mark's music
Check out samples of some of my work below. There’s music clips and video clips. Also a look back to my days playing in bands in the 1970s.
Music for TV Commercials
Love this commercial produced by Storypoint Media with music by me. That’s Ashevilles’ John Rutland as the 007 type.
Music for Dressage
Horses move to the beat and sound of music in what’s called the Grand Prix in the world of dressage. On the amateur levels of competition recorded music is usually spliced together for the horse to ride to. On the top levels of competition often music is custom arranged and recorded or maybe even composed brand new. Here the horse Mythilus is riding to my music custom arranged and recorded for this horse and rider at the Olympics in Hong Kong.
Music for Film
Here’s two clips from A DANCE FOR BETHANY, a feature film I scored in 2007. I recieved my first award for film scoring from the Accolade Competition for the score. The actual award was Award of Excellence: Original Score. They state in their award, “The judging standards are high and winning means the craft and creativity exhibited in your entry is outstanding and stands above other productions”. So I was excited for the recogniti0n.
More Music for Film
Here’s 3 short clips from MAGIC IN THE FOREST, a 30 minute fantasy film produced by StoryPoint Media for the Cradle of Forestry in Brevard, NC. in 2009. I scored the music. I also did the post audio work and sound design. I recieved a second award for film scoring from the Accolade Competition for the score.
Music for Nashville
I know people don’t generally think of me as a Nashville country music songwriter. But I have to say I love a good country song. The following song written by and sung on this demo by ‘yours truely’ is one of my personal favorite songs that I wrote. And I may be delusional but I kind of think this song would have been a good fit on George Straits’ new album that just came out (as of this writing). If anybody has an in with George would you please let him know what he missed out on. 🙂
Song dedicated to Joye Ellyn Henman, the girl in my 5th grade class that “pretended like she never saw”.
Music for Children's Book Reading
Actually I just wanted you to hear my granddaughter, Abby, perform this most excellent reading of this short children’s book What Do You Do With an Idea? by Kobi Yamada. I thought she was so good we had to bring her into my studio to record. Then I got to thinking it needed music. And in the end we added the imagery back in from the book. Check it out! This will tickle your heart!
Buttermelon - Circa 1973
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What a great band this was! Led by the talented and prolific songwriter, Emery Kapples. I was the youngest member at around 18 years old. I’m the guy sitting on the collapsed roof in the monocolor photo above. I played piano mainly. We actually carted around a studio grand piano in our van going from gig to gig. Crazy! Michael Graves played drums and Vic Koler was on bass, both had been students at the Cincinatti Conservatory majoring in percussion and double bass respectively. And last but not least was Paul Fabanich, amazing vocalist. I wanted you to hear the song Twins (reborn) below just to hear the musicality that we had going on here. If I were to offer any criticism of what I was doing, I would say I was probably overplaying a bit in those days. Enjoy!
(If Soundcloud tries to take you to their website just click the X over to the right.)
The following song entitled Enter was sort of our signature song (or so I thought of it as). Later the British recording artist, Long John Baldry, picked up the song and recorded it on one of his albums.
The following song is from a recording of a live “Coffee Break Concert” Buttermelon did on Cleveland’s FM rock station WMMS. It was a stripped down version of the band without drums in an interview/coffee house atmosphere. I think this recording was just a single live mic someone set up, (not the recording the station would have had). I say so because the recording quality was awful but, lucky me, at least the piano came through pretty clear on this song. I thought you might enjoy hearing this. If I recall correctly I believe Emery allowed me to write the instrumental interlude part for this.
Here’s one more. Check out the Elton John piano style going on here.
Snake & Albert 1971
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If you wonder how I got started on this lifelong “music kick” here’s what happened. It was this swift kick forward in 1971 at age 16.
Growing up my mother was a music teacher and we lived not far from the Oberlin Conservatory of Music so there was a lot of musical influence around. As a kid I took piano lessons, drum lessons, oboe lessons, trombone lessons and picked up the guitar also. My first “band” experience was a church folk group called The Congregation along about middle school age.
From there I grew up way too quickly and was soon hanging out with a group of freaky musician folks a few years older than me called the 1885 Schoolhouse Gang. I guess I fit in OK because I looked older, had a beard and was a pretty good musician. It was a great, eclectic group of interesting folks and we did all the things freaky musicians did around 1970.
Snake & Albert formed out of the 1885 Schoolhouse Gang. Did I mention that I was 16 years old. Yikes!
I was Albert (my middle name) and Snake was Russ Stevens. We were writing songs and playing. At some point we decided to go into a studio to record a demo which we did at Cleveland Recording Company. This happened to be the studio that Grand Funk Railroad did there recording at.
Well, it turned that Ken Hammond, the studio engineer, liked our demo and gave it to Terry Knight to listen to. Terry Knight was Grand Funk’s manager and producer at the time and was also starting his own new record label, Brown Bag Records. Wouldn’t you know it, we ended up signing a recording contract with him.
Our manager, Bob Roth, reported one day that Terry Knight had been in England hanging out at a recording session with the Beatles. He reported that Terry Knight had played the demo of one of our songs (New Born Baby Blues), which I wrote, for Paul McCartney who commented that it sounded like something he would have written. And indeed it did as I was all into the Beatles at the time. You have to know that’s something I’ve never forgotten, right?
After awhile Russ and I got wind that Terry Knight’s vision of us was as a sort of musical Cheech and Chong which didn’t set well with us as we were thinking more seriously about our music as in maybe a Simon & Garfunkel or Seals &Croft. In the end we bowed out of the contract which was easy since I was under 18 and couldn’t be bound by law in the state of Ohio.
End of story. But it was quite a kick for the 16 year old.
BULLETIN: Found old Snake & Albert recording!
I thought there was no recorded trace of Snake & Albert music still around. But I recently found this old reel to reel tape and had it digitized to see what was on it. I was thrilled to find a live, living room recording of Snake & Albert from 1971!
Check out these 2 songs. They’re not studio recordings but pretty decent and an interesting peek into my life at 16. I’m pretty sure it was Vic Koler on bass and Gary Sallay – drums.
This next one was my favorite song ever that Snake & Albert wrote. Russ wrote the lyrics and I believe we worked together on the music. It was both Russ and I playing acoustic guitars. I still remember it as a kind of magical time working out the guitar stuff and vocals together. For you musicians, check out the alternating 7/4 – 6/4 time signature section.