Holiday Music Favorites IV (2009)

This is turning out to be a fairly productive year for new Holiday Music arrangements. It would appear that working in the Guitar/Bass/Drums format has been helpful in terms of coming up with ideas.

This is “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” , written by Hugh Martin & Ralph Blane. It is from the 1944 movie Meet Me in St.Louis, in which the song is performed by Judy Garland.

I was going for a little bit of a Desi Arnaz thing here. The guitar is my L-4CES.

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Holiday Music Favorites III (2009)

This is another all-new arrangement, Hark the Herald Angels Sing.  The arrangement is — as usual nowadays — for guitar, bass and drums. On this recording the guitar is again the 1949 L-4C about which I recently posted on the blog.

Here are the links to listen:

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MP3

Holiday Music Favorites II (2009)

This is an all-new arrangement. I’ve never actually done Jingle Bells before, although it might well be the most arranged of all holiday songs. It’s one of the simpler seasonal tunes, and it’s pretty easy to overwhelm it with harmony substitutions. It seems to me that I’ve seen and heard more arrangements that I considered to be poor than to be good.

Given that it has been arranged so many ways, it wasn’t until the idea for this approach developed that I thought I might have something at least a little bit original — and that also preserves the traditional happy-go-lucky  mood that I think most people associate with the song. Perhaps you can tell me how well the arrangement works.

The arrangement is — as usual nowadays — for guitar, bass and drums. On this recording the guitar is the 1949 L-4C about which I recently posted on the blog.

Here are the links to listen:

Stream

MP3

Pro Tools 2: Smooth Jazz Funk Trio

It’s been a while since I wrote and recorded anything, and I thought I’d get back into things with a simple trio tune. It’s called “Take a Seat”. I am continuing to stick to the guitar/bass/drums format which has been my focus for the past few years. However, I thought I’d try to adjust just a little back in the direction of “smooth jazz”, which was my my style for so long.

Just the Three of Me

My latest release, Just the Three of Me, is now available on CD Baby.

This is the commercial version of the tunes I have been posting here over the past several months.

Pro Tools

I have finally gotten on the mainstream digital music production bandwagon. I am in the process of converting my home recording studio to Digidesign’s market-leading Pro Tools.

Rufous

This is the title of my latest tune and recording. As with all of my recent  material, it is a strict guitar, bass drums trio with no overdubs.

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My First Music Videos

The first three are tracks from my album, “Just the Three of Us”, which features all trio performances.  I have previously posted all of the tracks as audio here on the blog.

Fretless Bass

A couple of years ago I decided that it would be preferable for me to actually play the bass parts on my recordings instead of simply programming them and letting the computer play them. I purchased at that time a short scale P-Bass from Rondo Music in New Hampshire. This has worked out very well and I played all the bass tracks on my commercial release from last year, (could be) *LIVE* (but isn’t).