November 16, 2012 - Explorer is now available on Bandcamp

It took me a while, but it has finally happened. Explorer has been released on Bandcamp!

November 14, 2012 - Off the rails

I'm still not finished the Icy MOD, too many things got in the way though I hope to have it finished soon nonetheless. I started another new project in FL Studio, which is potentially better news anyways. This new track is the first of a new album. "Explorer II" wouldn't be too far off in terms of feel, but of course I'll have a more original album title than that. :)

September 18, 2012 - Ice Cold MOD

I found one of my older projects the other day, started around 1994-1995 in OctaMED SoundStudio. It was one of my first attempts at an 8-channel track. It just had the first four patterns finished, but I've added another 13 during the past serveral days. A few more patterns to do and then I'll post it on my MODs page. It feels good to delve into the tracker world again. Really contrasts what we can do with modern technology.

September 13, 2012 - So what has been going on?

Well... a lot has been going on, but not much that can be immediately seen. The management system has grown by leaps and bounds but has not left me with much time for other things. In my spare time I've been picking up a lot of old video games and scanning the box art and manuals for the sake of preservation. I've had a number of music projects on the go but I have been hard pressed to actually write about it in the meantime. I'm planning to release a few more of my previously unreleased MOD tracks such as the one I posted yesterday (In The Game Part 1 chiptune) so we'll see what happens. There are still a lot of unfinished sketches, some of which I'll finish and release as MODs and some that will get a complete reworking with all my new gear.

September 12, 2012 - More updates!

Ok, finally getting around to updating some areas of the site. I've updated my projects page with all the stuff I've done the past few years. I also managed to post another unreleased MOD (In The Game - Part 1) to my MODs page. I think I'll try to do more small updates from now on instead of saving up for big updates that never happen...!

August 28, 2012 - Dwarf Quest

What a rush... Andreas and I completed the score for "Dwarf Quest" a few weeks ago and sent off the master audio files to the developer, Wildcard. I've now played the finished game and I've got to say it is quite fun. It's neat to finally hear some music I worked on in a published game! Big congrats to Dylan at Wildcard, I hope the game does well.

March 06, 2010 - New record for web site neglect

As someone mentioned in my guestbook, where I just finished clearing out hundreds of spam messages, it has been far too long since I have made any updates here. One reason is that more of my focus has been going towards getting the Frequency 44 site up and running, so news updates will be happening more often over there. However, I'm still going to try keeping my solo projects up to date over here as well. I might even revamp this site completely with more of an emphasis on music.

Things are going fairly well, I've got more projects going on than I'd prefer, but it keeps things interesting. I've got a few new tracks that I should hopefully have posted here fairly soon. To be honest though, I've been focusing a little bit more on getting some licensed tracks done for Shockwave-Sound (the music library run by Bjorn "Dr. Awesome" Lynne). The few tracks that I do have up there have been selling fairly well, which is fairly motivating.

I also recently finished up my second "real" film score. It is for an Indie film called "Juice Pigs" and I'm quite pleased with the work I did. The final production should be released very soon, which is quite exciting.

A lot of my focus has been on developing my own web page CMS, mostly to help me build and manage sites. This is a massive project, but it's been growing by leaps and bounds. I'll likely switch this site over to it at some point in time, as it will make it much easier for me to do these updates. :) The Frequency 44 site is already up and running on it. Things will really pick up there once I get the music player finished.

Stay tuned...!

December 17, 2007 - The New Studio

Long time with no updates...!  The good news is that things are finally starting to fall back into place again.  I've moved to a new city as of last August and things have been a blur ever since.  I've got more studio space in the new place though, so things will not be as cramped as they were before.

Mostly I've been doing contract work and trying to finish up work on several web sites, but there have been a few musical developments here and there as well.  Most of the music jobs so far have not involved much composing, being more focused on arranging music.  Still, it's fun to try things out and experiment with another person's ideas.  It's kind of like remixing but in this case I'm working on an original mix!

At least the ball is rolling though, and I'll soon have more time to post a few more freebies up on my site again.

June 07, 2007 - Free time? What free time?

Wow, I don't think I've ever been so busy.  After spending three weeks in May with a horrible illness I'm back to work on all my projects and of course as a result of those three weeks I'm horribly far behind...

Product testing for EastWest is going well, I'm not sure what I'm allowed to say but it's probably ok if I say that things are moving ahead and that I might have some product demos finished very soon!

