I’m album-oriented, usually creating music that is tied together in some way, either thematically, musically, or otherwise related. For instance, the music on “Kopfkino” are all imagined as music for horror/suspense films which play in your head rather than the cinema. “The Vineyard” are mainly piano pieces, not thematically tied together at all. “It Is” contains music which may make you think of the music they were inspired by. The titles should clue you in on the progenitors.
Be that as it may, I sometimes compose music which doesn’t fit anywhere else, just one-offs that bubbled up inside of me and needed to be released. Seriously. I had no real choice. Those you who are creators of one sort or another will understand.
What follows below are some of the singles I’ve produced, with title links to the music, and one with an embedded video featuring…well…me. 😉
As always, the music is available at Spotify, Bandcamp, iTunes/Apple Music, Deezer, YouTube, and many others.
The music links below generally go to Bandcamp, which has the best audio quality, and is the only place that I upload the latest iterations. It’s free to listen there, but purchases are also available. And don’t forget to check out all the many, many other artists on Bandcamp - Shawn E. Donahoo, in particular.
Random Numbers From a Disturbed Mind
The title is from a line spoken by Kate Beckett as played by the lovely Stana Katic in the television series "Castle" and, just as the numbers referred to by her were not truly random, the "numbers" which make up this piece were derived from the selfie via MIDImage.
I very often have the title before the music is even thought of. This is another instance of it. It’s a bit of word play on “alas and alack”, of course. The music was composed in the traditional way, but the cello and viola melody parts were created by me singing, since I’m neither a cello nor a viola player, then converted to MIDI via Melodyne, then applied to the Spitfire BBC Symphony Orchestra samples. Some tweaking was involved afterward since, hey, I can’t sing, either.
Evita Amenda sounds like it might be the name of an exotic woman. It’s not, but I’ll leave it to you to discover what it actually means. And don’t try to decipher the vocals. That will only lead to frustration and disappointment.
Alongside Desire is another case of having the title before the music. It’s taken from a line in one of Monalisa Foster’s “Ravages of Honor” novels (which you should read). The phrase just struck me. The music itself was created from a photo of my beautiful wife, taken in Ramstein, Germany.
is also on here on Substack, talking about writing.Sleep / Walking (YouTube video link)
Sleep / Walking is the only one here which was not created with MIDImage, so that title link is to a YouTube video. It was originally composed and recorded on keyboard in 1992, but rearranged and rerecorded in 2023, with the video elements from two artists on Pixabay added. (Links to them in the YouTube description). I generally don’t play keyboard anymore, but I used to be decent enough at it, I think.
So of course now I'm curious, which line?