home

music

about

order

contact

For as long as I can remember, I've improvised music on the piano. Just the sound of the notes together making a chord, or the soothing quality of a familiar progression was enough to get me hooked on playing.

Later I played trombone in school, and I learned to read music, but I was never classically trained on piano. Thus, I cannot read and play piano music, and my skills as a performer are limited.

In college I discovered the perfect way to compensate for such limitations: MIDI! Using a synthesizer connected to notation software, I could write anything and everything I could think of, and the computer would play it back. I went nuts, to say the least, devoting long hours to composing the wildly creative, bombastic Child's Play – a CD of music inspired by video games.

This was the 80s, though, and MIDI was young. The sounds available to me were primitive – akin to bleeps and bloops. I wanted more traditional sounding instruments to work with. Eventually in the 90s I discovered the gorgeous sound of the Yamaha SY99, and took advantage of it to create my second CD, a totally different style of music, called Still Life.

Eventually, my goal is to create a Christmas CD, in the style of Mannheim Steamroller. Til then, check out the CDs above, and thanks for listening!

Steve

MIDI - Musical Instrument Digital Interface. A protocol for linking electronic instruments such as keyboards to a computer or a sound control system.

This is the synth I used to create Child's Play, 1984-1987, courtesy of CERL Sound Group, University of Illinois.

This was the Apple Mac, SY99 and DAT machine used for Still Life in 2000. Funny how fast these machines look like dinosaurs!