At the age of 18, I bought a Hagstrom electric bass and started teaching myself to play it. I did this by learning all the bass parts in my Yes album collection. It was difficult for the first 3 months with no amplifier, but I found I could press the head of my bass against the wall of my mother's apartment and get a pretty good tone. It quickly became apparent that playing and writing music was to be my destiny and that I'd better buy an amp quick.I began writing music in my head as soon as I started playing, so I learned to play other instruments that I could write with. I liked acoustic and electric guitars, keyboards, drums and vocals. In collage I played bass in the Skagit Valley Jazz Ensemble with a couple of members of my first original progrock band called Medusa.Later I became a studio and live sound engineer while continuing to write music solo or with a close group of collaborators. In the early 1990's I co-founded the progressive rock group Phreeworld. The band released two CD's (Boost the Signal, 1994; Crossing the Sound, 1998) disbanding in 2002 after a 10 year run.I started writing music for orchestra in 2002 starting with “Symphony No. 1, Vociferous Thesisâ€, a 40 minute symphony in 4 movements. It was written using a Roland JV1080 and EMU Proteus sound modules and then orchestrated for full orchestra and recorded it using GPO instrument samples. Here it is:
Â
Then came “The Universe Suiteâ€, a 30 minute composition for orchestra and synthesizers. "The Universe Suite" was used in the Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame in Seattle, WA. from June of 2004 through September of 2006.
I made this Universe Suite Music Player at MyFlashFetish .com.
Next I gave it a whirl, writing a piano concerto. The resulting composition, “Concerto for Piano and Orchestra No. 1â€, is a 26 minute piano concerto in 3 movements. It was my hardest assignment to date (yes, I give myself assignments), since I don't play concert piano. I just think it. Here are all three Movements...
I made this MySpace Music Player at MyFlashFetish .com.
In the summer of 2006 I wrote all new orchestral music for the Sci-Fi Museum for when the gallery was updated. It is playing now through the end of 2007. Here is a 40 min. playlist of the music for SFM's Alien Encounters Sci-Fi Art Exhibit.
I made this Alien Encounters Music Player at MyFlashFetish .com.
I have always been interested in film scores and it was in the fall of 2004 that I decided to learn the skills of a film composer. I have studied film scoring at the Pacific Northwest Film Score Program in Seattle. I'm currently on the board of the Seattle Composers Alliance, a non-profit group for Seattle composers.I live in Seattle with my family.
