Created with FretPet in 1999 for a short animation by Jean Detheux.

The Storm

For your brain to enjoy. This is the title music for my upcoming game, "Guardian of the Humanoids." Composed, mixed, and exported entirely with SunVox. This composition is meant evoke the serious mission of the titular Guardian in hostile alien space, with a retro style. If it reminds you a little of John Carpenter up front, that's no accident. His electronic music is a classic signature of the 80's and informs this piece.

I went through several iterations to pare the parts down after the initial exploration phase. Lines that were deemed too melodic or contrapuntal were dropped to emphasize the machine logic of the alien menace. The piece needs to be short and loop easily. The classic way to do this is to build up parts and then drop them one by one until you get back where you started. A drop near the beginning better sets up the rise in the middle. The main line is a frenzied 110 BPM, so the other lines need to be simple. The low rising tone implies immanent action. Hopeful notes are provided by spectral voices. Some 3-counts come in to make things interesting, and finally two lines converge disharmoniously. The drum synth provides a spare backup.

"Guardian of the Humanoids" is coming out in 2017 from Thinkyhead Software. A side-scrolling space frenzy that brings a classic retro game into the 21st century. Coming soon for iPad, Mac, Windows, Linux, Android, and others...

Guardian of the Humanoids

A longer version of the Guardian of the Humanoids theme music. Guardian of the Humanoids will be released in 2017 for iPad, Mac, Android, and Linux.

Guardian of the Humanoids - Extended

This is an acoustic cover of "She's Not There" by The Zombies. This song came into my repertoire when my girlfriend got fired, and it seemed apropos. Simple vocal overdubs, organ, drums added in GarageBand.

She's Not There — Mix 1

This is an acoustic cover of Radiohead's "Faust Arp." I wouldn't mind mixing it up more, adding strings and harmonies. For now it's just a little "effected."

Faust Arp 2016

This "snarky breakup song" is the result of a fast two-day write-record-mix project, with drums and bass added in Garageband. I readily admit, it's no "Beast of Burden." The take isn't great. The lyrics and added parts could use more workshopping. So it's a very rough mix. I like enough elements of it that it might be worth building on.

Go Do Say Be - Rough Mix

I'm doing more plain acoustical renditions for self-amusement lately, recording simply with the iPad in the back of a bread truck. I find that working on cover songs is a good way go gauge where you're at with your instrument, your voice, your energy, etc. I could "let go" a bit more on this one, but I may add more tracks soon.

Begin the Begin

This is a composition I wrote using FretPet, then played and augmented in GarageBand. It has an interesting structure, with a 4:4 rhythm over a 15:16 measure, with tones coming every third and fifth sixteenth note.

5ive by 3hree (Dance Mix)

This is a first mix of a song by Mazzy Star. It's a straightforward cover recorded and mixed with GarageBand. Started out with a back-beat and acoustic guitar. Vocal parts were layered and effected in GarageBand. Synth parts played through GB with the trusty Oxygen 8.

Rhymes of an Hour (sketch)

This is a pretty grooving piece I made many moons ago but which just popped up on my playlist and made my toes tingle. With some more additions this could be a pretty interesting dance thing, or even grow into something else. Now where did I put those old project files...?

Torn and True

From around 1988-1990 I contributed music, graphics, and code to a few Amiga games you might remember, including Space War, Deathbots, Dino Wars, and Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure. Not all of my work was credited, so recently I've started to gather together some of the best video game music I wrote during that period and feed some of that retro fever.

This piece was created as the Game Over music for Dino Wars, published by DigiTek Software in 1989. This piece was composed with a MOD Tracker on an Amiga 1000.

This sample was captured from an Amiga emulator (E-UAE) so the tempo might be a little inconsistent at some points.

Dino Wars: Game Over

From around 1988-1990 I contributed music, graphics, and code to a few Amiga games you might remember, including Space War, Deathbots, Dino Wars, and Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure. Not all of my work was credited, so recently I've started to gather together some of the best video game music I wrote during that period and feed some of that retro fever.

This piece was sitting around for a while before I realized it would make pretty good background music for the Dino Wars battle screen. After two years of design, graphics, and coding by three sweaty geeks, Dino Wars was published by DigiTek in 1989.

In 1989 I wrote music using a MOD Tracker program on an Amiga 1000. I don't remember which tracker it was, but I remember it was really cool and easy to use. If I had not been floating around disconnected from any and all persons interested in the explorative arts I was engaged in at that time, I can imagine having gone deep into the rabbit hole of the Amiga mod scene. Today we can thank the internet for making amazing creative connections more possible than ever before.

This sample comes from an Amiga emulator (E-UAE) so the tempo might be a little inconsistent at some points.

Dino Wars: Battle Music

From around 1988-1990 I contributed music, graphics, and code to a few Amiga games you might remember, including Space War, Deathbots, Dino Wars, and Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure. Not all of my work was credited, so recently I've started to gather together some of the best video game music I wrote during that period and feed some of that retro fever.

This insistent march of machine sounds was created for Deathbots by Odyssey Software, released in 1990 as part of the Classic Games Pak. It was composed using a MOD Tracker program on an Amiga 1000.

This sample comes from an Amiga emulator (E-UAE) so the tempo might be a little inconsistent at some points.

Deathbots 1990 Theme Music

This piece was composed and played entirely during a live performance. I used my own software FretPet to control the GarageBand synthesizer and captured the performance in GarageBand. This was only one part of a larger piece, so I will be trying to recapture the missing tracks, including drums and vocals, at some point in the future!

One Man String Quartet

From around 1988-1990 I contributed music, graphics, and code to a few Amiga games you might remember, including Space War, Deathbots, Dino Wars, and Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure. Not all of my work was credited, so recently I've started to gather together some of the best video game music I wrote during that period and feed some of that retro fever.

This music was created for Byteman, a Pac Man inspired maze game by Odyssey Software, released in 1990 as part of the Classic Games Pak. It was composed using a MOD Tracker program on an Amiga 1000. The voice saying "He Eats Things" is mine, slowed down and sped up.

This sample comes from an Amiga emulator (E-UAE) so the tempo might be a little inconsistent at some points.

Byteman: Theme Music

From around 1988-1990 I contributed music, graphics, and code to a few Amiga games you might remember, including Space War, Deathbots, Dino Wars, and Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure. Not all of my work was credited, so recently I've started to gather together some of the best video game music I wrote during that period and feed some of that retro fever.

This piece was created for Space War by Odyssey Software, released in 1990 as part of their Classic Games Pak. This was composed with one of the many MOD Tracker programs that exists for the Amiga platform. If anyone feels like extracting the MODs themselves from these old games, I'd love to have them for new experimentation.

I'm extracting these through an Amiga emulator (E-UAE) so the tempo might be a little inconsistent at some points.

Space War: Game Over

I've been singing since I was small, and I still sing every day. I picked up the guitar to be able to accompany myself, and I got pretty good at it. I like to combine vocals, acoustic and electric instruments, and synthesizers in an organic way. I have very eclectic tastes that run the gamut. I'm a fan of Morcheeba, Radiohead, Zero 7, and other artists that make soulful music with edgy and interesting arrangements, and I like to do similar stuff in my own style. I've written software to make music, and I enjoy making music and musical elements electronically. I play guitar, bass, and synth reasonably well, and I can sing really well in a pretty broad vocal range.

Thinkyhead

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