Two of the True Jive Plucker tracks are pretty much finished.  There will still be a little bit of tweaking here and there but nothing much left to worry about so I can really focus on the third track I'm working on for them.

Even my dayjob has been keeping me very busy..  lots of deadlines to keep up with so I've ended up bringing some of that home at the end of the day to ensure that we don't fall through on these projects.  The work is interesting though, which helps to keep me focused.

The best news for last...  we (my family and I) will be moving back to Regina in August!  I'll be setting up shop there, with a larger (and dedicated!) studio space.  Since this means leaving my web job behind (well, I might be continuing on contract with my employer and working remotely..) it should mean lots more time for music production, and will hopefully mark the beginning of a full-time career in music.

I should be putting a few more tracks up on the MP3 page very soon now, so check back later this month for some new downloads!

March 01, 2007 - Workin' workin' workin'

Things are busy and threatening to get even busier.  I've been spending most of my studio time working on those symphonic backing tracks for the True Jive Pluckers.  The level of detail has to be as realistic as possible so I've really been paying attention to the fine details.  In the end, I think it is sounding really good, but even so there is still only so much I can do without actually hiring live players!

To give myself a little break from that, I pulled another old MOD sketch out of the archives and worked it into a new 3 minute track.  You'll find "Ninjaguy in the Land of Mages" over in the MODs area.  I wanted to do something fun during my lunchbreaks at my day-job (webmaster for a university) and this track was needing to be sent out into the world.  I even entered it in a contest over at the CGEmpire forums.  I'm not expecting that it will do very well (an old MOD style tune up against some full orchestra and full choir soundtracks...) but hopefully it will at least give some of the listeners over there a brief moment of nostalgia!

There's more stuff in the works too.  I'm working on a licencing deal with an online music library for one thing.  It wouldn't be much money, but even so it is much better than my music sitting on an archive CD earning me a grand total of $0...  Besides, more exposure can never be a bad thing in this music business!

Lazerblade (the band) has another CD in the works, and it looks like I might be their mixing engineer once again.  Hopefully it goes ahead because I rather like working with these guys.

Ah well... back to the grind!

January 30, 2007 - 3rd Place!

What a fun way to start a new year!  I took part in the recent SoundsOnline (December) music contest and ended up with a solid 3rd place position when all was said and done.  There were more than sixty entries in this contest, many of which were incredibly well done.  As a prize, I will receive one of the latest EastWest/Quantum Leap sound libraries, and I will be beta testing several other new products for this company.

Presently I'm working on some orchestra tracks for my father's band, "The True Jive Pluckers".  These tracks will provide the background for several tracks on their upcoming CD, with the 'Pluckers trio performing solo instruments in the foreground.

Also of note, I've pretty much finished work on Ryan Purchase's web site.  In addition to the design/development work, I've provided him with an interface for managing his site, so he can easily make updates to his online shop and MP3 page, among other things.  Ryan is also a Canadian composer and you can buy some of his scores (sheet music) through his shop.

October 23, 2006 - Just a small update

I've posted a couple more remixes that I found "out there" (in this case, modarchive.com).  They were originally posted in IT (ImpulseTracker) format, so I've converted them to MP3 to make them more globally playable.  They've been posted under "Remixes" in my music area, so feel free to check them out!  The ones I've just posted are "Counterpoint" and "Dreasmscope I".

Not too much else to say at the moment, as I've been busy working on several web projects.  One of them is nearing completion and the other two are well underway now.  I might post some details about them later on once they're ready to go live!

September 20, 2006 - Another September..

Well, I have lots of news this time.  I've been quite busy for the past few months so I've been a bit negligent with my web site.

Back in May I entered another SoundsOnline demo competition, and finished in 2nd place again with my ethnic compostion, "EastWood".  So close to a victory!

Next, I spent several weeks as the mixing engineer for Lazerblade, a band from my hometown, Regina!  They're an incredibly talented group of musicians and I suspect their music could have a very broad appeal.  We got the mixes wrapped up in July and the CD is now available for order through their web site.  I might also get a few copies from them to sell in my online CD shop.

I'm not too sure what happened to August, that month seems to have just come and gone without all that much happening.  I've been working on some projects here and there, and also putting some focus on getting some bonus materials online for Explorer.

Now, the best news..  I just completed work on my first film score!  I will post more details about the movie (made for TV) itself soon, but for now let me just say the past two weeks were insanely busy.  I composed approximately half of the symphonic/incidental music for the film, which amounts to about 24 minutes of music, all composed within the two weeks I just mentioned.

