My Music
Way back in third grade, I was given a Roy Clark beginner’s guitar as a Christmas present from my parents. I played it religiously through high school.
In fourth or fifth grade, I was given my first keyboard, a little Casio home model with the “ROM Pack.” Later I got a larger Casio home model, which I used to make my first track, “Hyperdrive,” long lost since, using Casio chords and rhythms. I started learning keyboard chords by playing the chord on my guitar and then matching the sounds of the notes to my keyboard.
In the mid 1980s, I was invited by my church’s worship pastor to play a rented Yamaha DX-7 at a wedding, picking out the melody to Malotte’s “The Lord’s Prayer” using a string voice on the DX-7 and a “EZ Play” songbook (the ones with the big notes that have the letter of the note in them), accompanied by piano (I’ve since written my own arrangement of the whole song). That simple melody started me on pursuing the synthesizer full-time. I joined the church’s worship team playing backup strings on that DX-7, then layering “new agey” sounds on top of it with an Akai X-7000 Sampling Keyboard that I bought used from a local music store for $400. I played keyboard using the guitarists’ chords as my guide, since I couldn’t (and for the most part, still can’t) read sheet music. On the songs that didn’t come with the chords (hymnals!), my piano partner played the song and I learned the chords to accompany by ear. My Roy Clark guitar sold for $40.
Starting bible college in 1993, I moved on to devote my time to study, later finding myself helping lead a worship team (one of two) at a predominantly Filipino church in the Long Beach area of California, playing both keyboard and piano (although at the time early arthritis in my hands made playing the fully-weighted keys of the piano painful after a few minutes, but I kept playing anyway). I also started writing and arranging many of the classic hymns in more modern versions and wrote praise and secular songs. At least one of the praise songs is still used at that church, last I checked.
After graduating bible college in 1996, I started writing more music while holding down my full-time job. Most of those tracks have never been performed live. I used the Akai, connected via MIDI to a low-end computer with a wavetable soundcard, to record them and created two CDs (”Red” and “White”).
In 1998 I became a married man, and once I relocated from California to Florida in 2000, songwriting came to an end—there were “more important” things like wife and potential family to take care of, and the inspiration to write really wasn’t there, either. I did keep the tracks I recorded to that time in case I ever wanted to pull them out and re-do them with better equipment. The Akai got sold, and I bought a Yamaha PSR-225GM home model to tinker around on from time to time.
With the divorce and all the changes of the past year, I’ve started picking up the keyboard again, and just recently bought a new guitar to start working my way back to proficiency on that instrument again (although I’ve never been able to do bar chords with these long fingers). Having a MacBook with GarageBand has been indispensable in my writing work of late.
Here’s the tracks I have still around, for your perusal:
“Red” Project - 1993 to 1996
These were recorded on a cheap wavetable sound card, so they are possibly quite cheesy. You will note influences of Yanni and Enya on this project, as they were the CDs I was into at the time (Yanni’s “Live at the Acropolis” was in heavy rotation). 
- Love’s Memories - My one (and to date, only) attempt at playing with Band in a Box. After listening, you’ll know why.
- Come Away Again - My all-time favorite, and one I’d like to redo eventually on the newer setup.
- A Walk on the Ocean
- Be Thou My Vision - arrangement of classic Irish hymn.
- When I Fall
- Holding an Angel - I had a request shortly after publishing this in Usenet for a copy of the MIDI file; somebody wanted to use it in a wedding. If you search on Google you just might find that original MIDI.
“White” Project - 1996 to 1998
Mylène Farmer was in heavy rotation on my CD player, as evidenced by the similarities between her “Ainsi soit je…” and “A Last Lullaby” in terms of chord progressions. Similar setup to the first project, but with (slightly) better soundcard.
- A Last Lullaby (Where Sadness Cries) - “Where Sadness Cries” was the original title; shortly after finishing this song, my mother passed away from cancer, a few weeks sky of turning 50. The hook had the sound of a music box after listening to it for a while, so the change of title.
- Rain and Candlelight - My then-fiancée and I were sitting in her parents’ backyard in Florida, watching the thunderstorms passing overhead (we were in a covered area
). Inspiration for this track. - There Is Joy in the Lord - a NRG version of Cheri Keaggy’s praise song I had done for a youth group event.
- Love’s Refrain - Intended for my wedding, but never used. Probably because it came in a nine minutes in length.
- If Dreams Come True - This one actually had a lyric. It’s long lost.
Stuff since “White” - 2005 to present
Not much new material, but I’m just getting started. These are all done in Apple GarageBand (first on an iBook G4, then on the MacBook I currently own). NOTE: These are MPEG-4 (.m4a) files rather than MP3s.
- Without You
- Without You (the fast version, unfinished)
- Hyperdrive III (unfinished) - This is a combination of the hooks from the first two versions of “Hyperdrive” I had written in the 1980s.