Although the previous year wasn't a total disaster (with a well-received Greater Westfield Choral concert and the completion of my Requiem in D Minor), it wasn't exactly a banner year either. So I was hoping for a good start to 2023. But last night Karen and I felt horrible, with fever, shakes and serious muscle aches and headaches. Neither of us slept very well. This morning we tested ourselves for COVID. We both have it, after having dodged the virus for two years.

I feel quite a bit better today, though. I still have a scratchy throat and a headache, which I can deal with. But since it's COVID, we're basically quarantined for a week. Just when we hoped we were pulling out of the pandemic, we got a stark reminder that the earth operates on its own timeline. We had gotten together with my sisters at a Holyoke restaurant last Thursday. The place was absolutely packed, with not an empty seat. I'm sure that's where we got infected. Wearing a mask in there would have been futile, since you can't eat with one on.

So we're hoping that what we contracted (most likely the new XBB variant) will burn itself out by the end of the week. If not, that will get our new Westfield Choral season off to a rough start. We can't be the only people getting sick. I hope that doesn't keep potential members out of the group. If the virus scares off potential members, that would mean that the premiere of my Mass will once again have to be put on hold.

At least the virus will give me an excuse to refocus on composing. I'm currently juggling four pieces, one of them a symphony. The new version of MuseScore, the notation program I use, has phenomenal new sounds, replicating a fairly convincing orchestra. So that helps give me a better idea of what my arrangements would really sound like, with some expression rather than a mechanical click-track. At this point, that's the only method available to me for hearing what I write. So that's how I'll be amusing myself between coughs. I hope you all have a more healthy and productive New Year.

February 9, 2023

The rehearsals with GWCA have been going well. It's strange that I don't realize how different my music is. It all sounds perfectly normal to me. And yet, others seem to struggle with both hearing and performing it. Marc Winer, GWCA's music director, has been repeating to the chorus members, "This isn't going to go where you think it's going to go." With some of the more unusual sections, he's been emphasizing how much he likes them. So that's been encouraging, and has eased the fears of some singers. I still hear occasional complaints of, "Why do I have to jump down a fourth?", or, "Why are we singing in consecutive fifths?"" My only answer is, "Because that's what I hear." Fortunately, I've written many short pieces that the chorus has performed, so they do somewhat trust that I know what I'm doing.

One of my favorite composer quotes is by Charles Ives, said to a listener at a concert of one of his pieces: "Sit there and take your dissonance like a man!" While I've come a long way over the past few years in my understanding of the theory behind harmony and chord progressions (much of that thanks to the revelatory YouTube channel Music Matters), I still find myself preferring an element of "crunch" in my music. I keep listening to the ethereal and mezmerizing compositions of Lili Boulanger, wondering how she managed to make dissonance sound so melodious. I'm also fond of unexpected key changes and rhythmic shifts.

But at the same time, I understand the human tendency toward harmony. It takes a lot of mental work to listen to a piece that's exceedingly dissonant, or one that doesn't have a perceivable melody line. Many of those compositions can come across as intellectually fascinating but emotionally empty. I just learned of the passing of Burt Bacharach, the quintessential pop songwriter of the 1960s. I found it interesting that he studied under Darius Milhaud, one of the great 20th century classical composers. Bacharach adopted one of Milhaud's principles: never be afraid of writing something that you can whistle. And in all of my pieces I strive to give the listener some sort of earworm, a melody that gets stuck in your head.

But I think that's most effective when it's juxtaposed with dissonance. Melody seems much sweeter when it emerges from a fog of melodic uncertainty, as if you're lost in a dark forest and gradually escape into a sunlit pasture. To quote Steve Jobs (in an entirely different context), "It's like giving someone in hell a glass of ice water." And it can also work in reverse, fleeing from the comfort of melody into the uncomfortable uncertainty of dissonance. But each of those choices is made in the service of the overarching purpose of the piece. The question I continually ask myself when I'm writing is, "How do I want the listener to feel?"

