Contact me:
My Tunes
Over the years tune have come to me, and when I'm paying attention I write them down. I doubt there are any really new tunes, but I think tunes come to us, because we are filters that show some aspects of a tune and hide others. And the tunes seem to like their new clothes.
All these tunes are a journey in learning to arrange music. I'm not trying to make popular hits. I'm searching for the music I want to hear.
Hope Rising
This is the first piece I've done that's NOT a "tune" with a beginning and end that gets repeated in different ways.
The faint tune at the beginning and end are to mimic my mind which even after what I hope is a moving musical moment, is bumbling along, singing little songs and telling me stuff.
November Rain Not so much a tune as a feeling.
The Pandemic Waltz - Came to me Aug. 3 2021, but it's taken months to be happy with it. Click here for the dance instructions.
Celia's Waltz
This tune came to me just after I met my wife and partner in 1985. It was written in the key of D, but it plays better in G, so it's in G here.
The chords of this tune were interesting enough to me that I decided to see if I could play them twice through without the melody.
Compassion
I didn't know what to do with this tune at first. It's short and has 2 distinct endings to the single idea. It seemed like there should be more to it. Nope. This is it.
The Fake Swedish Hornpipe
After spending an afternoon with a fiddle player with many books of Swedish tunes, I thought, "how hard could it be to write one?" This is the only tune here I "made up" consciously.
Complex and Simple
Written for the wedding of a friend to a guy I didn't know, this tune seemed to have appropriate contrasts that I felt between them. The marriage didn't work out. The tune survives with a new name.
Chris is gone, life goes on
Written a week after we lost our son at age 14. Still difficult to listen to some days.
Russian Tango
What business do I have writing a tango, and calling it Russian? I don't know. I was playing the guitar one day and it just came out.
Tune From a Dream
I really did hear this as I was waking up one morning and I had to write it down right away because dreams leave our minds so quickly. Shortly after that I was at Mae Moore's songwriting camp, and I wrote lyrics for it (because it was songwriting camp), but I never liked them. So here it is without any words to tell you what to think...
Nothing Yet
Another tune that came to me while playing the guitar. Or maybe it was the mandolin? I can play it without thinking on either instrument.
The title comes from my answer to the question, "what tune is that?"
Climate
Written Jan 24, 2020. I might take another try at an arrangement. The second half of the tune might have this chorus:
I don't want to change
You don't want to change
No one wants to change at all.
But we know the earth is changing
And the world we've built must fall...