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

It seems like it gets longer and longer in between uploading new cuts. I don’t know if it is because I am getting too picky or what! I have kind of mixed feelings about this song, called “New All Along part I and II”. It is inspired from the old Bob Dylan song “All Along The Watch Tower”  in that it has a similar chord progression.

In this song the melody line is different and especially different in the second part.  I really like the way this came out except for one thing: No matter how I mixed it the first half sounds so different from the second half that it’s pretty much a different song.

After dozens of master mixes I finally gave up and made it obviously two songs – hence the  “New All Along parts I and II” title. Pretty clever huh?

I would really welcome your mix on this. The original unedited cuts are contained in zip files (links below) because iTunes (or the WordPress plug-in called Podpress) apparently sees posted mp3 files somewhat randomly. In fact I will go back and re-post the earlier stuff in that format to clean up the podcast tracks. As always you are free to use under the Creative Commons License. Translation – use it any way you want for free but give me credit as the song writer and performer.

Oh – and I would really appreciate it if you just let me know you used it – send me a link!

iTunes has added the opensource music project as a regular podcast! If you would like to subscribe through iTunes click here – and thanks!

This mix is one of my best I think. The track started from an unusually strong rock drum beat sampled from my synthesizer.  After hearing the whole set of tracks it was hard to choose what to focus on. The sax track is really smooth. The two lead guitar tracks are frequently in an interesting harmony – but not necessarily in tune with the sax track all the time. I think you will want to turn this up.

Over the Christmas Holiday I drive with a friend to New York and enjoyed a weekend in the city. The song “Skyline Drive” was written for that trip, and we played it (really, really loud) on the way up and back. I hope you enjoy it !

I’ve also included each raw track below in case you want to fool around with a remix yourself – or in the event you are just curious as to how one of my recordings goes together.

 

This one is pretty atmospheric in the beginning and a little fusion after that… I just don’t know where this stuff comes from sometimes. I hope you like this – I really do

Additional Note: I first posted this in November 2008, and while I have posted a lot of stuff since then I still find myself listening to this track in the car frequently. It is haunting and sweet at the same time … well to me anyway…

Some time ago I would spend time in a little Irish pub in NorthPort, Long Island, NY. It was a warm and accommodating place where most of the folks I hung out with were from County Cork, Ireland. I’m not sure why that was the case, but it was. I played darts and drank a ‘wee bit of Old Jamie’s and told stories with some of the coolest people I knew. My favorite memory was of playing guitar with the guys that hung out there. That’s actually the main reason I would go. Sometimes a flute would appear, and once someone whipped out an accordion.

This song reminds me of some of the music we were playing in NorthPort. I Finished the mix just now – I hope this does not get tedious to listen to… it’s as long a recording as I have ever posted here.  But I just wrote this and performed it in the last 90 minutes… it is still echoing sweetly in my ears. This is a straight up live recording.

This is a song I wrote about 20 years ago to and for the Mother of my Daughter. It has words, but I’m not ready to sing quite yet.

I was so frustrated earlier this week trying to set up my studio so I can record music I had to buy myself an early birthday present. It’s a digital recorder made by Boss, which in turn is owned by Roland, the same company that makes the synthesizer I use. (It’s a Roland Fantom-S BTW… see more here ) What an unbelievable difference in sound quality.

So here is the first recording on the Boss BR1200 created within four hours of opening the box, reading the instructions… O.K. reading a few of the instructions, hooking up the audio cables from the Roland to the piano and from there to the recorder. Plugged in my headset so as not to wake the neighbors – and came up with this version of Storm of Love.

8/8/2010
Note: I consider this a re-post since back in 2008 the individual track files were posted as MP3s . That messed up iTunes and a random work track would be posted to the podcast.

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…