Guitars performed by DM; all other sounds are produced.

I want to tell y'all about how I came around to creating music like this.

I read a really interesting book recently: "This is What it Sounds Like - What The Music You Love Says About You", by Susan Rogers and Ogi Ogas. One interesting concept this book discusses is the difference between "abstract music" and "realistic music". In Rogers' and Ogas' view, realistic music is either played on, or is intended to represent the sounds of, "real" instruments - drums, trumpets, violins, pianos, etc. Then there is abstract music: Abstract music does not reproduce or reference any existing "real" instruments.

Abstract music is a fairly recent invention. The first use of abstract sounds that I can think of in the music I heard on the radio started in the 1970s. Think of the bass part that drives "Sir Duke" by Stevie Wonder. What is that? Is that played by an electric bass, with the sound processed so as to sound different than a bass? Is it a keyboard? Is it programmed? The answer to me is: It doesn't matter. It sounds GREAT, it feels fantastic, and it's just what the song needs. It serves the same function as an electric bass part, or a string (acoustic) bass, but it doesn't sound like them. It's not realistic. It is an abstract instrument. Stevie did this a lot since the 70s - think "Living For The City", or "Superstition".

Rock players started using synthesizers around that time too; some (not all) of those sounds were abstract. That synth part at the beginning of The Who's "Baba O'Riley" - that didn't sound anything like any instrument anyone had heard before. But it sure rocked. Pete Townshend (who created that synth part) and Stevie Wonder were definitely pioneers in this stuff.

Since the 70s, a lot of the bass parts in popular music have been abstract. We - listeners of modern music - have gotten used to that. But other components of modern music have not been replaced by abstract sounds as much as bass has been. "Drum parts" tend to sound like drums... Sampled drums, electronic drums, modern beats - these usually sound, to some extent, like they are representing some form of "real" drums. There are a few genres that have been exploring other percussion sounds - Hip Hop is a prominent example. But most modern music I hear has percussion instruments that at least attempt to sound like drums, to some extent. Keyboards, even though they are electric and synthesize sounds, still sound like pianos and organs...mostly. (This is really odd, because commercially available keyboard synths have been able to make an incredible variety of abstract sounds since the 1980s...but few people seem to use them like that.)

...Yeah yeah, I know about theremins and Musique concrète and John Cage and all sorts of experimental music which has used unconventional means of generating unusual sounds. I'm talking here mostly about western popular music and derivations of it.

I find it quite amusing that any of these ideas, and the use of abstract instruments, can be seen by some folks as controversial. Think about what happened with painting in the 1800s. After centuries of the European tradition of "realistic" painting, along come these out-of-left-field French guys who called themselves "Impressionists", and they started painting works that...didn't actually look like the subjects. They caught a ton of flak in the "legit" art world; of course they did. "How dare they! That's not how painting is done! It doesn't even look real!" And guess what. The critics who said "this isn't real art" were wrong. They were living in the past.

The same thing happened in music when my chosen instrument, electric guitar, came to prominence in the mid-20th century. "That's not a REAL guitar". Etcetera. Those old fogeys who saw the Beatles on TV in 1964 and said "Hah! That's not real music! They can't even sing!"....Boy oh boy, were THEY wrong. You know? The same thing keeps on happening over and over. "Those aren't real drums!" Or "That a doesn't sound like a real guitar amplifier." Something new comes along, a different way of doing things, and it's always going to ruffle some folks' feathers. Maybe good art SHOULD do that sometimes.

So I've been thinking: why do the instruments that serve the function of drums (playing the rhythm, without pitches) have to sound like drums? Can't they be something entirely different? Can a part that would normally be played by a piano or an organ (e.g. providing harmony, or chord changes) be played by an abstract instrument you've never heard before?

Most of the music I've made since I left my day job 5 years ago has been made of instruments that "sound like" - to a greater or lesser extent - real instruments. Besides the guitar and bass parts I play (which, um, ARE real instruments), I used a lot of sampled instruments - drums, pianos, etc., that I was often trying to make sound like real drums and pianos. They were not abstract instruments.

But lately - in the last year or so - I've been experimenting with abstract sounds. This new tune, "Red Owl Ramble", is an extreme example: other than the guitar parts, everything in this tune is abstract. All of the sounds and instruments were created specifically for this song. On this project, I spent way more time crafting the sounds - designing the instruments, if you will - than I did working on guitar parts or writing the music. I wasn't trying to "sound" like any existing instruments. This one, it's about the abstract sounds. (Well, plus some fun guitar playing.) I hope you enjoy it.