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Kirk Casey's “Ten Soundscapes” is Contemporary and Classical guitar-
infused Soundtrack scores fashioning New Age, Rock, World, Easy
Listening, and Smooth Jazz with Urban R&B, west African and middle
eastern Pop and Celtic elements rolled into one. This album also
features revered Percussionist Kenneth Nash the acknowledged
inventor of fusing Pop music with African and World beats.
Kirk Casey, TayMusic.net’s founder, a Jazz rock guitarist and
composer with credits on 19 of the Sims line of video and computer
games, offers two electronica techno albums, Parallel View:
Rocktronica and, for something with a light classical flavor, Ten
Soundscapes.
Kirk Casey has also re-issued his own Lazy River, laced with acid
jazz and heavy metal, and No Borders, by ISIKOJAM, an electric world
jazz ensemble including Casey on guitars. These two albums are rich
in urban hip-hop grooves, techno-flavored R&B, Latin, Celtic and
world beat, and eclectic guitar sounds on a foundation of jazz and
rock.
Check out Kirk Casey - Ten Soundscapes. Ten Soundscapes - Kirk Casey is a great listen. Kirk Casey - Ten Soundscapes has an amazing sound.
Kirk Casey - Ten Soundscapes - Ten Soundscapes - Kirk Casey - New Age Music for Movies
TayMusic is proud to have Kirk Casey - Ten Soundscapes and Ten Soundscapes - Kirk Casey as part of our special selection of products.
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Not many musicians can say that they opened for the Grateful Dead … at a high school gig. But Kirk Casey, the guitarist, composer, arranger and founder of TayMusic.net, not only shared a bill with Jerry Garcia and the gang, but he wasn’t even old enough to be in high school himself when it happened.
It was 1969, and Casey, who was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, was attending junior high school in the East Bay town of Moraga. Having played guitar, sort of, since fashioning one together out of plywood and kite strings at age nine, he was in a band called Velvet Hammer when he was in seventh grade. The band got a gig at Campolindo High School. “I remember, our drummer had to drive!” says Casey. The engagement, he adds, is actually listed in a published log of Dead concerts. The bands played in the school gym. Later on, the Velvet Hammer also opened for a just-getting-noticed Santana Blues Band at Campolindo.
No wonder, then, that Casey feels so strongly about the connection between music and schools, a connection that’s a driving force behind his starting up TayMusic.net.
After graduating from Campolindo High himself, Casey studied music and composition at two Bay Area colleges, learned Cuban classical guitar, and developed a strong interest in world music and jazz. He then studied with Miles Davis guitarist Dave Cramer and segued into a career as a guitarist in various rock fusion bands and as a session player, working with members of Journey, Montrose, Santana, Tower of Power, and others. He slid into record production, scouting musical talent and taking them into recording studios. His recordings included three albums now available through TayMusic.net: Ten Soundscapes, Lazy River, and Isikojam.
As he honed his writing, arranging, and production skills, Casey found work making music for commercials, for soundtracks and, beginning in 1999, computer and video games. A friend who worked for an electronic game company hired him to compose and produce music for “Sim City 3000,” and Casey became a familiar musician around town. But producing sounds for computer games is a challenge, he says. “It’s the oddest thing I’ve ever come across. Electronica music these days doesn’t have choruses or bridges. It’s loop-oriented. For a game, you have to have some emotion—but it can’t be upsetting. So you can’t have a melody or a musical statement. It’s very minimalist.”
On the other hand, Casey can also improvise. “Game music lets you think outside the box. Can you mix reggae with yodeling? Things blend, and you wouldn’t believe what you can do musically.”
But not everything fit into the game environment—and that resulted in another Casey album, Parallel View—and his new label. “Every year, after doing another batch of games, you come away with a good quantity of music that didn’t work for the games, but it’s good music. And I’d say, ‘I’ve got to put it out!’” In his studio in Emeryville, near Oakland, he met fellow tenant Tim Gorman. As their friendship grew, so did Casey’s idea for a record label that would grow online and evolve, hopefully, into a vehicle for musical education.
Casey seems committed to making TayMusic.net a label not only for spreading music, but also “to educate younger players.”
After all, he once was one himself. You could look it up.
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