I was born in 1954, in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada — a small city noted for it’s steel production. My father was a police officer who worked hard to save money for my university tuition, and realized that I had a natural affinity to teach myself how to do things – one of them was that I taught myself how to play a wide variety of musical instruments. Upon graduating high school, I took a leave from public education for 3 years, and traveled Canada extensively as a professional musician playing in night clubs. For me it was a wonderful way to get out and see the beauty of nature, explore remote quaint and cozy mining towns, and meet the friendly first nations people of Canada that would later shape my life.
In 1974 at the age of 20, instead of going to university, I decided to plant my roots in Toronto, the media capital of Canada. With the help of my father, we invested the university tuition towards the construction of a professional modern 8-track music recording studio, with the intent on offering my creative music production services to others.
Music Production
It was here that I produced one record in 1978 titled “Robert Connolly Plateau” in which I play keyboards (Minimoog, Hammond B3, Mellowtron), bass, and guitar. It was released independently as a progressive conceptual “Chariots of the Gods” album that comes complete with a comic book. Since it’s release almost 40 years ago, it has become a collectors item for those that follow early progressive prog-rock themed music. Instead of using the recording studio to develop my career as a performing music recording artist, I decided to focus my attention in helping other musicians as their engineer, co-writer, music producer or artist manager.
With the introduction of the Apple Macintosh computer, my self-taught attitude allowed me to embrace computer MIDI music. With the use of digital audio samples and MIDI keyboards, I began creating entire music albums and movie soundtracks on my Mac.
Broadcast Television
As the Mac’s computer processing speed increased, I transitioned to using the Mac as a digital video workstation for broadcast television production. With the introduction of MTV, I began producing short TV commercials, music videos, and long-format music concert specials. As the cost of making movies became less expensive by the introduction of new technology,
I became an expert in post-production for low budget music movies. It was at this time I met my companion and partner who was a travel television show host. With the music industry in flux, it was the ideal time to use my experience with music to create meaningful, cutting edge, thought provoking social documentaries that hopefully could change the world for the better.
"Bob Connolly has pushed Adobe’s technologies to the limit. His rich-media PDF examples speaks for his talent and his willingness to share his knowledge makes him stand out in this competitive market."
Noha Edell,
Senior Business Development Manager,
Adobe Systems