notes

solo piano/keyboards.

Not that it means I'm all that great at it, but I love playing the piano. Like my photography it gives me an outlet -- another way of telling stories. I find, though, that music is almost always more personal and honest. Without my having to try, for example, it can reveal how I feel about a relationship fading away (the last time she said goodbye), bringing in a rendition of Over The Rainbow, reminding me that the dreams we have dared to dream don't always come true, at least not this time...

And then it digs way inside (broken) and out come allusions to Eleanor Rigby and a rather ironic version of an almost unrecognizable My Favorite Things from The Sound of Music. I don't really intend these things. I don't play well enough to do this intentionally. It just comes out and then I work on it.

The song but that's another story is rather different for me. It began as a piece inspired by Spiritual (composed by Josh Haden and performed by his father, Charlie Haden, and Pat Metheny on their 1996 album, Beyond the Missouri Sky (Short Stories)). In working on it, though, it kept bringing to mind a photographer friend who spends a lot of time hiking in the mountains near where she lives. She takes amazing photographs from vistas she spends a lot of time and energy getting to. But these are not the only pictures she takes as she also goes two or more times a year to Africa as part of a charitable medical team. In stark contrast to her wide open, panoramic mountain photographs the pictures she takes of the children she cares for are almost always up close and very personal--you can see her reflected in their eyes. Every one of those children, and even more so every one she is not able to help, breaks her heart a little. Knowing this, you begin to understand the hiking and the almost reverential photos of the mountains. She is restoring her faith and replenishing her serenity. She is mending her heart so that she is able to go back and do it again. If you listen to but that's another story with this in mind you'll understand why it reminds me of her...

I haven't recorded anything for years and the setup I have isn't really up to the task but I think it's good enough to at least share a few tunes with people. I hope you are affected by it in some way positive. I hope you enjoy it.

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I have a special project I started on Flickr called The Common Threads Project which has the audacious goal of getting folks all over the world to discover their similarities and celebrate their differences. If you are a photographer (professional or not) and have an account on Flickr then please take a minute or two to see what The Common Threads Project is about and if you like what you see, please join and contribute.

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This is really, really amazing Mar 14

New technology from Melodyne called Direct Note Access lets you correct (or change) the pitch of individual notes in a recording even when the note is part of a chord without affecting the sound quality or the pitch of the other notes. This applies to actual sound recordings, not MIDI (which has always had this ability). The full post contains a demo video.

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