Softsynths get better and cheaper, and my piano arrangements continue to improve. Most compositions from this period focus more on guitar than piano and are yet unrecorded. My brother’s development as a guitarist inspired my own improvement in guitar and harmonica, but where it goes from here is unknown.

The use of hardware rack synths, digital pianos from Roland and GeneralMusic, and software synths required a more robust software system. Computers had become more than powerful enough to stop tracking and start running raw audio, so I moved to Sonar and wrote a few songs to learn the ropes. This was an experimental period both technologically and musically. The featured song, Revealing, is my take on a song of the same title originally composed by by friend and fantastic music-maker Vince “Novus” Young.

In the 90s, with little income to dedicate to then-expensive hardware, I used free sample based trackers like Impulse Tracker and cheap MIDI tools like Encore to create electronic and neo-classical muscic. The result was  a blend of synthetic and sometimes acoustic music, but the sound quality certainly couldn’t compete with the expensive hardware-based studios.

Recordings of my own solo piano compositions and selections from other composers. I love the feel of manuscript paper worn thin from erasers, learning to first compose with nothing more than a piano, a pencil, and and metronome. Today those have been replaced by MIDI controllers, touchscreens, and digital pianos, but the solo still demands a pencil and a piano.

When the two of us lived close enough to record, my good friend Phil and I put a few songs together. While on some tracks my input was limited to a pressing “record,” on others he wrote the music and lyrics and I provided orchestration and piano. We even wrote a symphony together to celebrate an especially great bottle of scotch once. Phil wrote the music and lyrics to “The Three of Us” and we wrote the accompaniment/arrangement together.

Before the DVD and high-speed Internet game publishers had to concern themselves with the file size of their products. Tracked music made sense for the independent publisher, so for a while I contributed music to a few games and films. Most of it falls into the “chip tune” category, but some is a little more modern.