Hello! I'm a User Interface Developer who enjoys writing and recording instrumental songs in my spare time. This site contains most of the music I've recorded.
It also allows me the opportunity to experiment with emerging technology in the world of web development, particularly in the areas of HTML5, CSS3, jQuery/Javascript, Responsive Design, and website load time optimization. Please feel free to drop me an email or follow me on Twitter or Soundcloud.
New Songs
Songs I recently wrote and recorded using GarageBand.
A while ago I bought the GarageBand app for my phone for 5 bucks. I started to put together songs, playing guitar and bass parts through a Focusrite iTrack solo using the GarageBand amp emulations. Drum sounds are programmed and keyboards were recorded using the built in GarageBand simulations. After the first song I stepped up to GarageBand for iPad. It's a pretty amazing app. For 5 bucks you really have more recording technology at your fingertips than was available for 99.99% of human existance. Did I mention it was only 5 bucks? $4.99, actually.
A while ago I bought the GarageBand app for my phone for 5 bucks. I started to put together songs, playing guitar and bass parts through a Focusrite iTrack solo using the GarageBand amp emulations. Drum sounds are programmed and keyboards were recorded using the built in GarageBand simulations. After the first song I stepped up to GarageBand for iPad. It's a pretty amazing app. For 5 bucks you really have more recording technology at your fingertips than was available for 99.99% of human existance. Did I mention it was only 5 bucks? $4.99, in fact.
Equipment used: Focusrite iTrack Solo, iPad Garageband app, and a Telecaster put together with a bunch of random parts, a cheap Jay Turser violin bass. Drums and keyboard parts programmed using the built in GarageBand simulations.
Pure Mania
Recorded October 2015
This is the first song I wrote after a long period of inactivity. I had just bought a house and it was both a really great and really stressful time. I think that comes accross in the music. I feel it represents my frazzled-but-optomistic mental state pretty accurately.
Shockwave
Recorded November 2015
I was messing around on bass and came up with a riff that I liked, and I kind of just built on that. Normally, my process of writing and recording music resembles someone trying to build a lego replica of the Sydney Opera House blindfolded, but this song came together pretty quickly.
Twilight
Recorded December 2015
This is another song that came together pretty quickly. It's uncharacteristically mellow for me. I use the GarageBand simulations for drums and keyboards, and I remember recording the piano part on my iPad in bed at 3AM one night (morning?) when I couldn't sleep. More productive than my usual go to insomnia activity: watching cat videos on YouTube.
Black Friday
Recorded February 2016
I was at a Flyers game one night and they played this James Brown song that was like the craziest, most energeticly explosive thing I'd ever heard. This doesn't really sound anything like that, but it was my inspiration.
Hodad
Recorded January 2016
In addition to cat videos, another thing I freaking LOVE watching on YouTube are live music performances. I was on a surf music kick for a while and there are some really great representations of that genre. Lots of live Ventures recordings from Japan in the 70's that are really terrific. Also great is a Dick Dale (he must have been in his early 70s at the time) radio station performance where he completely smokes Miserlou in a way that makes me think I should give up playing guitar forever. Anyway, this song is inspired by binge watching surf videos on YouTube.
Fits & Starts
Recorded December 2015
I think this is my favorite song that I've ever recorded. It's one of those songs that I didn't have a real vision of what it would be like and it kind of evolved and changed while I was recording it. Often songs like that end up terrible but I'm really happy with how this one turned out. If you listen to just one song, this would be a good choice. I should probably put it first.
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Old Songs
Songs I wrote and recorded a while ago using a Tascam 4-track cassette machine.
A long time ago, I bought myself a Tascam 4-Track cassette recorder. I loved music, I played guitar and bass, and I wanted to start to write and record my own songs. I bought a Zoom Drum Machine and I was off. It was really fun. I found the limitations of the 4-track format surprisingly liberating. Also, I'd sometimes do stuff to get around the limitations like record 4 tracks, bounce them down to 2, record two more, and repeat. I got a subscription to Tape Op Magazine (still the greatest single resource for the home recordist, IMHO). In my early 20's I spent many a beautiful Saturday afternoon laboring over the tiniest details of songs that virtually no one would ever hear, and if I had to do it again I wouldn't change a thing. As you can see from the song "titles," naming songs is not my strong suit.
I wrote these songs a while ago and recorded them on a cheap Tascam 4 track cassette recorder.
