Music

I have always loved music, all kinds. Music to me is the emotional made visceral and the spiritual made touchable. People who study trends in Christian worship say that the music is about 90% of what makes a worship service meaningful. I am not an accomplished musician (though I am making progress in a number of areas). However, the advent of technology, particularly MIDI (That's Musical Instrument Digital Interface for the uninformed) has made what most musicians fear possible. The mediocre can now make music too. There are several things that I do with music and the computer. I compose, arrange, record and mix my own performances as well as record and mix the performances of others. I plan to make a little bit of everything available on this page. I make no claims to being a musician, but rather claim to be more of a techno-geek. Milli Vanilli proved long ago that you don't have to be a musician to have your name on a recording.

Copyrights. I can't ignore, with any integrity, the issue of copyrights. Most of the material presented here is copyrighted material performed by myself or someone else. I acknowledge and respect those copyrights. However, I do not wish to illegally share music or make money off someone else's work. I simply want to share with others what I have been able to do musically with my computer. If this page was about illegally sharing copyrighted music, I think I would choose more competent and notable performances than my own to share. I acknowledge that these songs are copyrighted and that putting my own recordings of my own performances of these songs for download on this web page constitutes a violation of these copyrights. I can't afford to pay the Harry Fox Agency the proper licensing fees right now so I hope people will understand. I just want to demonstrate what I have been able to do. If you represent the copyright holder of any of the music I have presented on this web page and wish me to remove it, I will, gladly. I do intend to be faithful in giving credit where credit is due for all of these songs. I do not wish to violate anybody's rights, nor tarnish my own integrity.

Equipment. I am currently using a Creative Soundblaster Live MP3 with the EMU music box package with EMU sample collection and onboard EMU DSP chip. The audio I/Os of the Soundblaster are connected to a Behringer Ultrapatch Pro patchbay. I own two microphones, but occasionally borrow others. One is a Shure SM57 dynamic mic and the other is a CAD M37 large diaphragm condenser mic. These are plugged into a Behringer Eurorack MX802A mixer which is then in turn connected to the patch bay. I have a Yamaha PSR-195 MIDI keyboard also plugged into the Soundblaster. I monitor with my old Akai AA-A25 stereo receiver and two Sony MB-100H bookshelf speakers on stands just off to either side of my computer.

Software. The recordings I have chosen to present for downloading on this web page were made with Cakewalk Guitar Studio as my main MIDI editing and multi-track audio recording software. I use Cool Edit 2000 with noise reduction and Direct X compatibility plug-ins for more comprehensive wave editing. I have been pleased with the results of the only third-party Direct X plug-in I own, Oberheim OB-Tune for intonation processing. It provides basic pitch correction using the same software engine as Antares Autotune but without the $300 price tag. I have also used Vienna Sound Font editor for creating and editing samples to use with MIDI for a number of songs, though I don't think I have included any here yet.

Computer. My computer is a self-assembled, Tim Henze-special. Of most importance to multi-track audio recording is the processor, memory, OS, and hard drive. I am currently running a Pentium 2 at 350mhz with a 100mhz front side bus. I believe this to be the minimum for multi-track audio. On board memory is 256K of 133mhz SDRAM. I am running Windows ME. My hard drive is a Maxtor 15 gig ATA60 7200 rpm drive. In addition I have a generic 2x2x6x CD-RW drive.

The Stuff

Going to the Sun (HQ)

MP3

3,051 KB

I originally wrote the melody and first three verses to this song back in high school. It was about one of my favorite places on this earth, Going to the Sun Highway in Glacier National Park, Montana. As I did not play guitar back then, I described the melody to friend and he and I recorded it on the school music department's cassette deck after school. His leads had a droning feeling to them that I never liked. Since becoming a Christian, I have thought about the play on words "Going to the Sun" and "Going to the Son". So this past year I decided to write a few more verses to the song and record it.

The most satisfying part of the song is the MIDI drum part, that I programmed. A friend of mine who is a drummer expressed how realistic they sounded to him. He was struck by their realism both in the quality of the samples and in the drum part that was written for them. He thought the drum pattern was realistic of what an actual drummer would have played for the song. He particularly liked the hi-hat.

This is really my first attempt at using loops in a composition or arrangement. The song needed some texture and fill. To give it the density it needed, I cut out and looped the opening guitar riff from a song called "Helpless" by Bob Mould into the background throughout the song.

The acoustic guitar and the vocals are performed by me in this song.

