MP3(S)

Welcome to my MP3 page. My goal with this page is to put up MP3s of my music whenever I get a chance. I will put up older pieces (or parts of older pieces) in their original versions, re-done versions of older pieces or new pieces/musical ramblings. Please check back here regularly for changes. NOTE: All pieces © Illustrious Music. Please do not use them without permission.

10.16.09 - Piece 101609

My weekly ImprovFriday+1 piece. I guess I'm feeling industrial today. Percussion (sampled) + 2 tracks of me on my Fender Jazz bass.
10.9.09 - Piece 100909 - for the Mighty Noah Bailey Dowell

Another ImprovFriday+1 piece. I know Noah Bailey Dowell and his family from a church we all used to go to. He is known as "The Mighty" and he died on 10.3.09 after a battle with a rare form of cancer - he was not quite 8 years old. He and his family are an inspiration. They are all mighty indeed!. This piece is for Noah. I don't know what else to say.
10.3.09 - Piece 100209

Yet Another ImprovFriday+1 piece for NetNewMusic. I'm grateful for the +1, as I didn't get this finished until today. All sounds come from the same softsynth (Mystic) that comes with Cubase 5. The melody you hear is the first and only take.
9.25.09 - Piece 092509

Another ImprovFriday+1 piece for NetNewMusic. My most improvised one yet. No forethought. Just played few a through sounds until I found this one. Once I found it, I messed around for a minute or two and then hit record. No click track. Just played by feel, based somewhat on the silences.
9.18.09 - Piece 091809

Another ImprovFriday+1 (people are now free to put them up on Saturday too, but everybody liked the "sound" of ImprovFriday) piece for NetNewMusic. Two weeks ago I was wanting to do something with bells, but "it" just wasn't there. Today I decided that I was going to limit myself to one sound. I went hunting through a few options of mine and the sound that inspired me today was . . . bells. Tibetan bells to be exact. Well, samples of them anyway. When I do these things, I try to go in with no musical ideas (hence improv) and get inspired by the sound(s). Well, here's what the inspiration was for today. With bells, I can't decide which I like most - the attack or the decay. I think it's the decay (and the harmonics you hear from it).
9.11.09 - Piece 091109 - In Memoriam

Another ImprovFriday piece for NetNewMusic. The date says it all.
9.4.09 - Piece 090409

Another ImprovFriday piece for NetNewMusic. Another real improv. I wanted to do something with a bell sound but nothing was jumping out at me. I ran across this sound on my Proteus 2000, which I've been messing with since it can do a variety of tunings. The sound you hear is exactly as it sounds originally, including the delay. I purposefully left off a click and played with/against the delay of the drone (which functions like a tambura part). This one uses a Just Minor tuning.
8.28.09 - Piece 082809

Another ImprovFriday piece for NetNewMusic. This piece truly is an improv. Here's my day today: Wake up - find out water heater is leaking bad - go buy new water - start replacing water heater - do a quick improv while water heater starts draining - go coach saxophones at band camp at my son's high school - come home and finish installing water heater. For what it's worth, the improv is in Just intonation. I like it. It reflects the peace I need right now.
8.21.09 - Piece 082109

Another ImprovFriday piece for NetNewMusic. How can you go wrong with a toy piano?
8.14.09 - Piece 081409

Another ImprovFriday piece for NetNewMusic. I had this bass line written down on a piece of scratch paper on my drafting table, so I grabbed it and a little while later ended up with this little piece.
8.7.09 - Piece 080709

So I belong to this group called NetNewMusic, and they do this cool thing called ImprovFriday. This is where members improvise a new piece on Friday and put it up for all to hear. I've wanted to participate since it started, but the "day job" got in the way. Well, seeing as I am still unemployed, I thought I would give it a go. The skinny on this piece is that I've been working with my son on an industrial song. He's 14 and it's our first go at really trying to make something (mostly him, with help from me on the technical side). I have a sample cd of all sorts of sounds and loops, and that was our jumping off point. Well, the other night I was up editing samples to load into Halion for him to mess with. As I sat down today, I thought I would use those sounds to get started. Once I had the "rhythm track" going, it took on it's own life. I put down a couple more tracks, but realized it was still missing something. So I pulled out the tenor, with my new Otto Link mouthpiece (which I love), and laid down the melody track. I limited myself to one take, with no fixes. A little processing and viola! Once I was done mixing and just listened back, I came to the conclusion that I ended up with some sort of tango. Sometimes it's fun to just follow things where they go.
4.12.09 - Piece 041009 & Piece 041009 Version 2

So this past week I upgraded to Cubase 5 (thanks Steve!), so of course I had to check it out. There are many wonderful things about the program that I have yet to mess around with, but I wanted to at least make something to get started. Using my usual MO for these things (3 tracks, approx. 2 minutes long), I wanted to start to work with some of the VSTs. There are some great sounding synths in here, and the way the sounds are organized makes life much easier. Anyway, I found some sounds I liked and laid it down real quick. I felt that something was missing, so I added the drums, which I think was a good call. As for Version 2, there's a little more to the story. I got some money for my recent birthday and decided to spend it on something musical. I had read about a wind instrument called a Xaphoon and it intrigued me. If you're interested in seeing what it is, you can read about it here: www.xaphoon.com. I bought the green plastic one from Lark in the Morning (a great music store!). When I was reading about the xaphoon, I read mixed reviews. It's called a pocket sax, but it sounds more like a clarinet, so some people were not happy about that. My hope is that it would sound more like a duduk, which is an Armenian instrument. If you don't know what it is, hunt it down. While you're at it, check out Djivan Gasparyan - he's the man! Well, I got it, and while it's a challenge to play, mostly in terms of intonation, I think it's close enough to what I wanted to stick with it. Version 2 includes me playing the Xaphoon.
12.7.08 - Harbor Pearls

