The Linear Canvas

As a young prosecutor, Vincent Bugliosi, put Charles Manson in prison along with his murderous cult. He later wrote the book “Helter Skelter” about the murders and subsequent trials. He was the top of his class at UCLA law school and is known by anyone that knows him as always being the smartest guy in the room. At the time he wrote this book in 2001, he had also just released a highly regarded album of Latin love songs. Quite a guy.
In this short book based on an article he wrote for The Nation magazine, Bugliosi presents the evidence in a conspiracy to anoint a U.S. president without Democracy getting in the way. Above all, his legal arguments make me wonder why Al Gore’s lawyers in December 2000’s Gore v Bush case that was decided by this rogue Supreme Court, did not make any of them. Incompetence or conspiracy? I believe the latter. Only because these were all very very smart people. My 9/11 suspicions are much broader after reading this book. No doubt the Bush administration orchestrated the 9/11 event, but now I suspect complicity with Gore and the DNC, if for nothing other than allowing this to happen. Money can buy you love.
I have read many books recently about events that that laid the groundwork for 9/11 and the perpetual fear/war cycle we are in. John Dean’s book about the flawed appointment to the Supreme Court of Chief Justice William Rehnquist, “The Rehnquist Choice” sadly begins the spiral to the tragic events of the initial decade in the 21st Century.

As long as I remember, Ready for Love has been one of my favorite songs. Guitarist Mick Ralphs wrote the song back in the early 1970’s when he was with the band Mott the Hoople. It appeared on their All the Young Dudes LP. It was titled Ready for Love / After Lights on the album sleeve mainly because of the ending, I think. After Mick left Mott, he formed the band Bad Company and the song appeared on their first album as well. I consider my version to be a little closer to the Mott the Hoople version as I perform my own version of the After Lights ending. I think it rocks harder than either of the other versions though.

I played my Fender Stratocaster guitar, Rickenbacker 4001 Bass, and my Ludwig drums on this track. I sang all the vocals. I used my Fostex VF-16 multi-track recorder to record the original tracks. I used Cakewalk Sonar X1 Producer Expanded and Sony Sound Forge to remix and edit the song.

I have been playing She Talks To Angels almost since it was released by the original artist, the Black Crows. I recorded it once before with my niece singing the lead vocal. She was dissatisfied with the resulting recording and I never posted it. It was in a key that just didn’t suit her voice very well. I had a pretty hot guitar solo in it so I was a little disappointed.

I recently recorded it all over again and did the lead vocals and most of the background vocals. I had my wife Jill fill in some of the background vocals for me as well. I played all the instruments.

I used my Takamine acoustic guitar, and Rickenbacker bass, in addition to a Roland Octapad and Roland slave keyboard. I recorded it using Cakewalk Sonar X1 and edited the file properties with Sony Sound Forge v9.

I recorded myself recently, performing the song  “Swan Creek” off my upcoming CD,  in my kitchen. I used my Sony Digital camcorder and recorded it with a Shure SM-27 condenser microphone.

I was listening to an old audio tape and a voice out of the past (a much younger me) told “me” to record this music. I even gave “myself” the chords and I even played them a few times for “me”.

When I started recording A Lonesome Breeze, I only needed one more good song to have enough to be able to release my best CD yet. The other songs are all good, but I just felt I needed another really good one to finish up the project. I had already put together seventeen other songs and I was only going to pick about ten songs for the album. I just wanted plenty to choose from.

I wasn’t real sure what the song was about at first, but I watched a recent PBS Frontline episode about the thieves on Wall Street and right there and then I knew I had my subject.

On the recording I used my Fender Stratocaster guitar though my Line 6 POD, Rickenbacker 4001 bass, Roland Octapad and Session Drummer 3. I also sang both lead and background vocal parts. I was having trouble with my Sonar X1 DAW installation and the Tascam FW1804 on my main recording computer. So, much of this was recorded using Sonar v8.5 and my PreSonus Firebox on my old computer. I was able to do the final mix and mastering in X1 though. I also used Sony Sound Forge v9 in the edit process.

I wrote Gone for Good about a friend whose marriage had just ended. Many of the things he said to me about what happened are included in the song. I won’t tell you who it was. If you guess I’ll lie.

I had never done much to this song in the “digital age” because its analog recording had been done on some poor behaving tape decks. Once I figured out how to fix it in Cakewalk Sonar, I was able to get the tempo to stay in one place. I played electric guitar on a Fender Stratocaster and an Ibanez LP. The bass was a Rickenbacker 4001. The drum sounds are from Session Drummer 3 software using Roland Octapad MIDI pads.

