Category Archives: Music

Dreamland

He’s got a road map of Jupiter
A radar fix on the stars
All along the highway
She’s got a liquid-crystal compass
A picture book of the rivers
Under the Sahara

They travel in the time of the prophets
On a desert highway straight to the heart of the sun
Like lovers and heroes, and the restless part of everyone
We’re only at home when we’re on the run
On the run

He’s got a star map of Hollywood
A list of cheap motels
All along the freeway
She’s got a sister out in Vegas
The promise of a decent job
Far away from her hometown

They travel on the road to redemption
A highway out of yesterday — that tomorrow will bring
Like lovers and heroes, birds in the last days of spring
We’re only at home when we’re on the wing
On the wing

When we are young
Wandering the face of the Earth
Wondering what our dreams might be worth
Learning that we’re only immortal
For a limited time

Time is a gypsy caravan
Steals away in the night
To leave you stranded in Dreamland
Distance is a long-range filter
Memory a flickering light
Left behind in the heartland

We travel in the dark of the new moon
A starry highway traced on the map of the sky
Like lovers and heroes, lonely as the eagle’s cry
We’re only at home when we’re on the fly
On the fly

When we are young
Wandering the face of the Earth
Wondering what our dreams might be worth
Learning that we’re only immortal
For a limited time

We travel on the road to adventure
On a desert highway straight to the heart of the sun
Like lovers and hereos, and the restless part of everyone
We’re only at home when we’re on the run
On the run…

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Ask the composer for sync rights? Why thank you!

Something happened a couple days ago that genuinely increased my level of hope for the human race.  Someone from the Indiana State School Music Association contacted me because they wanted sync rights to a couple of my unpublished pieces which were being performed by marching bands this fall.  For those that don’t know, sync rights include things like recording audio/video (at least I think so, although I’m no copyright expert, so don’t quote me).  For the record, no one from that organization or any other state school music organization has ever contacted me about sync rights.  I thought it was a nice gesture on their part, and it was obvious to me that they were trying to do the right thing.  I told them how refreshing it was to see an organization doing something like this.

There is a pretty large debate going on right now about copyright law, who owns music, how it gets shared, who can do what with music, etc.  For whatever reason, I’ve always been more interested in observing and analyzing all sides of these types of issues than actually forming opinions myself, so I often wondered what I’d think if something ever happened to me regarding my music and copyrighting.  For example, I’ve never been active about finding video companies that record bands playing my music to stick them with a copyright violation for not getting sync rights, but there are some composers that do.  This isn’t because I’m a spineless hermet, its because there is so much grey area surrounding copyright right now that I don’t feel the need to get involved in causing controversy.  Its a very nebulous subject.

Either way, in the meantime, I think its great that organizations like ISSMA are trying to do their part to keep the composers happy.  After all, we can’t keep track of every performing group in the world.

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My Latest Web Project

I recently finished work on a new website for the composer Les Taylor, a friend and mentor to me, who also owns a publishing company.  I spent a total of about 4 days working off and on to complete the new lestaylorpublications.com.  I consider this site to be a great success because of the speed of my work.  I was very fortunate to have had a few days of extreme productivity that allowed me to complete the site much more quickly than I normally would have.  The largest feature is the music Catalog, which uses a MySQL database to display info about each piece and allows the software to sort music in different ways.  I also spent a few hours setting up a blog for Les and edited one of the standard WordPress themes to fit within the header and footer design that I created for the rest of the site.

ltpscreen

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Music for weddings?

Is there such thing as a wedding composer?  In case someone is reading this that doesn’t know me personally (which at this point is probably no one), I recently got married to a beautiful girl named Lindsey after 5 years of being together.  She didn’t want to walk down the aisle to the traditional Wagner march and she loves piano.  So I composed this piece for her.  I wanted it to be a departure from the traditional cadence of the wedding march, almost conveying a sense of surrealness that you’d see in a movie.

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