Music

An excerpt from a live concert performed in Moscow, Russia as part of the group Siva Hari. I thought it would be nice to have a Siva Hari track in this player as all the music I am doing nowadays is with Siva! Guitar is a modified Yamaha from the early 70's and a Line6 Floor Pod.

I recorded this track as a test in GarageBand, using my new VG-99 guitar synthesizer.

The third track recorded in Oxie before we moved to the USA. I love this song and had great fun playing it. I especially like the way the chords come in at the end.

This track was recorded in a studio in Solna, Sweden, for the album "Setting the Scene" I did with the group Rasa. Although I had sung the song before and also had played it on the piano, specifically recording it in another style on the first Rasa album, "Oasis," this version was something I created on the spot and it was recorded in one take. Ah, to listen to my 31 year old voice again! Where has it gone?

This is the second song I recorded in my studio in Oxie. I was experimenting with the subtleties of tonal collage and vocals. There are many effects on this track. Since it is quite wild and definitely eastern in flavor, I thought it was right out of the Congo, the Indian Congo!

We lived in a marvelous ecological community in Oxie, Sweden, for some years. We built out the attic and I had a small studio there. This was the first song I recorded in that studio. I like to add vocal tracks to my songs as I love to use the voice as a percussive and melodious instrument.

Another of the Flow songs, recorded live as an improvisation in Oxie with the three original band members (see Flow 4). I enjoyed the chant and find the energy of this track to be peacefully enlivening.

I had become ill from overwork and stress during the latter part of the 80's. Although I had made music during 1987 and 1988, I stopped for four years. This was the first song I created when resuming my musical work. It was recorded in Copenhagen, Denmark. I particularly like the mood of this song and the words resonate well with me even today. The interesting lead guitar is by Yadu. He helped me in many of my tracks during this time. I always liked working with him.

This track comes from the Sri Hari series of techno music created with Ian Ion (see my story in About Me). When I got to the studio I was given the chord pattern as a loop and asked to sing the song. I had never heard the pattern before but told them, "Let's do it like Sinatra does it, just put the recorder on and I do it in one take." So this is what we did and although I never sang this song before, I had a lot of fun creating the melody and styling right on the spot. The track was mixed with this one-take improvisational melody and I like it today. One interesting point: the loop was not long enough, so I had to paste in the last verse due to running out of the loop at the end!

An irreverent string box something or other. Yet, it sounds nice.

A track from "Living Dreams," a collection of keyboard meditations from St. Petersburg, Russia. I am playing a Korg SG keyboard controller.

Another track from the "Living Dreams" collection. This song was in the mood of wind chimes reflecting the breeze within the ether.

Before I speak before an audience, I like to set the mood with some keyboard meditation. I close my eyes and listen to the sounds that appear at the end of my fingers. If I am lucky a melody will manifest that captures my attention. This track is special as it is the first one that Mamed has added orchestration to, and actually it should appear on our Siva Hari website. But as he is making more tracks like this, there will be enough to go around!

During one of our New Year's parties, a few of us got together to perform. I play guitar, Philip Sadkin is on bass and Jon Ely on keyboard and vocal. It was a spontaneous composition that created a very peaceful, yet inspiring mood in an otherwise wishy-washy party.

Also recorded in my studio in Oxie. The original track had me playing the mridanga, an Indian drum, and singing, Johan Sievert playing bass, and Jon Strider on piano and vocal. Due to a monstrous stupidity on my part, I lost Jon's vocal track and piano. The rest of it still sounded good, so in April of 2008, Mamed added the piano that was missing, I added more voices and the song was reborn. In 2003, we had wanted to create a group together and we named it "The Flow." Jon still uses that name in Europe. All the tracks done at that time with the original people are called Flow something or other. I love Johan's bass playing on this track.

My cousin, Jim Campagnola (CalJames Entertainment), came to visit for Christmas from hectic and cold Manhattan. We got together to jam this track. He is playing bass and rhythm guitar, me the lead, some vocal and a little keyboard. It starts somewhat slowly but gets moving soon enough.