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Music? I don't know if I can claim that, but it's mine.
My music is something that I do as a hobby. It is another one of those things I insist on keeping fun and never using as a method for income. There are two reasons for this: 1) I don't want it to become work, and 2) I'm quite sure I could not make any money with it even if I wanted to!
I've never been part of a band, even though I would have enjoyed that tremendously! All the songs I've written and recorded are only me. Whatever you hear is generated by my voice, fingers, or instruments. I tell you this not to brag, but as an apology and to explain the many shortcomings of my music!
With all this said, here are a few of my songs (and videos). New things I add I'm putting at the top of the list:
16th Note Jam : There was a very brief moment in my life where I actually had a band. We were a "garage band" and litterally played in one of the members of the band's garage. These days were something I remember with so much fondness. I have almost always played alone, just by myself making things up with no one else a part of my music. But for this short time there was three of us and we had so much fun! This is something we did back in December of 1992. I call it "16th Note Jam" because at the beginning of the song Mike says, "Let's do that 16th note thing". We had no songs planned out. We always just started playing and enjoyed the results. Of the three of us, Mike, Scott, and myself, I was by far the less accomplished of the group. But I had fun, and I will be forever thankful that I had a few months in my life where I actually was able to experiment on the guitar with good friends.
Gold Will Shine Again: This song was a contest between me and my sisters sons. The goal was to write a song using only four keys (notes) of the piano (or guitar, or voice). I named this FGAB because it was only using F, G, A, and B. I then put lyrics to it and named it "The Gold Will Shine Again". Later my musician friend recorded the backup for me and left me to add the voice. As always, I didn't completely finish my part of the song. It still is lacking being the final mix. But, here it is so family and friends can see the effort.
VIDEO Ghost in the Guitar: This is actually quite cool! This is a video, and it's pretty short, so check it out! Here's the story behind this. I was playing with my guitar once, making a song, and recording myself as I did it so I could remember what I came up with. I got tired and felt that the writing of the song was getting tedious, so I took a "noise" break where I just make interesting sounds with the guitar. This recording was digital with no voice-box or anything like that modifying the sounds, and the only thing feeding into the tape is the one guitar I was playing at the time. When I listened back to the session afterwards, I noticed something that sounded like words. This should have been impossible since I had no microphone set up, and there was no way for a voice to get into the guitar recording. I listened to it a few times and decided that the words were this nonsense: "Sell the house, Sell the cars, Sell everything! SELL EVERYTHING!" Yep. That's what the voice that came from my guitar was saying in a whisper. Some would attribute it to ghosts or something, but I just figure it's just some odd physics. However, I tried for quite a while afterwards to reproduce something that sounded like a harsh whispering voice or words at all, and never was able to even with everything set up identically. A ghost? A helpful spirit? An evil spirit? Who knows! Check it out to make your own decision! Either click on "Ghost in the Guitar" to see it, or right-click on it and select "Download" then view it from your computer. Send me an email to let me know what you think!
Fighting Guitars: This song is a quickie that I wrote while playing around. It's basically just me on two guitars trading off licks. It's short, and worth listening to. You can also see a video that Paranoia Productions created for this song at the following link: Music Video. Check out the rest of the things at Paranoia Productions! (It appears that Paranoia Productions no longer exists. You can view the video file from my site by clicking HERE).
Dance With Me: This song was a musical effort using looping technology. I just picked out little pieces of music and looped them and stuck them together in such a way as to make this song. I call it "Dance With Me" because I felt that it sort of invokes the desire to dance or move. I made a music video from the New Years celebration I went to (Together as One) in 2006. Click HERE to download the video (WARNING: It's 43 megabytes, and not all that interesting).
Remembering: This song was created entirely on my Korg X3 keyboard. I stayed up one night creating it with my headphones on as the night ticked by. I was really getting into it, thinking it was something special, and before I knew it I looked outside and realized the sun was about to come up. I took my headphones off, listened to it, and thought, "Cool!" Then I went to bed. The next morning when I checked it out I decided that it was a bit tedious and not nearly as good as I had thought the previous evening! I shortened it a little, and quit working on it. So, here is the result.
Eternity: I have quite a few songs that were never finished. This is one of them. One of my weakest musical talents is the drums and the bass. This song has neither included since I was putting that off until the end before adding. Since I never finished the song, the bass and drums were never added. I'm adding this because my dear, sweet mother asked me to include a song that has me singing on it. So here I am singing, harmonizing with myself, and playing several layers of guitar.