At least I certainly say that life has not been at all boring lately!

May 26, 2006 - Good results!

Well, I had to rush a bit to get it done but I entered a composition in the April contest (right on the last day of the month) at SoundsOnline.  After the first round of voting, I was tied for first place with two other entries!  The voting period was extended to determine the final results, and after all was said and done I ended up in second or third place, depending on if you count the last few votes that came in past the deadline.

"The Castle Garden" can be found on my MP3 page.

It was quite an experience for me, and it's a good feeling being so close to winning a contest.  Too bad that only the winning entry receives a prize though!  There were 36 entries in the contest, many of which were fantastic... so I'm very happy about being in the top three!

April 03, 2006 - Several new projects

Well, after a short break in January, I started working on a few new things:

For starters, it looks like I'll be mixing/mastering an album for a band from my hometown.  I'll write more details once everything is finalized and the project is a little further along.  I will say that they are a very talented bunch of musicians and that their music combines acoustic and electronic sounds with vocals.

Next, I'm co-producing a vocal jazz album with my sister-in-law, who has written some excellent tunes.  She is a fine vocalist and this will be a great learning experience for me since I have mostly worked on instrumental music in the past.

I'm also working on my own compositions, including a sort of retro-styled theme, like the music from the 1940's.  There's also another synth/rock track in the works that will sound more familiar to those of you who are used to my work!

The Explorer sales have been going well, better than I'd expected!  James (a good friend of mine) has been setting up some distribution in the Toronto area, so hopefully the sales will continue to build up!  I'm hoping to at least make enough to buy some more upgrades for my studio.

December 27, 2005 - Explorer

Explorer has arrived!  There's an mp3 sampler here... it's about ten minutes long and contains clips from almost every track on the album.

I've got the finished CD in stock now, I'm pretty happy with the results!  The artwork turned out very nicely (thanks again, Jesse!) and the entire package is definitely something I'm glad to have my name on.

I'm going to be rearranging things here a bit, so the Explorer page will now be found under the Discography section on my site instead of Projects.

Also, I'll be opening an online shop soon where Explorer will be available.  It should be ready in the first week of January 2006 if all goes well.

October 12, 2005 - The Sweatshop

Well, I've spent the past week and a bit working on the final cut of Explorer.  I've finished the first draft of it and I've played it all the way through for several 'alpha testers'.  Turns out it still needs alot of work, so I'm now working hard on the second draft.  This mixing/mastering stuff is very, very time consuming and possibly driving me slightly mad.  Trying to get that 'final sparkle' that so many commercial CDs have is proving to be quite the chore.  I'd love to be able to get someone else to do it but I don't exactly have the budget for this.  Maybe next time!  :)

September 29, 2005 - The light at the end of the tunnel

Finally, I've finished composing all the tracks for Explorer.  If all goes according to plan, we'll have a December 2005 release date.

I've got a few small projects going on the side as well, including some background music for a friend's video production.  I've also been working on some unofficial remixes of the music from Ultima 6, but now I'm waiting to hear back from Electronic Arts to see if I can get their permission to post these on my site. Probably better to sort this out first so that I don't have any nasty legal suprises.  I hope they say yes as I spent a fair amount of effort reworking the introduction music.

June 27, 2005 - Almost done!

Explorer is almost finished.  At this point there are only two tracks left (both of which are pretty much written, just need some updating and revisions).  I'm very confident now that it will be a late July or early August release.  I'll put a sampler of it online very soon.

The demo is also moving along, we've been planning each part of it out and a storyboard is being assembled as I write this!

... which brings me to an introduction.  Jesse Sinclair has joined our team and will be in charge of the artwork.  Some of his drawings/paintings can be seen on his deviantArt page.  Jesse is a fellow Canadian, and Andreas and I are glad to have him onboard for this project.  I probably should have mentioned this sooner since he's actually been part of the team for several months already.

Jesse is also going to work on the cover art for Explorer, so that will be something else to look forward to!

June 06, 2005 - Music Progress

It's getting close...

During the weekend I completed two more tracks for my "Explorer" CD.  I'm pretty sure now that it will see a Summer 2005 release, most likely in August!  Yes, this long, long journey is finally nearing its end.  This is a good thing since I have several new projects in the works!

Andreas and I are also working on a web browser based demo.  It will likely be released as a Frequency 44 production.  I've got lots of fun Javascript effects ready, so now we're looking into creative ways to combine and use them in the final production.  I made my first "true 3D" starfield the other day.  I found the algorithm online, credited to Matt Fairclough.  I modified his algorithm and made a few small changes in order to get a similar effect in DHTML.  Hopefully this demo will see a summer release date too!