This one is a little outside my usual MO, but I had fun making it. There's a little story behind it. A talented student in my world music class at Santiago Canyon College would periodically give me copies of music he made. When I heard the opening of one of them, I heard it go in a different direction. I asked him if he would e-mail me the opening organ and synth bits so I could mess around with an idea I had. He was cool with it, and here it is. It's all soft synths except for the guitar. I made it in two nights. Oh yeah, the little part that comes in at 1:16 was composed and performed by my 7 year-old. He jammed over the basic tracks and then I cut this part out and put it in (but did not alter it in any way).
4.9.08 - Piece010608 / 040908

So how's this for depressing - I was originally hoping to put something up once a month, and I haven't put anything up in a year and eight months. Time sure flies by and I sure have been busy with life. I'll have to figure out a way to revisit this more often. Anyway, back in January I started a little piano and melody idea that I liked, but had to stop as it was getting late. My plan was to finish it the next day. Nice plan, but I finally had a chance to get back to it tonight. Seeing as I challenged my song writing students to get something done this week (Spring break), I figured I could do the same. As usual, here's something short, simple and (I think) beautiful. With life the way it is these days (2 jobs, 3 kids - 2 of them teenagers, etc.), simple and beautiful is what I need. I hope you feel the same way.
8.27.06 - Bug Central Radio Ad 08/06

Here's the final ad, which started running on 95.9 FM (The Fish) on 8/28/06. All the sound design/music is mine, along with some of the voice work!
8.22.06 - Bug Central Unused Radio Ad Bed #1

Bug Central is where I work during the day (I manage the office of a termite company). We're going to be running some ads on the radio, so I figured what the heck, why not write some music that will be playing underneath the talking (which is what they call a "bed" in the business). Here's the first thing I came up with, which turns out to be a bit too heavy (or so says the folks at the station). Never wanting anything to go to waste, I thought I would put it up here. I know it's not my usual thing . . . come to think of it, I don't know if I have a "usual thing" anymore. I just like writing and playing, so it doesn't really matter. This piece isn't supposed to be anything more than music for a radio ad, so there it is. I did have fun making it though, and I played everything on it. There's a second version of the same piece, with no guitars and the keyboards mixed a little louder, but this one's got me playing lead, so it won out.
3.19.06 - Cues that didn't make it.

The Haunted Boy - Cue 1 Rough Demo 1

The Haunted Boy - Cue 6 Rough Demo 1

OK, so I know it's been a while, but what can I say? Anyway, I'm finishing up the score (just mixing left!) to a short film being produced at Chapman University and I thought it would be fun to put up the rough demos of 2 cues that didn't make it. The first one is the first thing I came up with for the opening and the feeling was that it wasn't "haunting" enough. I agreed, wrote a second cue, and got it right. The second cue was the first try for a cue near the end of the film, and the feeling was that it was beautiful, but too "jubilatory." I was a bit taken back at first, as I thought I hit the mood right, but in retrospect, it was too sentimental sounding and I hit the moment too soon. Since I wasn't sure where to go next, musically, I started two different cues and sent them in for feedback. Fortunately for me, both cues were well like and they became cues 6 and 7 (of 7 cues).

Regarding the procees of writing for this film, I had a copy of the film (without the temp score, of course) loaded into Cubase SX, and I would start cues at my upright piano, and then work between pencil and paper and writing right into the software (from my head). I had already decided on the "ensemble," which is violin, viola, cello, clarinet, guitar, celesta and piano, so I set up a program in my JV-1080 (using the Orchestral module) to give me a quick, rough mock-up of the group (which is what you hear in these demos). Once I finished (I hoped) a cue, I would save them in mp3 format and e-mail them to the man in charge. I would usually get the thumbs-up or thumbs-down (which only happened twice) within a day, and then get back to it as time permitted.
10.7.05 - Piece100705

Wow, that took a long time to get another piece done. I finally got around to tuning (well, sort of) the kalimba I bought earlier this year in Sacramento. An African shop in Old Town Sacramento - go figure! Anyway, I'm going to be talking about African music in my world music class, so I thought that I would get the Kalimba ready to bring in to show and tell and play. I started messing around on the piano and then went from there. Just a couple of takes to get something down for fun. Oh yeah, the "drum" is the kalimba as well.
3.10.05 - Piece031605

Although this piece took only 4-5 hours to write, record & mix, the process was spread out over two nights. I started it on the 16th, so that's where the title came from. I had all sorts of possible titles for this one (much more interesting ones than what I ended up with), but one of the reasons I love instrumental music so much is that you can say so much without using any words.
1.23.05 - Piece012305

Wow, two in one month. Crazy! The reason I got around to a new piece so fast is that I wanted to show off my new guitars. What you're hearing is a Gibson Les Paul, a '57 Strat, and a Godin Artisan. OK, so they're not "my" guitars, but really nice samples of real guitars from Vint Audio.
1.9.05 - Piece010905

Music from a rainy Sunday. That's my three-year-old son Joshua on the piano.
10.24.04 - Piece102804

What can I say? Another 2 minute 3-track synth piece. I just felt like making something. Besides, I just got DSL last night and I was dying to upload something new. Dial-up never again!