Keymander

About Keymander

Hi

My name is Bill Keyes I am retired American living for the last 10 years in Cuenca Ecuador with my wife of 54 years. I will be 80 years old and yes I am still rockin as Jethro Tull said “you’re never too old to rock n roll”.

Keyboard is my first instrument which I started piano lessons when I was about 12 years old but hated it and only learned Mary Had A little lamb.
Later in high school I realized I could play by ear and also had some talent for music composing. In college I played piano in a jazz quartet. When the Beatles storm hit the guitar player said to me “ we have got to start playing Beatles tunes at gigs so you better learn how to play guitar which I did which became my second instrument but rhythm only.
I wrote my first instrumental on the piano when I was in my second year of college here is a link to it
with other instruments using Reason

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Since college I didn’t do much composing until about 15 years ago when I discovered Reason so since then I have tried composing music in as many genres as I feel comfortable with. If you want to check my music out go to SoundCloud and type William Keyes in the search engine. I just recently in the last two years tried my hand at writing lyrics I also do rap yeah I know an old white guy rapping? Pretty weird but that got me to start trying to write lyrics to my instrumentals. Most of the rap was political but here are links to three which were more creative

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I use Reason 10 triggered by my keyboard to compose and record in Protools 12. I mix and master to produce what you hear on Sound Cloud I am not a trained recording engineer most of what I have learned has been by trial and error. I would be happy to share with anyone how I do my composing and recording etc. But first I would like any input on any aspects of my recordings. You can comment on the compositions themselves but I am mostly interested in the recording itself and how it sounds good bad drums too loud etc. I will tell you know that a have system from start to finish which is probably contrary to what you learn in the Berkeley School of Music but I have a simple theory if what comes out of the speakers or on the headphones sounds great to the listener that all that matters how you did it isn’t important of course you can’t steal or plagerize of course
Check it out and let me know what you think any and all comments and criticisms are welcome.