Equipment used: Tascam Cassette 4-Track recorder, Line 6 Pod, Zoom RhythmTrack Drum Machine, Fender, Danelectro and DeArmond guitars, Fender Precision Bass. A super cheap keyboard I bought in a pawn shop for 10 bucks. Significant amounts of unearned youthful exuberance.
Track 1
This was originally a complete song, but at some point I realized I only liked the
first and last 30 seconds of it. I grabbed those parts and made them into an "intro"
and "outro" and scrapped the rest. Around this time I was listening to these Rhino
Records British power pop compilations with bands like the Records, Nick Lowe, Undertones,
Rezillos etc. I love those bands and I like to think I hear their influence in this
and lots of the other songs I've recorded.
Track 2
This is basically a straight ahead, driving song. It's probably the song that came
out closest to what I envisioned when I wrote it. It originally had an intro that
I edited out when I realized it was kind of boring. I think it's better now. Someone
once told me that making a song shorter was almost always an improvement, but he
may have just not liked my music and wanted it to be over as quickly as possible.
Track 3
I was always a big fan of ska music, particularly the first album by the Specials. This is me trying to write a ska song but
putting my own stamp on it. I really took advantage of the drum machine on this
one. To actually play this you would need, like, 4 percussionists. Or one super
intelligent drum playing octopus. I would love to be in a band with a super intelligent
drum playing octupus (no offense human drummers).
Track 4
It's always fun when I break out the slide and play some slide guitar. Fun for me, that is. For everyone else it's probably pretty torturous. Unless you like whale songs.
Unless you like whale songs sung by a very sick and sad whale. Because that's what my slide guitar playing sounds like. Anyway, I still like this song. Maybe you will too.
Track 5
There's a lot going on in this song. The recording quality is not great (or, um,
not good for that matter...but I really like the song...I think there are lots of good ideas
in there and the ebb and flow of it captured what I was trying to do with dynamics
at the time. And yes, I'm aware that dynamics for me is less the difference between
2 and 10 and more the difference between 9 and 13. Subtlety isn't one of my strong suits.
Track 6
This song is part of a misguided period where I seem to be trying to use every effect
on my Line 6 Pod.I still kind of like how it turned out. The intro and outro is
some kind of Cure/Psychedellic Furs influenced thing, and the middle is inspired
by the various indie music I had been listenting to at the time. I like the drums
in the beginning of the middle section. I think I was really interested in how drummers
created tension and dynamics, and I was trying to explore that a little.
Track 7
I like the main riff of this song...I just think I didn't know what to do with the
song besides that. I think I just tried to make the whole thing build to something.
Not sure it works, but the first minute or so might make a good outro to a commercial
break for NPR. Or NASCAR. Or not.
Track 8
Pretty often, when I listen to a musician talk about their work, I notice that their
favorite songs are often ones that I really don't like that much. Also, songs they
are lukewarm about are ones that I think are great. Weird, right? When I recorded
this song, I was really happy with it. I got to incorporate lots of ideas I had...I
thought it was catchy...heck, I even got to use my $10 (literally...ten bucks at
Cash Converters) Casio keyboard. I thought it was, like, the best thing I'd done.
No one that I've played it for seems to agree. Oh well. I still like it.
Track 9
I went to Nashville on vacation. If you walk into any bar at any time of day I could
see musicians that were 8 trillion times better than me playing for free. It kind
of inspired me to try to get better. It also turned me on to "Telecaster" music,
particularly Roy Nichols. I even got an instructional DVD. This song was kind of
a reaction to all that stuff. It's a bit like a monkey painting a picture after a visit
to the Metropolitan Museum of Art but whatever. I had fun.
Track 10
I don't have anything interesting to
say about this song, so I'll just relate a story about my friend
Aaron, who was the bass player in a band I was in. We were at his house and he had a large bottle of vodka sitting on a
shelf. I said something like "Wow. That's a lot of vodka (I'm very perceptive)". He then proceeded to pick it up, open it, and chug the whole damn
thing. I said stuff like "No! Don't do that! Bad!" to no avail. For the next hour
or so I tried to watch him for signs of alcohol poisoning, but he didn't even seem
slightly inebriated. At the end of the night be revealed that he had filled it with
water months ago and was just waiting for the opportunity to shock the crap out
of some dope (me). That's some admirable commitment to a joke. Hats off to you,
Aaron.
Track 11
This is from the same song mentioned in Track 1...it's just the last minute or so
of it. I think I said everything I had to say about it earlier. Let me think...do
I have any other Aaron stories...um, no. If anyone actually made it this far I
am both really surprised and really grateful.