May 16, 2005 - A busy weekend

Aside from trying to keep up with my fatherly duties, I spent alot of time working on "Explorer" during the weekend.  I managed to get three tracks completed!  This is a new record for me, granted most of the time was spent mixing, mastering, and recording the live parts.

With a little bit of luck I can keep the momentum up and the CD just might be ready this summer!

February 25, 2005 - A rather late New Year!

Well, quite alot has changed recently.  For starters, I now have a daughter.  :)  She arrived in December and we've been rather busy ever since.

It's quite amazing how little free time I have these days, so all my projects have been dragging along at a snail's pace.  In the past few weeks I've managed to find a little more free time though, so things should start happening once again.

There's a new XM posted on my MODs page: "Rays Of Light".  I've been working on this one during my lunch breaks at the office.  I've discovered to my suprise that my webspace has been expanded to 1GB, so I've posted XM and MP3 versions of this track for download.

November 13, 2004 - New XM file posted

I've added another 'new' XM file to my MODs downloads: "Optic Neutron".  This track was at least 6 years in the making, so I hope it will be enjoyed!  It was quite fun to compose, and I probably could have kept on going with it, but 7 minutes is probably enough.

I might even consider making a slightly shorter version of it to post on scenemusic.org...  Seven minutes might be a little too much for most listeners to put up with all at once.  Besides, the full version is always free to download from my site.  :)

My family was up for a visit this weekend, so I didn't get much composing done.  I'll probably do some on Sunday for a while since Andreas (DarkStar.) and I have yet another project going down.  This time we're working on a sort of fantasy track based on the "Guild Wars" game.  We're even going to throw in a small bit of the title track (composed by Jeremy Soule) just for fun.  The game itself is quite cool, and I had some fun playing it with Andreas a couple weeks ago during their world preview event.

Bjorn Lynne is offering another Christmas deal this year (as he usually does each year).  This time he is giving away a free "campfire music" CD to customers who buy two or more of his own CDs.  I'll probably take advantage of it, since I've still got a few more Christmas gifts to pick out this year.  Check here for more information!

November 03, 2004 - Updated the MODs page

Well the fun never ends around here.  It turns out that Aminet's main USA mirror has been shut down.  Since I have no idea when or if it will return, I have decided to host all my Aminet released MODs on my own webspace.  I also re-archived them all into ZIP format which should make them a little more accessible to everyone.  In addition, I have made available one large zip file that contains all of those Aminet releases.

I've also added some statistics to the MODs page itself (more for my own benefit than anything else).  It now displays the total playtime of my MOD releases.

Explorer is moving along again, albeit rather slowly.  I've been tinkering with some freeware ASIO drivers in an attempt to be able to add realtime effects to my electric guitar.  It's quite cool being able to adjust all the effects and be able to hear the results right away.  It turns my PC into a very expensive effect box.  :)

Speaking of my PC, it died a couple weeks ago.  I'm not completely sure what went wrong, but I suspect the processor burned out.  Apparently this is a very rare thing to have happen.  The chance of a two-year-old processor burning out after working perfectly for the entire two years is probably in the same range as winning a lottery (though infinitely less thrilling).

Of course, the usual solution to this problem is to drop in a new P4 processor and carry on normal operations.  However, when I went to the store to do just this, the techies there informed me that because of the mainboard I have, the new P4 processors will not work properly in it.  I would have thought a P4 is a P4, but apparently they come in two flavours: Northwood and Prescott.  The Northwoods are much more difficult to get now, being the older version of the P4.  Also, my mainboard was one of the now rare boards that uses Rambus RDRAM memory modules.  In the end I had to buy a new mainboard and new memory in addition to the new processor.  Ouch, my wallet hurts!

October 13, 2004 - Concerts and Messageboards

Last night I went with my wife and some friends to see Sting and Annie Lennox live in concert.  It was quite an experience...  the music was nothing short of amazing but being among the 'crowd of screaming fans' gets old pretty fast.  I can understand showing appreciation, but screaming insanely, whistling, and generally making an ass of oneself is not something to be proud of (and I'm referring to the extreme cases of these, since the first two can be expected and even appreciated to some extent).  When I say 'making an ass of oneself', I pretty much mean the people around us who chatted noisily with one another through much of the concert.  I mean, who the heck spends $80 to go to such a concert so they can prattle on about the weather with their friends?  Personally, I went to see Sting and Annie Lennox, which is most certainly not something that I can do every day!

