Welcome
Welcome to my website of music demos. This post is a bit about me, and my musical point of view, and what this site is about.
I am a mostly self-taught musician. I spent many of my early years playing brass in public school bands but never found that it afforded me much opportunity for self-expression. In that capacity I have played many small and large venues across the city of Ottawa, and even taken part in a marching band for a parade. At one point my playing (as part of a much larger ensemble) was even recorded, published and sold. From that I have a classical musical training, however it seems to factor little in where I have gone musically.
When I was very young music and choir were large parts of my life, until I discovered wilder things like Rock and Roll, Heavy Metal and girls. The guitar became the focus of my musical world, even as I played rote-for-rote music in concert bands. The trumpet always felt like a second running instrument for me. My heart was in guitar music, but I played big-band because there was no opportunity to play guitar at the time.
During my early trumpet-playing years I became associated with fringe concert groups, playing Jazz as well as Concert pieces with sub-band groups, presenting at school events along with the standard pieces of music in the usual ensemble. While I was learning and playing trumpet solos, old friends of mine where playing Metallica covers as well as writing and recording their own songs. To me it was inspirational what they were doing.
In my mid-teens I was fortunately given a guitar. This guitar was very old, with rusted steel strings but I taught myself how to tune it, then play it. I found playing other people’s music less interesting to play, rather than writing my own songs, and to be honest, once I figured out the basics of singing and playing at the same time I thought the sky was the limit. It seemed easier to write my own music than to spend the time learning other’s. This was a flawed attitude that was, at first, short lived.
At one point these aspects of music crossed over and I co-organized a cross-city tour of guitarists playing traditional orchestra Christmas music scored for a twelve-piece guitar ‘choir’. I wish there was recordings from this period of time, we felt like Gods spreading our Sound across the city. We practised until our fingers literally bled, it was an amazing experience.
Around the same time I learned how to play keyboard, bass, and drums. For a time I was a teacher of synthesizer to younger students. Musically, as well as many other ways, I was actively trying to find myself.
Since the time I picked up a guitar, first as an engineer fixing other’s instruments as a method to expose myself to the use of them, to the present, the guitar and the singer/songwriter urge within myself has taken me over a continuing decade-or-so journey.
This website documents, and will continue to document my progress and evolution as a self-taught musician, and recording engineer. You will find here recordings of experiments in song structure, lyrical content, dynamics, recording equipment, collaboration and music techniques as I progress towards wherever it is I am evolving into. There are even a few covers included, and possibly more to come.
Most are presented in an un-polished and incomplete format, hence the labelling of these as “demos”. Consider them as suggestions of song, not complete products.
