AN INTERESTING NEW CD WITH SYNERGY MUSIC

BACK IN TIME, A SPACE ODYSSEY produced by Chris Abbot (http://www.c64audio.com). This is the third in a series of full orchestra arrangements of video game soundtrack music which was originally performed on the SID synthesizer chips of Commodore C64 computers. "Ancestors" from AUDION was often appropriated for C64 game themes back in the 1980s. Chris Abbot has provided three outstanding full orchestral versions of "Ancestors" on this British CD released in 2001. Visit their website, or email them (cd@c64audio.com) for information about purchasing the CD.

DAVID BRYAN "LUNAR ECLIPSE" (RE)-RELEASED

Rounder Records has finally issued in the United States the solo piano and synthesizer album that I co-produced for Bon Jovi keyboardist David Bryan. The CD has two new solo piano tracks and a new name "Lunar Eclipse" in place of the old title "On A Full Moon". Otherwise it's the same great record that got overlooked a few years ago getting the new chance that it deserves. David is a terrific pianist and uses this CD to perform in ways that just don't fit into his role in Bon Jovi. There's one piano track with Synergy synth orchestra arrangement, and a few more electronic pieces which we both worked on. e openminded.

MACWORLD 2000 NEW YORK

I was asked to give the music and audio keynote talk at the July 2000 MacWorld in New York. There might still be information posted at this site: www.apple.com/creative/musicaudio/showcase/ It went so well that It's possible that I'll be talking more about my computer platform of choice at future conferences. Maybe even a little virtual synth live performances off of a PowerBook. Stay tuned for more info in the coming months.

TONY LEVIN "THE WATERS OF EDEN"

Recording work on Tony Levin's solo album "The Waters of Eden" is complete and released on Narada Records. Though there are nine songs on the CD, I'm only on five doing synth arrangements on Tony's new songs. Many different musicians appear on the album, but the interesting thing for my own personal history is that Tony, Jerry Marotta and I worked together on more than half of the tracks. This was the first time the core of the "classic" Peter Gabriel band has worked together since some sessions we did for another artist, Pamela Golden, in 1986. (We haven't all worked together with Peter since 1983).

Tony has a lot of background about the project up on his site including photos during the recording. Visit Tony's web site at www.tonylevin.com for general information, or visit papabear.com/passionatebass.htm for pictures and Tony's diary of the recording.

The way the album was recorded was interesting, too. It was done entirely on computer hard disk--no tape rolled during the record--using Macintosh-based Emagic Logic Audio (Tony's recording in Woodstock, NY) and Mark of the Unicorn Digital Performer (at the Synergy Studio in New Jersey). I spent a few days in the studio in Woodstock with Tony, his co-producer Artie Traum, and guitarist David Torn planning the tracks. Then I took clones of the multitracks from their Mac back home on CD-R, loaded the tracks into my computer and worked on the arrangements. Tony had another project to complete in California so every day or two I made MP3 reference mixes and emailed them to him. Tony could listen on his Powerbook and email his comments back to me. When all was okay, I made submixes of my parts to CD-R and sent them up to Woodstock to be conformed to the master. If we had higher bandwidth available at both ends we probably would have used the internet for that last stage too. Next time...