Where does the time go? I was just spreading the word about the Make Music PDX (MMPDX) program and I realized that it’s been 5 years since my first trip down that particular road. A lot has happened in my musical career since then, and much of it was made[…]
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As promised, there is new music! Ocean Amblin’ This is a song that has been in development for many years. It all started at a jam session when someone suggested we groove on a 2-chord progression that was quite pretty. The person who suggested it said that he was working[…]
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Yesterday was really productive. I spent the day at Pyrate Llama Studios to catch up with some new tracks and explore some recording techniques, and thanks to input from those present, a new project is starting to take shape! The New Project While we were setting up, I was talking[…]
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As long as I have been playing guitar, I never get such strong imagery as I do when I sit at the koto. I was playing at the Tigard Bull Mountain Farmers Market today, and I took the koto to add some variety. The response was nice, although many people[…]
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It was one of those things you always hear about, but seldom run into if you’re lucky. And if you’re luckier still, it turns out well. Last Sunday I had a gig at a local farmers market. We’d set up the date at least a month ago and it was[…]
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Yesterday I got to do something that I never imagined I’d ever get to do. And it even turned out well! Through an unexpected string of events, I ended up collaborating with an old theatre buddy who writes, among other things, some poetry in the beat style. He was looking[…]
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Good analogies get harder to find all the time. Everybody’s seen everything and every possible kind of comparison has been made between everything because you never know when the right set of variables will trigger a marketing algorithm. So when a good analogy comes along, it deserves to be celebrated.[…]
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The Instrument – I have been studying the koto for a couple of months now, and recently made a breakthrough with the help of a slightly different tuning. Instead of the traditional Japanese hirajoshi tuning (D G A Bb D Eb), my teacher Mitsuki Dazai showed me a tuning based[…]
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Thanks Pete! Thanks for all the great music and for making even the most hardened cynic clap and sing along. If you’ve never heard Pete Seeger play live, find a recording and listen. And rest assured that whatever the angels were singing before, from now on they’ll all be singing[…]
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Now that the holiday season is finally over, we’re all recovering from the total immersion in Christmas music and most of us don’t want to hear any more of it for the next several months. But “The Gift” by Liz Story and Joel Di Bartolo is an exception to the[…]
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