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I just finished another recording for the Lost and Found album, a song called “Healing Heart.”  (Download the mp3)

Look within your own heart
There is always another open part
This burden, can you forgive?
Oh, please forgive!
I sing for you and your healing heart

Deep within my own heart
Can I open another broken part?
This burden, I will forgive
I will forgive!
Oh, pray for me and my healing heart

(Dedicated to the memory of John M. Stang, MD) (more…)

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In 2012 I found a keyboard midi controller at a yard sale for $10, and I couldn’t pass it up even though I’m not much of a keyboardist. Once I brought it home I had to find a way to use it, and that search led me to LMMS. There are many good tutorials and other documentation which cover every aspect of installing, configuring, and using LMMS, and I’m not trying to duplicate any of those efforts. This article is meant more as a review and a memoir than as a how-to guide.

LMMS is an obsolete acronym for “Linux Multimedia Studio,” which made for an awkward name when it became a cross-platform application. The website currently says “Let’s Make Music” in the top banner, which would work for the acronym if we could think of a word that starts with “S” to add to it. (Any suggestions? How about: “Let’s Make Music, Sonny?” Yeah, nevermind.)

(more…)

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“Claudia Doesn’t Like It” was my most successful garage band. We played gigs regularly during my junior year of high school, and I learned a lot about how to write songs for a three or four piece rock band.

We didn’t have access to good recording equipment in those days, so I don’t have many recordings that are worth sharing here. But in 2001 Jake Bracken and I got together to digitally record some of the old songs for posterity, and called the album “2001: A Claudyssey.” Some of these recordings turned out okay, but I was a bit clumsy on the drums. (more…)

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I just posted recordings from my university days, which was when I first got my feet wet with digital multitrack recording. I licensed a shareware app called n-Track Studio which I used for years. A new version came out within a month or so of my purchase, but the company wanted me to pay for the upgrade so I just kept using the old version for the next 6 years until I migrated everything to Linux.

The name “New Folder” was a joke, because I was a compulsive organizer of my own computer’s filesystem and it drove me crazy to see other people’s computers with random folders scattered all over the desktop. “New Folder” is the default name for a newly created folder in Windows, and I remember seeing a desktop with New Folder, New Folder (2), and New Folder (3) all on the desktop, and all empty folders! I decided that the only way I would ever have a directory named “New Folder” on my computer was if I gave that name to an album. So I did, and I chuckle to myself whenever I see it in the file manager.

I am still fond of these recordings, but they are a bit rough around the edges because I was at an early stage of learning the craft. (more…)