This is why I'm so comfortable writing programmatic music (like the Mount Tom Suite); the subject matter is extremely clear, and that makes it easy for me to set it to music. For the first symphony that I'm working on, I'm taking a different approach. I have no storyline to convey. In much the same way as an abstract painter adds color to a canvas, I'm using the symphony as a journey without a planned destination. I'm not sure where it's going to take me. I've established the main themes and I'm letting them evolve organically, flowing through different moods without really knowing when it will end. I'm not sure where eventually this will take me, but I'm enjoying the journey. And perhaps the listeners will as well. I work much faster when I know the end point. The choral director at Westfield State University asked me for a choral piece based on the works of Walt Whitman. I was able to deliver that in two days. But the symphony has been in development for nearly a year and only now am I approaching the end of the first movement ... or not. That's a problem with having a composition so open-ended. But hopefully I'll know when I reach that point. I can play it for someone and when they get up and walk out, that will be the end.

March 24, 2023

I'm happy to report that the GWCA concert went really well. It was well-attended and the group received many compliments. My primary concern was for the orchestra, and whether I had written their parts correctly.

The big test of this was during our dress rehearsal the day before the concert. Marc rehearsed first with just the orchestra. He ran through the entirety of the Kyrie. What I found interesting was that most members of the orchestra didn't seem to understand what they were playing. They were hitting the notes, but seemed confused as to why they were playing them.

Often in a classical Mass, there would be a basso continuo consisting of a bass and perhaps a harpsichord. They usually would play the same line that the bassists in the chorus would be singing. And often, the violins would play the vocal line of the sopranos. But my composition did neither of those common things. Each instrument of the orchestra was playing a different melodic line to complement what the vocalists were singing. So I suspect that the instrumentalists felt a bit detached. It didn't fit the classical construct they were used to, and they couldn't understand where the piece was going.

When the chorus arrived and Marc began the rehearsal again, there was a distinct change in the orchestra, a sort of collective "Aha!" moment when they discovered how it all fit together. From that moment on, the instrumentalists really came to life, playing with much greater expression and forming the foundation on which the singers would rely. It was a really exciting moment to experience.

It was also a relief for me to discover that I wasn't completely musically stupid. I was worried that I had relied too heavily on technology to compose, and that what I had written was not humanly playable. The French horn in particular I had pushed to its upper limits. But the musicians didn't seem to have any problem with that, and the result sounded just as I had envisioned it.

After the concert was over, the concert mistress approached me and said she really enjoyed playing the piece, and wondered if I would like her copies of the score so that I could examine her notations. That was really thoughtful of her and I took her up on that. Something I learned was to break up multimeasure rests into manageable chunks. For instance, instead of showing a single 47 measure rest, have four groups of ten measure rests followed by a seven measure rest. That makes it much easier for them to figure out where they are in the score, and gives them room to notate entrances. Previously, I hadn't realized that the concert mistress was in charge of notatiing how all the string players would be bowing their instruments. (It looks better when the sections all execute up or down bow movements at the same time.) So she had all of those notated in her scores as well, which helps me understand string player technique. There was also the matter of cuing, which was foreign to me. When instrumentalists have long rests, they can get lost in a piece and struggle to know when they're supposed to come back in. So instrumental parts often have cues written in them, helpful hints that show the musical line of a different instrument that comes in right before they do. Those notes are written in a much smaller font. I did some research and found that I could do that with Musescore, the notation software I was using, but I had to jump through a few hoops. The main problem was that any cues I wrote on an instrumental part would then appear in the conductor's score, causing visual cacophony. My workaround was to make a duplicate of the conductor's score specifically for working with parts. Then the conductor's score stayed pristine and I could mark up the parts as much as I needed to. Musescore had a major update shortly before the concert. The new sound sets that came with it were a revelation, giving me a much more accurate impression of what my pieces would sound like when played by musicians (instead of a computer). That in turn set me on a path to completely revise all of my orchestral scores to reflect the new knowledge I had.

