It’s all about the music. The key to making great music is to write great songs and then create an environment where the performers feel comfortable and inspired to give their best performances – best, not necessarily perfect. For me, a great emotional performance is far better than a perfect technical performance and that’s what I go for in my personal playing as well as with those who record in my studio.
Here are some songs that I recorded in my studio over the years. They were recorded on a variety of systems that I had so there will be some variations in sound quality depending on which system they were recorded on. Some of the songs were written by me and performed by one of the vocalists that I have used over the years while other songs were written and recorded by other people who I’ve had in my studio. Enjoy.
Places – I was always a big fan of American Idol and there were a few years where they had fans submit songs for the winner to sing. I wrote the song in anticipation of submitting it but that year they decided to have one of the judges write the song – I can’t remember her name but she was only on the show for one season and I thought her song was less than good as did many others from what I read. My goal in writing the song was for it to fit the context of the situation the winner of American Idol was in while also being a song that someone who was in love could sing to their significant other. Gina performed the vocals, like she did on many of my songs. This song was recorded around 2008 or 2009 – the year after AI stopped doing the fan competition for the finale song. It was recorded into and early version of Cubase using either my MOTU or my ProFire interface.
Pretty Little Blue-eyed Girl – This song holds a very special place in my heart – I wrote it for my daughter (Jordan Nicole Wunderli) about two weeks after she was born. She had blue eyes at the time and I was hoping that wouldn’t change: 1) because they were so pretty and 2) because of this song – people who heard and know her would think I was nuts. At any rate, I wrote and recorded this in the new studio I built in my first home in White City (Sandy, UT). I had my Mackie 24*8 mixing board, the Alesis ADAT XT and the Panasonic SV-3200 as my mixdown deck. Gina performed vocals. I remember going over that lead guitar part at the end of the song for almost two hours until I got it just the way I wanted it – I wanted it without edits and as organic as I could play since this was for my daughter. Thankfully, she loves the song and shares it with her friends.
Remote Control – I wanted to right an energetic song based on metaphors. I wanted it to be (very) guitar-oriented and this is what I came up with. I performed the lead vocals and some backing vocals and a couple of female friends also performed some backing vocals as well. This was recorded back in the late 90s or early 2000s. The drums and any keyboard / synth parts were recorded via midi into Cubase and the vocals and guitars were recorded on the ADAT XT and the two were synced together and mixed down to the Panasonic SV-3200 master 2-track digital recorder.
Please, Just Say You Love Me – I wrote this song in the early 90s and recorded it very soon after on a fully analogue system (Tascam Syncaset 238). I wanted to change it up a bit with a bit of funk and grunge and record it on a better system. I re-recorded the new production around 2007 or so with roughly the same set-up as what I used to record “Places.”
More Than Just One Night – I got the idea for this song in a dream I had. I’d been wanting to wright a story song and the idea for this came in a dream one night after I had been putting a lot of thought into what I wanted to right. The setting for the song was the playground, and the somewhat woodsy area just above it, at my old elementary school (Davenport Ridge – Stamford, CT). Ironically, I had a dream about two nights prior and I was too tired to get up to write anything down – I thought to myself that I would certainly remember such a stellar idea. In the morning when I woke up, I remember that I had the dream but not enough to reconstruct anything so I promised myself that if it happened again, I’d get up and write my ideas down and lay down a scratch track for the melody. This was recorded in the later 90s with Cubase as the midi editor and the ADAT XT for recording guitars and vocals.
Boy Meets Girl – This is another story song, but this one was inspired by the church and school dances I went to as a youth. I wrote this back around 95 and recorded on my ADAT XT. This is the original recording. I love the clean guitar sound for this – I thought it was very appropriate for the song.
Other’s May Never Imagine (the OMNI song) – This is a Christian rock song I wrote when I was listening a lot to Amy Grant – it’s not in her style, but I wanted to write something with a good message. Originally recorded on the ADAT XT, I reworded the song a bit while keeping most of the core of the song and then re-recorded it on either my MOTU interface or my ProFire 2626. Gina did the vocals on both occasions.
I Want Your Love – This is a rocking song that I wrote after the vein of “Hot Blooded” by Foreigner. I wanted to write a “love” song that reached out and grabs the listener. This song was played at the NYC Hard Rock Cafe back in 1993 when I brought my current wife (then girlfriend) back to visit my home in Connecticut where I grew up. At that time, the song was on a regular old cassette. The original recording was done on the Tascam Syncaset 238 and mixed on the Tascam M1516 to a decent stereo cassette deck. I re-recorded the song around 2005 or so on whatever my current digital recording system was at the time – probably either the ADAT XT and Cubase or my MOTU interface and my Cubase DAW (digital audio workstation).
