jamie.smartypants

At the age of eight, I had a job selling soft pretzels on the side of the city highways in Philadelphia. The proceeds from that job bought me my first two synths, a Univox Mini Korg K2 purchased in 1978, and an SCI Pro One purchased in 1982. 

It was clear back then I had a strange infatuation with synthesizers. 

I took piano lessons off and on from the age of eight, but never really mastered the instrument. I played percussion in high school and achieved quite a bit playing mallets, ranking first chair in both National bands and orchestras in my senior year of high school. 

I played in a few bands after high school, but put music aside to attend college for sciences. 

I never really got back into the music scene, but after a few years from 1990-98, keyboards were completely absent from my life. 

In an effort to get myself caught up with the changes in technology, I began buying gear on EBay, learning about them, and deciding to keep, sell, or upgrade the instruments. That started with a Yamaha CS1x, and through various up sells, I now have a wonderful rig that I spend time as a hobbyist. 

Yes, a, all this gear, and I do nothing with it.  But those in The know understand the satisfaction of it all. 

Musical influences: porcupine tree, Rush, Marillion, yes, IAMX, Radiohead. 

Goals: more newer gear, more vintage gear. 

2017:  I have spent much of this year developing a cloud-based collaborative effort. Most of the year centered around the process and finding musicians to take part, the last days of the year have finally moved to the goal of writing and putting ideas together. It took this long to discover a concept, and I’ve started writing a few songs that revolve around somewhat common themes. 

As a keyboard player who writes largely guitar-driven music, it is difficult for me to find a starting point. 

Right now, for me, the starting point was sitting for a few hours behind a set of Vdrums coming up with various rhythms in various time signatures. I’d record them in Ableton, then break the useful parts into loopable midi tracks and then set to the task at doing the same with bass guitar, using the drum loops as a reference. I found these two together will set me on a rudimentary keyboard path, and then voila!  I start linking them together and forming motifs, verses, etc. 

that in turn has started a rhythms for me to design lyrics around, which is where I am at right now. 

I have four songs in the works at the moment, three of them have rough lyrics at the ready. 

In the new year, I will use these rough outlines to send off to my drummer, guitarists, and vocalists to build a more cohesive melody, fill in the spaces left empty for guitar parts, and build a more structured rhythm part. Let that bounce off me from there, and finally have a few demos to work with for our EP. 

if anyone seeing this might be interested in collaborating in this way, please contact me. 

I do not work with any one guitarist, drummer, or any one of any musician, as I believe this collaborative effort should welcome different approaches before settling in on one kind of sound. I am hoping an approach like this will spawn different projects for me working with many different people down the road, either in support or in command. 

I do seek musicians with some common musical background. While I desire a sound of my own, I do abide by the approach of many different progressive rock artists, from Rush, yes, Marillion, Porcupine Tree/Steven Wilson, to newer sounds like riverside/lunatic sould, anathema, Frost, as well as some more electro type acts like IAMX, Radiohead, etc. 

‘the goal is mature, guitar based, full sounding progressive rock. I don’t intend the sound to be overly complex, only where it needs to be. I will embrace some of the technology in some pints, like the use of arpeggiators and layered synths. But I intend to keep synths more atmospheric and supportive than featured. 

My keyboard approach is more organic and leans towards vintage keyboard sounds like acoustic pianos, Rhodes, B3, mellotron, but also with the use of analog and digital synths, samplers, loop fx, vst and iOS synths. I am happy to occasionally solo, but my world involves mostly filling in empty spaces in a mix.