The Music

A Little Intro

The MP3s that are posted here were all done using the Color Computer 2 or 3 and various software such as "Orchestra 90cc", "Bells & Whistles II", "Lyra", & "Ultimuse III". Most of the songs were sequenced with live performance in mind, so there usually is no melody line (vocal line) as I was usually singing or at least someone was. The only reason I originally sequenced in guitar parts was to use for learning the part and practicing. I would usually mute the guitar parts for performance. To get these songs into the format they are in, I ran them through a MIDI host on my PC, using various MIDI VSTi (virtual instruments) to get the best sound quality. I then recorded them to "wav" files so I could then run them through "Soundforge Pro" for mastering, applying compression, eq, ect.

I hope you enjoy what our little Coco can do :-)

B.P.

UltiMusE III

The Music

“Jump” by Van Halen

As a guitarist, I used to buy a lot of “Guitar” magazines. In the early eighties, somone got the idea to print transcriptions of popular songs in guitar tablature in magazines. The first was “Guitar For The Practicing Musician” if I remember correctly. Soon the other rags followed and still do this to this day. Being a working musician, I bought a lot of these rags to learn songs for my bands so needless to say, I had a lot of them lying around. Sometime in about ’93 or so, I ran across a transcription to “Jump”. They even transcribed the keyboard parts for guitar. I just copied them back over to the proper staves and octaves, then transcribed the lead guitar solo. As always, the hardest part was the drums. I spent many hours with headphones on, picking out the tiniest hi-hat moves and the buried tom rolls. In the end, “Jump” turned out to be one of my best (at the time).

“Jump” was sequenced using a Color Computer 3, OS-9 Level II, and Mike Knudson’s “UltiMusE III. The synth was a Yamaha PSR-500. This software was to become my “weapon of choice” for many years to come.

“Knights In White Satin” by The Moody Blues

My wife’s best friend Keely came to me one day and asked if I would play for her wedding. I was totally shocked. Keely was a heavy metal groupie and her fiance was a singer in a heavy metal band. At the time I had been writing a lot of acoustic music and Keely hadn’t heard me play much of anything else and I didn’t really think she had payed me much attention. Then her song request floored me even more. She wanted me to play all original acoustic stuff and then play “Knights In White Satin” for her wedding march. She even bought me a cassette tape of The Moody Blues and the sheet music for “Knights”. I worked on this for about 3 months straight. She wanted me to do it all instrumental using the first half as a processional and she wanted to walk down the isle at the flute break in the middle. The more I worked on this song, the more it appealed to me as a wedding march. After all… it is a march of knights in white satin. To this day, I have never heard a better wedding march. My wife and I have discussed renewing our vows on our 50th anniversary and I’m pretty sure we’ll use this song.

“Knights In White Satin” was sequenced on a Color Computer 3, Os-9 Level II, and UltiMusE III with a Yamaha PSR-500

“Kashmir” by Led Zeppelin

I had been experimenting with sequencing strings and orchestras, so what better rock song to practice on than “Kashmir” by Led Zeppelin. I had a transcription of the guitar and bass parts from a magazine, but the strings were all done by ear as were the drums, as usual. I have never found a good source for drum transcriptions. I worked on this song, pulling a lot of late nights with the headphones on. I guess the headphones are a lot of the reason I have hearing problems now. My greatest achievement in this sequence was nailing down John Bohnam’s drumbeat. Truly “The Hammer Of The Gods”. A backbeat you can stand on.

“Kashmir” was sequenced on a Color Computer 3, OS-9 Level II and UliMusE III running a Yamaha PSR-500

“I Swear” by John Michael Montgomery

Not long after Keely & Anthony’s wedding, my sister-in-law called to tell me her best friend wanted her to sing at his wedding and she wanted me to play the music. The song Aaron & Viki had requested was “I Swear”. My sister-in-law Lori told me she wanted something simple with me on acoustic guitar. So I sequenced this arrangement and accompanied it with my nylon string classical guitar. Lori has a beautiful voice, so it all came out really well and hey… they’re still married :-)

“I Swear” was sequenced on a Color Computer 3, Os-9 Level II, and UltiMusE III running a Yamaha PSR-500

“Enter Sandman” by Metallica

Along about this time, Metallica hit the charts with their best album ever, titled “The Black Album” because of it’s solid black cover. Almost evey song on the album was released as a video hit on MTV… remember?.... They really did used to play videos. My neighbor “Les” was a big Metallica fan and came over quite often with lots of beer to entice me to play some guitar and maybe teach him a chord or two. I sequenced “Sandman” as a request by Les. So I guess this is dedicated to Lester Aman, and hey man…. Thanks for the beer!

