It has been several years since I have had the time to do serious music writing/performing. The pieces here start with the most recent work in the mid 1990s, going back to my college years in the late 1980s. The recording quality gets poorer as you go back in time. I've arranged the pieces along music style. By training I am a guitarist, but I also fiddle with synthesizers, even though my piano playing ability is poor (it's a good instrument to compose on). I also have a sound sample for my program Audio Atomizer. The main link for each title is to a Real Audio streaming version of the song, with Real Audio download, and MP3 download versions available for most songs.
Classical
piaz1 - solo piano, violin and cello. This piece was meant to be a cross between Bartok's violin pieces, Astor Piazzolla, with some Bach thrown in. This is my favorite piece that I've written. Everything was performed on a synthesizer. Other formats: MP3, Real-Audio download
ind3 - solo repeating piano, in the style of Simeon ten Holt, with a wandering violin solo on top. The piano was played on a synthesizer, while the violin was performed 1/2 time on a guitar to midi converter. Other formats: MP3, Real-Audio download
greek1 - a very minimal harp solo piece, written on a drum machine controlling a K2000 synthesizer. Other formats: MP3, Real-Audio download
piano1 - an experiment I made to see how convincingly I could play piano. Very new-age in style. Other formats: MP3, Real-Audio download
Jazz
drum1 - a somewhat complicated world beat percussion, with two repeating, clear-guitar tracks. The drum sounds were done with a K2000 synthesizer, programmed on a computer. Other formats: MP3, Real-Audio download
fripp1 - two heavily compressed jazz-guitar sounding guitar lines, one repeating, the other a solo, in the style of Robert Fripp. Other formats: MP3, Real-Audio download
fripp2 - an acoustic guitar version of fripp1. I prefer this version to the electric guitar version. Other formats: MP3, Real-Audio download
jazz1 - a watery, heavily flanged guitar, repeating bass, on top of a jazzy hihat-based drumbeat. Very, very mellow. Other formats: MP3, Real-Audio download
gtr2 - simple two-guitar piece with a repeating background guitar, and the foreground guitar is using a playing technique where the guitar is laid flat on your lap, and the notes are produced by "hammering" your fingers onto the fretboard. The sound is much more percussive than the usual plucking technique. Other formats: MP3, Real-Audio download
Rock
susan1 - A rock piece, with a blurry guitar and simple drums, and my friend Susan Lowell singing (she was also my voice teacher at the time). Other formats: MP3, Real-Audio download
wired - This piece sounds like British punk-pop, with a loud distorted bass, clangy guitars, and super-crisp drumbeat. It also reminds me of Fripp's song "Third Uncle", which the band Bauhaus eventually covered and popularized. Other formats: MP3, Real-Audio download
care - an older rock piece, where I originally attempted to sing, done in the style of the band "Wire". Other formats: MP3, Real-Audio download
sad3 - "So sad", a piece I wrote in college, using my technique of hammering notes on a guitar and bass. The sample comes from a radio preacher complaining that his listeners haven't written or sent money, and how sad he is (well, that's not originally what he said, but it's what he ended up saying after I tape-edited the recording). Other formats: MP3, Real-Audio download
bohm - a piece I really enjoyed, because I felt it really caught the nihilistic tendency of some religions. A slowed down "bohm" voice sample, with a slow radio-religious monologue that is so well paced for this piece, that everyone I played this song to assumed that the voice was done by a performer for the song. A quote from the piece: "our hope does not lie in this world" Other formats: MP3, Real-Audio download
ind5 - a simple tabla - based drumbeat with some computer vocal samples. I like the background, but feel the vocal samples didn't work. This was written in college. Other formats: MP3, Real-Audio download
untouch.wav (52k) This is a very small piece of a song I did with a band in the mid 1980s (high school). I didn't include any singing: consider yourself fortunate.
