Pieces of Eight

The Following list contains the track names, a brief note about each one and links for downloading MP3 Clips. Check the notes and see if you would like to hear the song. If so, click on the icons under the track number. To download a short preview clip, click on the bass clef icon. Click on the treble clef icon to download the entire song. File sizes for each are listed under the icons.

Please Note that the MP3 format is a conversion process that must, by definition, alter the music in order to perform compression. The full dynamic range and fidelity of the original music is only approximated by the resulting MP3 file and cannot be recovered to its original splendor. If you like the music you hear in the MP3 cuts, order the CD. You owe it to yourself to have the "real" product. This is true for any musician's art you sample using MP3.

Track Titles, Notes and MP3 Links

Track 1		Time of Your Life	6:53	80's Synth Rock
		The song has lyrics but this is an instrumental CD so the aren't included. It's about a kid who gets fed up with small town life and decides to move to the big city where he hopes to have "the time of his life".

856 Kb	6.6 Mb
Track 2		I Can't Tell You (I Don't Love You Any More)	4:08	50's Ballad
		This 50s style song also has lyrics which are mostly nonsensical and meant to be sung in one's best Elvis voice. This version is an almost "Nashville" sounding arrangement with a honkie-tonk piano in the background and a Jerry Lee Lewis slow ballad piano lead. The "Do-Wah" choir in the bridge was inspired by Frank Zappa's "Crusin' With Ruben and the Jets" album, although it's much more strait ahead in this track.

817 Kb	3.9 Mb
Track 3		That Digital Touch	3:53	Alternative
		The lyrics of this song are only in sketch form but are quite tasteless making reference to one's "hard drive" and "mouse buttons". The style is pure punk alternative with an organ solo that is vaguely reminiscent of the solo in In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida.

643 Kb	3.7 Mb
Track 4		Broken Soul	5:56	Rock Ballad
		There are no lyrics for this song except for the "hook" part of the chorus. I just never got around to it. I think I like it as an instrumental with that gut wrenching mournful sax melody.

647 Kb	5.4 Mb
Track 5		Daydreams and Nightmares	5:09	New Age
		I used this song as the title track for my demo cassette of a few years ago. It is a simple "new age" sort of theme that grows a bit during each cycle until it climaxes into a drum and trumpet fanfare with fluttering strings panning back and forth.

884 Kb	4.9 Mb
Track 6		Pieces of Eight - Symphonet in G Major	9:17	Symphonic
		I never gave this a title until I was about half way through recording this CD. The title of the CD came first and then I decided to extend the title to this work. The best description I can offer is that of blending Vaughn Williams and Rachmaninoff although I can't pretend it possesses the genius of either. 1) Fair Seas - Even though this movement is first, it was written last. In 1990 I developed only the string pulse and let it sit until 1997 when I actually wrote a piece around it. 2) The Queen's Bounty - This movement started out as a stand-alone "Symphonic Tone Poem" and had no piano part at that time. Actually, the opening brass fanfare dates back to 1980 and was originally part of a keyboard opening for a jazz number that never got off the ground. The piano was added in 1990 when the first movement was written and this one was modified to join it.

1126 Kb	8.7 Mb
Track 7		A Good Start	8:15	Mellow Jazz
		This song developed rather quickly one night in from a brainstorm session at the keyboard. The three sax verses were written first and then a few days later I split them and inserted the piano solo. I think the song came from a memory of having enjoyed a Boney James concert last summer. In any event, it's meant to invoke his style.

916 Kb	7.7 Mb
Track 8		How Many Times (Do I Have To Tell You)	4:00	Samba
		There are lyrics to this song somewhere, but I didn't like them so I'm sure they'll be re-written at some point. There is a brassy Latin flavor to this cut with the vibes offering a nice counterpoint to the piano. The chord changes for the chorus came first and date back to about 1983 or so. They were so odd and hard to move from that it took several years of playing around with them before I hit upon the right verse structure to fit them.

773 Kb	3.7 Mb
Track 9		Lord Knows You Make Me Blue	3:44	Brass Rock
		Another example of brainstorming at the keyboard with no particular direction in mind, this song sprang from the "gospel" sounding changes of the opening. After playing with that for a few minutes, the old "Blood Sweat and Tears" bug bit me and the song started to rock! The Gershwin lick at the end inspired the title and sooner or later I'll write lyrics for it.

604 Kb	3.5 Mb
Track 10		Tone Poem for Guitar Duet and String Ensemble	5:22	Acoustical Classical Guitar
		1) Valerie's Theme 2) Interlude 3) Dawn in the Arms of my Lover These three short melodies were inspired by and written for a lady I knew and was secretly in love with in the mid 1980s. She was a very talented flutist and also one of my favorite models from that time when I was expanding my body of photographic work and mounting my first gallery showings. She never heard the tunes fully arranged but did play the melodies for me one afternoon so I could hear how they sounded. Originally scored for flute, harpsichord and string trio, the arrangement evolved to a keyboard/woodwind with strings grouping in 1990, then to its current nylon string acoustic guitar form in 1999 for this CD.