Actually, most of the time I had no problem with the audience, it was really just the person seated immediately behind us who was whistling so loudly as to cause immense pain in my ears.  My wife was the smart one and covered hers during these times.  I would love to strap this person to a chair and force them to listen to that sound directly in their ear for hours, to show them how unpleasant it is for everyone else around them.

Of course, I am more used to the audiences at classical music concerts, so perhaps I am just not well adapted to the pop crowd yet!

Annoyances aside, it was great to hear some of my favourite tunes from Annie and Sting.  Sting's segment was the most technically impressive with all the special effects, but I have to say Annie's got the most stage presence.  They both really know how to play to the crowd, and I could see that most (if not all) of the audience was having a really great time.

My favourite part of the entire show was during the opening.  We were treated to some solo guitar work by Dominic Miller (positively amazing).  Sting came out to accompany Dominic for the final opening song, providing the vocals for "Shape of My Heart".  The rest of the show was very impressive to be sure, but to be honest it was a bit tiring on my ears and by the end everything was sounding a bit distorted.

Still, for all the combined onstage talent, it was pretty amazing.  It's one thing to hear a studio-produced track, but it's something completely different to experience it all live.  It is even more amazing when each and every one of the performers gives a virtuoso performance, which was pretty much the case with this concert.  You name it, the drums, the guitar, the keyboards, the backup singers...  they were all exceptional!

So, was it worth the ticket price?  Oh most definitely.

---

My friend Andreas finally has a working messageboard.  For the past couple weeks I struggled with the installation of Apache, MySQL, and PHP in order to be able to run MiniBB, a freeware messageboard.  I should probably write a small tutorial on how to set those three things up, because it was quite difficult to find all the information I needed to know.  A few small details were left out of the official documentation.

Once that was working, the rest was a bit easier since it just involved fixing up some HTML templates and tweaking the stylesheet in order to customize it for Andreas.

---

Lots of music has been worked on lately.  I'm almost finished the background work for "My Pyramid or Yours", which will feature some solo guitar (though I feel like a complete hack on the guitar now, after hearing some real guitar playing at that concert).  After this, there are only two or three more tracks that will need to be finished off for my upcoming album.  "In the Game Part 2" and "A Walk In the Cold" will likely be the final tracks.

In addition, Andreas and I have been working very hard on the GrimStone soundtrack.  We're quite pleased and frequently suprised by the results we're getting.  We've written two full tracks for the game (probably only one of which will actually be used in its entirety) plus several solid ideas that we will definitely use in the game.

September 28, 2004 - CGI Woes

Well, so much for Netfirms.  Mere days after I set up my CGI scripts there, I noticed alot of downtime during the middle of the day during which my scripts were unavailable.  In fact it was not even a 'busy' message, but a message informing me that my scripts would receive no priority on their free server unless I upgraded to their pay service where all the restrictions are lifted.  I felt this was bogus since most of my scripts would actually use less system resources than serving up a graphic-heavy webpage.

I also didn't appreciate their obvious attempt to extract money from me.  Especially since there was nothing that clearly explained this to me when I signed up for my free account.

They offer 50MB of free webspace, which is a pretty good deal, and their server seems pretty fast.  However, their unreliable treatment of CGI scripts is unacceptable for my needs.

I have set up my own server now, and I am hosting my CGI scripts with no restrictions whatsoever.  Hopefully this also minimizes downtime, since I am dedicating a computer to this task 24 hours a day.  Andreas and I are also using this computer to facilitate our sharing of work files for Frequency 44 projects.  It took up pretty much all of my weekend getting this server hooked up, but I think it was well worth the effort.  It's a good feeling when things finally start working.

September 20, 2004 - Blue Mood

I've posted another new MOD in the music section: "Blue Mood".  It's a track that's been around for a while, but I only just got around to actually posting it.

I switched to a different free host with the hope that my CGI scripts will start working again.  Prohosting has become far too problematic, so I'm trying out Netfirms instead.  It looks like there might be some bandwidth issues though, so I might be looking around yet again if this becomes too unreliable.

September 06, 2004 - Guestbook

Well, my guestbook is now working again.  I don't know how long it was broken for, but big thanks to my dad for pointing it out this evening.  I was wondering why nobody had signed it since February!

