Is that really just you?

Rather than talk about all the excitement that goes into putting together a website, something I'm not actually excited about either, I thought it would be more interesting to talk about how I come up with all these great tunes all by myself...

Then again, maybe not.

However, I do find that people are surprised when they hear the music and that I did it by myself. Some of that is simple economics; as someone who records at home and works at it in fits and starts, it's much easier than trying to coordinate say a band, with different individuals with their own time restrictions and commitments, not to mention their own ideas about how the songs should sound.

As for how I come up with a song, mostly, like other musicians or songwriters, it comes from playing, be it a guitar or keyboard or drums/percussion. If I like something, I'll keep working on it till I know it well enough to remember it the next day or as I did in the old days, I get the basic tracks recorded.

Then I begin adding other sounds; bass, more guitars, vocals, whatever I find fits, and I find that out through experimentation. The fun in having a lot more tracks to play with ( 24 now versus 4 in the past ) and the sounds that come from the GR-55, a guitar synth, or just running the guitars through the outboard equipment I have, an Effectron 2, an Alesis Midiverb, and old school stomp boxes like a Rat or a wahwah pedal.

I'm certainly not a virtuoso musician, but I'm good enough for what I want to do or create, and I'm willing to work out parts as I need them. I also feel that I have a very good sense of production as far as what I want to accomplish with a particular sound or song.

Pretty boring.

But it works for me.