Welcome to my discography. These are all of the songs I've written through the years on various machines primarily with ``tracker'' programs. If you are not familiar with tracker-style music, check out the MOD Archive's Quick Introduction to Modules.
click here for my ``latest'' song.
Update: April 3, 2000
Almost all of these songs are now over half a decade old, (some of them ten years now,) and although I can laugh about how cheezy some of them are now, they represent and in a way document some of the turmoil I went through during my teenage years. The aspects of myself that these songs represent have certainly become less significant to me as time has progressed, but have not altogether dissapeared...
Criticisms are still welcome, as I may end up remixing some of these for old time's sake until the muse visits me again...
Update: July 23, 2002
Toys For Bob is planning a re-release of Star Control 2 later this year, complete with remixes of the songs by their original artists. Needless to say, this has been a real motivator to start writing again.
Update: April 22, 2009
The release of Ur-Quan Masters was completed a few years back. Riku (IQ) had a heck of a time getting us old-timers to remix old tunes, and eventually gave up. I believe only one of my remixes made it into the song packs, even though I did three...
featured in Sandbird Software's "Brudal Battle"
This is the first song I ever wrote that sounded good, and it was silly enough that it warranted a release. My samples (yes, it really is me going on like some warped human) go like this: "What's this with all this Belgian industrial music?"; "You know, it must be the taste of their waffles." I came across the idea for this song when I was at a BBS meet, and one of my friends had brought his collection of industrial music. This song still makes me chuckle a little when I hear it. It is pretty silly.
featured in Sandbird Software's "Brudal Battle"
My first real song. I was feeling weird one day, as I was home from school for some reason. This song gets its name from the drug I was taking at the time. (You medical people can grab your PDRs and see what Accutane is perscribed for.) It's a pretty mellow tune I suppose, not meant to get you up dancing or anything. Kind of depressing too, much like a lot of other of my songs.
featured in Toys For Bob's "Star Control II" game
I was trying to do a MOD version of a Pop Will Eat Itself song, but as soon as the break came, I went off on a tangent. I consider this song to sound kind of spacy; a good exploration song. Apparently the folks at Electronic Arts / Toys For Bob thought it sounded good too -- I won $50 and the song is included in the most excellent game "Star Control II." (It is the Supox' theme song in case you were wondering.)
featured in Sandbird Software's "Brudal Battle" game
This song took me one afternoon to write I believe. The samples are from Zodiak's/Cascada (now CDA) music in their Cronologia demo. I was basically trying to figure out how to work double and normal tempos into a song. The song itself is pretty generic, though I don't think it's absolutely horrible by any means.
I had some samples that I had just made, and I figured I'd put them in a song. The drip sample, the "what is this..." and the bell/clang samples are all mine. (The drip was made by my own mouth, FYI. The other two samples are from the Orb single "Perpetual Dawn.") This song doesn't have much to it. Just some interesting sounds going off layered against a simple beat.
featured in Sandbird Software's "Brudal Battle" game
By the time this song was being conceived, I figured I wanted to write music for demos. I got the name of this song from a dictation machine which sat next to me on the desk where I composed my songs. I was trying to do a MOD version of New Order's "Fine Time" but I kind of went off on a tangent. This one sounds pretty good though.
featured in Sandbird Software's "Brudal Battle" game
This is the first remake I did that sounded halfway decent. It's based loosely on 808 State's "Revenge Of The Girlie Men." I ran into some limits with four tracks, so things aren't as full as the original. Oh well. :)
featured in Sandbird Software's "Brudal Battle" game
After coming back to San Diego from the DECA state Career Development Conference, this bassline I heard was just stuck in my head, and I figured I had to put it in a MOD somewhere. I couldn't think up a tune to go with the bassline, so I used some tunes I was familiar with and turned the whole song into a mix of sorts. My sister was taking piano lessons at the time, and I figured I'd borrow from a couple songs she was learning. The goofy laugh in the Leisure Suit Larry part is actually my father's.
The instruments are out of tune, but still it's not a bad song. At this time I was trying to write some serious techno, but I couldn't really get the hang of it. The syncopations with the hihat in this one are still interesting.
This is probably one of the better tunes I've written, even if it is a bit on the long side. This was my first try with protracker commands, and I suppose everything came out pretty good, as I didn't have a protracker-supporting editor at the time, just a player. This I believe was the last song I wrote with MODedit 2.01.