Also, I apologize for the abominable advertisements that appear on my news page and on my guestbook.  I think this is reaching an unacceptable level.  I can appreciate that they have to advertise to make money, but this added link bar at the bottom is too much.  I will be looking for a new place to host my news and guestbook.  I welcome any suggestions.

August 31, 2004 - New Tracks

Alright, enough is enough... I've decided to grab all the unfinished tracks that I started during the past few years and, well, finish them!

I've already completed two of these tracks and they have now been posted in my MODs section.

Frequency 44 is moving ahead!  Andreas and I finished two tracks for the GrimStone project.  We might have them posted soon on the F44 website.

August 04, 2004 - More Updates

I've added two more unreleased MOD files to my mods page.  Also, I've made some updates to the projects area.  Not much else to report for now.

July 28, 2004 - Settling Down

Alright, things are finally starting to calm down again.  Susan and I have moved into our new home and it is already starting to feel comfortable.  There is still much work that needs to be done, but I think the worst of it is over for now.

Andreas and I have been working on the soundtrack for a small game project.  I believe the game itself will end up being a short demo, but we will make sure that even this short demo has an impressive soundtrack.  The game is called "Grimstone" and you can find more information about it here and some on Andreas's site.

My music studio is almost rebuilt and I will be composing at full speed again very soon.  I have a speaker to use with my amplifier now, which means I will be recording guitar parts properly with a microphone from now on.  This should provide a nicer sound than the direct line I was using before.

Finally, I've extended my MODs page and added a couple of older MODs that were previously unreleased!  I'll be adding more soon, but there are two 'new' MODs for now.

June 28, 2004 - Busy Busy Busy

It's been a crazy time for the past month and a bit.  Susan and I have bought our first home, which has proven to be quite a learning experience.  It's amazing how much money it all costs.  It's a good thing we'd been saving some up, since there are many hidden costs involved.  Should be worth it in the end though, since paying into a home is more productive than paying rent.  :)

I've been rather bad at getting music work done, but I started working on "My Pyramid or Yours" again last night.  The whole process of making a CD is worrying me a bit too, since there are a few things I should probably take care of (most of which cost money) like opening an account on Artistlaunch and registering as a composer in Canada.

I'm thinking about starting a movie and game review section on my site.  I've been feeling somewhat disgruntled towards many 'reputable reviewers' who have bashed on movies that I thought were actually very well done.  It also drives me crazy when a game reviewer writes a review for a game and it's obvious they don't know what they are talking about.

One reviewer was writing about "Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness" (the 6th game in the series) and actually wrote something to the note of "Lara can now climb on certain walls!" as if this were some major evolutionary step in the series.  In actuality, Lara has been able to "climb on certain walls" since the 2nd game in the series.

It makes me wonder Why these guys are being paid to review games when they obviously don't do any research.  Seriously, if you're going to make a claim about a 'new feature' in a game... at least make sure the prequels didn't already do it.

...

I also finished up the bulk of the work for my friend Andreas's (DarkStar.) new web site.  We're quite pleased with the results.  The menu at the bottom of his site actually caused me the most trouble and made up most of the development time.  I really wish the people who develop web browsers would sit down and agree on how to do things!!!  It would make my job much easier.  I have to say that Mozilla Firefox presently does the best job of behaving itself.  There are a few little annoyances here and there, but not nearly as bad as the others.

I had a crazy amount of trouble getting that new menu to work in Opera 7 (Windows) and Safari (Macintosh).  I don't know how well the menu will work on previous versions of these browsers, but hopefully it is now stable for most web surfers.

Ok, that's all for now.  :)

May 12, 2004 - So much to do...

Well, first off I have made a few small changes around here.  There are a couple new header graphics that I whipped together.  If anyone is interested, the piano keyboard I used for the Music page is from a photograph of my Yamaha PSR-38 keyboard.  I also took the pic of the A500 that is seen on the Early Music page.  :)

I've also added some more MOD tracks to the MOD section, along with some background information (I can't believe it takes me so long to write all these short little web pages) about them.  I think I will have to create a download mirror of all these files since they are proving to be slightly problematic for people to listen to.  It seems that not everyone knows what to do with an LHA file, so I will eventually post them all in ZIP files which should be much easier for everyone to deal with.  I will also post XM (FastTracker 2) versions of all the OctaMED files, since those are causing some playback problems as well.

Well, another interesting project has been started, which I will write about in greater detail later on.  Let us just say that it involves me learning some X86 assembly language!  This is something that I never thought I would do, but I was able to learn it in only a few days.  There is a great online book about it, which can be downloaded for free.  If you're interested, search for "The Art of Assembly" on Google, and you are bound to find a mirror of it.

