For Richard Wright

I'm no keyboardist...far from it. I quit taking piano lesson from Mrs. Knudsen when Little League baseball rolled around. Much to my later regret. My Dad plays well, my brother and two sisters also play piano, but I ended up on guitar.

But that doesn't mean I don't have a keyboard or two laying around the studio. I was going through the many presets and sounds of the Virtual String Machine virtual instrument when I found that by layering two patches together, I could get a pretty reasonable Pink Floyd string sound. I added a bit of M-Tron, a virtual Mellotron program, and the DB-33 organ sound from the Pro Tools 8 stock plugins. I put a little David Gilmour-inpired guitar using a Les Paul into the AmpliTube Fender simulation.

I always found the sounds of '70's rock keyboardists to be fascinating, from Rick Wakeman to Gary Wright to Gary Numan to Richard Wright (Pink Floyd).

Richard Wright died from cancer in September of 2008 and this is my humble elegy in his memory:

For Richard Wright.

This download is available for 14 days or 200 downloads. I expect the calendar will win that battle!

Black In Back

Sometimes those guys and gals in black that move around the back of the stage in the dark get a chance to be out front.

Thanks to Keith Urban and his band for letting us roadies have some fun in Buffalo...

Inspiration's what you are to me. Inspiration...look...see.

Sometimes events have a way of spinning you 180 degrees. As an independent, no-label, too-old for the masses, niche market musician, one might take the recent awards show as a possible sign of the apocalypse....um ....yeah, the sign over the newly-christened Apocalypse City Hall of Apocalypse City, on Apocalypse Street. That sign, they one they unveiled last night may be a harbinger, alright.

But one might expect to have their expectations unexpectedly excepted.

Enter Facebook, deflecting my initial dismay in regards to the - let's face it - whoring of all that I call Holy, the de-legitimization of my entire career path, the raping of my tender Muses by Vandals at the Pools of Inspiration, the televised Charade Semi-Finals at the School of the Blind... into a net positive. After a few posts and much venting, I'm all better today.

Just support your local musicians, in whatever town you live in, in whatever genre they exist.

Just do that....be a Patron of the Arts.

Download an independent artist's album tonight, as penance for watching that TV.

Throw a $5 into the tip jar instead of a $1.

Go see a live show and tell the band they were good, if indeed they were.

What else can you do?