Welcome to my website. I’m a passionate amateur songwriter, producer, photographer, videographer, and blogger. I write about my creative process, health issues, and just about anything else that strikes my fancy.
I’m a co-founder and co-host of the Song Talk Radio podcast and Meetup group; producer, drummer and co-songwriter of the indie-folk-rock band Beige Shelter; and I also release my own music.
I invite you to spend some time here, discover something, maybe learn something, have a laugh, and enjoy my musings. Thanks for visiting!
Words
I recently finished reading a great book by Marc Myers entitled Anatomy of a Song: The Oral History of 45 Iconic Hits that Changed Rock, R&B, and Pop. Myers interviewed the people involved in historically significant songs from the 1940s to the 1990s. He ended his examination in 1991 because, as he explains it, you [...]
I first discovered Rush towards the end of high school, after borrowing a tape of Presto from the public library on a whim. I expected to hear heavy metal that I wasn't fond of, but instead I was pleasantly surprised to hear a fusion of rock, jazz, progressive, and extraordinarily well composed and performed music; [...]
I was intrigued by the premise of the movie Yesterday; an English singer-songwriter who finds he's the only one in the world who remembers the Beatles music after a freak accident. This is a unique idea and relatively refreshing after a barrage of mediocre musical hero bio-pics in recent memory. Watching the movie, I often [...]
Music
I met Chad through the cross-pollination of our respective Meetup groups, Song Talk Meetup, and Chad's own group, At Home Songwriting. I highly recommend Chad's online workshops, he's a fantastic teacher with a great presentation style and knows how to engage his participants in a meaningful and effective way. He's also the Education Director at [...]
I’m inviting rap artists to collaborate on a new project. I created these beats for my progressive electro-pop EP, Ace Symmetry. I challenged myself to only use odd time signatures, so every beat is 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, or 13 beats to a bar. If you’re up to the task, I’d love to hear [...]
I released an EP of progressive electro-pop songs in September 2020. Ace Symmetry features odd time signatures, nonsensical lyrics, inventive beats, and catchy synth solos. It was an interesting and fun challenge to work on a focused project like this. I talked about the project and featured some of the songs twice on Song Talk [...]
Images
I released an EP of progressive electro-pop songs in September 2020. Ace Symmetry features odd time signatures, nonsensical lyrics, inventive beats, and catchy synth solos. It was an interesting and fun challenge to work on a focused project like this. I talked about the project and featured some of the songs twice on Song Talk [...]
Canadian Music Week is always a great time to see artists you're already a fan of, and discover some new talent. On this night, I went to see my friend Arianna Mae perform with her band, and got the pleasure of catching Alex Whorms as well. This was certainly a night of great talent, and [...]
I went to a live music show featuring Toronto-based rocker Marlon Chaplin (check out his stuff, he's great) at the Piston in Toronto. I had my new Panasonic Lumix G85 camera in tow to try out, and used my Zoom H2N recorder to take a signal from the room mixer and capture the room sound, [...]