speakeasy(X)

Ok, so I tricked you. No Beyoncé here, no Avril, not even a single Kanye West jam. Terribly sorry, but how else was I going to get you to this page?

These are, in fact, my tunes. They’re not quite the production value of the above mentioned artists, but I tend to think they’re not that damned bad, truth be told. Mostly because I thoroughly enjoy making the music and I believe that comes through.

Everything I record I write it all, play it all and record it on this here HP laptop I own. It takes some time and effort, but the result is something I’m proud of. Feel free to download them, burn them, throw them onto your iPod and hand them out to your friends. I’ll shut up now and get to the music.

» Crisis of Faith (Part One)
» Crisis of Faith (Part Two)
» Essence of Time
» Jeff Beck Called
» LeRoy Hutchinson (spoken word)
» When She is Here

(Here’s a tip: to download these songs to your computer, RIGHT-click on the links, rather than left-clicking. When you right-click, select “Save target as…” or “Save link as…,” depending on your browser)

A Little History

‘Crisis of Faith, parts I & II’ arose from just that: a crisis of faith. I’ve been a Christian all my life, and a troubled one at that. The last few years of my life have been spent searching for God in various ways, mostly being led around because I was too afraid of making a wrong decision to think for myself in terms of the bigger picture. While I have never been terribly judgmental, I have been, more than once, very orthodox and at times fundamentalist. Well, those days are over. I am still a Christian, but a much more liberal one. These two songs came from the barrage of emotions that I felt some months back while trying to cope with my own decision to walk away from fundamentalism and orthodoxy and look for my own sort of path.

‘Jeff Beck Called’ is a simple song that arose after listening to Beck one night. I enjoy some of his electronic experiments, but I mostly enjoy when he gets raw with his playing and just goes at it. This was a little homage to that side of him. There creeped in a good bit of ZZ Top there as well. Not sure how that got in there. It works, though.

‘Essence of Time’ was just about that: time, and how it just seems to flow, always, away from you.

There’s a little useless history for you.

The Madness Method

All the guitars are played on a 1989 Fender Stratocaster with a 1972 reissue neck with a more rounded radius. I like those necks better than the flat ones. I can really tear into the bends with the rounded radius, and they have more of that classic strat ‘jangle’ as well. The amp is a Line6 Spider II 30 watt. Small amp, nice, big sound. It took me forever to admit that solid-state had reached a point it could be trusted to be almost as warm as tubes, but the Spider has sold me. The bass on the newer tunes is an inexpensive but nice Austin I picked up in Detroit.

Recorded on an HPdv9000, as well as an IBM Thinkpad, and some of the older tunes on a Gateway workstation. Maybe 800mgz on that old Gateway. I fought some serious software latency in those days. I use Adobe Audition sometimes, other times I use an old (but paid for) copy of Cool Edit Pro. That software became Audition once Adobe bought Syntrillium. I like the old Cool Edit at times because some of the tools are laid out a bit simpler. I could go with Pro Tools, but for my small needs, I find Audition works just fine with far less clutter.

So there you have it. Are you still in here?