Tim O'Brien
by Alessandro De Murtas

Featured Songs: 
Save The Rock'n'Roll
You Will Never Be Alone

HHmm.. What is there to say? Until very recently, Steve and I were working on the Save the Rock n Roll tracks, which we've completed and posted on my website. Making these songs was quite an experience; I learned a lot about Ntrack, digital audio hardware, and what things one should do as well as things not to do. My guitar playing days started rather young, since then I've had plenty of time to develop a deep love for playing music and the different instruments. Each is unique, and requires a different
approach and attitude. I guess I'd have to rate guitar and piano
as favorites since they're so versatile. It's with one or the
other of these I write most of the songs whose music I compose.
I like percussion for the raw unbridled emotion one can emanate
forth with it. Music is certainly something very special, and once
it truly becomes a part of you, it's there to stay. Several years back I heard Steve playing with another local band, and was impressed with his talent for both writing good songs and
performing them with pizazz. Shortly thereafter we played together in a local band a had a great time performing our tunes. Things changing over time, Steve eventually married and moved to Texas.
Home studio recording was something I'd wanted to try for years,
but it was always much more expensive than I could afford. ADAT
and other formats were in the several-thousand dollar range for just the multitrack machine. On top of that, one needed an 8 bus mixer, some outboard effects, and a lot of other stuff to get a working set up. It was more than I could handle at the time, and analog cassette tape multitrackers are so frustrating! I can remember many times using one and finding one track bleeding into another, or something would happen and the tape would get 'eaten'.. Aaaaaugggh!!
About 2 years ago, someone told me about using Ntrack on a PC for recording. To make a long story short, I tried it (albeit skeptically) and it worked! Since then, I've lived in a digital world and been able to improve the equipment here and there which makes for even better recordings.
In the end, our short compilation of songs was done with Steve in
Texas, while I was in Alabama. During a telephone conversation one day we realized collaboration on a project like this between two home studios was indeed feasible, and started sending data tracks back and forth; resulting in the 'Save the Rock and Roll' collection of songs available on my website at http://home.hiwaay.net/~tjobrien