media

Here you can find all my art related projects and contact information:

@joakin_fma

Music and Me

Since I was a child I enjoyed a lot music, since my father collected Pink Floyd stuff and that made me grew up in an environment where music was always present. I have always liked Pink Floyd, and I still do, but there was a moment in my life where I thought I needed to expand my knowledge in music, so I started listening to the typical popular bands, like Metallica, Queen, Guns N' Roses and those bands whose name is known all around the world. I quickly got bored, even though those bands have great songs and I enjoyed them quite a lot, I wanted to explore something that wasn’t that popular, something that made me think “how come someone thought this would make sense?”, and then I found it, progressive rock/metal/jazz/whatever is it.

I didn’t know what progressive rock was, even though I listened a lot to Pink Floyd, but after I started to explore bands like Dream Theater, Porcupine Tree, Haken, Opeth, etc… I fell into a rabbit hole of music, and from there on, there was no escape from progressive music.

Even though progressive music is my favorite genre, I listen to a lot of different genres, I listen from Slipknot and Korn, to Michael Jackson, Bruno Mars and even unknown pop bands like Sunset Rollercoaster. But one of my biggest influences is definitely jazz, I listen a lot to Pat Metheny, Chick Corea, Allan Holdsworth, Christian Galvéz and many more.

Music, apart from being a lifestyle to me, it also has been my biggest hobby, I’ve been playing guitar since 8 or 9 years old, it all started when my brother Felipe was gifted an Ibanez acoustic guitar, because he was also in love with Pink Floyd music. He started learning and I, as a curious kid, started to try to get the guitar to make a somewhat musical sound. My dad noticed this and taught me the name of the chords, the different strings, the pentatonic scale, and that kind of stuff. I quickly began to learn guitar in parallel with my brother, we didn’t fight for who was better at it, we just both learnt songs that we both liked.

When I grew up, I was gifted my first electric guitar, which I still use actively, a black Squier Bullet Strat. I began improving fast, always thinking that music was my passion. Sadly, I quickly realized that musicians are not that appreciated in my country, and that made me think again what I wanted to do with my life.

After that I kind of gave up on music, but recently, in the last two years I’ve been playing the drums in small school bands that made me think again what music is for me, and I now have a plan to achieve my dream of becoming a musician, but I still have a long way to go.

Why are concerts so important for me? For example, to be a great author you have to read a lot of books, that way you’re familiar with the work of other people doing what you love. The same concept also applies for music enthusiasts, if you want to become great, or you simply want to have a blast, go to a concert, it’s the best feeling in the world.

As I mentioned before, I’m in love with music, and that also involves admiring musicians, as they’re the masterminds behind the music that people like me enjoy.

Porcupine Tree, Live at Movistar Arena, 7th October 2022