Standard Deviation I had been introduced to Syndrums by my friend and bass player for Dred Scott, Chris August. He published one of the first electronic music magazines (Synapse) and they gave him a kit to review. Shortly thereafter, I was introduced to Emu electronic drum pads by Reek Havoc, a fellow drummer of the day. Emu pads were approximately 6" square and required a precise playing technique. When I showed up for the session with these pads on cymbal stands and a kick pedal with an upside down beater, everybody thought I was crazy, however, they sounded great when we assigned super clean, beefy sounds on the output. Jennifer Batten, Jennifer Condos, Tom Griep and I rehearsed "I just Wanna Dance (Retro)" and "Illusion" then recorded them in a few takes. Jennifer Batten retreated to a corner of the studio and played guitar exercises and solos for hours.

Next Jane sang her lead vocal parts and we did a rough mix. Then we went to lunch where Jennifer B told us one of my favorite jokes; the one about the BMW and the porcupine.

After lunch, we returned to the studio and Jennifer B recorded her blazing solos. She blew us away with her talent. A few weeks later, she was hired by Michael Jackson for the "Beat It" tour. We were blown away again!

After her solos, CheriŽ Curry showed up to sing background vocals with Jane. She was great and also very interested in my strange drum kit. Jane had a lot of fun singing with her and their voices blended well. A little more mixing and the songs were finished.

The rest of the album was recorded by Jane and I in my Mac MIDI studio, Smooth Jibe Studios, using the software Master Tracks Pro by Passport Designs. We played the tracks ourselves from keyboards and electronic drums. We transferred the results to Ten Squared Studios in Culver City, CA, where John Rando added some cool sounds and enhanced parts with Digital Performer. There we met "Eric" (wish I knew his last name) who played guitar solos on some of the remaining tracks. Things kind of fell apart at this stage as we didn't all work well together. I later had the songs mastered at Ocean View Digital Mastering, Santa Monica, CA. Eclectica Media in Venice, CA did the artwork for the album. It was published by Handlee Music on the Handlee Records label. The two live songs "I Just Wanna Dance" and "Illusion" were also released as a vinyl 45 on the "Starborn Records" label. As a side note, the (Retro) tag was added to "I Just Wanna Dance" after a quantizing error motivated us to write and record a new version of the song, but we wanted to keep the older version as well. In other words, "I Just Wanna Dance" was the title on the vinyl single but "I just Wanna Dance (Retro) is the title of the same song on the CD. We still have about seventy five copies of the single and several hundred copies of the CD.

It was our first recording experience together and we were still talking to each other. Quite a feat!

Boardheads Jane and I are both avid windsurfers. Davo Weiss is a windsurfing buddy of ours and we windsurf together often from May to October every year in various locations in California. Davo, his wife Janet, Jane and I have all traveled the world in search of the perfect combination of wind and water. Most of our memories are in our head whereas, Davo recorded most of his experiences on camera. He created a documentary film called "Boardheads" from that footage and a lot more from other sports which all involve boards.

He was preparing the film for inclusion in the Sundance Film Festival but he needed a theme song for the film. He asked me if I had any ideas and, one night around a campfire at Lopez Lake, lyrics started spewing out of my head. Within two weeks I had written and recorded the song at SmoothJibe Studios, which is perfect timing as I had a two week deadline. The first version was recorded and mixed in a hurry, so it sounded kind of thin. With a little time, I added three bass drum tracks, three snare drum tracks, three bass tracks, several guitars tracks and Jane sang background vocals. The song really filled out and sounded great! I also made some small "snippets" for the film from various experiments with sounds and track manipulation.

The film is available on iTunes and the audio single is available at iTunes and CD Baby or from links on this website.

My OS is G.O.D. I was kicking this song around for years. I had the chorus, but I struggled with the verses for a long time. I used to think that technology was useless when it came to religion. I am also a database programmer and I was approached to do a couple different Christian websites for clients. I realized that I was wrong about the ability for the internet to spread the word, however, it wasn't the way to communicate with God directly. I approached the verses from a different angle and I finished the lyrics.

This was my first project with Logic Studio (Garage Bands big brother) and I started from scratch with some Logic audio loops. I wrote the guitar and bass parts, combined them with some edited loops and came up with a killer hip hop beat enhanced by both edgy and beautiful strings. Again, I tapped Jane to do the amazing female vocals and I sang (spoke, recited) the male vocals. I originally wanted to use a RAP artist to do the male vocals. I ran ads for months to get a Christian RAP artist, but none responded. One day, I sang the part myself to see how it would sound. The recording had an effected "Mexican Radio" or "One night in Bangkok" sound that we thought came out pretty cool, so I used it. The male vocal track on this song was my original first take!

The song was mixed and mastered by Darren Burgos and myself at Vector Studios in Long Beach, CA. Darren is a Logic Pro expert who helped me with an intro to Logic Stusio when I began using it for the tracks. I have used MIDI software since its inception, so the basics were the same, but Logic Studio has almost limitless options for sound creation.

We hope you found some of these insights to be entertaining. We also hope you like the music. Thanks for taking the time to get this far!