“Enter Sandman” was sequenced on a Color Computer 3, Os-9 Level II, and UltiMusE III running a Yamaha PSR-500.

"Big Love" by Lindsay Buckingham / Fleetwood Mac

This is an amazing piece of guitar work from one of rock's most underrated guitarists, Lindsay Buckingham. This version is his solo version from the concert footage from Fleetwood Mac's "The Dance" reusion tour. The vocal performance on this song is purely breathtaking. The guitar is a Chet Atkins model Nylon string electric. I have one myself and it's one of my favorites. Lindsay uses the Merle Travis "dead thumb" finger picking technique for this song and show what can be done with 10 fingers and 6 strings.

“Big Love” was sequenced on a Color Computer 3, Os-9 Level II, and UltiMusE III running a Yamaha PSR-500

"Littile Red Riding Hood" by Sam The Sham & The Pharaohs

I remember when I was a kid, my older brother was a "whistle boy" at the local skating rink. It never failed that at some point this song would play through the sound system at the rink everytime we went skating. It had that perfect groove for the side-to-side skating motion. Not only that but it was a good song as well. I love playing this one on acoustic guitar as it makes all the girls smile.

“Little Red Riding Hood” was sequenced on a Color Computer 3, Os-9 Level II, and UltiMusE III running a Yamaha PSR-500

Lyra

The Music

"Wasted Time (Reprise)" by The Eagles

This was another exploration into the world of sequencing strings. A very short but very strong piece of music from the Eagles' "Hotel California" album. It was a perfect lead-in to the raunchy "Victom Of Love" which came next on the album.

“Wasted Time (Reprise)” was sequenced on a Color Computer 2 and Lyra 2.62 running a Yamaha PSR-500

"Crosseyed Mary" by Jethro Tull

This is probably one of the best sequences I moused while using Lyra. Jethro Tull is one of my all time favorite bands and "Mary" is definately one of thier best. I used it as a "Showpiece" when I was giving a demonstration to someone interested in having sequences done. It was a very complex piece to get into 8 voices without losing the impact of the music. I remember spending many hours late at night when it was quiet in the apartment I lived in, with the headphones on trying to hear all the flute parts. It took me many long nights to get it right. I may have missed a few notes here or there, but for the most part, the solos are all there. With Lyra, I was using a Color Computer 2 and a single disk drive with the Midi coming from the bit-banger. It's amazing that the Coco 2 could keep up with the speed that's used in the flute parts, much less keep the rest of the music going too!!!

“Crosseyed Mary” was sequenced on a Color Computer 2 and Lyra 2.62 running a Yamaha PSR-500

These songs were all actually recorded with the Coco 3 running NitrOS-9 and UltiMusE III or HDBDOS and Lyra with the Coco Midi Pak wired into my Gateway AMD Quadcore hosting Cakewalk as a Midihost for the VSTi virtual midi instruments used in the songs. These don’t sound much different from my old Yamaha PSR-500 as I used a simple midi sound engine of about mid-quality with the exception of the drums. All the drums were run though the “Superior Drummer” midi sound engine which offers some of the best drum sounds I’ve ever heard. I often use “Superior Drummer” in my studio for drum replacement in my recordings. You need a really acoustically correct room for recording drums and the costs to build such a room is unbelievable. These days, drum replacement is a given for most music. About 98% of the music on the radio today has the drums replaced. It’s just not financially feasable these days. One of these days I’ll get around to writing my tutorial on sequencing drums to sound real…. someday….

Bill Pierce

Engineer/Producer

The Barn Studios

Rocky Point NC USA

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