Originally by The Producers, here's my old cover of She Sheila.

She Sheila cover

Yes, this tune is weird and long, but here's the story...

The year was 1986 and I was enrolled in Electronic Music Composition at the University of Utah, taught by Tracy Peterson. Learning to Speak was my class final. The task was to create a piece of music under 10 minutes that was created all electronically. I used a Yamaha DX7II, Sequential Circuits Prophet 5, Alesis Microverb, Fostex 380S 4-track recorder, Audio Technica 450D microphone, and my own human voice, the latter of which, due to it's organic nature, was cheating. (Tracy didn't seem to mind.) I got an A.

Fast-forward to 2012 and I decided to restore the audio from the original 26-year old cassette tape. The problem was that to transfer the audio, I needed a Fostex 380S because it had a rare from of noise reduction: Dolby S. Since I'd sold my deck decades ago, I found a 380S on eBay and transferred and remixed the audio in Nuendo. Then using the brilliant iZotope RX2 noise reduction plug-in and WaveLab, I was able to restore the audio. In fact, this is the first time I've heard the composition the way I'd wanted it to sound 26-years ago.

Yes, Learning to Speak was not written for the masses. But if you like avant-garde electronic music, it may tickle your fancy.

mattlth