Electronic Music Workshop

Electronic Music Workshop
Dedicated to Bernard Pasquintino Chris Udy Mark Traine Rob Brown Craig Hyla
Paula Bucelato Paul Wos the Jazz musicians of The Niagara Falls High School Band
and my fellow students.
by Christopher J. Bradley
4/8/00 6:20:00 AM
Where was I at the beginning of it all?
The era of direct to analog?
Sample to Sequence to Four Track...
Staring at a catalog for a Fairlight...
I Bombed into the studio running
With barely a wit about me
Just knowing that I could do it
I could be my own Peter Gabriel.
How could Paula in homeroom know she'd changed my life
By showing me the album cover
for Depeche Mode 101
the one I'd kept seeing on Hyla's shirt
As he walked down the hallway with Severely Spiked Hair.
Two weeks and I was figuring out the ESQ-1
Popping beats out on the TR-404.
Four weeks and I was setting MIDI channels
and linking up to the ROLAND S10.
Multi-Channel Sequencing
Multiple Instruments
32 channels of bliss
In a four walled dirty white room
With posters on the ceiling.
I locked myself in for study hall
And came out with a disk full of composition
Suddenly there was a new toy in my own room
The Ensoniq Performance Sampler.
And at the end of the year
My "Guitar Trio in C Harmonic Minor"
Came out on 100 cassettes
Along with Pasquintino's
"Mary Had a Little Scarecrow"
And so many others
that the titles are a blur.
The Auditorium blacked out during the
1989 Homecoming Rally
And Sal danced in an Indian Headdress
Made of Construction paper feathers
While the band played.
Traine with his Guitar and Pedals
Udy with the Sequencers and Drum Machines
And Bernie masterfully fingering the black and white plastic
whipped us all into a frenzy.
The three of them won a Casio synth
and several other instruments for the workshop
After a battle of electronica
in New York City.
We had some fun at Christmas that year
in The Wintergarden
Playing our Multi-Layered tunes for
A small but possibly international audience
that included TJ Insana who would later become Jesus
At least for 3 shows.
I started getting Rob Into it
and by 1990 he had an Ensoniq board too
And we slammed some tracks together for
Class Day
and snapped sticks against drumpads
to trigger Orchastra Hits.
Rob went into the Marines
and By College I was striking my own keys.
But those stories are for prose
And for what you can find from the music
Because the music is really all there is
The rest is just settings for cracked actors
And the life of the sound
Comes from the people who craft it
Even if they are only somewhat famous children
in a world
that only sees
through cathode ray static.
Category:Catalog