Music

I have been playing music since 1988, when I was 8 years old. I started piano lessons, like everyone else, but didn't like piano. My neighbors somehow got a small electronic organ and I really liked it, so I started organ lessons. I stopped organ lessons at age 17½, mostly because of college, but not before I had substituted sevral church services and played a few recitals. We aquired a piano in around 1994, and I have been playing it ever since, and loving it. I used to have about 20 pieces memorized at all times, but then college came. I have taught both organ and piano (starting at age 15) and continue to write music, improvise and play. Recently (~summer 2000) I have picked up a growing interest in electric guitar, not for the annoying noise that older folks tend to associate with the electric guitar, but because I am very interested in audio-electronics and music. I really enjoy hearing the round, warm tones that can be generated only on the electric guitar using vacuum-tube amplifiers.

Some of my all-time favorites on the organ are Bach's "Gigue", Louis Viernes "Finale from the VI Symphonie" (that piece is so hard!!), and Messiaen's "Gift of Wisdom".

Some of everyone's all-time favorites on the piano are Vince Guaraldi's theme from Snoopy "Linus and Lucy", Christmas Time Is Here, and Red Baron. I also aquired the real version of "Christmas Time is Here" - it is so awesome to play those notes. I still play "Liebstraum" by Franz Liszt and stuff by Rachmaninoff (thumbs up!) as well. I also play and enjoy a lot of Maranatha songs at the youth group, but I mostly make up my own stuff rooted in jazz and early DeBussy-like motifs.

This is some of my own music.
• Piano score: "Mere Solitude" written in November 2000 (size 2.1Mb, Adobe Acrobat needed). The song is sort of unflashy (F lydian), but still musically colorful. It is in 8/8 time, but the figures are grouped for a while in two's, but slip to three's, throwing the rhythm slightly off. It has a reprise between transitions in 15/8, with the end chord being repeated in the same rhythmic figure in 15/8 to finish the song off.
• MereSolitude.mp3 Music for above score in .mp3 format, 3.27Mb, ~3.5 minutes long.
• WurlitzerAndGuitar.mp3, a colorful, dream-like song in a waltz-like meter using a vintage Wurlitzer electric piano (model 214), a telecaster electric guitar (clean), and a bass guitar (clean). All instruments played by me through a 4-track tape recorder. 3.48Mb, ~3.5 minutes long.
• Sample piano score, untitled as of yet: piano1.gif. It's sort of a melancholy, subtly colorful song written in E-minor, but ending triumphantly in a robust B-major chord, spanning the entire keyboard. Your right hand will get a workout from the repeated figure in 6/8 time.
• Sample organ score, " Clear Night sky": A warm, full trumpet fills the starry night sky, singing an angular melody in an irregular meter against colorful hues on the horizon.