This’ll probably surprise anyone who’s read this site, but I’ve got a few musical creations I like to show off now and again. Some I’ve done on a professional basis, others I’ve done just for my own amusement. Even more than writing, I feel a certain pride of creation in my music. Not just because “hey, I did that!” but because I honestly feel that music can convey more emotion, more directly, than words can ever hope to.

Much of the time, I’m a bit of a purist - I don’t use MIDI or sequencers, and prefer to play everything manually. My current range of instruments is four keyboards, one sampler, an electric guitar and a Yamaha digital drum set - but I try to use any pre-programmed elements of these instruments as little as possible, if at all. I’m not a master of any of these instruments by any stretch, but I’ve got a little personal credo that if I can’t play the song myself, it’s not ready to be played.

That being said, in recent years I’ve had to do some client-oriented work, creating music for sales videos for horses, audio theater, and TV work. In many of these cases, where I’ve needed to crank something out quickly, I’ve been using MTV Music Generator, a loop-based music program which turns out some very nice-sounding stuff but definitely has its limitations - if you want everything to turn out like club music, it’s great. I’ve found some ways to work around that, but I prefer a more “organic” way of recording. I’ve also moved around a lot in the past 4 years, making it hard for me to ever set up my proper instruments in a permanent space and record.

A note about sound quality: the clips you hear from MTV Music Generator were recorded analog straight to CD. Other clips were recorded analog to 4-track tape, and in some cases the tracks were “bounced” to make way for more tracks. The resulting 4-track analog masters were then mixed down straight to CD.

Enjoy the music, and get a chuckle out of the descriptions below. I’ll try to keep this section as up-to-date as possible.

The 3:00 AM Special (1992)
You want loud, annoying, boisterous music? This is it! It is what it says, something I cooked up one morning when I couldn’t sleep because Dizzy, Louis and Duke were playing a set in my head - thanks so much, guys! I tried to do you proud. This piece has a programmed background drum track, though most of it is covered up by louder percussion tracks which I played manually. This is one of the most intricate songs I’ve yet recorded, with three layers of drums, one organ, one pinging synth part, the “grungy” bass, the synth-accordion part, and the clarinet solos, not to mention the pre-programmed piano part. (Say that five times fast!)

Burchuss Search (1999)
A piece of music from Jump Cut City, this was also a good tryout for my then-new Yamaha digital drums. Having that to work with, rather than trying to finagle any kind of natural-sounding drums out of the keyboards’ drum pads, is incredibly liberating, and I think you can pick up on that growing sense of satisfaction as the whole thing becomes heavy with drum rolls and cadences.

Chief Chugs Along (2003)
More horse video music. This one was done for an Arabian colt named Phaedrus Zein, who was nicknamed “Chief” because he had no problem letting everyone know who’s boss. Chief died at the age of six months from a respiratory infection in early 2003.

Cut, Pasted, Wasted (2000)
This is a little bit of unabashed house music with some wacky stuff thrown in for good measure. This track is really about me learning how to use Music Generator.

Deep Sky (1991)
Be thankful; this song used to be eight minutes long, but it’s feeling much better now. I tried to make it sound a little less “synthesized” than usual, but as often happens with keyboard “string sections,” they wind up sounding like an organ. Also note that I used that weird howling-whistle sound a few years before Mark Snow used it in the X-Files theme.

Dreams In Velvet (2000)
One of my better Music Generator experiments, this one takes some of the vocal samples - which are very, very limited in their uses within that program’s context - and makes good use of them. This is one of my favorite pieces on this page.

Hannah Dreams Of Running (2001)
More horse music done with Music Generator, this one is a bit of a cousin to “Dreams In Velvet.”

Invasive Species: Attack Scene #1 (2002)
An actual commercial commission of sorts, this is one of the key cues from the original score I produced for the internet audio drama Invasive Species. This cue and several others were included as bonus tracks on the CD release.

Jump Cut City Scene Intro #1 (1999)
More Jump Cut City music, not only getting a little bit of a hip-hop thing going with the drums but trying to emulate the “blaster beam” instrument that dominated the first Star Trek movie.

Jump Cut City Scene Intro #2 (1999)
Another Jump Cut City piece, this time going for something a bit less cheery.

Perseids (1992)
This is meant to be an Alan Parsons-ish piece which sonically describes stuff falling out of the sky - in listening to it, you might just pick up on the musical metaphor. I’ve always wanted to go back and redo this one, just to beef it up a bit and make it more substantial. That wild oscillating howl of feedback at the end, though, was pure serendipity.

Phosphor Dot Fossils: Brown Box (2003)
Strictly hypothetically speaking, if a guy happened to be working on a TV documentary series of the history of video games, and if one episode of that documentary started out with a teaser about the very first home video game prototype hardware, it might just sound like this. Y’know, if that was in the works somewhere.

Phosphor Dot Fossils: Timeline Excerpt (2003)
Again, hypothetically speaking, if a guy were to be working on a documentary of the history of video games, and if that documentary featured a lengthy animated timeline of that history, this is an excerpt of what the music might sound like.

Pursuits (1992)
A real oddball piece in my repertoire for a number of reasons. First off, principal recording took place late one night in the production room at KLSZ radio. Second, there aren’t any real instruments per se, but rather me beating every metal surface in the room with a couple of big screwdrivers (the tool, not the drink). The victims/instruments consisted of every possible facet and surface of the microphone boom (the springs of which I dragged one of the screwdrivers along, actually creating a steady note sounding like the wonderfully nasty sound which characterized the first two Star Trek film scores) and the turntable, which provided the bell-like tone. It’s all percussion, recorded on the station’s open-reel four track recorder. I gave it the reverse-echo treatment at home. I’d love to do another piece like this someday, though possibly with a more tonal component.

Riyala’s Romp (2000)
One of my personal favorites, this one starts out bright and playful, and abruptly shifts into something dark and atmospheric about halfway through the song; the second half is a little bit Alan Parsons-inspired. It’s a little bit repetitive, but I find it relaxing. I probably should have changed key a little more just to vary things.

Running With Raquina (2000)
Another personal favorite, this is a quiet, hypnotic piece which makes use of some ethereal, choral-sounding samples. Occasionally, when the choral samples hit a peak, I’d hit the brakes on the song and bring it to a full stop to let it soak in. It’s driving and relaxing at the same time, and really hits the nail on the head with what I’m trying to do with the music for the horse videos.

That Flashy Mare (2001)
Another music bed for a horse video, this whole thing is one long unapologetically glam groove. At one point, it breaks down into the world’s longest drum solo, but there’s nothing better for hooves in action. This one was done for my own horse, Sultry.

Time Apart (1992)
This is the first song I recorded with the intention of featuring a guitar track or two, though I’ll admit that they’re the kind of guitar tracks that are played by a single finger on a single string. This song was recorded around Christmas of 1992, and was the last recording I laid down until February 1994 (!). If you’re wondering about the unfamiliar Oriental style percussion, that’s the nifty sound of me beatting the door of the clothesdryer at my old house with a metal soup ladel for a different percussion sound. I’ll do anything for a different percussion sound. I just hope the dryer’s warranty covers different percussion sounds…

What Do We Do On Sunday Morning? (1994)
Recorded between midnight and 2:30am on February 1, 1994, it sounds like it was probably recorded less than a week after “Time Apart,” though there’s a gap of just over a year between the two songs during which I recorded nothing.