I am pleased to announce that, after a six-year sabbatical from the music industry, I have resumed playing the keyboard. Not just any keyboard: my old Miracle Piano Teaching System keyboard. After a few days of intensive/obsessive rehearsal, I have managed to relearn almost everything I knew how to play before. Granted, this does not equal a high quantity, nor quality, of material. But it is truly a strong testament to my desire to find creative ways to avoid doing schoolwork.

So now I can finally get around to recording all the songs I’ve written since 1998. And all the songs I wrote before 1998 that I never recorded. First, though, I have to figure out how to record stuff from the keyboard without also recording the sound of my fingers clacking against the keys. I don’t think it’s supposed to do that when you’re using direct input.

Anyway, to celebrate this probable creative reinaissance I am devoting this week to songs I’ve recorded using the Miracle Piano Teaching System keyboard. Keep in mind that many of these were not intended for public consumption, but nevertheless I was proud of them that the time. Nowadays when I listen to them I have to stop my larynx from reflexively trying to fix my pitch.

Anyway, here’s a Miracle keyboard track, one in a series. Fresh from 1996:

Moon Rocks [MP3, 2.9 MB]

There are people in this world
Who are trying to defend
Other people in this world
Who do not deserve defending

There are selfish astronauts
Playing with their pet moon rocks
Neil Armstrong’s even talks
It says, “Hi there, how ya doin’?”

But now it’s too late to go back on their word
Their big fishbowl heads never even could have heard
For each giant step in the name of mankind
There’s six thousand steps in a dewdrop on the moon

There are laws that we could break
There are things that we could steal
There’s a trip that we could make
It’s a long one, but it’s worth it

And if we could work in pairs
We would only need two chairs
We could both go down the stairs
Leave the cockpit to the robot

We’ll grab what we can and put it in a sack
We’ll bathe it and feed it and name it when we’re back
Then off to New York to go sell all our shares
We’ll quickly retire in the grateful public eye

And I don’t know where the moon is
But I know it’s far away
And the moon is far away
But I’ll make it there someday