I'll be posting a couple of fresh tracks to the website in the weeks to come. They were all created in the "traditional manner", that is to say with hardware sound sources recorded through an analog desk.

I've had a new PC in the studio now for close to a month, and I'm getting my head around learning the various software applications I've collected. Making music on a computer is a completely different experience I'm finding than with the traditional synths and samplers I've been using for years. For some reason, even though I haven't physically changed anything else in the studio, there is a sort of disconnection between my creativity and the actual process of sound manipulation and recording. By all accounts, using a computer should simplify the whole process, and perhaps it's doing the job a bit too well.

The software has the ability to make everything sound excellent very quickly, but in doing so leaves something to be desired with the actual content. Things that are accomplished with a turn of a knob with the old setup are frustratingly hidden behind pages and menus. By the time I wade through the endless parameters I've lost the original inspiration for whatever I was doing.

It will take some practice, of course, to get to know the strengths and weaknesses of the various systems. So far, my "old" method of composition seems to suit better than using the latest soft synths and VST plug ins. The only advantage gained so far for me is in the area of recording and overdubbing material. Computers excel at this sort of graphical representation of sound. Great for editing and compiling finished works, but I personally don't want to be looking at a screen when I'm composing music. You start looking for patterns on the sequencer page instead of listening to what is coming out of the monitors. That's like dancing about architecture.

Someone asked me the other day how I got into music production, and the obvious answer is that I was a fan of music as a listener since I was a small child.

Aside from the TV themes of "Emergency!" and "The Banana Splits" - the first track that really hit me was Gary Wright's hit "Dream Weaver". I was in grade 1, and in March 1976 took my first big road trip to Florida with my family. We left at about two in the morning, and it was the first time I had been up late at night. The sky was clear and full of stars, especially outside the city.

Our Monte Carlo didn't have anything other than a radio in the dash - so the radio it was... I must have heard "Dream Weaver" a dozen times during that trip, as it was sitting close to number one in the charts at the time.

As luck would have it, the brightest comet in the last 150 years was sitting overhead in the dawn sky. I kept telling my dad to look at the "shooting star". Even my father was speechless when he finally craned his head out the driver's side window. It was scary and beautiful at the same time. The passage of the comet was swift, so much so it didn't really make the papers until it was all over.

I was hooked. The one-two punch of great electronic song, and a haunting, silent comet suspended over our car late at night had a huge effect on me. I got full on into astronomy with a small telescope, and I began to devouring books and magazines. I eventually became the youngest member of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada in 1980 at age 11. The music would come much later...