So overall, the concert was a tremendous learning experience. And I'm glad my learning didn't happen at the audience's expense; they all seemed to have a really good time. So a big thank you to Marc Winer for trusting the music, to all the singers who worked so hard to bring it to life and to all the musicians who skillfully added so much color to the score. I can't wait for the next opportunity to learn!

June 1, 2023

I first discovered cheese-on-a-stick when I was living in Mississippi. In the Oxford Mall, across the street from Ole Miss, was a Corn Dog 7 concession. I had never heard of them before. In the south, they were everywhere, like Dunkin' Donuts in the northeast. As you might expect, they primarily served corn dogs, which I didn't really care for. But they also had cheese-on-a-stick, with which I was unfamiliar. So I tried one. And then another. And then the concession became a regular stop for me. The treat wasn't particularly healthy, and there wasn't much too it. But the combination was heaven! It was nothing more than a corn dog without the dog. Instead, in the middle of a thick blanket of deep-fried corn bread was melted cheese.

After I left Mississippi, I never again saw a Corn Dog 7. The chain downsized to just two locations, one in Louisiana and one remaining in Mississippi. So I forgot about cheese-on-a-stick until the 1990s when I visited Cedar Point, the giant Ohio amusement park. I noticed a couple of cheese-on-a-stick concessions in the park, and once again I was hooked. On our visit to the Point this year, though, the park didn't have any c-o-a-St, so I didn't get my fix. Outside of those two Corn Dog 7 locations, I didn't know anywhere else to get it. So I took matters into my own hands.

Years ago I tried making my own coaSt. I mixed up the corn meal batter, skewered a long rectangle of American cheese, dipped it in the batter ... and it all slid off. So I tried holding the coaSt sideways to keep the batter on. Then I lowered it into the fryolator ... and all the batter slid off. The cheese melted and coated the sides of the fryolator. It was a big mess. (I later discovered that the batter needed to be kept chilled in order to adhere to the cheese.)

Several years after that, and without a fryolator, I found a mini grill. It was like a waffle press, but it had little indentations in it that looked like corn dogs. It came with little skewers. The idea was you place a tiny skewered hot dog (or cheese slice) in the grill, pour in corn meal batter, close the lid and presto! you'd have a half-dozen miniature coaSts. So I tried it out and it sort of worked. Most of the cheese leaked all over the press. The pieces that held together tasted okay. But it was more trouble than it was worth.

I've been buying small bags of corn meal to add to pancake batter when I make myself pancakes once a month or so. I happened to look at the back of the package a few days ago. There were a few recipes for making corn bread. Then out of the blue, I had a thought: what if I were to add cheese to the mix? So I got a pound of American cheese slices. I mixed up the corn bread batter and poured half of it into the baking pan. Then I layered on about 3/4 of the American cheese slices, poured on some more batter, layered more cheese and then the remaining batter. After 20 minutes in the oven, I had an 8"x8" cheese-on-a-stick ... in a pan. I sliced it into 10 squares and tried one.

That was it! Arguably, it was healthier since it wasn't deep fried. So my guilt was slightly lessened. But it tasted exactly the way I remembered it. And as a bonus, it was simple to make. So if you'd like to try this delicacy for yourself, you can find the recipe here.

June 2, 2023

This summer marks the 30th anniversary of my final pop album, Waves. It was also the final year of my dream job as watchman at Mountain Park, where for eight hours a day I basically got paid to work on my music. At the time, I wasn't even sure that I was going to make another album. I had just broken up with the Dots and I had completed what I thought would be my last recording, Time Machine. But although I felt that album had some of my strongest songs, I was really unhappy with the production aspects. I didn't want to rely on others to produce my recordings (and couldn't afford it even if I did want to), yet I couldn't quite figure out how to produce the sounds I wanted with the primitive equipment I owned.

