About Me and My Music

       I would describe my musical exploits as a mix of mellow acoustic rock with alternapop rock.  My influences are as varied as solo acts like Hayden, Paul Westerberg, and Sarah McLachlan to bands like King's X, Catherine Wheel, and Live.  I have written and recorded well over 75 songs, but have only recently really found my niche.  Overall, my songs tend to concentrate on emotional impact and what sounds good to me, rather than any kind of technical proficiency.  And, as I hope you can see from the available samples, I am not afraid to be different.  Also, I received only a few years of lessons with the guitar and have never taken any type of singing lessons; I'll let you make your own judgments about my abilities in both domains :).  You may be able to see that the content of my lyrics tends to be quite personal (music as therapy--leading to an unwillingness to play many of my songs for anyone that knows me) but there are also a few songs where I just play a passive observer's role.
         My current recording environment is in my decent sized, single bedroom apartment in Regina, SK.  I have a Pentium 4 1.8Ghz computer with 512 MB of RAM and a Sound Blaster Audigy Platinum sound card that I used to record all of the instruments, including my voice, my BC Rich acoustic guitar, my Hondo FAME 761 electric guitar, and my Yamaha PSR-240 keyboard.
         As time goes on, I will make use of my 50 Megs of free space to show off my newest songs and rotate some of the older stuff.  At this point, this is all just a fun experiment for me.
         Thank you for stopping by, and I hope you enjoyed what you found here :) (and if you did, please email me and let me know that).

Why Did I Record So Many Songs to a Camcorder?

       Ah, yes--the big question!  But it's actually a pretty simple answer.  Although I did in fact own a four-track recorder (cassette, unfortunately), I hadn't used it in over five years and it was not operational.  When I bought my camcorder, one of the uses I thought I'd make of it was to practice my song writing and recording, specifically playing live (and, it would give me an opportunity to hear myself again, something that I had missed since my four-track died on me).
       Thinking back to my four-track recording days, I would, of course, always record the songs track-by-track.  Unfortunately, this often led to situations where I could not play the recorded song live.  I wouldn't be able to coordinate my voice with the music I had written.
       With this recording arrangement, I was forced to learn to play the song live.  I had only one take and one track to get it right.  And, to be perfectly honest, I don't think the quality is much less what I'd have gotten with my analog four-track.  What was missing were quite obviously the little extra details: the harmonies, the lead guitar tracks, and any additional instruments.  With my new computer recording setup, all these options are now available for me, but the live playing of the song will again start to suffer.
       I should also point out that I had no idea I'd end up transferring these recorded songs to my computer and uploading them for the world to hear (not that anybody is actually downloading them anyway!).  But I was pleased with the quality and wanted to share the tracks with friends.  And that is why I set this web site up.  As of this date (March 19, 2002), I'm quite sure no one that doesn't know me personally has downloaded any of the songs available here.  I'd love it if that changed, but I'm not holding my breath.  But I digress...
       Basically, recording to my camcorder gave me a quick and easy way to get my songs out there for myself and others to hear.  I wanted to encourage feedback, weed out my weaker songs, and build my confidence so that someday I'd feel comfortable enough walking into a recording studio (or, as it turned out, creating my own recording studio) and doing things the right way!  As I said above, for now, this is all just a fun experiment!

Yours truly,
Scott W. Langman
Songwriter, Musician, Webmaster, Full-time Electrical Engineer
Regina, SK., Canada