Going to the Sun (LQ)

MP3

1,744 KB

Going to the Sun (part)

MP3

651 KB

Rose Among the Thorns (LQ)	MP3	1,258 KB	I first heard "Rose Among the Thorns" as the finale to a performance at the Bar-J Chuck-wagon in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. I was performing with North Country Gospel and doing Prairie Praise Worship during this period of time and thought the song would fit nicely into our repertoire. I approached one of the performers after the show and asked him where I could get a copy of the song. He pointed me to a southern acappella gospel group called The Bishops. I went to their web page www.thebishops.com and bought a CD that had the song on it. I chorded the song for our band and we performed it, but with full instrumentation and without the pristine harmony. This is my attempt to perform the song in the same spirit I first heard it. The song was not written by the Bishops but is credited on their album as Ernest Martin / Inspirations Quartet Music / BMI All vocals are performed by me in this recording.
Rose Among the Thorns (HQ)	MP3	2,199 KB
Rose Among the Thorns (part)	MP3	315 KB

Circuit Rider (LQ)	MP3	2,029 KB	This song was written and recorded by an early seventies band called Lazarus. The main songwriter for the group was a man named Billie Hughes. I first heard this group when my friend, colleague, and Scobey Alliance Church pastor, Charles Kelly made me a tape of their first album. I love the song because it captures the mood and emotions of ministry in North Eastern Montana so well. It was funny after working on the song for sometime, to go back and find that I had unintentionally changed the melody a little. Oh well, it's good to be different occasionally. All vocals, acoustic guitar, harmonica and drums were performed by me. Only the bass strings were recorded using MIDI. The drum used is a drum that my mother brought back for me from a trip to Nepal.
Circuit Rider (HQ)	MP3	3,549 KB
Circuit Rider (part)	MP3	1,070 KB

Lovely Child, Holy Child (HQ)	MP3	3,325 KB	When I sang in my junior high school choir we performed this song. Basically, one girl sang the verses as a solo and the choir came in on the chorus. We did the song completely acappella. I thought that was pretty good for a group of junior high kids. A couple years later when the United Methodist Church was rethinking the old hymnal but not yet ready to publish a new hymnal, they published a little hymnal supplement. To my great pleasure this song was included in this supplement. It was written by David N. Johnson and is published by Augsburg Publishing House. It has become one of my favorite Christmas songs. This recording is among a collection of Christmas songs made up of the first multi-track recordings I had ever done. I am particularly proud of the harmonica in this song. All of the vocals, harmonica, and guitar were performed by me. For the guitar, however, since there are some quick changes to difficult chords, these difficult chord changes were punched in one chord at a time using Cakewalk. This basically means the record function was started right at the place in the song where the particular chord should begin and only allowed to record for the set duration of that particular chord.
Lovely Child, Holy Child (LQ)	MP3	1,901 KB
Lovely Child, Holy Child (part)	MP3	576 KB

Come Together (HQ)

MP3

2,945 KB

Since I started this strange hobby of multi-track recording, one goal eluded me for a long time; to record someone else. I knew I could make myself sound pretty good, but could I make someone else sound good. These kids in the town of Scobey formed a band and I asked them if they would let me record them. This is one of the four recorded songs that came out of our sessions together. They call themselves Unknown Truth. This song is my favorite because of my decision to flex my creative muscles. During the places in the song where the instruments drop out leaving only the voice, I ran the vocal track through a telephone band pass filter and then panned the voice hard to one side. The band thought it sounded real cool.

I also have received compliments on the drum pan from left to right just after the chorus. It amazes even me when I think about the equipment used to mic the drums.

I don't think this is the band's favorite because the timing is a little off. When you consider their drummer was just beginning his freshman year in high school, I can overlook some of the timing problems (not intending to put all the blame on the drummer). This song is written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney and was originally recorded by the Beatles.

Come Together (LQ)

MP3

1,684 KB

Come Together (part)

MP3

510 KB

The following are all MIDI compositions and arrangements.

Harvest Time	MIDI	15 KB	This is an arrangement of an old and little known hymn written by W.A. Spencer. To United Methodists in Montana it is know as "Brother Van's Song". It was the favorite hymn of William Wesley Van Orsdel, affectionately known as Brother Van. He was the first protestant minister to come to the Montana frontier and he would start many Methodist churches. This arrangement is used as the background music on the Scobey United Methodist Church web page.
Greasy Fingers	MIDI	4 KB	I was playing around with my MIDI keyboard just after eating some fried chicken. I was playing with letting my fingers slide off the black keys onto the white keys. while doing that I discovered this melody. When I was done composing the song, it just sounded like greasy fingers. This song is the background music to my animated logo for Nutcase Production and Design.
Loop3	MIDI	4 KB	This is my brief homage to jazz violinist Jean-Luc Ponty. I was not really composing songs when I created this song, but rather loops to use as background music for web pages. Set your media player on repeat and you can hear how it was meant to segue into itself. Actually the older media players took longer to recycle and the loop sounded better than it does with the most current Windows Media Player.
Loop5	MIDI	5 KB	This is another loop like the previous file. This however is more of an homage to jazz guitarist Al Dimeola.
112099b	MIDI	20 KB	The number refers to the date I created this MIDI file. I found a disc that I had forgotten existed and found this lost composition of mine. The "b" means that I cleaned it up a little bit from the original file. This is not a loop so turn the repeat back off on your media player.