Post-COVID I’ve decided to release more of my music library online and that includes over 260 rap beats and instrumentals that I produced for Rap Track back in 1999-2004. The new YouTube channel for some of these rap instrumentals is currently called Rap Dogs Rap Beats.
I wrote “Roberto’s Cha Cha” back when I was musical director and pianist for “Burn the Floor”, a modern Broadway Ballroom Dance show. It’s a straight ahead Cha Cha beat with classical nylon guitar, piano and percussion.
Shortly after writing this piece, I was talking with a friend about Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein Novel. I pulled up the piece to listen to and it struck me as a good fit for the story of Frankenstein.
This was really fun working on a Final Cut video for this song, The Winding Stream. I wrote this back in 1997 for an artist who recorded it on the Road Records CD release “New Faces Volume Two”.
I wrote this song back in 1994 after returning from a 14 week tour of South Korea (and Japan). During the tour we spent most of our time in Tongduchon, South Korea (Hello Camp Casey!) and played different military bases 6 nights a week to entertain the troops. The band was a Southern Rock band called “The Hardriders” that was playing U.S. military bases for MWR (Morale, Welfare and Recreation). Every night we played a different base, sometimes with two hour bus rides each way. It was a tough tour.
This song was released by Road Records on the CD “New Faces Volume Two”. The goal of this song was to create something that sounded like a retro jazz ballad. I remember this is one of the few recordings where I used an actual upright piano to play the keys parts. Normally I don’t use upright pianos because they’re always a tad out of tune, but that effect worked very well on this song to give it an authentic retro feel.
“Ballad of Dull Knife” is one of the first songs I wrote that ended up being on a released album (around 1995). It is about the Cheyenne chief Dull Knife (Morning Star) and the emotions I imagined he might have felt as his lands were being taken away.
So I earned a couple degrees: Bachelor of Professional Studies from Berklee College of Music and a Master in Arts Leadership and Cultural Management (MALCM) from Colorado State University. I actually just finished these in the last couple years so I’m what they refer to as a “mature learner”. Was it worth it? In short, yes. Does anyone really care? Not really.
Both my degrees were earned online. One of the reasons I didn’t finish my degrees many years ago is that in my line of work you often get a call for a tour with a short window of prep time. If I was back in a brick and mortar school and I got the call for a gig then I would have had to turn the gig down (or drop out of school to do the tour). I didn’t want just any degree. I wanted a degree I felt proud of (or at least wasn’t embarrassed by). There is one well-known online university that I didn’t want to sign up with because every time I imagined writing down the name of the university, well, it was not a feeling of pride. No, I won’t mention that school name because I’m “nice”.