Open Source Music Project

Pronounced ˆdike-man, the Dyckman Valley is where I grew up in New York City. It is the oldest inhabited part of the island, originally the home of the Weekquaeskeek Indians.  They are the ones who “sold” Manhattan Island to Dutch governor Peter Minuit In 1626.

I happened to be mixing the tracks to this song when a documentary called “Super City: New York” was playing on The History Channel.  What caught my attention was a shot with an archeologist taken in Inwood Hill Park. He was standing in a place I had been many times as a boy. The neighborhood kids called them “the Indian caves”. Well it turns out they actually were. It was the winter home of the Weekquaeskeek Indians.  Really.

I don’t know how I connected the musical theme with that vision – but there you have it. Enjoy

Oct 24, 2008
What a great evening I’ve had. After a full week that went well, and at the end of a fun night, I found myself wanting to play.  So I did. I was really inspired tonight, and it came out of my fingers as an upward spiral of good spirited blues.  I think there is a better mix to be found in here somewhere, but good bad or indifferent here is my “Sweet Meet Blues“

August 7, 2010
My site were all compromised by hackers in July and as I finish the re-build I have reposted this tune with a different mix under the Re-post category. This mix sounds a little too raw and more like a circus than a song…

I really wanted to record something new tonight, but the little black box which connects the keyboard to laptop has an unacceptable hum. Drat.

Well, actually I got lucky. Moving some files around I noticed a set of three tracks which I had not produced yet called Friday Playday. I originally recorded these tracks on March 18, 2007. Sounds impossibly long ago against the backdrop of my current “new” life.

I call this a track and not a song because as I poke around inside my existing recordings I notice that I have played a lot of very different variations on surprisingly few themes. In other words I hear the same melodies and counter melodies across many recordings, but they seem pretty different because of the musical arrangement.   This is upbeat, all me – playing across three or four different tracks, and (I hope for your sake) not completely unpleasant.

Here are two versions of a song called “Ticker Tape”. The first mix is a little rough and the second one is more produced – I like them both. We all get our inspiration from somewhere, and for me this song was inspired by a Manfred Mann Album - Angel Station – not a specific song – just the feel of the whole album.

Angel Station is unique in featuring a six-note descending theme in most of the songs on the album, woven skillfully into the context of each song in a different way. You can read more about Angel Station here.

August 9, 2010
Note: Originally (Sep 27, 2008) I posted both these cuts within the framework of the podPress plugin for WordPress. Either I did not understand how that software worked or it did not work – so iTunes posted a random version of this song. I have since discovered that if I post only one song to the blog for iTunes to see it works a lot better – so if you are interested here is that alternate version of “Tickertape” mentioned above, please feel free to download the cut labeled “Track 1″ below.

Track 1

Here is a recording and individual tracks for a song I named snickers. It’s actually named for a pet goat, not a candy bar, but that’s a long story…