Category Archives: Musical Compositions

Composing music has always been my most passionate endeavor. Here you’ll find (eventually) hundreds of songs, instrumentals, demos, and riffs that I’ve written and recorded over the decades – many under my performance name of Tarnished Karma

Drizzle

A nice little piano and drums instrumental piece. It has a laid-back band feel – sort of like what you might play after closing time when everyone else but the bartender has been booted out. Course, its just me on the synth doing mult-track, and I never had time to join a band, but anyway, that doesn’t mean I can’t get into the same groove from time to time.

E. J.

First recording of a song in progress from about ten years ago. Eventually it became the concept for a multi-media graphic novel about the search for identity. Never got around to developing it, though. However, now that I’m retired, I might just revisit the project…

Voice In The Wind

Here’s an ethereal piece from 1980. We had rented a synthesizer for the horror film I was directing (The Strangeness, available on Amazon) and I took advantage of the opportunity to knock out a few of my own compositions while we had it. Turns out, this was the exact same synthesizer that had been rented to Star Trek The Motion Picture – the first movie – and they had used it to make that big bass twang whenever we saw V’ger. Kind of like tickling history with your fingers. I used the bend wheel to get some stretchy surreal effects as you can hear for yourself.

Maynard G. Krebbs

An homage to the character played by Bob Denver (Gilligan) on his firs TV series in which he had the role of a quirky beatnik who was the best friend to the main character (whose name was the title of the series), Dobie Gillis. Warren Beatty also had a recurring role as the handsome college man.

The Family Jail

I had a very happy childhood, but I had so many friends who couldn’t wait to move out. I wrote this song about that and with the added message that if a young person is having suicidal thoughts because they feel trapped, break free instead – it’s better than letting the oppressive family win. Pretty naive, I suppose, but that was me in my thirties – sure of my points of view and preachy as well, which is more or less what being thirty-something is all about. It’s how you make thousands of snap decisions every day to build your own family, which in turn can make the kids feel oppressed, so they have to leave to grow up to be their own person in their thirties and then do it all over again to their own kids. That’s how the species survives. You ever stop to think just how many of your attitudes are biologically driven by your age, rather than by personal growth? I suppose you do, if you’re my age…