Song titles that are underlined have a Windows Media sound sample that can be played by clicking on the title.

1)  Praylude
Yes I know it's usually spelled Prelude, but this was written to have a prayerful quality to it.  I really struggled with what to do melody wise with this song.  When I found the fluty patch in my processor and played it with the rhythm track...the melody just fell into place.  You typically don't want to start a CD with a song this laid back, but it has a natural transition into "The Awakening".  Plus, sometimes I just like to do things different to break the norm.

2)  The Awakening
I named this song the Awakening because it was the track that made me 'wake up' and realize that I really could do songs like this by myself.  Prior to this I had done many guitar tracks for other musicians on their CD's, but I never really entertained the idea of doing a CD of my guitar instrumentals until I saw what could be done.  It was such a rush as I layered the various tracks and it started sounding like a full band.  This is one of my favorites on the CD.

3)  Guitaria Medley
When I got into doing this medley, I was afraid I had bitten off more then I could chew.  It is pretty involved trying to do a 13 minute piece of music by yourself.  This medley has close to 100 parts in it!  If there is a track on this CD that I think defines me and my guitar playing, I think this would be it.  It basically is the culmination of all that I have learned through the years.  The last portion of the medley is actually a hymn found in church hymn books, "O Sacred Head Now Wounded", which was written in the 1500's.  Obviously this has a twist you probably wouldn't hear at church.

4)  Interlude
This was just a short little bouncy piece that I wrote as a variation on the chordal theme in Praylude and The Awakening. 

5)  Calm Before the Storm
This song got it's name because of the calm acoustic intro that is followed by more progressively intense passages until the screaming guitars at the end.  During the time I wrote and recorded this, I was going through a lot emotionally with my Dad and his Alzheimer's disease.  This piece hopefully captures some of these ups and downs of emotions.

6)  Celebration
This is a PFM song that has some neat melodic runs that is a lot of fun for me to play.  Hopefully it has a happy feel of celebration to it.

7)  Dreamscape
Pete Bragg wrote the rhythm progression for 'Dreamscape' and plays the rhythm guitar part on it.  I was over at Frank's house one day listening to some drum tracks he had completed for Guitaria.   Frank played a track for me that he and Pete had recorded.  It was only rhythm guitar and drums at that point, but I liked the dreamy quality of this piece and could hear the potential for adding additional tracks to round out the song.  It didn't have a name, so I called it 'Dreamscape', added the melody and harmony lead guitar parts, and added keyboard bass to fill out the song. 

8)  Vectra
This song was written by Ariel Pozzo, a guitarist from Buenos Aires, Argentina.  I got to know Ariel through the old PRS Guitar Forum and had the opportunity to meet Ariel at a forum event at the PRS factory in Maryland during March of 2002.  In addition to Ariel’s awesome guitar tracks, Brian Scherzer, the head of the old PRS forum who is from Colorado, did the bass track.  And I am from Waynesboro, Georgia.  It is really neat with computer recording how you can have musicians this far apart geographically come together to make music.  If you like this song, you really need to check out Ariel’s two solo CD’s on the Aspen Records website.

9)  Pit Pony
'Pit Ponies' were used in the coal mines before there were automated ways to bring the coal up to the surface.  Since ponies are small, they could be used down in the mines to pull the coal carts around.  As you can imagine they lived a pretty dark and sad life.  This song has some of that same quality of sadness to it.

10)  College Days
This song contains some of the old riffs and feels of music that was happening back during my college days.  About half the song is stuff that I made up back then that I have merged with some new parts.  Overall, I was trying to recapture the style and feel of music that was happening in the 70's.

11)  Riff Raff
There is a patch in my Boss GT-6 called "Riff Merchant".  This piece is a result of playing around with that patch and building on it.

12)  Farewell
My older brother gave me some Native Instruments software that works as plug-ins with Cakewalk Sonar.  I wrote this piece while I was playing around with these plug-ins.  The plug-ins simulate a Hammond B3, Yamaha DX7, and Prophet analog synth.  It's just a little slow piece that is nothing too fancy...it just takes some control over your guitar to play slow stuff like this with a lot of string pulling.

13)  Hymn Medley
I thought I would try playing some hymns using four part harmonies in a Brian May (Queen) style.  Three of the harmony parts are played on the guitar with the fourth being the bass part played on my Alesis Quadrasynth.  I got Bird to add an additional keyboard track to fill out the sound.  The three parts of the medley are 1) A Might Fortress is Our God, 2) O God Our Help In Ages Past, and 3) My Country Tis of Thee.