A Sound Idea


Front CD Cover	Inside CD	Back CD Cover

	Title	Audio File	Lyrics
1	Surreal	WMA	N/A
2	Piano Ride	WMA	N/A
3	Strong Wind	WMA	N/A
4	Cathedral	WMA	N/A
5	Galixies	WMA	N/A
6	True Life	WMA	N/A
7	The Jungle	WMA	N/A
8	Adelaide	WMA	N/A
9	Dremas	WMA	N/A
10	Freelance	WMA	N/A
11	Terminal V	WMA	N/A
12	Sinisteria	WMA	N/A

Project Description:
    "A Sound Idea" was my first compilation, back in 1997. Stemmed from the fact that I had not yet acquired the means of fully recording all of the music and songs that I wanted to, I just compiled all of the instrumentals that I had been working on, and recorded this first CD project.
    Some of these pieces have been used in various projects by other organizations over the past several years. However, none have made enough to present me with any royalties yet.
    My favorite piece in this compilation would have to be "True Life" which has still remained my own personal favorite instrumental. In listening to my music over and over again, "True Life" has been the only one that ever gave me chill bumps when listening to it. Specifically towards the end of the piece during the crescendo. If you have the ability I would highly recommend listening to this piece with a really good sound system or headphones that can give you the full bass sounds. I found the heart beat sound throughout the piece to have some really interesting effects to it and give it that extra feeling. But it is just not heard without a good system.
    "Surreal" ranks up there pretty close as one of my all time favorites. But it still didn't give me chill bumps.
    "Strong Wind" was an interesting production. Although it sounds like there's a lot going on there, it was actually all done with only one track, in one recording. I had often envisioned adding another track, but refrained.
    "Piano Ride" was kind of an accident. I was just playing around with the background rhythm patterns and decided to see what I could do with the piano along with it. After recording the first track, I muted that and tried again. Now keep in mind, these two tracks were just me playing off the top of my head, making it all up as I went along. Later, while playing around, I accidentally combined the two piano tracks together and found them to be quite interesting, and amusing that they went together so well. So I decided to mix the song with the first piano track at the beginning, then the second, and then with both of them combined to finish out the piece. I thought it came together rather well.
    "Cathedral" was a piece that actually came to me in an amazingly realistic fantasy dream of a different world, in a different dimension. The dream was so vivid and interesting to me that it even spawned a book project of the same name.
    When I first began learning to play the drums, like everything, I really stunk. And, although it is still not near as good as many of my friends' playing, "Adelaide" proved to me that I actually could be able to play the drums. Well, eventually.
    One year, I think it was back in 1994 or so, I ran home on Halloween to get the house ready for the "trick-or-treaters" that evening. Wanting to provide the best spooky experience possible, I ran into the studio and threw together a bunch of weird sounds for about an hour and set everything up to pump the eerie music out the front window into the yard and neighborhood. I grabbed a bunch of old clothes and began stuffing them with wads of newspapers and created a whole yard full of dummies. I was trying to figure out what to use for heads when I decided, "Well, they don't really need heads. That's why they're laying all over the yard." So there they were. I spread spider webs all in the branches of the trees and turned all the Malibu lights around to face the yard. I filled the yard with fog from a container of dry ice. And to top it off, my cat decided to conveniently sit right in front of one of the lights for the duration of the evening, creating a very realistic silhouette of a cat. So my whole goal was to scare off as many children as I could, and save more candy for myself by the end of the evening. And it actually worked to some degree. But I never considered that the music that I threw together on such short notice would grow on me. After listening to it over and over again, it somehow got stuck in my brain and I grew to enjoy it.
    So "Sinisteria" was born and I eventually decided to throw it into the mix of my first "Sound Idea". Yeah, one of those pieces that most people probably listen to and wonder, "What was this guy thinking?" Or probably more like, "What was this guy on?"