I switched trackers, and my style changed a little. Whacker Tracker was the first tracker I had ever used which supported the pseudo-piano key layout, hence my music changed a little bit. Pretty generic sounding song, but at least it flows and isn't too long.
featured in TCE's newsletter #1
This song was written for TCE's newsletter number one, which was released a couple months later. I had come back from three weeks at Reed College with the SuperQuest program, where I was exposed for the first time to unix boxes and full time internet connections. I found the drum samples on some songs I grabbed off some FTP sites. The "finntro" line of songs were to be for intros and demos ( less than64k in size) but I kind of scrapped that idea and went on with the "finload" line of songs. This song is kind of dark sounding, a good thing I suppose. Nice beat.
featured in Sandbird Software's "Brudal Battle" game
Kind of gentle sounding, this song was meant for a loader, where song length and size are meant to be small. I gave permission for this song to VLA before I became a member, as they were writing loaders and BBS ads at the time. This song was realized on the piano, as opposed to songs previous which were realized in the tracker.
featured in Sandbird Software's "Brudal Battle" game
When I started off making this song, I wanted to make something as catchy as "Fuchia Fantasy." I used a lot of similar samples, but I ended up having to force myself in a different direction for this song. I don't think it's as good as Fuchia, but it's nice background music for travelling or something like that.
This song was being written about the same time as Inquiry, so it sounds very similar. I thought the dual synths for the bassline I used were kind of cool at the time, and even now they sound pretty decent even though they are a little out of tune. All the fine-tuning was done with a hex editor, IE edit, play the song, figure which direction the samples needed to go, re-edit, ad nauseum. Not a fun thing. The end product is acceptable though.
By this time I had a borrowed PAS-16 I could use for composing and sampling. The drum beats were sampled by me, and this was the first time I ever composed anything with intent for it to be heard in stereo. The chord progression is rather elementary, but it sounds good nonetheless.
By the time I wrote this, I had been introduced to everyone else in VLA and volunteered to write the music for the group. They were releasing the traditional holiday demo, and I ended up writing the music since I was the only musician who had ties to VLA, and nobody else in VLA could really write MODs. The bassline came about through almost random twiddling. This song kind of puts me to sleep now: for some reason it relaxes me.
I had some leftover breakbeat samples from my samplings with my borrowed PAS-16, and since I had an amiga with protracker, I could write fully synced music. It was kind of a nice change for me. The night this was completed, my sister was having some friends over, and they were listening to Garth Brooks the whole night long it seemed. The end sample is me, sampled with the PAS-16. (I had a cold at the time, so I sound kind of strange.) This song marks my movement into using protracker commands as it was written on the amiga with protracker. (Imagine that?)
My first true chiptune. Since I was on the Amiga, I was able to use the built in loop editor and various other utilities like finetune to make a pretty cool little song. This was written in only two days. The thing that surprises me is that the pattern data takes up more space than the samples do. :)
This was written in only a couple afternoons when I found out TCE was going to come out with another issue. The issue was never finished, (or even started as far as I know,) but the song was completed anyway. This one is my little brother's favorite. It uses another one of the breakbeats I had sampled when I had the PAS-16. The tune is based on the "when you're happy and you know it" song you probably sung in kindergarden.
I don't know how this song came out to be so mellow sounding. I guess I must have been in a mellow mood when I wrote it. :) A rather nice piece of work I think.
I was over at a friend's house and sampled some of his Shamen CD's, and that's where I got the guitar sounds for this song. This song I suppose could be called a turning point in my songwriting, as it marks the end of a long session of songwriting. My Junior year of high school was over, and I was preparing for a tough senior one.
This song was written at the end of my junior year, after dealing with major frustration regarding the Gompers Secondary School's computer science department. It's a long story, but basically all my efforts and ideas ended up being fubar'd or not implemented. I kind of learned my lesson in dealing with bureaucratic administrations then. (Though I still persist in fighting some other ones.)
I had this song partially finished, sitting on my HD for about six months. It took an 18 year old Latina to get me to finish it. I was real frustrated at the time, and where everything else somewhat failed me, I was able to pull back to songwriting and let some of my confusion and frustration out.
featured in Sandbird Software's "Brudal Battle" game
Ironically, this song dedicated to the girl who would be the last person I had some sort of warped relationship in high school was the last song I wrote on the Amiga, and at that the last MOD I have written. The song is kind of false in its feeling, as I couldn't exactly put how I felt into the song, as I couldn't exactly tell how I felt to a certain person at that time. Totally ironic song. Totally. Even the fact that I wrote it using an Amiga makes it even worse.
