New Album Alert — “No Words” released Jan 15
Now streaming! My new instrumental experimental rock album “No Words” is available on the following services and many more worldwide.
YouTube Music | Apple Music | Spotify | Tidal | iHeart Radio
This album is a moody thing. In musician terms, most of the songs are in a minor key. I find it works well on a moonlight drive or when making homemade chili on a cold day.
While I can play a certain amount of guitars acoustic, bass, and electric, I decided to produce this entire album using MIDI instruments since my keyboard skills are stronger. Although the instruments themselves are samples there are no loops or pre-recorded riffs except for the small amount of percussion on the song “Slow Monday.” Every other note including drums were played on my trusty keyboard.
When I use digital instruments I strive to play them in a manner which can be reproduced by someone holding an actual guitar or sitting in front of a live drum kit. It’s a habit I learned from my musical mentor Henry Hedberg (RIP) as a high-schooler in Anchorage, Alaska playing with drum machines and MIDI software back in the mid-1980s. I can’t mention him without also mentioning Kirke Muse (also RIP), who created an Independent Music Study course for me and for which I wrote a truly awful synth-pop track that I hope I remembered to delete from the Atari computer it was recorded with back then.
Why a rock album? The songs on this album were started between 2008–2011 when I was testing various guitar sets I had access to then ended up ignoring for years until I focused on finishing them during the fall of 2023. Three of my original rock tracks were used in the Discovery Channel series “Heartland Thunder” (samples included in my current composer showreel) and the cuts on this album started as basic noodling to determine what I could do with the tech available to me at the time.
I toyed with adding lyrics to each piece but decided the instrumental work wouldn’t fit with what I have to say, so NO WORDS this time. (And we have a title!) Thanks if you have a chance to listen, and constructive feedback would be appreciated.
Instruments used: Independence Free Yellow Tools bass, guitars, drums, percussion | Lemonstrum 2 guitar | Upright string bass (plucked) samples | EastWest Symphonic Orchestra strings, percussion, brass, Steinway piano | Takim percussion | Various synthesizers | Sampled accordion | Tabla samples | SuperRiffGuitar | StratAVarious | TurnTablistPro (scratching on “In the Cage”) | SampleTank 2 | Best Service Engine’s Djembe | Native Instruments Guitar FX
Individual instrument samples assigned to MIDI keys with the Shortcircuit VST by Vember Audio
Recorded & mastered with Reaper DAW in a virtual Windows XP system
