journal

Nothing new to report on the album front, but in the meantime here is a version of Bob Dylan's "All Along the Watchtower" as arranged by the late Michael Hedges (see his "Live on the Double Planet" album) and performed by myself (acoustic guitar) and Phil Clute (vocals). Phil is working on a couple of paintings for the artwork on my CD.

For those who are interested the guitar is in this tuning:
Low D - A - E - E - A - A High

mp3: All Along the Watchtower

Spent the long weekend working on "The Water Discipline". This song is based on a section that was cut from "Seven Falls, Eight Rises" on the last Electrum CD.

I elected to give it a sort of ambient trip hop groove. Being my first time venturing in to that arena it took forever to get the feel and sound of the drum parts right. Then I decided to take the keyboard part which used to have a classic synth pad sound and arrange it for strings. That effort paid off huge as the strings bring a ton of richness to the piece.

I've tracked the guitar synth and acoustic guitar parts. All that is left is the electric guitars which I should get tracked during the week. I think I'll skip bass guitar on this since the string double bass and cello should cover the bottom end.

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As 2005 began a collection of demos was in place. Bryan had a CD of my material and was working on drum parts for the first couple of pieces. In the meantime I had 2 other projects to work on. In January I recorded a couple songs Gino had asked me to play on for his solo CD. Gino has become very much interested in World Fusion over the last few years. As a guitarist my right hand technique sucks often leaves a lot to be desired, so in order to get my chops up for the nimble jazzy soloing much woodshedding was required before pressing the record button. In the end though I think the pieces came out pretty well.

The next project on my plate was a request from my mother. A couple of years ago my wife, who plays flute, and I surprised my parents with a CD of holiday music for Christmas. Well she wanted a follow up CD for her 60th birthday. This little EP titled "Simple Gifts" took most of the Spring to complete. Below are a couple of pieces off it. Most of the material isn't my usual fair but Mom really likes it. Had we had done Rush's "La Villa Strangiato" and Yes' "Heart of the Sunrise" arranged for flute and acoustic guitar it wouldn't have made anyone happy.
Canon in D (Johnann Pachelbel)
Rhymes or Reasons (John Denver)

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