But a few things occurred in the early 1990s. One was that I had purchased a Tascam Portastudio 5, which for the first time gave me the ability to multitrack up to ten layers of sound. I immediately began experimenting with it, but it took me a few years to get the hang of properly "bouncing" tracks: combining three separate tracks into a new single track, then repeating the process for the remaining tracks until the only track left (usually the first) was dedicated to vocals. Using that technique I could create a false sense of stereo by panning tracks left or right. But essentially, everything was in mono similar to how the Beatles recorded their mid-1960s albums.

Another thing was that my brief adventure with the Dots made me a much better keyboard musician. Though I still read music fairly slowly, I could quickly pick up chord patterns and progressions and play them smoothly. By that point I was also intimately familiar with my cheap old Yamaha PSR keyboard and knew which sounds were convincingly realistic (and it certainly wasn't the piano sound). And because I had been performing all over the Pioneer Valley with my guitar, I had become really proficient on that instrument as well. My sense of rhythm still left something to be desired (which shows on Time Machine), but overall I was a more confident performer.

To learn how to use the Tascam unit, I created increasingly complex recordings. The first album I attempted with it was Feel Like Fire, and I kept it technically really simple with very few instruments and simple vocals. I had an aversion to noise reduction, so the album ended up with a lot of tape hiss. I next re-recorded Family Album which originally was recorded directly to a 2-track tape recorder, and I experimented with layering in a few more instruments.

But my big lesson in production came in 1992 when I undertook a re-recording of my first album, Eye of the Storm, which, like Family Album, originally had been a direct-to-2-track recording and really sucked. I could hear in my head all the production that I wanted on the album but intially hadn't a clue how to achieve it. So that's when I turned to my friend and Dot-mate Scott Haworth and enlisted his assistance. Eye of the Storm was supposed to be a rock album in the style of Genesis. But I couldn't get that without a solid rhythm section. So Scott brought his drum kit to Mountain Park and I set up my Tascam unit inside the empty merry-go-round pavilion, with his drum set at one end of the building and my microphones at the other. We made a few test recordings so that I could get a good balance between his intricate drumming style and the cavernous echo of the building. And then we recorded his drum part for the entire album in pretty much one take. He was listening through headphones to a click-track I had created over a simple guitar/vocal performance of each song. He was a phenomenal musician and nailed each track. After that I went home and used my keyboard to record the bass parts on track 2 and the rhythm guitar to track 1. Then I bounced that rhythm section to track 4. That gave me two tracks to use for layering atmospheric orchestration like horns and strings, which would get bounced to track 3. Track 2 was reserved for lead instruments, and track 1 for the final vocals. On the tracks where Scott sang backing vocals, he came up to the park and we sang together into one microphone. When all the recording was completed, I took my Tascam to Joe Podlesny's digital mastering studio in Northfield and connected it up to his system where a digital master could be made. Even though I was still distributing recordings on cassette tapes back then, at least I had a clean copy. I was really happy with how the production and engineering turned out, and I wanted to take it one step further. But I needed material. After Time Machine, I was in a slump. I felt I had nothing left to say, either musically or lyrically.

Around that time I was also self-publishing a lot of poetry, volumes that hardly anyone knew existed. I really liked some of them, and realized they were almost song lyrics. But they didn't have a verse nor a chorus nor a bridge. The style was too free-form for lyrics. So I started off with about twenty that I thought were most promising and I began to rework them into song form. I tried to choose poems that seemed to tie together thematically. In the end, I settled on seven poems that seemed to work well. Those became the basis for I Keep Waiting, The Force Within Myself, Still I Walk, Tension, Drifting and Search for the Source. But those seven would barely make an EP, let alone a whole album. There were two songs I had been performing during that period which hadn't been recorded: I Will Not Fight and Riding on the Bus. Those always got a good audience response, so I decided to include them even though they didn't really fit the album's theme. That gave me nine songs. It had been a long time since I had come up with a really upbeat tune, so I wrote Bright Side of the Street. Status Quo emerged out of my frustration with how phony show business was. The final two songs on the album were derived from movies, something I hadn't done before. More Than the Stars was inspired by Dances With Wolves. The Light that Burns the Brightest was inspired by the final battle in Blade Runner, when Rutger Hauer and Harrison Ford are on a roof in a rainstorm. I didn't like the movie, but that one scene really resonated with me, especially as the world grappled with the AIDS epidemic. With that I had an unlucky collection of 13 songs and I was ready to record.

