The Folk Festival, WDCB 90.9 FM

I don't listen to much radio anymore. At least not with a physical, traditional AM/FM receiver. There are radio programs I listen to online that I used to tune in on a radio. They are much easier to record this way and sound better. I don't have to worry about a cassette not being long enough to record a longer show.

One of the programs that I still enjoy listening to is "The Folk Festival" found on WDCB 90.9 FM public radio from the College of DuPage in Glen Ellyn IL. The show is live on Tuesday evenings from 7pm to 9pm.

I've been listening to the show since the days George Brown used to host it. He passed away suddenly and then Lily Kuzma took over as host. The show is basically 2 hours of mostly Contemporary Folk/Americana music with occasional tinges of international folk and studio guests who give interviews and perform live versions of their songs.

I have not listened to the show for a while now due to the music selection being less interesting than in the past and the imbalance of talk vs. music when the guests come on. But I do have plenty of shows that I recorded over the years and will be providing links to those programs here on this blog.

I don't have much information on the shows other than the dates they were first broadcast. If you want to know the names of particular songs or artists you will probably find them mentioned at some point in the program.

Stayed tuned for links to the shows!

Open Sky

This is a new video/song I made for my YouTube channel. I originally just had the video up but I felt it needed some music. The video is a time-lapse presentation of a severe thunderstorm that was coming through the neighborhood on June 18, 2010. It was actually 14 minutes long in real time. Even though I enjoy watching it in real time I felt that most other people would not. Besides that, I like to keep my videos generally short because unless it's something absolutely mind-captivating or with plenty of visual effects, most people don't have the attention span to watch them.

As for the music of this video, I created a basic 2 track ambient sounding instrumental track, just about 2 minutes long (just about 1:20 was used for the video). I wanted something to match the eeriness, dramatic nature of the video. So I used my Yamaha S90 for a great sounding synth sound and a piano track. For the piano track I added plenty of reverb to create a very distant and lonely sound. The entire song was made in a matter of minutes. I just wanted something quick and ominous sounding. I titled it "Open Sky." I'm pretty interested in this type of ambient, atmospheric sounding music. It can be used in movies, commercials or just as chill music. I plan to make a full length album of this type of music.