GARDEN VARIETY (2024) ALBUM NOTES
Thank you for checking out my music. On this album is a collection of songs I recorded in 2023 and 2024. Some ideas are a little older, but all of them got finished within this time frame.
All compositions are mine except the last song, which is a classic guitar piece from 1960 “Wheels” (composers: Richard Stephens, Jimmy Torres, Norman Petty). All instruments are played by me and recorded track by track.
01 Myrtlewood: This tune has 2 major parts. In the first half of the song I use my Rick Canton headless semi acoustic guitar (equipped with 2 humbuckers and a piezo bridge) for the chords and it develops into a little chord journey with some interesting keyboard sounds in the background. Then an ascending bridge leads into the second part, which features a very rock oriented guitar solo that culminates in a theme I doubled with vocals. This song has a distinct progression in intensity from beginning to end.
02 Buttercup: The longest tune on the album, it uses a sequence played on my Korg Opsix keyboard coupled with a Behringer Edge analog percussion synth. On the latter I worked the filters manually which formed the basic rhythm and background structure of the song. Then I added the guitar chords and later the melody lines with different guitars and guitar sounds.
03 Rhododendron: Here I use a Boss GM800 guitar midi sound module to create a 12 string guitar sound with my 6 string midi guitar. It is an unusual rhythm structure, a mixture of 8/4 and 7/8. The melody partially has a somewhat “Irish” feel (I think). For me these melodic lines are sing-alongs. If you would listen multiple times, I guess you may also recognize it. (I think there are quite a few of these “sing-along melodies” on this album).
04 Lavender: This is an older chord progression. I love it and it finally made it on this album. For the chords I use a guitar of my own design and build, a fully hollow semi acoustic model with a real solid-wood-x-braced-acoustic-dreadnought-flat-top soundboard, but no sound-hole. It has 2 pickups, a K&K Pure Mini and a neck humbucker, and a strat type bolt on neck. It is a very flexible guitar, meaning you can easily bend the neck a little bit to create a light vibrato effect. The melody is played with another electric guitar and it is also “sing-along” (or whistle-along), at least in my humble opinion.
05 Blackberry: Here is an acoustic guitar tune. The solo I played with a Cannon guitar made in Oregon, recorded via the K&K Pure Mini pickup. The rhythm guitar track is played with a Tacoma guitar equipped and recorded with a K&K Trinity system. Two tracks, chords and solo. A third track in the background features some keyboard pads to add subtle spherical elements. It was quite a challenge for me because acoustic guitar string action is a good deal higher and stiffer than electric guitar and therefore much more difficult to play, especially on the faster melody lines. Besides that, the song alternates between a 8/4 and a 15/8 rhythm.
06 Rose: Here is an ambient sound piece to relax you after the previous fast piece, it is done with the “centaur” reverb on my Eventide H9. A spheric sound piece. Three guitar tracks, one with the centaur theme, one with very sparse little guitar snippets and one with the melody guitar with long sustained notes.
07 Coos River Beauty: Our apple tree. This is a smooth-jazz-pop tune that uses an accompaniment I arranged in “band in a box” software. Later I added a melody theme and a solo with electric and archtop guitar.
08 Azalea: “Upbeat” stuff…if you listen to it with headphones you will notice alternately left/right-fast-panned chords. There actually is an upward and a downward movement simultaneously. It is a relatively short piece in a 4 incarnations format: 1:Intro- 2:Snappy- 3:Heavy- 4:Rock.
09 Garden Happiness: This song is dedicated to my dear wife Karla, I asked her to name it and she suggested “garden happiness”. She definitely has a “green thumb”. Our garden does bloom like crazy. I also enjoy helping to put up trellises and eating the harvest. It is a very melodic tune, with warm and soft character throughout.
10 Cedar: A short tune featuring a baritone guitar theme with electric guitar melody snippets, leading into a chord-part with palm-muted add ons and returning back to the baritone theme with kind of a surprise.
11 Ivy: Intertwining, invasive and it finds its way to everywhere. Believe it or not, it grew under the house-siding and through a window seam right into our kitchen. But it still is beautiful. I know that this song is a little different than the rest. It’s harmonically all-over-the-place, like Ivy.
12 Wheels: Finally, here it is (another out-of-context song). The very first guitar song that I remember. I was 8 or 9 years old. My father had a 45 rpm single of it and played it on our tv-radio-turntable combo that we had back in the mid 60s. This song has been covered a few times since then. My version is how I remember this single (it is actually way better than the original I guess….) but I do not remember for sure who the artist was. Probably Billy Vaughn. There was a lot of palm muting and even some sweeping. I also combined it with the favorite rhythm pattern my dad used when he strummed chords on his Hofner guitar (I still have that one). This song was definitely a very important motivator for me to learn to play the guitar. But believe it or not, I just got around to it now, 60 years later.