I believe that it is always
better for a musician to let his
or her
music speak for itself, instead of writing hundreds or thousands of
words describing it. I also find it empowering to compose and
record my music on my own digital audio workstation, rather
than having to go through the music biz games just to get one's music
recorded. Promotion's another thing, though -- something that
most musicians aren't particularly good at. But with the rapid
advancement of digital audio technology and the proliferation of MP3
files, much of this has changed. At long last, with just a bit of
marketing savvy, musicians can finally promote themselves without
desire or need of the recording biz quagmire.
I was a music major for my first
two
years of college, which is where I received a decent grounding in music
theory. I also picked up some piano skills as well, since piano
was a
required instrument for all music majors. I have been able to put
my
keyboard skills to some use in the music I've written.My composition methods are probably quite
a bit different from those of most modern "songwriters." First of
all, I don't consider myself to be a songwriter. I usually don't
write songs -- I've written only a few. My pieces usually are
born from a small snippet of melody or harmony, sometimes an idea based
on an interesting aspect of music theory. I actually
compose my music using notation software, my favorite being Studio
6. Other, more expensive and more robust packages are available,
such as Finale and Sibelius, but Studio does everything I need.
Once the composition is complete, I import it into Sonar, which is
where all the detail work occurs. Instrumentation.
Balance. Levels. Even editing. I will finalize the
project in Sonar, then export it to Red Roaster: red-book compatible
CD-burning software.
Digital Audio Workstation:
The DAW I used to record my CDs
was a project I put together over the span of several months back in
2001 and 2002. I figure, all told, I invested about $5,000 in the
project. Nowadays, I could probably put together one with even
more capability for less than half that. Even though my DAW is
approaching nine years old now, it still works well enough, although
I'll be needing to replace the motherboard, CPU, and hard drive with
bigger, faster units before too long. But as it sits, and what I
used to record the CDs is as follows:
CPU includes a 1.2GHz AMD
Athlon, MSI mainboard, 50 gigs of drive space, DVD +/-R drive.
Three sound cards are installed: M Audio Delta 66, Soundblaster Live!
somethingoranother model, and a Yamaha SG card. I installed the
Yamaha SG because of its extended set of instruments. The
Soundblaster is also being used because of the quality of the sound of
its midi instruments. All recording chores are handled by the M
Audio Delta 66. External to the CPU, but part of the DAW system
are: a Roland JV-1010 synth module, Roland GR-33 guitar synthesizer,
Beringer Virtualizer Pro and Compressor Pro, Yamaha PSR-500 synth
keyboard, two Marshall amplifiers, two Shure condenser mics, and a
Mackie 12-channel and Midiman 6-channel mixers to tie it all together
and handle the mixdown chores. For software, there are several I
use: Cakewalk Sonar, Band-in-a-Box, Studio 6, Red Roaster, SKED, and more.
My music is available through
this website either on CD or
you can purchase individual tunes separately as MP3s. I accept
Paypal only. Shopping cart coming soon.
Click on the tunes below to preview them
before purchase.
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