Michael D. Walthius

    Michael Walthius, the Keyboard Wizard, has found a world-wide audience for the music he composes in the electronic studio of his Lakewood home. Walthius' website, The Music of Cyberspace, draws listeners for his original MIDI compositions from Latvia to Guam and just about everywhere in between.

    Walthius explains that he first got online back in the Dark Ages (1993) through CWRU's Cleveland Freenet, progressed from there to AOL, which, at the time, did not provide access to the Internet; and has now moved full-scale onto the World Wide Web. "As a kid, I'd been into shortwave radio, listening to radio stations from far away places and exchanging mail with penpals around the globe. The Internet was an awesome new "toy" as far as I was concerned, providing an opportunity to communicate with people from all over the planet. When I discovered that I could create and distribute music on the 'Net that could be heard from Singapore to Switzerland, this definitely intrigued me." Walthius began offering his music online in the Web's infancy, by posting MIDI file to a binary Usenet newsgroup and also making it available at a site in the Netherlands via FTP.

    "I started distributing my music this way (and also via AOL's software library) simply because I could. It was interesting to me that I could create a MIDI music file on my PC at home, and with a couple of mouse clicks I could send my tune off into cyberspace where potentially thousands of people could hear it. It was a way to find an audience with virtually no financial expenditure, and without having to rely on entities like radio stations and record companies to have one's music heard globally."

    A visit to the Music of Cyberspace site reveals that his mode of delivery has become ever more sophisticated.   Now featuring separate pages for each composition, the site originally began as a fan project by one of Walthius' online listeners. "In the fall of 1995, I received an email from a systems analyst in St. Louis, Victor Khong. Victor had been enjoying my music, and was in the process of learning how to create web pages. He'd made a relatively small web page that featured my compositions, and asked for permission to make it public. I consented, and the page grew in the following months, adding a few graphics, biographical information, etc. Victor and I became good friends, and have collaborated on the site for the last couple of years," remembered Walthius.

    "A couple of years ago, Victor started 'decorating' the original page with some artwork he found on the 'Net. Naturally, he acquired permission from the artists to display their work. Ultimately, when the site grew (and I composed a lot more music), the page became too long, and we decided to put each song on its own page."

    Since then, Walthius has spent hours looking through online art galleries to find more works to enhance the site. He always seeks the artist's permission to display the work, and publishes appropriate copyright and contact information. His professional courtesy is beginning to make the Music of Cyberspace site a desired venue on the Web. "Recently, some artists have approached me about having their works displayed at the 'Music of Cyberspace,' and some have even volunteered to create new original song-specific pieces for the site. I have gratefully accepted some of these offers. Certainly, a significant amount of credit for the beauty of the site goes to these various artists (from all over the world) who've allowed me to integrate their visual works with my sonic ones," Walthius relates.

       It's important to remember that this entire enterprise is a labor of love for the composer and for the designers of the page. Walthius, Khong, and Jim Gray, a graphic artist they met online, overhauled the site in the spring of 1997, which Walthius estimates took "a couple of weeks' worth of evenings and weekends." In addition to composing and searching for artwork, Walthius and Khong spend most of their time answering email about the music and the site in general. In November 1997, Walthius released a CD, "Dreaming in Stereo," and while encouraged by its sales (ordering information is available here), he's not quite ready to quit his day job yet. "The site generates no revenue at all, and. . .I've never been remotely interested in charging people who were downloading my MIDI files for personal listening, nor have I been interested in cluttering up the site with unsightly banner advertising or other junk like that," said Walthius.

    The site has brought Walthius' music to the ears of potential customers, however. He has composed music for computer games, electronic keyboard demo disks, multimedia entertainment and other projects, and continues to be available for such ventures. Like any artist, he expects to be compensated for the commercial use of his work, but it doesn't always happen that way.

     While the Music of Cyberspace site has plenty of fair-use warnings, and Walthius holds a copyright on each named composition, he does hear his music in all sorts of places he hasn't authorized. "I guess that's the nature of the world we live in. When confronted, most of the people simply say that they 'found the music somewhere on the Internet,' and didn't know how to contact the composer. This may be true, because unfortunately, there's no real way to see a copyright notice in a MIDI file unless one opens the file in a MIDI sequencing program such as Cakewalk. Windows' Media Player program, for example, just plays the file, but doesn't have the ability to display any text. Regardless, however, I believe that people simply shouldn't take or use things that don't belong to them and that they can't secure permission to use. I may find a beautiful graphic on the Internet that I'd love to display at my site, but if I can't identify the artist and acquire permission to use it I simply won't," he notes.

    Walthius, a 1975 graduate of Lakewood High School, has fond memories of his musical education there. "Fortunately, for me, the school actually had a small electronic music studio with an EML101 synthesizer and a four-track tape recorder, as I recall. I studied music theory and composition with Jerry Wondrak (now retired), and also was able to do an independent study in electronic music my senior year.

    "I also played the piano for the stage (jazz) band, choirs, and some of the Barnstormers' productions. B. Neil Davis, who conducted the Symphonic Choir and ran the music department was/is an inspiring educator. I learned a great deal about music (and the appreciation of music) from my experiences with him.

    "Lastly, I was fortunate to grow up in Lakewood while the Great Lakes Shakespeare Festival (now the Great Lakes Theater Festival) was performing at the Lakewood Civic Auditorium. I was able to work for the GLSF for a couple of summers during high school, playing the piano for a few of the productions. This was a tremendous opportunity for me as a teenager to be able to work with a professional theater company," Walthius recalled.

    If you're interested in hearing some of Mike Walthius' MIDI compositions, or learning more about the site, visit the Music of Cyberspace.

    Mike Walthius was also featured in a Sun Post article on April 17, 1997.

    Mike Walthius' CD, "Dreaming in Stereo" was reviewed in Wind and Wire Magazine.