Special Sound Clips and a Story

Carol, my wonderful wife and partner, has gone wild with Garage Band and has put some new sound clips on our website. She wanted to post sound clips that would actually give an experience of the essence of the music. Something that could be felt at a greater depth whether somebody bought any music or not. She wanted people to have the experience of possibly being touched by what it is we are trying to do, the humanity of it.

And guess what? She did it! It's "a work in progress," she says, but she's redone most of "Occurrences" and "In Living Continuance." I listened to them and felt the potency of the music in those bits. But it seemed timeless. Music can be so transforming in a short period of time if one is open and will allow themselves to receive it. I encourage those interested to check it out.

I want to tell one story about one of the clips, "The Blue of Neptune." This piece was inspired by an amazing picture of Neptune's deep, rich blue cloud cover. I was so absorbed in that color, that I started feeling the music form inside me quite soon after looking at the picture.

One day, a former student of mine named Joe Branco, who played bass trombone, was having a lesson with me. We started working on "The Blue of Neptune" in a connective manner by really letting ourselves feel the deep blue and sensing the planet as best as we could.

As we kept playing the piece and getting more immersed in it, we started to get inside a very different state of mind. We did not realize how different we felt until we left the practice room and went outside. We felt as though we were functioning at a totally different speed and mental reactivity to what was around us. We felt really good but odd, until we both looked at each other and realized we had just 'taken a trip' to Neptune and had not yet fully come back to Earth!

Enjoy the sound clips!