A theme in honor of the Beatnik character portrayed by Bob Denver before he found fame as Gilligan on Gilligan’s Island.

When I was first setting up my new studio, I didn’t have the electronics in yet, but was still enjoying just sitting there at the keyboard and playing again for the first time in a long time. One session, I came up with this melody and liked it enough to get my laptop and just record it over the air with piano and voice. Liked that enough to add a couple other instruments and vocal harmonies. A bit rough still, but here it is.

I wrote this in the 1980s to satirize the vacant minds of those who spent all day staring at MTV music videos when the channel first premiered. I’m rather pleased with the lyrics on this one.

I wrote this one somewhere in 2005-2010 when we were living up in Salem, Oregon. It was a brand new apartment complex right next to farmland and I’d never lived out of state before. Then, wonderfully, I found my Muse waking up for the first time in years and making music far more complex than I had previous produced.

Just a pleasant little piano piece I tooled together around 1999.

I wrote and recorded this melody 2 or 3 years ago when I was first getting back to my music after almost a decade of self-imposed exile from composing.  Life had kind of imploded and it took me that long to find my Muse.

Anyway, this one isn’t polished at all and has no lyrics, though it could use some.  Just me and the piano, live with no processing, recorded direct to my laptop microphone from the keyboard’s speakers with me carrying the melody, open air in the garage.

Still, it is a haunting tune and I think one of my best, or at least one of my most mature pieces.

Also – the music cuts off at the end so it is hard to hear, but the last key is in a major chord, so the entire song ends, literally, on a positive note, which I thought was rather nice.

Composed in the 1970s, recorded in the 1980s. This is, so far, the only religious song I’ve ever written, though I have composed several of a spiritual nature. One of my earliest compositions, I wrote this back around 1970 when my parents had taken a path toward a more active Christian belief. It was an age where young folks everywhere were questioning traditional values, and I found myself wanting to simultaneously embrace the faith of my parents while still incorporating my own evolving spirituality. The result is this song designed to be both obscure enough to avoid retracing tired old ground and also the cast a slight sci-fi tone to the journey of an unnamed seeker of Truth, as I was heavily into epic science fiction at the time. Perhaps you can find your own path reflected here.

“Almost Home” is a synthesizer song I wrote in the way back on my CZ 101 – the first consumer digital synth on the market.  Recorded it on my TEAC 3340SX reel to reel tape machine.  I particularly like its organic feel and made good use of the bend wheel – a marvelous invention!  Recently, I made a stereo mix of this song I from the original elements that I renamed “Bug In Your Ear” because the high-pitched buzzy sound is only on one channel of the stereo.

A musical composition of mine from 2022, followed by my original 1969 Composer’s Sketchbook version. Read the story behind the music below the videos…

The 2022 version is a bit different for me with some complex instrumental harmonies, almost discordant, and a featured saxophone solo (courtesy of my new Yamaha keyboard which provides the most organic sax I’ve ever heard).

Patrons get a free download of this one in a special post!

Here’s some background on how and why this song was produced:

As short as this is, it’s pretty intriguing with some odd harmonies that are almost discordant, similar to some of the soundtrack instrumentals in the movies Meet Joe Black and The Road To Perdition.

For some time, I’ve wanted to experiment with those kinds of sounds, but never had the proper keyboard for it.  Thanks to an unexpected cash gift from my daughter at Christmas 2022, I was finally able to buy the one I’ve had my eye on and this is the result.

Another interesting element of this instrumental is that is it from a tune I recorded on cassette more than half a century ago.  Late last year, I went through all my old tapes where I had recorded more than 500 tunes since the late 1960s.  I’ve put them all up on my YouTube channel but am planning on rerecording the best of them with today’s technology, like this one.  And in the process, I’m adding in some of the compositional sophistication I’ve picked up over the past fifty years.  For example, this song had no backing harmonies – it was just the melody line played by the piano.  It’s a good line, but when I heard it, I knew I’d like to produce it more like it sounded in my head way back when, and this is the result.

For Patrons, I’m also including a download of the original track as well so you can compare the 1969 quick sketch of a tune to the new version from 2022.

Melanie

May the Muse be with you!

This may be the very first tape I recorded of my music, back in high school days. No on has heard it for 50 years, including me! I just discovered it last week in an old box and transferred it to digital. This is side A. I’ll post side B later. Enjoy the first 30 minutes of what turned into five decades of recorded original music.