Techno
pthud - a techno background with a grimy moog synth on top, and a slightly dissonant piano pattern repeating over it. Other formats: MP3, Real-Audio download
fla1 - a typical techno industrial pattern, modeled after the band FrontLine Assembly. Other formats: MP3, Real-Audio download
fla2 - another techno piece, this time with a big booming drum beat, distorted guitar and bleeping synths. Other formats: MP3, Real-Audio download
trivial - "Trivia", a piece I wrote in college, with various religious scholarly samples. After I had recorded the song, I met a fellow student (I have forgotten his name, but I like his voice) who wanted to sing on this piece (and on "New World Order"), and so I had him add his voice to two parts of this song. Other formats: MP3, Real-Audio download
neworder - "The New World Order", a techno-metal piece I wrote, with a newly found singer in college, during the period when the USA was trying to kill Saddam Hussein after the gulf war while simultaneously denying it. Other formats: MP3, Real-Audio download
techno1 - a very old techno piece I did as a freshman in college. I was trying to discover how to make drums that "came alive" in the recording, and the trick I found for this piece was to slightly time delay the right and left drum tracks to create a strong stereo effect, and in this case, also running the drum machine through a guitar distortion box to add some nice harmonics. There also is a distorted guitar track on top of the drums. Other formats: MP3, Real-Audio download
anticom - a simple techno piece I wrote in high school, using vocal samples from Brian Eno talking about how "new age is not a music in a certain sense, it is a music space that you enter". Also, many samples from an academic colloquium on anti-communism. Other formats: MP3, Real-Audio download
drudge1 - an angry guitar piece I wrote in the style of the long-defunct band Big Black. I really liked Big Black's screechy, grinding guitars, and tried to replicate the effect here. This piece was written during college. Other formats: MP3, Real-Audio download
These are a few pieces I wrote for a video called "Parallel Journeys." John Spillane, a video editor at NBC Washington, created this video about an artists exchange program between Washington and Calcutta, India. He hired me to write music for it, and asked for a mix of pieces, some Indian classical, others with a strong western feel.
ind6 - an acoustic guitar pattern, with a flute solo. This is an acoustic guitar/flute piece that is supposed to sound typically "western" (as opposed to "eastern"). The guitar was played 1/2 time through my midi guitar (that's the only way it can track decently) as was the flute. This sequence was used a few times with different instrumentation: piano, hammer-dulcimer, etc... Other formats: MP3, Real-Audio download
ind1 This piece has a hand-played (on the keyboard, with a pitch wheel) tabla, with two oscillating keyboard drones. Other formats: MP3, Real-Audio download
ind4 - My attempt at an Indian raga. I sampled and looped a very long Indian drone. Because I know nothing of Indian musical scales, I decided to play it safe and use a flute as the lead instrument. Other formats: MP3, Real-Audio download
Radio Promotional Music
These are all very short pieces that were created for radio in the late 1980s. These are all old, before decent drum machines were available inexpensively, and were recorded to four-track audio tape.
promo5.wav (34k) Mellow bass with clear guitar chords.
promo1.wav (90k) Two phasing wah-wah guitars, with a bass line and a cheesy drumbeat.
promo2.wav (89k) A polka-like bass line, a clear reggae-like guitar and another cheesy drumbeat.
promo6.wav (124k) For some reason, this promo was hugely popular at my college radio station (it's not my favorite). It is a happy acoustic guitar and polka-bass, and says: "91.5FM WRBC in Lewiston, happy music for happy people"
promo3.wav (79k) Spooky out-of-tune guitar and announcer saying: "91.5 WRBC, where you never know what to expect"
promo4.wav (117k) Bouncing layers of simple-minded keyboards, with the phrase "91.5 WRBC: always a new experience"
gotme.wav (212k) This is a mock-up of "You really got me." I made it to promote my high school radio show -- it has chipmunks singing modified lyrics, with the ever-famous guitar riff. Caution: this is very silly.