Finally, I ought to mention that work has started on "My Pyramid or Yours?", which is another track for my upcoming CD.

March 29, 2004 - One Step At A Time

"Four Fried Chickens" is complete and I have updated my projects section.  I put quite a few hours in over the weekend to get this done.  I'm starting to look into ideas for the CD cover now.

I've also finally added a music section to the site during the past week.  I'll be adding information to it fairly regularly from now on.  At the moment I'm trying to put a complete collection of my MOD music releases together, with a few scraps of background information about each track.  :)

March 22, 2004 - Update

Well, the weekend started slow but ended with a burst of creativity.  I've pretty much finished up the background work and the bass part for my new "Four Fried Chickens" track.  It's always fun to try something new, so I thought I'd try writing something with more of a jazz/blues/funk feel to it.  A couple of solo parts and some touch-up work is all that remains to be done.  Slowly, but surely, my new album is taking shape.

February 27, 2004 - Back to work!

Well, so much for the February release date.  I've had some "writer's block" since January, but it seems to have cleared up now and I've been working at full speed on my music once again.

In recent events, I finished up a small soundtrack for my friend Andrea Norberg's film studies project.  She is making an episode of Hamlet done up like a TV sitcom.  I have provided her with a title track and 5 little jingles like the ones you hear before and after commercial breaks on TV.  I also got another track finished for my upcoming CD, which can be read about in the projects section.  This new track is called "Regen" and it is dedicated to my friend DarkStar who has been providing lots of moral support for this project.

I've also got some new equipment (Christmas gifts!) in the studio, mostly some smaller percussion instruments.  Some of them will likely get used in a few tracks for my upcoming CD, but they will be used more extensively in one of my next planned CDs.

Oh, one other thing, I have changed the name of the CD yet again...  it will be called "Explorer" now.  I think I like it better with the 'r' on the end.  :)

December 08, 2003 - Upgrades

I picked up a stand for my Yamaha synth on the weekend, so now I can finally use the thing.  I've already put it to good use in "In the Game - Part 1" -- it really sounds much better than the lead synth I'd originally put there with Buzz.  I finally decided on a final title for my upcoming album.  The album will be called "Explore", and I'm hoping to release it this February.

November 24, 2003 - A Busy Weekend

Wow, all I can say is that I probably clocked over 20 hours of music writing this past weekend.  I'm fairly sure that "Counterpoint 3.0" and "In The Game - Part 1" are about as complete as they'll ever be.  It was a real exercise in mixing and mastering.  The first track was completely made in FastTracker II, and I used ModPlugTracker to extract all the different parts.  The real fun began when I realized that I hadn't been completely consistent with what tracks were being used, so I had to do some creative cutting and pasting to put a few parts (for example, the guitar) back together.

I even tried to follow a 'standard procedure' when it came to mixing this track.  I started by adjusting the basses, pad synth and percussion's levels and EQ.  Then I added the other parts in one at a time, making adjustments along the way.  Hopefully the end result is worth all the trouble!

November 03, 2003 - Introducing Frequency 44!

DarkStar and I are pleased to announce that Frequency 44 is now online and ready to go.  We've temporarily established it on DarkStar's web host, but we'll get a dedicated domain for it soon enough.  Check out the official site to find out more.

October 22, 2003 - Fall is here again...

Man, what happens to the time?  My CD was supposed to be finished by now!

Ah well, it's taking longer to get it done, but the overall quality should be better than I had originally planned.  A few cool things have happened in the past few weeks, but I'll have to talk about them later.

So Indiana Jones Trilogy is out on DVD now (finally).  Hopefully I'll have my copy by the weekend.  I was hoping there would be a director's commentary, or possibly one by Harrison Ford himself, but it doesn't look like they felt like doing it.  I've been holding off on watching these films for the past year (at least) so that I would be able to really appreciate the DVDs.  Should be great to see them in DVD Widescreen format!

In other news, Bjorn Lynne has started a new service called ZonkMusic.  It's an online store where you can buy legitimate copies of MP3 files, and definitely worth checking out.  It looks like you can also nab all the cover art for the CDs, which is quite cool for anyone who wants to support the artists.  I'll probably try hopping aboard once Revolution is ready.

I think the title of my new album is still subject to change.  I was looking around and found that countless musicians have already used this title for their albums.  Having the same album name as dozens of other musicians doesn't seem like a great way to stand out, in my opinion.

