Our band has been in existence since 1979... our initial multi-track recording "DAW" was bouncing between two cassette decks, adding more instruments and vocals on each pass. Eventually went to a program called Master Track Pro on an Atari computer. Then graduated to Cakewalk whenever that became available on the PC... and we've been on Cakewalk/Sonar ever since. Cakewalk was owned by Gibson, but Gibson closed that division and discontinued support about five years ago. But they were bought and resurrected by a company called Bandlab. Now, "Cakewalk by Bandlab" is entirely free, and still works great. As far as I can tell it has all the features and functionality of the other popular DAWs. I tried Cubase for a while, but was so accustomed to the Cakewalk workflow that I've just stayed with it.  Anyone else have experience with multiple DAWs (maybe including Cakewalk) and have features that you really like of other DAWs? I'm not opposed to switching at some point, but I'd have to see a definite benefit to the learning curve of switching.  Thanks Chris, for bringing up this topic.  --Jer of the band Mitch the Needle ... View more

I've always been a synth guy. Owned an original Yamaha CS-60 around 1980 (the baby brother to the famous CS-80). Wish I'd never traded it for some "latest and greatest" synth that came along, but so thrilled that the Arturia synth collection does a very good job of emulating that synth. So, I use a lot of the Arturia synths, but my favorite software synth is Native Instrument's FM8 (which is basically an old Yamaha DX7 on steroids). FM8 just seemed easy and intuitive for me to program and I've had hours of fun creating melodic as well as ambient sounds with it. It shows up in a lot of our songs, especially if I need a swoosh, bells, chimes, or evolving pads.  Jer of the band Mitch the Needle  ... View more

Hi toastedweasel I just checked out your music under the One Onion artist name. Really liked both songs I heard with Churemi (Myopia and All The Way Down). Very cool music.  --Jer of the band Mitch the Needle ... View more

Hi Steven, just listened to several of your compositions (including "Through the Kaleidoscope", "Dancing Spirits", and "The Shining Star"). Beautiful, emotional music with nice interplay between the hands. Thanks for sharing with us here.  Although my main musical output is as a member of the pop/rock/synthpop band Mitch the Needle, I also compose pseudo-classical piano music under my own name as Jerry Fochtmann and new age meditative piano music under the name Highcroft Peace Brigade so I really appreciate top-notch piano compositions like yours. Great to meet you as part of this community.  Jer ... View more

Hi Chris and All,  My name is Jer and I'm one of three members of the oddly-named band "Mitch the Needle" (since there's no one named Mitch in the band). We're pop/rock/synthpop with a wide variety of influences. Our band's primary shared influence is Jeff Lynne/ELO, but we love everything from Bob Dylan to Wet Leg. Favorite AMP tool is definitely Promote Single.  By the way, Chris, I listened to your music previously and enjoyed it, but it looks like your "shapes & colors" album is brand new. Checking it out now. Definitely like the feel, vocals, and production. Can hear the very creative David Byrne influence for sure.  ... View more

My songwriting process starts in one of four ways, and I've gotten some great results from each method, but a lot more mediocre or totally garbage results from each method, too. 🙂  1. Get an idea for lyrical content and write the entire lyrics first. Then either I or one of my bandmates writes the music.  The inspirations for lyrics come from anywhere (a line from a tv show, something in the news, remembering something from my past). Then I work out the music and record it. 2. Playing around with synth sounds until I find something interesting, then laying down basic tracks to create a basic bed (usually placeholder drums, bass or synthbass, piano/pad, and maybe a strum guitar). Then create vocals/lyrics on the fly through doing punch-ins. For pop songs, this is probably my favorite method.  3. Sit down at the piano, turn on the voice recorder on my iphone, and just do 100% total spur-of-the-moment songs with piano and voice. No idea beforehand what key I'll be in, what style, lyric content, etc. I just pretend I'm live on stage and I have to make up a song on the spot. For several years, I did this about 15 minutes per day on average, which was about three or four spur-of-the-moment songs, resulting in several thousand ideas over a couple of years. Amazingly, a decent number of the ideas (maybe 1 in 15 or 20) turn out to be really good songs that just need some lyrical tweaking and melodic reworking.  4. Get partial idea from my bandmates and fill in whatever they haven't done yet. Sometimes they'll send lyrics and I'll write the music. Often, they'll send a bed (sometimes with a working title), and I write lyrics to fit the song structure using their working title, then send it back for one of them to create the melody. Or, they'll send a bed with a "la-la" vocal melody recorded and I'll write lyrics to fit their melody. We do a lot of collaborations that way, and all of those methods are a lot of fun.  It really comes down to doing a lot of attempts, and eventually some really good stuff happens along with the junk.  --Jer of the band Mitch the Needle   ... View more