Thoughts on Thanksgiving

It is Thanksgiving Day and I have been busily at work on a cover of "God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen" as an offering for this season's holidays. But as it is Thanksgiving, I am certainly thankful for all the same basic, essential things everyone else is. And since this is a music blog, I am particularly thankful for all music gear I have and have had and the abilities I have been blessed with to make music. Music has always been an escape for me from the cold, hard realities of this world into another dimension where I am completely absorbed and untroubled.

I remember growing up and wanting to have real instruments to play. Instead, I had to make do with homemade devices that were so much better than having nothing at all. I have yet to locate some of those pieces. I know I still have them because I would not throw away such things. I'm much too sentimental to dispose of things like that.

There was a church I went to as a child that lent us an acoustic guitar for a week. A nice big dreadnought. I don't know what brand it was. I have a couple of photos of myself with that guitar in hand. At that time though, I had no idea how to play it. A few years later I would have my first electronic keyboard--a tiny, monophonic, cream-colored Casio keyboard which I used on many of my earliest recordings.

As a sophomore in high school. I had a music/piano class that allowed us to take a full-size keyboard home with us to practice on over the weekend. I think it was a 61-key model. I know they came in 76 keys and 88 keys but there's no way it was an 88. I walked that thing home under my arm for about 1.5 miles. It was heavy as heck and I couldn't feel my arm for a while after that. But my intention with that keyboard was to use it for a weekend of recordings. Never before had I access to a keyboard with such authentic piano, organ, bass, drums & vibes sounds! I would happily publish my recordings here were they not so error-laden and simple-sounding. Back in those days I was recording with very cheap microphones--the kind used for tape recorders--and very cheap cassette tapes. Any mistakes made during recording would mean having to start all over from the beginning; none of this wonderful punching in/out editing of the modern digital recording age. And during those days I didn't have all the opportunities and abilities I would have liked in order to keep re-recording to perfection.

A few years after that is when I got my first acoustic guitar and a Casio keyboard similar to the one from high school although it was much lighter in weight! That was the genesis of what has become my music gear. I am really thankful for all that stuff and the ability to make music at home. This would have been impossible to do 25-30 years ago without having to spend a small fortune. Eventually I would still love to have my own studio with state of the art equipment. But for now I'll count my blessings and be grateful for what I am able to do with what I have.

Early Percussion Instruments

Here are some photos of my early percussion instruments. These are the things I used on recordings during junior high and high school and before I ever touched a real drum set. I hadn't seen this items in years as they had been stored away in the garage after our move.

The plastic-reels-with-the-pencil-sticking-up-thing was my 'cymbal' stand. The reels were from 8-track tape cartridges. The actual symbol is not shown because I do not know where it is. It was never mine anyway. It was part of my mother's fancy crystal candy and confection dish. I used to borrow the metallic lid to use for recordings because it was the closest thing I had that sounded like a cymbal, even though it sounded nothing like a cymbal. But hey, it was round and remained suspended on the tip of the pencil. So it looked cool.

Those things are from trees that have pods that fall to the ground in the fall or spring or whenever it is. When they're dry the seeds inside are loose and they make a nice shaker sound. I used them as maracas and as snares underneath my 'snare' drum.

This was my tambourine made from little holiday jingle bells. Gave every recording an instant Christmas feel. Hence, I did not overly use it.

Here is my snare drum. Made from an old, red Fannie May (?) candy can. The bottom was cut out and I tried using cardboard, sheets of paper and plastic as the drum head. As you can tell, by the time I last used this thing I had settled on a sheet of plastic as the drum head. I also added those seed pods underneath to give the snare sound. My drum sticks were markers that no longer worked and a couple of paint brushes for that 'jazz brush' sound.

Finally, as far as my percussion instruments go, these were my toms. Just two coffee cans with plastic lids on top. The brown (or dark) one had just the top metal lid removed. The green one had both the top and bottom metal lids cut and were replaced by the plastic lid. This can also doubled as my bass drum. When I wanted to record bass drum parts I would play it with another non-working marker that had a lot of cloth wrapped around it to give a nice deep sound. Had to be recorded separately though. Could not play the snare, toms, cymbal and bass at the same time. Didn't have the proper set up. In my early recordings I didn't even use the bass drum option. It was just snare, toms and cymbal. Later is when I started using the bass in the way described. In the final stages of using this equipment I was just alternating between playing the snare and the bass just to keep it all in one whole track. When you're doing analog recording--and especially with cheap cassettes--quality starts going down very quickly as you add more and more layers of tracks.

So those items are part of my music history. I still have them and want to keep them as a reminder of what I used to do with much of my spare time when I was in school. Maybe they'll end up in a museum someday?

There is some other gear which I no longer have and others which I do. I'll have to post photos of them when I come across them.

Autumn (A Sonnet)

Thought I would share a poem I wrote back in high school which I subsequently added music to and turned into a song. However, I have never been completely pleased with any recorded version of it and have intentions still of re-recording it to my liking.

Here is the poem, titled "Autumn":


Autumn is a time of long, chilly days
With grey skies and colored leaves all around
It's a time when we change our living ways
With all of the leaves flying to the ground

The squirrels are starting to store their food
And all of the trees are becoming bare
The weather leaves us all in a sad mood
And raking of leaves we all have to share

The harvests are ripe and ready to reap
They will be the final crops of the year
The piles of leaves down the street are quite steep
And the frightful sound of the wind we hear

Autumn's memories we'll keep when it's gone
Until the time of the new autumn's dawn.


The poem is a sonnet. It was an assignment for an English class. I actually wrote my first poem in 6th grade. I was in an 8th grade level reading class and there was a poetry contest. My contribution was titled "The Moon" and I actually won 2nd place if my memory serves me well. And for the life of me I cannot find a copy of this poem anywhere. I tend to save everything, yet I cannot find this one treasure. I remember that my entry was a very simple and unpretentious one. I wrote the words on a sheet of paper and drew and colored in a yellow moon in the background. That was it. And I won. That was my first confirmation that writing was one of the talents I was blessed with.

This poem, Autumn, I happened to also use in a Literature class in college. We had an assignment where we needed to present something to the entire class. So I read this poem aloud and then played my then-most recent recording of it to the class. Received pretty good feedback as well, as I did presented something wholly unique to the class.

I've never uploaded this song to YouTube so I can't add a link here. But maybe once I get around to it I will add a link to some audio so you can have an idea what it sounds like.