In my view, the greatest works of art (especially in poetry) are allegorical. In other words, the works can be viewed one way and are perfectly valid. But then they can be viewed a different way and are equally valid. The challenge for the artist is to create a work with that kind of duality. That was what I wanted to achieve with the songs on Waves. Each song on the surface would mean one thing, but had resonance beyond that surface meaning. For example, I Keep Waiting can be viewed on the surface as a trapeze artist nervous about jumping off the platform, worried that one slip will mean death. But it can also be viewed as the story of someone attempting something completely new (like a change of career) and terrified of failure. Or it could be viewed as a cautionary tale of procrastination. On the surface, it has a pretty obvious meaning. But if a listener wants to dig deeper, there are other meanings woven into it. I wanted to make that happen on every song.

I knew I didn't want to perform everything myself again, as I had done on Time Machine. My experience working with Scott on Eye of the Storm gave me a new perspective. I didn't dictate anything to Scott on that recording. I let him decide how he wanted to perform. So I approached Waves in the same way. I first asked Scott whether he'd be game to do it. We'd have very little time, because I'd be leaving Mountain Park in a few months. But he was really enthusiastic about the project. I also asked Gideon Freudmann if he'd be willing to play on a few tracks, and he was up for it. I also needed one other performer to get the sound I wanted.

One of my favorite bands was (and still is) The Fixx. They had managed to create songs that were the equivalent of Stanley Kubrick films: they painted lush soundscapes containing oblique lyrics that made me feel their ideas rather than rationalize them and left me with more questions than answers. So as an homage to the band, I wanted to evoke the production style from their early albums produced by Rupert Hine. Jamie West-Oram's guitar work fascinated me, swirling and grinding one minute and then ringing out like a bell the next. And Rupert Greenall's keyboard work was really evocative. I certainly couldn't play guitar like West-Oram ... but I knew someone who could. David Gowler, the guitarist from the Dots, had a very similar style. So I asked him if he'd be willing to play on the album and he agreed.

Since I wasn't about to dictate what any of them played but I had a specific style in mind, I made each of them a cassette called "The Fixx Corollary". I chose a Fixx song that matched the style I imagined for each of the songs from Waves. I also provided them a recording of me singing all of the Waves tracks with just my guitar and a click track. I gave them about a month to absorb all that. Then I got together with Scott at Mountain Park. This time, instead of recording his drums directly onto the Tascam, I had a multichannel mixer and was able to position about a half a dozen different microphones at different locations. I sent all that into my 2-track tape deck and recorded it in true stereo. As always, Scott nailed all the songs. The only additional recording was for the thunderous beginning of The Force Within Myself which was done with two toms closely mic'd under the merry-go-round building and run through a used Alesis MIDIverb digital effects unit that I had acquired.

I transferred Scott's drum tracks down onto track 4 on the Tascam, along with me once again playing bass lines on my keyboard. I hated to lose the spectacular stereo sound, but I had no other way of layering all the other tracks that were required. I had carefully mapped out each song on a chart, figuring out which instruments needed to be recorded in what order and on which track so that I could fit in everything. Then I began layering in all the synth sounds I needed. I wanted that '80s crunchy analog synth sound for Force Within Myself, so I borrowed a friend's keyboard with that capability. In many cases, my guitar tracks were simply replaced by synths, going for lusher soundscapes with undefinable rhythms. Within a few weeks, I had finished all of the background instruments and I was ready to record the lead parts.