This little chiptune was written for a contest Necros had on irc channel #coders a while back. He wanted to see what people could come up with using only about 5k. This song isn't very complex, but it is rather small and the melody line is nice I think.
This song is possibly the first truly techno sounding song I've written. I was basically experimenting with new sounds. The song is rather long, kind of repeditive, and it does break down into a little theme at the end. (I still have a hard time writing true techno. I guess it's just not in my blood or something.)
featured in the EGG Farm-Fresh music disk #1
Since my attempt at writing techno kind of fizzled out, I figured I'd try and write something with housey feel to it. Success! This song was featured in the Farm Fresh music disk on the EGG label. Actually, now that I think about it, this song isn't really that housey. But it is a step in a new direction for me, a new sound I hope I can improve on for the future.
featured in the EGG Farm-Fresh music disk #1
This song was written all in one night, absolutely from scratch. All the samples are exclusively mine, and came from a few of my Kraftwerk records. I was extremely depressed when I wrote the song, and the minimal soundscape of the song reflects the feelings I had at the time.
This was a hastily written song, but it sounds good nonetheless. I was trying to get out some energy of frustration attributed to my mother's condition, hence the name "Arpeggio Catharsis." I used arpeggios for the lead because I thought they sounded quite neat.
Featured in EGG 3
I guess this is the closest thing to IDM I've ever done. Perhaps it could be called IDM. It's a rather cute tune I reckon, as it should be. Lots of little beeps and rather "organic" synth sounds. What more can I say about it?
After a long while of not having any musical computing faculties available to me, after leaving to Reed College, it was kind of nice when I went back to San Diego over Winter Break to sit down and actually get my fingers on a tracker. Unfortunately, I didn't have any samples with me, and I didn't really want to rip any from anyone. So I generated some in Michel P. Weber's "Synthesized Sample Editor." The song itself is rather chip-musicy sounding, and very simple. It's also small. I'm still amazed at what FT2 can do.
I had this song in a finished state for newsletter from a group called NPi. Apparently the newsletter never got finished, and this song just sat around on my HD. When Scott Logan asked me if I had any special "previously unreleased" songs to put on his CD-ROM project, I thought of this one. The drums are a little different than the original version, but I think they sound better. (It's kind of hard to get the drums synchronized correctly when you have a constantly varying tempo.)
Another chiptune of sorts, this one is quite a bit more upbeat than "Fingers." Again, it's really small. Fasttracker II just blows me away. This tune is not an amazing piece of work, but it's a nice little tune and a good example of Finn-style demomuzak.
Featured in a newsletter in Russia somewhere...
I finally got another song finished! This one is another "catchy Finn- tune," perhaps a bit more polished than the others. I dunno how to describe it, actually, it's just kind typical of the kind of stuff I write. Grab it! Check it out! It doesn't mind. :)
This one is... kinda different. No real leads or anything. It has a definite resemblance to "Ixian Dreams", but is tweaked slightly. :) But of course... Check it out. Lemme know what you think.
If you have to ask, you don't really want to know. This one's got a pretty funky beat lifted from a FYC remix album and some nice samples taken from LFO's "Frequencies." I just had a weird itching to write this, at the urging of some real weirdies on the IRC channel #trax.
A little chip-diddley written overnight for Amusic's 20-dc compo, with the help of a little casio synth and while staying with a friend of mine in San Diego over the holidays. It's a bit chippy, and only four wonderful channels, but again, this is pure Finn-muzak. :)
Coma3 had a music compo, and I decided to enter. As you can see, it's been almost exactly six years since I've released a song, and I have to admit it shows... I brought up a (DR-)DOS box from scratch to track this song and all the samples were taken from gear in my studio. I didn't think I should compress the bassdrum much, and the whole song is rather quiet as a result, so crank it up.
Blockparty 2009 held an old-school music compo. I decided to kick my MIDI-composition ass into gear and write something for it on my suitably oldschool Roland CM-64. George "Fatman" Sanger, who wrote quite a lot of music on its MT-32 subset back in the day, signed it. I wonder if I'll ever be able to get Jake "Virt" Kaufman to write a song on it? :) until then I can load the (Fatman-written) general MIDI patches onto it...