Compact Disc Cover Art - "The Whole 100 Yards" by Jan Brown Checco

The Death of Desdemona for double bass and tape

The Story of Herman for 2 basses, percussion, narrator and tape

Nebula for piano, double bass and tape

Reflections for viola, double bass and tape

This Bass, She's Not Electric!

See Review

Red Mark CD 9208
Hear Audio Excerpts of the music

Notes by Frank Proto

Like many others of my generation, the late 60s release of Wendy Carlos' hit album Switched-on Bach opened my ears to a whole new world of sound possibilities. I was so excited about the Moog Synthesizer that was used on this recording that I began saving as much money as I could with the idea of purchasing one myself. I cooled down a bit when I learned that the Moog, besides being prohibitively expensive, needed more care and room than I could possibly manage. Never-the-less my appetite was whet and I kept my eyes (and ears) open for any news of this new technology. A few years later the ARP-2600 appeared. It was compact, quite stable and relatively affordable. I began saving again and within a year I had my very own unit.

After experimenting with the ARP for awhile I realized that something was missing. With the use of a multi-track tape recorder I was able to put together some fairly complex pieces, but something was still not right. Once set to tape these new pieces were finished, but they "played" exactly the same each time. There was no surprise, no variety. They just existed as recordings, never to be performed live. It dawned on me that perhaps the element I was missing was that of the live performers. After all I had always approached music as an active participant, whether as a listener or a player. I set to working on a way to utilize these wonderful new timbres together with live performers in real-world performance situations.