Dave would be playing on Force Within Myself, Still I Walk and Tension. He arrived at the little room under the merry-go-round and set up his amp. I had built a headphone splitter so that up to four people could listen to the Tascam at the same time. So Dave and I were both able to plug into it. I started playing Force Within Myself, and Dave was completely lost. He stopped me and said, "This isn't the recording you gave me." I told him that indeed it wasn't. This was how the song actually was going to sound. I asked if he listened to the corollary tape I had given him. He told me he didn't, preferring not to be influenced by someone else's performance. So here was an unexpected wrinkle in my plan. I had thought I was being helpful, giving them a stylistic guide. But in reality it was treated as more of a hindrance to their creativity. Since I didn't want to dictate anything to Dave, I just let him listen to the piece over and over. When he was comfortable with it, we began recording a take. He didn't like it, so we recorded another. And another. And another. I thought I was going to wear out the tape. His takes weren't anything like what I had envisioned, but I was determined to let him contribute in his own way. He was finally satisfied with that song, so we moved on to Still I Walk. Once again he had to listen to it several times. "I'm going to have to change everything I was going to do", he said. I told him that was fine. In the end, it took the entire day to record those three tracks. By the time we got to Tension, he was comfortable with the process and knew what to expect. I thought he gave his strongest performance on that piece. His work perfectly complemented the song.

Gideon stopped by a few days later to record his tracks: I Keep Waiting, Still I Walk, Tension, Drifting and Search for the Source. As with Dave, he at first was taken aback by how different the recording sounded. And like Dave, he said he was going to have to change what he had rehearsed. I told him that was fine, and I knew whatever he chose to do would work fine. And also like Dave, by the time we got to the last few songs, he was comfortable with the process. He had some suggestions on several of the songs. On Tension I was originally going to have him play pizzicato during the song's bridge. But he suggested bowing to keep a more mellow feel. And he was right. For Drifting, he asked that I keep his ending cello solo going right up to the beginning of Search for the Source, and that worked really well. I liked the low growling bass sound he created for that piece, which helped ground it. He asked if I also wanted him to play on Riding on the Bus. So we recorded him on that too, and he really helped that song come alive.

When all those instrumentals were done, I layered on my vocals. So that I wouldn't get interrupted at the park and to get more audio control, I recorded all of those at home in my bedroom. As before, when Scott had backing vocals I had him come over and sing them along with me. I ran all the vocals through the Alesis unit. That wasn't the best way to record a song, because the reverb was then a permanent part of the recording and couldn't be changed. But that was my only option for adding effects back then.

In August of 1993, I took my Tascam up to Joe Podlesny's studio and mastered the album. I was pretty happy with it. I had a sort of instrumental crisis on a few tracks. I was never completely happy with I Keep Waiting. I purposely kept the track sparse because of the audio barrage in the two opening tracks. I wanted some contrast. But a bit of oboe in that piece would have helped it soar a bit more. I had included a subtle homage to another New Wave band, Squeeze, by having my vocals in that song doubled in octaves. More than the Stars felt a bit flat as well. And The Light that Burns the Brightest (which I still think is one of the best songs on the album) had a pretty uninispired arrangement. It was the last piece I completed and I think I had simply burned out by that point.

Gideon's wife Gloria designed the original cassette cover based upon suggestions I gave her. My suggestions were a mistake, and I wish I had let her come up with her own design. The original cover was supposed to be an homage to the cover of the Burning Sensations EP Belly of the Whale, which had a neon light cutting across it. Since I was trying to replicate the sound of the New Wave movement, to me neon was a visual representation of that era. But I don't think my concept worked. It didn't give a sense of what the album was about. So I eventually remade the cover myself to reflect the title of the album. Thematically, my idea had been to have songs about "things that come in waves", like happiness, depression, anxiety. But that didn't quite turn out either, especially with the two songs in the middle that had nothing to do with the rest of the album, stylistically or lyrically.

