Another Kind of Quill

The other day, I asked Bill if he would consider music composition as an acceptable form of writing to be submitted to ye not-so-olde Quill. He gave me the green light, so off I go. I have a few MP3s to share that I've done over time. For now, I'll start you off with some personal musical history, followed by one of the first original recordings my friend and I made 20 years ago.

In the late 70's, my parents signed me up for piano lessons. I studied faithfully for about 5 years, while my family noticed my obsessive behavior of constantly tapping on the table during dinner. Towards the end of the 5th year, I heard ELP's Karn Evil 9 on the radio. The drum solo in part 2 of the first impression made me decide rather firmly that "I want to do that!" So, in 1983 I abandoned piano in favor of violently smashing round things called drums. I taught myself while listening to my favorite Who and prog-rock albums, and was able to get a decent groove going.

After doing the high-school garage band thing, I was always on the lookout for like-minded musicians to do some interesting writing. One day, I was asked to fill in for a local cover band at a party. When I arrived and started playing, I noticed the guitarist reminded me a lot of Robert Fripp. Long story short, I stole him from that band and we got our own original situation going, which we decided to name Progressions.

We both pitched in for a 6-track Sansui (I think) cassette recorder. The track below is a mixdown of one of the tunes we wrote, but didn't complete. We never got around to adding a bass track to the mix. :) One thing I was particularly proud of was my laying down the drums first to nothing but a click track and the song structure memorized completely in my head. Sick, I know, but the rhythm section has to go on tape first! :) Once the guitar tracks were laid down, I added some keyboards for a little atmosphere, and there ya have it.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy this one. It's still one of my favorites to this day.

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