I wrote Who Gets Hurt in the early 1990’s after I had an incident at work.

I played acoustic guitar on a Yamaha (?). I played electric guitar on a Fender Stratocaster and an Ibanez LP. The bass was a Rickenbacker 4001. The drum sounds are from Session Drummer 3 software using Roland Octapad MIDI pads.

I just started writing a song and this just came out. It’s a story about a woman that fell on hard times and breaks the monotony by imbibing in the spirits a little too much. It’s more from point of view of those that can’t appreciate the plight of others. Especially when the tales don’t seem to fit the teller. When I think about the story, it has occurred to be that nearly anything could be in the papers. I just let my imagination run wild with it. I’ve known people like her.

I wrote the song and recorded it with my Takamine G Series acoustic guitar, Rickenbacker 4001 bass, tambourine, and Roland slave keyboard. I used Cakewalk Sonar X1 Producer Edition and Sony Sound Forge v9 software.

I wrote And On And On several years ago. I think I took the title from a poem my wife Jill wrote. It was just collecting digital dust among the other files on my computer. I recorded most of the tracks when I lived in Swanton, Ohio, I think. I am not sure I knew what it really was about. After some soul searching and a bit of a re-write, the song has some meaning to me now. It is about people that kid themselves and others about their objective in life. I also think I wrote it about me too.

I originally recorded And On And On on my Yamaha MT-100 II 4 track tape recorder. I really can’t remember when. I think this was recorded using a dbx encoded 2 track cassette as a mix down device. I had one that had severe speed accuracy issues. But that conflicts with my other thought that I recorded it late in my analog recording days.

In any case, the tempo fluctuated all over the place. I had recorded it using my Boss drum machine, so it had to be a mechanical failure in the recording. Most likely a rubber belt slipping. I had tried to rescue this song before, but its problems were too great a task to accomplish at that time. I probably just didn’t know where to start. That and I had other, easier, music files to process.

I knew I had some options when I finally decided to take this project on. One was that I just play a new drum track live and forget about any real tempo fix. It would have sounded OK, but I would still have a tempo that was all over the place. The real fix was to go throughout the song and identify the beginnings of each measure to my Sonar software. One method allows you to pick a point and then set that as the now position to a specific measure and beat. That then creates a tempo map. Usually a live performance or one created with equipment that is not defective will change in tempo somewhat smoothly over the song, or hardly at all. Analog equipment has a natural amount of speed inaccuracy as a rule. But if everything is operational, most times that is imperceptible.

After viewing the extremely erratic tempo map, I decided the best way to accomplish the re-timing was to use the Audiosnap function in Sonar. I went though the tracks only enabling Audiosnap transient markers wherever I determined the beginning of a measure was.  Then I set the whole project to exactly 129 bpm, the original beat timing. Using a combination of quantizing the transients to the measure and dragging the uncooperative ones into place, I succeeded in creating a constant beat in the song. I considered the timing in between the measures, but I believe that the speed changes were over several measures and any tempo issues are corrected every measure. I don’t hear any problems the way it is. The work involved in accurately tracking quarter note or greater changes in tempo would have been unnecessary and time consuming. So I didn’t

I played my Fender Stratocaster electric guitar, Rickenbacker 4001 bass and Session Drummer 3 software using a Roland Octapad MIDI drum pad. The vocals were recorded using a Shure SM-27 studio condenser microphone.

I first began writing After The Thunder as a collaboration with an acquaintance. He had brought me a song that he wanted my help with that I turned into “Blind Not Just Yet”. He gave that song to me to me on a Sunday and I had a finished song by the following Wednesday. In turn I put together the music presented here and gave it him so he could help finish the song. We had discussed him writing the lyrics and helping with the arrangement. I suppose him singing lead on it was on the table as well. 
But after several weeks, I decided to abandon the project as my “partner” had made no effort to write the lyrics or anything else. Besides, after my wife Jill heard the music she told me to take it back and write the lyrics myself.

This song which I wrote in 3 parts or "Perils" is about fear being used as a weapon.

I wrote After The Thunder and played all the instruments including  a Fender Stratocaster electric guitar and a Rickenbacker bass guitar. I sang all the vocals. I also programmed the MIDI drums using Session Drummer 3.