Making Music

Originally posted October 2, 2007
(I'm moving posts from my old blog)

Christmas of 1975 is one that I’ll remember forever.

My family was not well off, but my parents scraped together the money to get me a gift I absolutely loved. It was an “Air Organ.” An Air Organ is kind of across between a harmonica and a cathedral pipe-organ. It has a little fan in it that blows across reeds that drop into the air flow when you press the keys. The sound it made was something like that which a cow makes, but melodic. I loved it.

And, in no small part because I knew that my parents had stretched the budget beyond what they should have, I spent hours, days, weeks, months in front of that thing, learning to play, learning to make music.

Fast forward to the mid 1980’s. My hair was big and my collars were narrow. I was in a “band.” It was called “Structure and Method.” (Alek and Paul -- the other members of the band -- got the name off the back of their algebra book.) We so wanted to be Depeche Mode. And we weren’t. But we did have fun, and we did write some cool songs. Around this time I also worked with some friends and wrote some novelty songs and parody songs. (One that got some airplay nationwide was “Squirrels,” a parody of the Beastie Boys’ song “Girls.”)

In the 90’s I thought I’d be the next Alan Parsons Project, though until the second Austin Powers movie, nobody knew who the Alan Parsons Project was. Not that that mattered to me. I recorded an album of "adult contemporary" music that ranged from ballad to orchestral, with a heavy dose of synth pop.

Throughout my musical career, if you can call it that, I’ve maintained a sense of the dramatic, and in the mid 00’s, Paul, my partner in life and in movie production, convinced me that I had what it took to write the score for a feature film. Well, I really didn't have much choice; either I wrote it, or it wouldn't have any music at all, since we couldn't hire anyone to write it. So, I cranked out the score for Pandemonium. And it wasn't bad. You can judge for yourself, soon enough, when I post the soundtrack on my music pages here, or you can check out the movie on YouTube or at the Internet Archive (see the "Other" page for details). Then I got involved with the folks who produce the fan series Star Trek: Odyssey, and have created some stuff that folks really seem to like.

It pleases me no end, and I know that if they were still here, my parents would be very proud.

At least I hope so.