Gotta Get Back to Dreaming – This song was written in the very early 90s and was originally recorded on my Tascam PortaStudio 424. The song is about getting back a positive attitude on relationships after a bunch of bad ones and moving on from relationships we shouldn’t be in to good ones where we are truly loved and respected. Dreaming is a metaphor for a near-perfect relationship. This was one of the first songs I wrote when I got into recording. I re-recorded it on my ADAT XT. I did the vocals on the original recording and Gina performed them on this recording.
I’ll Dream of You – I wrote this song for my wife when she was gone for three days to Missouri for her grandfather’s funeral. She didn’t know this grandfather very well but loved him nonetheless. I had never met him and we were newly married and had limited finances so the decision was made that she would go alone. I took my time alone to write this love song for her (I’d already written a few other songs for her but was inspired to write this true story song for her). It was recorded on my ADAT XT and mixed down to my Panasonic SV-3200 DAT.
Language is a Funny Thing – I’ve always thought that the English language had a lot of oddities. I only touch on a few on the song but I hope I get the point across. My English teacher, music-loving brother pointed out that for accuracy’s sake, it should probably be titled “English is a Funny Thing” but he agreed that my title sounded better. I sing lead vocals with some female background vocals – same as on Remote Control. Since I’m a guitarist, this, like many of my songs, is guitar-oriented and it was recorded on my ADAT XT and all of the pieces I had with that system.
Real Love – I had a young lady who worked for me as a loan processor. She did a fantastic job at work and always had a great attitude. She was also in a bad relationship where her boyfriend was always leading her on. I wrote two songs that were inspired by her situation, this song and Hopeless Love (see below). Both songs were recorded on the Alesis ADAT XT. Lead vocals for this and Hopeless love were performed by Janie Garner who also performed backing vocals on Language is a Funny Thing.
Hopeless Love – This song was inspired by the situation I mentioned for “Real Love” but from a different perspective. I toyed around with the idea of doing more songs with similar titles of something LOVE but I never followed through with it. Maybe some day…
My Rainbow – This is another metaphor song – I’ll let you figure it out, it’s pretty easy. Janie performed the lead vocals and her vocal teacher helped us out with the background vocals. I think of this as my lullaby song. It was also recorded on the ADAT XT.
In addition to the above songs (these are not all of my songs, they are just my favorites that I have written and they are my favorites for a variety of reasons), I’ve also written a few instrumental songs that I’ll share with you. I hope you enjoy them.
Beat Box Highway – When I drive, I like to listen to music with a good beat or some good energy (or both). I grew up loving classic rock and 80s R & B / soul. I guess this, and some of my other songs, is what you get with that background. As with all of my other songs, I play all the instruments and do all of the production.
In Gear – I think this was my first instrumental song I wrote. The clean guitar tone and the style of playing was inspired by Mark Knopfler on his song “Sultans of Swing.” All of the instrumentals were recorded on my ADAT XT system. Additionally, you’ll probably note the somewhat generous use of horn (mainly trumpet) sounds – trumpet was the first instrument I played so there is a big place in my heart for it, even if it’s not a rock and roll instrument.
Rag Top Man – I got the idea for this title from a line in an Eddie Murphy movie where Nick Nolte played a cop. Toward the end of the movie Nick tells Eddie that he’s a “rag top man,” meaning he likes convertible cars. For me, I like hard tops because of the torsional rigidity they provide which helps the car to handle better – but that’s a whole different topic. The other thing you might notice on this song is that there’s not guitar – and I’m a guitarist. What the heck was I thinking?
The Open Road – By now, you probably notice that the titles of my instrumentals all have to do with driving. I’m a sports car enthusiast and I’ve owned a few fun cars but some day, I’ll own a version of my dream car – the Porsche 911. As of this writing, I think the best daily driver version that has the ideal combination of drivability and performance is the 991.2 911 C4 GTS. I’m back with some guitar on this song.
Back and Forth – The title for this song came more for some fun production stuff I did in the song than for anything having to do with cars or driving. It’s guitar heavy and I’m not sure that I ever really finished it. I kept listening to it up to this point and I could never decide what to do to add to it / finish it off so I thought that this is where it was supposed to end. This song was recorded through my M-Audio Pro-Fire 2626 interface into Cubase.