Everything: This is another song created exclusively on my Korg X3 keyboard. The story behind the title is that I was listening to a song by Cracker called "I Want Everything" and admiring the chord progression in the song. I started playing with the chords on my keyboard and came up with this song. I called it "Everything" to remind me how I came up with it.
Midnight Sky: This song had some tentative lyrics to it that I have since lost. It is about loneliness and dreams and waking up from a dream of being with someone you love and finding your arms are wrapped around the "midnight sky" instead of your imaginary lover. I wrote this song on the guitar, but never recorded it with the guitar. This is recorded on my Korg X3 keyboard, but I tried to make it sound like a grungy guitar hammering out the chords. There is only enough recorded here to help me remember the song to later record it with guitars, etc.
Within or Without: This is a psychotic song about a guy who loves someone so much that even though she's not really a part of his life, that she is because he keeps her safe "within" his heart as a never-ending undying part of himself. It starts out with an excerpt from "Braveheart", then leads into the song, starting with a dull recording of how I wrote the song, strumming on my electric guitar without it being plugged in, then switching to the powered version. Like MOST of my songs, I never got around to recording the drums or the bass and it's only partially completed.
Contemplation: Recorded using my Korg X3 exclusively, this is Contemplation. It is finished, which is nice. No singing, no lyrics, just music that sounds like it should be the soundtrack to a movie or something. I like this song, even though it's as simple as it is. I named it because it sounds like the backtrack to someone considering some serious decision that needs to be made. It also reminds me of "Bolero", though I have no real foundation for that. And it's a shame to compare something so lame (my song) to such a masterpiece as "Bolero", but I'm just telling you that in my mind, perhaps how I imagined my song to be, it reminds me of such.
Aye Cara! Okay... This is just silly. My best friend is Cara, and I wrote this song about her. The lyrics are just silly at best. "Aye Cara! Aye Cara! I care a lot!", "We've got to have at least two of the hot mustard sauce!" What can I say? Here's a surprise for you! This song never was finished, and the bass or drums were never added to it. Oh well, here it is regardless.
Been There Before: This song was finished, recorded on guitar and included lyrics. However, I lost the recording I did of it with the guitar (actually including drums and bass!) and only have this version which is an instrumental version of it. It's also not a full length version of it. The lyrics were about a love gone bad, where the girl wants to get back together again. The chorus goes "I've been there before, and I ain't ever going back again, to a love... a love gone bad." It's drawn out a bit more than that, but that's the gist. This is an interesting piece to show my piano playing.
You're Mine: Okay... this is a mock song that I wrote that has hardly any words to it and is very short. It's trying to be as trashy as possible, and sticks to that with the few lyrics as well as the quality of the recording. It's short, but loud and obnoxious with such an overdriven voice track that it's hard to follow at times. Basically, this guy just says that even though his girlfriend is leaving him that there's no way that could be because she'll be with him until the day he dies (obviously because he's such a stud and all). It starts out with a snippet from "Pretty Baby" with Brooke Shields. At one point I say in the lyrics "You're my little baby, you're mine" and I planned to change it to "You're my pretty baby, you're mine" just to go along with the introduction. But I never did. Be warned, this is a trashy song! ...though it ends with a simple, clean, guitar riff without any distortion as a juxtaposition to the rest of the song.
VIDEO You're Mine: Here's a little video I made to go with this song. It was just an effort to learn text graphic manipulation in Premier. Either click on "You're mine" to see the video, or right-click it and select download and then view it from your own computer.
Searching For Myself: I made this song into a music video. That was my very first music video effort. It was kind of cool THEN, but looking back on it shows how incredibly stupid it was! I was experimenting with special effects and the like, using Adobe Premier, and trying everything I could think of. Anyway, this is short, incomplete, and likely never to be completed. It's about a guy who realizes that his biggest search is just to find himself, who he lost a long time ago. I'll search my old files and see if I can find the Music Video version of this (which is also incomplete). If I find it, I'll post it later on. -- Okay, here's the video. It's SILLY (And REALLY bad)! VIDEO of Searching For Myself
Rapture: This is the first thing I did with my Korg X3. I sat down and started playing with all the cool and unusual sounds I could make with it. Then I said, "Hey Self, why not make a song from all these cool sounds?" Self was kind of surprised at that idea and thought it would be kind of stupid, but Self and I worked together and came up with this. Self has always felt that this is a lame excuse for a song, but Self thinks it's unusual and sounds like the Rapture of a man taken from this world into what follows. You hear the heart beat as it goes from the fear and excitement of dying, to seeing the "white light" to finally being taken inside to something totally new.
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