I think this funky / rockin track would go well with a movie or video game about bank robbery, or a casino heist (a la Ocean’s  11/12/13). I think it could also work with a sports game. I can visualize it to  the intro cut sequence of the players walking onto the field, and then clashing together in the game as the music starts rocking.

I organized it into the following sections: Intro: Men in Suits Walking in Step / Big Time Player Theme / Neon Breakdown / Big Time Player Theme End.

With the exception of one drum loop in the background, all of these tracks were played by me, mostly using MIDI devices, but the guitars and bass are “real”. The drums aren’t programmed, I played them on my Roland MIDI kit. I mastered and re-mastered this track quite a lot, trying to make it “hot”, and the end result turned out pretty well I think. 

This was an exercise in re-sequencing a song I really like. Do you recognize the song? Hint: the actual song title is a synonym for “Woe”. This version is truncated, since the point wasn’t to fully recreate the original, just to learn from the arrangement and experiment with my own tones and textures. This is all me on the MIDI kit and using some nice synth pads. I also got a good guitar tone out of the Amplitude plug-in, I think.

In the new Garageband, you can create ringtones for the iPhone. Of course, I don’t have an iPhone since I live in Japan…but my friends do! Yimay asked me to whip something together for her. This is the first draft of the Original Yangsta Theme.  

When I listen to this song, I envision some kind of scene in an glistening modern airport: a man running through the crowd. Desperately trying to reach the gate before the woman departs. Like something from the end of a John Hughes movie.

This is a track I arranged and recorded with some close friends over 10 years ago. It is a re-interpretation of the timeless Super Mario Brothers Theme. I always wanted to put an animated sequence to this music: Imagine poor Luigi, living forever in the shadow of his more charismatic, successful brother Mario. Of course, I’d be sued in a heartbeat.  All these instruments are real humans! No computers or programming.  Me: guitar, pedal effects, and arrangement. The talented Jordan Siegel: Drums. The funky Micah Roark: Bass. Recorded in 1996 at Asleep at the Wheel Studios (Bismeaux) in Austin, Texas. 

This is a background music loop for a multimedia presentation I made a couple years ago. Motorola hired me to create a Flash movie about a new technology they were showcasing.  At this time I was using Cubase, I think. Just me and a keyboard.

Here is a short experiment trying out some of the toys in Reason 3.0. Its a short piece, I am thinking about titling it, “The End of Time”, but I am not sure yet.

I never thought I would say this, but I am starting to think a full size keyboard would be a good investment. My small keyboard is very nice, but it feels very cramped recently. Maybe my hands are growing out of control…

So here is a more traditional version of the song (see this post for the other version).So I abandoned the West-Side-Roll feel (apparently being from Austin isn’t good enough, you have to be from San Antonio to make it work) and modeled the song into a more train / blues feeling. The idea still works well. I tossed a solo in there as a placeholder for the vocal track.

I had this idea for a song that was heavily inspired by a Sir Douglas Quintet tune, but the more I tried to go for that feeling, the trickier it got. Instead of a 1-4-5, I wrote a 1-4-1-6m-6# (?) sort of thing. 

It’s sort of feisty, which I like. But the keyboard part is too ‘Baba o’Reilly-meets-the-circus’.  Maybe I’ll take it out.

You can hear another version of this song posted here. 

This is a dramatic little idea that came together while I was playing with some ambient sound effect loops from the Apple library. You can hear some vinyl scratches and some gated drum parts, along with a guitar part and a keyboard part that I added into the mix. I sort of like the key change at the beginning…

The Chills

This was the first sketch of a tune that the Naturals are doing now, and I prefer the live version to this initial draft. But the basic idea is the same. I like to roughly sketch out the sections of music, and play with the transitions at home, then take it to a live situation and see where it goes.

I’ll post a live YouTube version of this song sometime to show the difference…

Since my wife and I are living overseas, away from our immediate family, we uploaded a video of our daughter to YouTube so relatives could see her. I was compelled to create some silly baby-esque music to accompany the video clips. For some reason I got it into my head that it needed to be a video-gamey kind of thing…

One interesting thing about being a parent is that you’re always singing - bedtime lullabyes, TV show sing-a-longs, playing pat-y-cake, etc. I enjoy it more than I would like to admit. Now if I could only keep myself from bursting into Old-Mac-Donald-Had-A-Farm when I am waiting by myself on the train platform.

One of my favorite things to do on a rainy, grey day is to visit a park, especially the tradtionally landscaped ones here in Japan. The mossy rocks and trees take on a deeply green color, and the stones are stained dark grey. Everything glistens in the overcast sunlight.

It was on a day like this a few months ago that I began the idea for this song. Normally people associate sad (minor scale) music with rainy days, but I wanted to capture some of the moody yet inspiring aspects of a stormy day.

Here is a snip of a tune I am working on for Nathan & the Naturals. I’ve been on the fence about what direction to take this song in. Right now it seems like it’s on the verge of being an upbeat Bill Withers tune (Good!) or one of Michael McDonald’s later works (maybe not so good).

(Guilty admission: I love Keep Forgettin’.

All instruments by me (guitar, midi instruments, samples. Software: Logic).

This is a track from the first demo EP I was ever involved with. My friends (Jordan, drums/background vocals; Micah, bass) and I recorded three songs at Bismeaux studios in Austin, TX. Our band name was “Any Volunteers”, which I still think is a pretty damn good name. I think this was in either 1996 or 1997, but I am not sure.This song is called “Cast Out” and the lyrics are inspired by a dream I had.  Something about a Death Clock, and a conversation with an old man (who was maybe me?)…I can’t really remember.