original song

here is a song, "reaching the peak" composed by darnell stewart and myself in early december 2007 and recorded on december 5th, 2007. i thought i had previously posted it, but i guess i haven't. it was to be used as the soundtrack to a snowboarding slideshow that a friend of mine was doing. electric lead guitar - darnell acoustic, bass, mixing - me

here is the march 22 08 set in zip format and setlist 1 opiated (tragically hip) 2 counting down the hours (ted leo & the pharmacists) 3 lotus (rem) 4 strange love (depeche mode) 5 sunny (morrissey) 6 going to california (led zeppelin) 7 crosses (jose gonzalez) 8 two step end - into - typical situation (dave matthews) 9 smith (brian danchilla) 10 emily, please (luke doucet) 11 so real (jeff buckley) 12 why must i plead? (richard thompson) 13 rocky world (daniel lanois)

here is an acoustic set that was all recorded last night. except for two songs (that make use of the same vocal equalization effect), everything is raw and basic - no amps, no reverbed vocals, which is what i wanted this time. songs flow well into each other - the good and the bad. there are 15 tracks, 4 have been recorded before - 'strange love', 'why must i plead', 'behind blue eyes' and my own song 'smith' (previously titled 'smith & reflections'). but the other 11 songs are new!

well, over the weekend i spent $200 and bought a midi keyboard interface - the behringer UMX61. here is literally one of my first experimentations with it...the possibilities of sounds are fairly limitless as it comes with 50 high quality virtual instruments each with many, many settings (as well as hundreds of downloadable instruments (pirated or not). the UMX61 works with all the major recording software - neundo, cubase, ableton, etc. knowing the concepts of midi but not the many steps in setting it up with this software was tricky...and i'm sure it will take sometime to get used to...my keyboard skills will improve too, as right now i know basic chords.

called "the words resonated so true" it was created/recorded january 18th (i forgot about it until now - then i was like oh yes, i remember this...i had new strings (you can tell)) now on my demo page like most of my songs, this one is on the dark side of the happy-sad spectrum, as i write pretty much all my songs in that mood (go figure). it doesn't seem too bad...unless you read the lyrics... i swear, i've been known to brighten up a room...but i can also be pretty f#@&in dismal...i make no apologies for either.............i am me

wrote and recorded four new songs yesterday. they are called (in order of creation):

• destruction
• cleanse the slate
• falling away
• searching

they are my first new songs of 2008 and located on my "album" page. the guitar kept fairly simple (all songs make use of a capo at different fret positions) and except for "destruction" (which has a lead guitar on a second take) where done in one take...so some improvisation, but they all came out fairly strong, by my humble standards.

new song recorded tonight. called faraway dream.

I don't know if my original songs are getting better, but the process is sure quickening. This song took me an hour to write lyrics and music, record, mix and upload. I'm simplifying and gaining confidence, which is necessary.
It's called Never hide.
Abstract scribble from August 23rd.
Click to enlarge

Did a "studio" version of my song "And So it Goes". It is a minute shorter than my work in progress video version, and has drums/electric guitar.