This is an unfinished demo piece that I started in February of this year. I think I have most of the melodic elements in place; it just needs some arrangement.

The feel of the piece is meant to reflect experiences I have with my son on our many adventures together. He’s a pretty adventurous guy, and he loves to explore. One of our favorite things to do is to go on hikes through the woods, especially at the UGA Botanical Gardens. Our favorite trail to hike is The White Trail, hence the name of the song.

I really wanted to convey the sense of an easy-going, leisurely journey through the woods, that still had lots of interesting twists and turns. Much of my time with him is spent is this type of setting, so this tune is very much dedicated to that.

I set my Windows rig back up a few weeks back, hoping to tap back into the great wealth of synth resources that I’d amassed over the years. The one thing drawing me to my Windows system was the overwhelming number of VST synths that I’d collected (most of them freeware). I’d always found these instruments inspiring and capable of a lot of different things.

Ever since moving over to Logic five years ago, I’d largely forgotten about VSTs. Logic does not support VST hosting, and there’s not nearly the same type of community of freeware synth developers out there creating stuff for Mac OS X. Call me a cheapskate I guess, but I love freeware synths! There are some great synths available for Mac OS, don’t get me wrong. But there’s just a TON of stuff out there for Windows.

At any rate, I find myself in a different headspace when I compose on my Windows rig, as I tend to be very much inspired by the sounds of the synths that I load. This particular piece follows in that spirit of allowing the sound to inform composition and arrangement.

Below is a link to a presentation I created in Captivate. In it you can see demos of some of the keyboard equipment I use in my studio, including sound samples, and links to other information.

http://www.strawsermusicstudio.com/edit6190/HTML5/

I’m doing a full overhaul of my website as I transition fully to WordPress. The Equipment Blog is currently offline while I restructure everything. In the meantime, I’ll be posting lots of samples of other work I’m doing, including new music compositions, designs, and instructional media projects. Enjoy!

Last weekend, a friend of mine asked if I’d provide some music for a game he was helping to develop for a gaming contest. Egg Defender made it into the final five. The grand prize winner is awarded seed money to bring their project to market. Below is a short 1-minute clip of the game in play:

I recently had a composition used in a series of promotional video demos for Sage 50 Accounting software.

Other demos can be found here:
http://www.fallowfields.org/animation-sage.html