Dave was really concerned about how the album would turn out. So when it was done, I invited him over to my house to hear it. At the time I had big stereo speakers in my small room, which helped punch the bass. The album was just under an hour long. During most tracks, a suprised smile would cross his face and he'd exclaim, "That's wild!" He really liked the album, and that was a relief. I gave copies to Scott and Gideon, who also liked it. The public's reaction was much more muted however. Radio stations didn't seem interested in playing it, perhaps because by then New Wave had passed and alternative rock was the new kid on the block. But I was generally satisfied with it, and considered it a fitting swan song.

I've often wondered what those old recordings would have sounded like had I created them within the last five years. The technology at my disposal is now so limitless, I can manifest anything that I can dream up. I had considered bringing all the original tracks into my computer, adding additional instrumental tracks and then releasing a special "30th Anniversary Edition". But then I realize that the problem with tracks like More than the Stars wasn't with the production; it was a lack of focus and creativity. I'm still amazed at what I was able to achieve with the limited technology I had. I think it helped that for once I allowed the creative input from other musicians. Thirty years later, I still enjoy listening to the result of all that work. I don't think I could write better songs, and I'm content with that part of my life being complete.

There were some local artists (including Joe Podlesny) who were impressed with what I'd been able to create. One of them was Tom Neilson, a popular folk singer who labeled himself "The Bard Insurgent". After Waves was released, he asked if I could record his next album, Swords into Plowshares. He wanted it to be a document, without fancy production. I got to add my own touch on just one track, Water Under the Door, bringing in reverb and a bit of distortion. Tom liked the result and asked me to work with him on his next album, Dancin' Shoes. I told him I was game for it, but only if he'd let me properly produce it. I thought that live performance was one thing, and recordings were another. In a recording, you try to get the song as close as possible to how you hear it in your mind. I really liked the songs he chose for Dancin' Shoes, and I knew I could add to their power with interesting production. Tom didn't like working in the fragmented kind of way that intricate production requires. So to make him more comfortable, I recorded his vocals and guitar together. That wasn't ideal for production purposes, but it set him at ease. Then I went away to my little studio and tinkered with the songs for a few months. I got Scott to play drums on some of the tracks. Tom was amazed with the result, though he worried that people hearing him in concert wouldn't like his "unplugged" version. But I reassured him that concerts were one form of expression, and recordings another. I was really pleased with that album. Most listeners have no clue that the instrumentation was all done on a synth. Tom asked me to record another album for him, Root Beer Makes Me Burp, a kid's album. By that time, Karen and I were married and had a house. That album was a bigger challenge because he brought in more vocalists (many children) who had to be crammed into my little basement studio. But that recording also came out really well.

After that I extracted myself from the production business. As I began to focus more on classical composition, I had less need for my digital audio workstation. But those years of production helped to hone my sense of what sounds work well together, of how to support a voice and of how to integrate lyrics with the music. It was a great education, one that produced some memorable recordings.

September 12, 2023

I've always enjoyed tongue-twisters. I've begun writing my own, and also have collected some from my years in theater. Probably my all-time favorite is "toy boat", simple words that are nearly impossible to rapidly repeat. Here's a list of what I've come up with over the years. I'll add to the list as time goes on:

Restless wrestler

Social she-shed

Proper copper coffee pot

See the city sheriff shoot the city cop

If two witches watched two watches, which witch would watch which watch?

The witch wove witchcraft on the wristwatch.

Wristwatch witch

Which watch went westerly when wound?

Seashell shop

Make the maid making mead for the maiden make mead for the maid and me.

Pre-shrunk silk shirts

Nab the clapping catnapper

Creamed trout chowder

Please explain the purpose of this pink and purple porpoise.

Sun-shaded sailing ship