About the Guitar Ambient music:
This is improvisational guitar music, harmonious and ambient. Most of it is easy listening, calm and instrumental. Textures of electric and nylon string acoustic guitar, with supporting drums and occasional layers of synthesizers. In the genre of New Age with flashes of Progressive Rock. There are dark rhythms, medieval chords, and warm, bright guitar notes. The music is moody and evolving. See more on www.guitarlight.com.
CD Guitar Scapes:
"Guitar Scapes" is my second CD, following quite soon after the first one "Guitar Light". It was composed and recorded from May-August 2006 in my modest home studio.
The title "Guitar Scapes" comes from a wish to create wide and epic landscapes of sound, using various guitar textures. Inspiration is taken from the Roach/Obmana CD "Well of Souls", the Danish MusiCure project, and many others.
In addition to electrical and classical guitar I have been starting to use software synthesizers and midi. But at core is always the guitar. The opening track Flying On Clouds sounds very synthy but is entirely made with electrical guitar. Also new is the use of vocals on two tracks, Every Day Is Today and Guidance. I hope not too many people are offended by my singing.
I am extending my musical horizons with this CD. I am constantly looking for the way forward. This way is not clear yet, but I trust it will be shown me.
Although I have done almost everything myself on this album, I want to thank Ron Bommelé from Twilight Studio (Zoetermeer, Holland) for the enormous help and advice he has given in countless email exchanges. And thanks also to my wife (even though even she had trouble with the singing).
I hope that this album shows and communicates the deep love for music that I have been gifted with. I hope you will find moments of beauty in it and feelings of peace.
Music Biography:
I was born in The Hague, Holland, in 1963 and have been living in Denmark since 1985.
My life as an amateur musician started when I was a teenager in the mid-seventies. The music of Pink Floyd, Yes, Al Stewart was the first influence. I did not know how to play the guitar and for some reason, you know what kids are like, did not want to take lessons. A black Fender Strat was financed by voluntary child labour in my father's shop after school. A vain attempt at starting a band with some class mates followed and lasted a few years. We recorded some absolutely awful tracks on a big clumsy tapedeck in the attic of my parent's house. Now, some thirty years later, these tracks still exist and are (still) painful to listen to.
My parents were not musical and did not support my interest, for some reason music did not exist (and even to this day is hard to find) in the universe they inhabit. I was of course never allowed to play loudly at home. But since I only owned a plain transistor guitar amplifier that could not provide any amount of fat distortion at low volume levels, this was a problem. And you try to explain to parents why the distorted sound is the one you want. So one day we did a test: my father would be on the ground floor of our house and I would be in the attic, which was two floors above ground floor, and try the distortion. I put my earplugs in, adjusted the volume knob and started playing the riff from Smoke On The Water. Thirty seconds later my father came storming up the narrow attic staircase, shouting and asking if I had completely lost control of my mind.
After leaving school I sold the Strat and there was a long pause that lasted close to 10 years. Then one day I heard someone play the piano, very badly, in some practise room. This made me decide to pick up guitar playing again and this time take proper lessons. The choice of instrument was never in any doubt. Coincidence brought me to a flamenco teacher and for some years I learnt this style, practising a lot of technique to get that right hand speed. In fact I concentrated so much on technique that I eventually lost feeling for the music. Again I sold all my guitars and quit.
The third and most current period has so far proven the most fruitful. When I had rounded 40 years of age I took up the guitar once more. This time starting out with pure classical music, Bach and Barrios and the like. Happily all of that previously learnt guitar skill had not completely disappeared. But I did drop the right hand finger playing in favour of a simple plectrum. This allowed me to concentrate on the music instead of the playing.
I discovered I could play those complex classical pieces, but there was one curiosity: I could not remember them very well. After a few days I would need to get the notes out before I could play a piece that I already had learnt by heart once. This turned into a bit of a frustration. I felt like Raistlin (from the DragonLance series) and his magic spells that had to be constantly relearnt.
A remedy was really needed and this was found when discovering the CAGED fretboard logic for the guitar from the books of Bill Edwards. Here was something that allowed me to play the guitar, with the emphasis on "play", without having to remember notes, melodies, fixed chord sequences or compositions. This gave me freedom on the guitar. Suddenly I was improvising and it sounded good.
I already had acquired a superb handbuilt classical guitar. When adding a Strat, a PODxt and some recording software on my laptop it became possible, even easy, to turn the improvisations into recordings. By profession I am a software engineer, so the computer side of recording my own music was no problem. In no time at all I had enough material to fill a first CD. This became the "Guitar Light " album (2006), which was filled with easy-listening and harmonious guitar improvisations, supported by software drum loops and effects. The horizons had opened up.
I created a small but professional home studio with top class recording software and soon a second CD, called "Guitar Scapes " (2006), was ready, mixed and mastered. Now there were guitars, synthesizers and even vocals. The tracks had better sound quality and the compositions increasing complexity and depth.
I have finished work on a third CD "Streams". My starting point is still an improvisational guitar. To this are added layers of synths and vocals in a mix of New Age and Progressive Rock styles. See my web site for details and download samples.
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