New music! Can you believe it? Me neither. But here it is!

After an exceedingly long dry spell, I’m finally starting to explore some of the musical ideas that have been floating around in my head for the past couple of years. This new track is the first of three experimental recordings I did on a recent vacation, where I finally had enough time and no responsibilities other than to play an instrument.

Over the past few months I’ve been looking into ambient guitar. While a lot of it doesn’t appeal to me because it seems to lack musical direction, it does remind me of the electronic music of Tangerine Dream, Brian Eno, and other artists that I really get into. By using some melodic ideas and working on giving them more room to breathe, I hope to find a middle ground that sounds pleasing. I also like the slower pace as it’s a lot more relaxing to play–and since people are always telling me how relaxing my music is, why not go with the flow?

This first track, “Magnetic Pipeline”, is about as simple as you can get. I plugged an electric guitar into a reverb unit, turned on the recorder, and followed where the music wanted to go. There’s a bit of post-production magic, but really not all that much. Most of the sound is coming from the reverb and the raw guitar tone. There are two more recordings from this session that will feature some background pads and other sounds, just to see what a richer arrangement sounds like.

The ultimate goal is to make things that are much more complex, using several different instruments and textures. While these early tracks will be simple and on the more primitive side, I’m really excited just to find some new musical ideas.

Watch for more tracks coming soon!

Recorded at Gull Cottage in Seaside, Oregon on November 30, 2023

Gear used

• Epiphone Les Paul Standard guitar
• Strymon Blue Sky reverberator
• Zoom H5 recorder

Enjoy!