The Importance of Music in My Life

Gary Dean Baldwin II was born on June 3, 1971, in La Jolla, California. From his earliest memories, music seemed to possess an almost mysterious power.
His mother played both guitar and piano, and Dean was fascinated by the idea that someone could place their hands on an instrument and create music. At four years old, he would pick up his mother’s old Gibson acoustic guitar, strumming the strings while randomly placing his fingers along the neck. To everyone else, it probably sounded like noise. To him, it was magic.
His mother became his first and perhaps most important musical influence. Some of Dean’s earliest memories are of standing beside her singing while she played songs by Barry Manilow and Glen Campbell, along with the folk songs she loved.
But there was something remarkable about those moments.
His mother was deaf.

Music had been an important part of his mother’s life long before Dean was born. She had attended a music conservatory, but while in college she began losing her hearing and eventually became completely deaf.
Rather than communicating primarily through sign language, she learned to read lips. As a young child, Dean understood that his mother had difficulty hearing, but for years he didn't fully comprehend that she could hear nothing at all. Perhaps part of the reason was that she never stopped making music.
She continued to play the guitar. She continued to play the piano. She even continued to “listen.”
Dean remembers her sitting beside large stereo speakers, feeling the vibrations produced by the music. She would explain that although she couldn't hear the songs anymore, she could still feel them—and feeling the music was better than having no music at all.
Long before Dean could have articulated it, she had taught him something that would remain with him for the rest of his life:
Music isn't simply something we hear. Music is something we feel.

As Dean entered his pre-teen years, his musical world began expanding beyond the songs he had discovered through his mother. He developed a particular fascination with The Byrds and the shimmering, jangling guitar sound that would remain part of his musical vocabulary.
By his teenage years, his tastes had expanded dramatically into blues, progressive rock and hard rock. Guitarists became his teachers.
Steve Hackett of Genesis, Rik Emmett of Triumph, Steve Howe of Yes, Randy Rhoads, Vivian Campbell of Dio and George Lynch of Dokken all left their mark. Their technical ability inspired Dean to push himself as a guitarist, learning increasingly complicated patterns and trying to play faster, harder and with greater precision.
For a time, becoming a better guitarist meant being able to play more notes.
Then he discovered Stevie Ray Vaughan and David Gilmour.