Kurt Shultz  graphic design
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Music Composition

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What a wonderful wife I have to let me completely occupy our formal living area with music equipment!

My equipment includes:

  • Digidesign ProTools
  • Roland Vdrums
  • Yamaha digital piano
  • Clavia Nord Electro
  • Clavia Nord Modular G2x
  • Roland JP-8080
  • And a bunch of wires and mixers to connect it all together.

Musical Influences

My musical influences include Patrick O'Hearn, Sting, and Mark Isham. The latter is a brilliant trumpet player and composer. I was always drawn to the trumpet and my only formal training in music was in middle-school band as a coronet player. To my credit, I was typically first or second chair then. But now I can barely play my fancy new trumpet. It's a long-term goal of mine to rebuild my embouchure and record trumpet with synthesizer and piano.

In the Beginning

Here are a handful of tracks from my "first album" entitled "4703". The album collects a number of pieces recorded just before and just after graduating from high school. Back then MIDI was fairly new. I had a PC with a MIDI card, a very small keyboard (with equally small keys), a Roland MT-32, a Yamah FB-01 and your average everyday cassette tape deck. In other words, keep your expectations low...

Nowadays

Sadly, the music studio is now crammed into a small room to allow for photography in the grand space it once occupied. And even though it is functional, it's hard to find the time and energy to finish anything, so I mostly have "ideas" laying around. However, as recently as 2005, I did a small piece for U.T. Austin to use as background music for a short web slideshow to invite visitors to the Harry Ransom center for an Ansel Adams photography exhibit. My wife affectionately calls this "the whale song". The version below was not actually used—it was extended in length and had its piano and percussion tracks removed—but I prefer it!