Motivation is really hard to find these days, but I'm finding that if I can start working on a track, it's fairly easy to keep working on it for hours and hours.  The real trick is getting started.  Coming home from a long day at the office isn't very condusive to getting more work done.

July 21, 2003 - A Productive Weekend

Well, the weekend was pretty good.  I managed to get a fair bit of work done for a change.  I finished reading the new "Harry Potter" book, and it was pretty good.  One major complaint though; Harry is too angry and whiny through the entire book.  I mean, sure, the guy's supposed to be an adolescent and all, but he's still rather difficult to relate to.  That and I have to compliment J.K.Rowling's ability to create utterly despicable characters that you love to hate.  The new character, Professor Umbridge, is easily one of the most miserable and disturbing characters I have ever read about in a book.  I think if I ever read the words "Hem hem" again I will have to shoot someone.

In other news, there is an update on my Revolution page.  A couple weeks ago I finally got around to recording an electric bass track for "Journey to Neptune".  It felt really good to do some real playing again after, what, four years of neglect?  My playing skills are still not up to par with what they used to be, but I think it was good enough to get the job done.

I recently ordered some CDs from Bjorn Lynne's website.  I payed for 4 CDs, and he sent me 6.  One was a bonus for completing one of his CD bundles, and the other is a promotional CD of various artists that he is giving away to anyone ordering one of his bundle deals.  What a great guy!  It's comforting to know that at least someone out there understands the concept of good customer service.  :)

On Sunday, I also spent some time working with DarkStar on a remix of a tune from an anime soundtrack.  He is working on the remix itself, but I will possible contribute a bit here and there.  Perhaps this will be our first official Frequency 44 release.

Finally, I've started working on a professional site for myself, and a new official website for Frequency 44.  This website will remain as a 'fun stuff' site, but I'll be focusing more on music and graphics on my pro site.

March 14, 2003 - Buzz Machines

Buzz Machines is a reall cool music editing package.  The craziest thing about it is that it's completely free!  Check out my "Revolution" project for some information about what I'm using it for right now.

January 31, 2003 - What am I up to?

The projects section is now open with information about my new CD and also about the new group "Frequency 44" which DarkStar. and I are forming.

January 03, 2003 - A Bold New Year

First of all, happy new year!  Hopefully this year there will be a few nice suprises here and there, but one thing for certain is that it will be a busy year for myself and DarkStar., with whom I will be working to establish Frequency 44.

Today is a historical day, since DarkStar. has officially released his new CD, aptly titled "Evolution".  This CD features 12 tracks of original music, two of which were contributed by myself.  Find out more about this CD at www.worldofdarkstar.de.

I'll be adding a projects section, a Frequency 44 section, and finally posting some streaming music on the site.

September 25, 2002 - Netscape 7

I've checked the site out using Netscape 7 and everything seems to work.  It's faster than NS6 and some of the rendering bugs are gone (the flickering in my JS banner for example.)

You can get a cut-down version of NS7 from www.sillydog.org that has had the AOL junk removed to make it smaller.

August 06, 2002 - Online Art

The Visual Art section is open now and I have posted some sketches.  Feel free to browse them.

July 03, 2002 - Guestbook is open

I've coded a guestbook that should now be somewhat useable.  I built it as an excercise in online form processing in Perl.  The code should be fairly portable so I may post it later as a downloadable.

June 18, 2002 - News Updates

I've just added a news module to the site, so the most recent news will be posted to the front page as well as the news page.

June 17, 2002 - New JS for the site

Ok, NS6+ and IE6+ users should be treated to a new JavaScript I've been working on for the past while.  Unfortunately they still generate a pile of errors in other browsers.  Also, the system requirements for NS6 are rather atrocious.  Why oh why does NS6 have to be so pickin' slow?!  Hopefully I'll eventually get this sorted out.

Ugh, I just tried this thing out on a Mac using IE and it took an abominably long time to load.  Looks like I'll be making a hacked down version of the site in the near future.

November 13, 2001 - New Site!

Well, the new site is pretty much in place, now I just need to add some more content.  I'll post updates to the site right here in the meantime.

So what should you be expecting to see?  Well, I'm still finalizing the site looks, but what you currently see will pretty much be the final product.  You can definitely expect a music section to be up soon, and the audio controls on the page will eventually work.  I'm also toying with the idea of a games section where I can post some reviews.

At any rate, welcome to my new site, and please check back every once in a while for updates.  I should have streaming versions of some of my better musical offerings available on the site very soon.