SnowGhost Music

Ted used to have vinyl, but he now admits that he rarely listened to the old LPs, EPs, and singles that he used to buy.

“Well, for one thing, they look cool. Nothing ever looked cooler or will ever look cooler than vinyl,” says Ted, adjusting his hands so he can flip the record he’s holding in his hands. “But they sounded like ass compared to CDs. At least they did on my shitty Technics whatever it was. And I definitely never washed my records…”

His voice trails off as he studies his reflection in the absolutely spotless ebony 12-inch disc. Maybe he’s thinking about the first time he heard Back In Black, which he has just removed from its jacket. Or maybe he’s thinking about how he’s starting to look too m... read more >

So after a bit of a holiday away from working on my record, I decided to ramp up again. With all of the drums and bass parts really solid, I felt that it was time to build the weirdness, or soundscape stuff. You see, because I already hear the rhythm parts in my head, I have a different philosophy about building songs. If you fill it up with noise, for lack of a better term, and have to work the rhythm parts around that, you don’t risk having key anchor parts step on each other. It’s a bit backwards, but sometimes noise is the only thing that keeps you from adding too much. This time around I invited my good friend from Portland, musician, producer, and engineer extraordinaire, Cory Gray. He also has his own project called CarCrashLander. We share the same love for production - all things weird and noisy. There is always some serious back patting going on when we blow up a tube or transformer. We’re Freak is the first installment of the session I had with Cory.

Ah, a much-needed return to the world of writing. The last song I wrote was a song called Peace and Harmony, to be sung by a chorus of 4th to 6th graders at a school function. The theme was harmony. We nailed it. The last story I wrote was a two-paragraph number about a famous hobo. It was followed by five questions asking about main ideas and details and sequence of events and what not. These are the things I find myself writing these days because I am an elementary school teacher.

I still look at my guitar. I play it too sometimes. I recently performed even, in front of actual people other than students and parents. But mostly I wait. Oh, over the next break I’ll have time to record that piano track I’ve been... read more >

I haven’t bought music in two years. I did have a span where I would mail order some more obscure CDs from my ear-to-the-ground friends at Aquarius Records in San Francisco (thanks Jim and Andee!). I would also buy my classic CDs, Sam Cooke to The Stooges, from Amazon. I’d get the discs in the mail, load them into my server, and file them away for safe-keeping. It sounded better at full resolution, and overall was cheaper per CD, rather than $1 per song off of iTunes - $1, for a low quality mp3 that seamlessly loaded on my phone – I’ll do the extra steps thank you very much. I have never bought an mp3. Wait, I take that back – I did buy the mp3 version of “Goodbye Horses” by Q Lazzarus from Amazon a few years back, in a pinch. Remembe... read more >

This is the latest demo of my song ‘Leave It Alone’, which has been on the back-burner for a long time. It took two days for Producer Mike to pry it out of my hands and turn it into something I felt good about. I knew that there was a good song in there – it was always a favorite when I played it with my acoustic guitar. But as soon as I started mucking with a band feel, it almost always went cheesy…. at least I thought so. After some meandering in the drums and piano areas, I feel like I have made some peace with the song. Add the super-smooth backing double harmony vocals, panned left and right, and you’ve got a poor man’s Steely Dan. It also doesn't hurt that Garry Tallent from the E Street Band makes an appearance on bass.