747 Kb	5 Mb
Track 11		It's Time You Knew	4:55	80's Rock
		I started out with the chorus in 1984 and never took the song beyond that. In 1999 I composed a melody and verse structure but couldn't think of a chorus to put with it until I re-discovered this set of changes on an old brainstorming tape. I spliced the two together and the 15 year gap closed to form this song.

749 Kb	4.6 Mb
Track 12		Third of Five	3:13	New Age
		OK, I admit that the name for this 5/4 tempo orchestral piece had something to do with the Borg. However, in my defense, the structure and melodic cycle date back to 1990. In 1996 I expanded on the theme and gave it this name. Resistance was futile.

788 Kb	3 Mb
Track 13		It Doesn't Have to Be That Way	3:57	Rock Ballad
		This is another example of writing a song inside out. Again I developed the chorus sometime in 1985 and came up with enough words to made up the title. The rest came in 1990. There are as yet no lyrics. Damn, I love that Cakewalk guitar amp simulator plug-in!

605 Kb	3.8 Mb
Track 14		I'll Remember Her	3:34	New Age
		This is my most recent song and was developed in early 1999 from a mood at the keyboard. It happened all at once. I can't say much more about it. Perhaps as time goes on I will discover more about what caused it to happen. I had a hard time coming up with a title, but one night I developed a snip of lyrics that suggested this title of lament. It would make a nice opening theme for a motion picture like a Tom Hanks love story.

783 Kb	3.4 Mb

Liner Notes:

All of the music on this disc was composed and arranged as MIDI sequences first. Each song was then converted into digital audio by playing each track of the sequence one at a time while recording the resulting sound generated by the synthesizer onto the hard disc. The separate tracks were then mixed down in multi-track fashion and mastered into standard stereo digital audio "WAV" format files. This was all done using Cakewalk Pro Audio 8.04 and various Direct-X plug-in effects. These songs were then exported to the CD Architect module of Sound Forge 4.5 to create the final CD image for burning onto recordable compact discs.

All of the sounds you will hear were generated by synthesis using either a Kawai K11 keyboard or the Emu 8000 soundfont module in the Soundblaster AWE 32 sound card. Digital audio conversion was also performed by this card and by a Soundblaster PCI 128 sound card. Two Ethernet linked computers were used in the process of generating this disc. A Pentium 166 running Windows 95 was used to record from the AWE 32 and to burn the finished CDs and a Pentium Celeron 300A overclocked to 450 MHz on an Abit BH6 mother board running Windows 98 was used for recording from the K11 keyboard and for all mixing and mastering.

Listening tests were performed on a variety of systems. Critical evaluations were performed using the McIntosh MCD7010 CD player, C15 preamp and MC275 Gold tube power amp driving Martin/Logan ReQuest electrostatic speakers.

Please note that this disc contains substantial information in the 30 to 60 Hz range and so it is inadvisable to boost the bass. In fact, if your system has il-defined bass response in that bottom octave or your listening environment tends to be boomy, a slight bass cut may be in order.

Great care was taken in the mastering of this disc to preserve the dynamics of the music by using minimal limiting and by not trying to cram all of the music into the top 10 dB of the CD's 96 dB dynamic range. However, given limitations in fidelity of both the synthesized sources and sound card performance, this disc isn't exactly up to "audiophile quality" standards, but I believe is quite listenable and hopefully the music is too.

D. Glen Cardenas 5/99

Acknowledgments - Thanks to the following people for their help and support in various, perhaps even obscure ways:

Bill Denny, a musical mentor and fellow seeker. Robert Stevens and Steve Doane, long time friends and sources of inspiration. Dave Hallock, John Bartelt and Keni Fink (Deep Space Records) for advice, criticism, much needed encouragement and solid friendship. Bruce Richardson (Purple Iguana Productions, Dallas), Justin Dawson (Accelerated Press, San Antonio) and Mike Garrett for advice, tools and technical support.

My deepest thanks to the development team at Cakewalk Music Software and to Jim Aikin at Keyboard Magazine.

Thanks to the folks at Bjorn's Audio - Video in San Antonio for access to the equipment and listening environments used to perform the evaluations and listening tests on the CD along its various stages.

Also, a special thanks to a great group of very talented and very picky people I work with on-line whom I shall refer to as "The Illustrious Order of the Crash Test Dummies" - you all know who you are.

Lastly I wish to thank my family, especially my wife, Mary, for her ability to put up with a preoccupied musician obsessed with making a CD and spending a fair amount of time and money doing it.