Nate's Music - An Overview

Nate at VineyardI've been playing and recording my own music since the early 1980s. As a dedicated amateur you can't expect high quality recording or musicianship, but I've had a lot of fun over the years playing with friends in various groups. I tasted the bar scene a little bit and didn't like it, I'm much happier to get together at house parties or events to entertain. Most of my early music experiences were classical (on 'Cello) or for musicals. I got into heavier stuff when I took up the bass, and later the guitar. My current love for folk, Irish, and ancient music only developed slowly since the late 80s but I also carry along a fiddle these days.

The most recent group I recorded and played with is Bardic Circle which is an Irish folk group. The facebook page has been closed as of 2019, and the G+ page where I was keeping a list of tunes to work on disappeared with Google Plus. The old domain Tim had set up, bardiccircle.info, expired and we didn't renew it. The screenshot below is all that remains. Currently I run a private Discord server to coordinate on tunes with folks I play with.

To facilitate sessions I've been keeping a "Book of Song" for over 20 years. Eventually the book moved online and at some point I decided to format it as a book and have it printed (I used lulu). The first volume came out in 2009, then a second volume was created in 2011. In 2015 I released a second edition of Volume II with a bunch of new tunes. I hope to get around to making a second edition of Volume I some day because there are ton of great tunes in that one but its also shy on sheet music and thats a daunting amount of more work. I've been working on Volume III for almost 2 years now (2023) so hopefully I can knuckle down and get that done sometime soon. The domain http://www.bookofsong.com was intended to include all the tunes and errata and more but right now its just links to the books on lulu. These should be thought of as "workbooks", they are just collections of the tunes we were playing at the time in the form we did them with some of our notes. It was just less messy than photocopying all that stuff for everyone.

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My tape collection of recorded stuff is quite large, though most of it is crap, frankly. As I would get together with folks over the years I've always tried to make a point of recording some of what we were doing because those magical times with different folks never last as long as we all would like. Usually when things start to fall apart its too late to get anything recorded! I would gather a bunch of tunes together at some point and create an album which I would "release" in the spirit of the mixed tapes of the 80s to everyone who had been involved and any friends that were interested. This practice started with tapes, shifted to CDs, and more recently has been a bunch of digital audio files.

I've added some pages for the various silly projects like this I've worked on over the years which are listed here.

  • YouTube and Twitch

    Music videos I've posted on social media
    2019

  • Thus Sang the Bard at Beltaine

    tunes I wanted to bring to Bardic Circle but never got good recordings for with the group
    2013

  • Bardic Circle - Samhain, MMXI

    Sport and Cate Moran help me carry on without Tim
    2011

  • TdB Bardic Circle Podcast

    All that is left of the podcast which I used to run in iTunes where I posted spippets of practice sessions or other funny stuff
    2010

  • Bardic Circle - Samhain, MMVIII

    more musicians and more merry music making in the medieval inspired genre
    2008

  • Momus and the Fomorians - Samhain MMVI

    More originals by Tim rounded out with lots more Irish and English folk
    2006

  • Comyn's Bardic Closet - Beltaine, MMVI

    Irish and medieval inspired folk tunes with several originals by Tim
    2006

  • NRN - Mostly Covers

    Mostly inspired by Rob, we worked up a lot of actual recognizable covers for a couple summers
    2000

  • Looking For Me

    I'm done screaming
    1998

  • Uruk Hai - Angel of Mercy

    An eclectic miscellany
    1993

  • LVC Sessions

    an EP of sorts produced by Todd of a few songs Ned and I had worked up
    1993

  • PREY

    an EP recorded by John in his basement
    1991

  • The Flying Mollusks

    some more original trip-metal meat puppets inspired material
    1991

  • In the daze of Ralph

    Ned, Todd, and I collaborate. Todd was a large influence here as he had been writing longer.
    1991

  • Identity Crisis

    more attempts at writing songs but perhaps a little angrier
    1991

  • Introspection

    My first attempts at writing songs
    1990

  • Chipmunks on Acid

    A very silly set of songs inspired mainly by my friend John
    1989

  • Me, Him, and the Other Ones

    Merry antics and deep lyrics by Morgan, great guitar work by Erik
    1984