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IN THIS ISSUE:
> Greetings
> New Music Recap
> Appreciation File
> Beach Banter
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GREETINGS and welcome to the premiere issue of the Secret Beach Newsletter. Thank you for subscribing and taking the time to check out the website.

Secret Beach is an original and experimental music project. It is a work in progress and is the culmination of many years of training and dedication. The website and this newsletter are the latest entries in its continuing development. They are a way for us to stay in touch while this project continues to grow. I look forward to sharing with you the origins of Secret Beach, the people involved, and of course, all about the music.

The name "Secret Beach," originated during high school when my friends and I discovered a particular "out-of-the-way" beach one night. We would often have low-key campfire gatherings on this beach, and midnight adventures would end as the sun was coming up. These clandestine activities continued through my college years on a regular basis and have made for some great memories.

As I look back, there were many reasons why I enjoyed the Secret Beach, became so attached to it, and decided to name my music project after it. Like any beach, it offers fresh air, warm sand, and the constant rush of the waves. The fact that the beach has few visitors makes it very intimate, and at night, being there with friends while the rest of the world is asleep is incredible.

SUBURBAN ENNUI? Rebellious adolescents?
Pretty universal if you ask me.

I enjoyed that "jazzed feeling" I would get when walking around the beach and ravines under the stars. I noticed that I developed a confidence in my new and wild surroundings. Other visitors were unsure of themselves, afraid they would fall off the side of a ravine or get lost in the darkness. While some found this uncertainty a cause for retreat to the safety of the streetlights, I felt empowered. What I discovered, and what I enjoy, is that my auditory senses became even more focused, and my night vision sharpened and exhibited a heightened spatial sense. It is quite exhilarating. A catharsis?

There is a lot to be said for the good times my friends and I would have late at night at the beach. We would build our small bonfire from the plentiful driftwood and fallen tree branches. Sitting around the beach and drinking soon took on a larger-than- life rustic quality, such as you might find in a vintage magazine ad for Old Milwaukee. But for me, there was also an underlying layer, some kind of a transcendental quality to the whole experience.

The heightened feelings and numerous experiences put me in a creative mood and inspired my musical output. I began to visit the beach during the day on my own and I would try to distill and capture the essence of the beach in a song  (and get a tan at the same time).

The tone of the beach during the day was equally tranquil. I could spend hours there without seeing another face. It was ideal, getting lost in nature, daydreams, lyrics. The waves provide a nice meditative state and I would just noodle around with my guitar, brainstorm, and be incredibly creative. So far, I have filled roughly five 1-inch binders with my songs, lyrics, and pieces of musical flesh.
My job now is to get that music to you.

Before summer, I began preproduction for a new CD. I imagine that completing this entire project will take some time. Among other things, this process involved taking stock of all of the old recordings I have done over the years: boxes of cassette tapes, digital tapes, and open reels. They will be used as a basis, to form a rough sketch of the CD.

I decided to bring them into a studio where they could be digitally remixed, cleaned up, and archived on CD. The quality of these recordings varies greatly. I would consider releasing only a few of them "as is." The others are equally important, serving as demos, explorations of musical themes, and song- writer's notes.

One group of recordings contain neither music nor lyric...

A couple of summers ago, I took a Sony portable digital tape recorder and a Neumann shotgun stereo microphone into the wild blue yonder to record some ambiance. FYI, the value of this professional gear easily runs over eight grand. Carefully, I set the microphone just a few feet away from the waves to capture every drop of detail. In the end, the equipment survived without ever tasting any seaweed and the sessions yielded excellent results.

These "sounds of the Secret Beach" include the waves during various times of the day, psychedelic cicadas living in the ravines and trees, some calm suburban crickets that will make you rest easy, and a wild symphony of unidentified deep-wood bugs that are sure to prick your ears. I can't wait to find out how you like it. These sessions add up to about two hours worth of ambiance. You will hear portions weaved into songs on the upcoming CD.

Getting this thing off the ground is going to be a whole lot of fun,and when it comes to fun, there is plenty to go around. Here are a few people who were very helpful recently and deserve to be thanked:

At Rax Trax Studios in Chicago, MIKE CASEY has been the man behind the controls remixing and archiving my home recordings. He has logged some seriously long hours (12 - 14 hr days) working on this project and deserves thanks for his hard work and dedication. You can visit Rax Trax at www.raxtrax.com

AMIE HARTNETT is a freelance writer living in Chicagoland. She specializes in business writing for the web and has been very helpful editing text on the website and in this newsletter. Aruba to you! Her website is www.riotshopper.com

I was happy as a clam when I heard from DANIEL STECKO in Montreal. He has proven the power of the internet when he responded to my posted request for a copy of the Fostex R8 service manual. Thanks very much as you have helped keep the studio project on track. Dan plays keyboards in the band "Group Therapy." Visit his site at www.grouptherapysessions.com

DIANE NARDOZZI, a web designer also in Chicagoland, was kind enough to send me a long and detailed critique of the Secret Beach website. Through her constructive criticism, she provided a number of great ideas and improvements and offered some really sound advice on how the site should grow. Check her out at www.nardozzidesign.com and tell her thanks from me.

Hats off to "Hawk-eye" JODENE ANDREWS who offered the most common-sensical piece of advice to date. She suggested that I put my name on the website! Oh.. yea.. I, uhh, almost thought of that too.

PSSST...If you have a great idea, an interest in contributing a tid-bit here and there, or just being another pair of eyes, well have at it! Just drop me a line at eric@secret-beach.com --All volunteers are guaranteed at least 15 seconds of fame.

www.secret-beach.com is still very young. Based on your suggestions, I hope to fine-tune things over the next few months, by adding what you would like and getting rid of the things that you don't particularly like. Your feedback is really essential to this project, so by all means don't hold back.

Check out the Web Board and post your comments. Start up, or contribute to a group discussion and meet some of the others. Of course - keep it clean. There are people subscribed to this newsletter on both coasts and many places in between. Who knows where the banter will lead. Otherwise, if you prefer to be discreet, you can e-mail me directly at eric@secret-beach.com.

The winner of the "Funniest Message Award" (by default) goes to a good friend and college roommate, Eric VanDyke from Des Moines, Iowa. He wrote this soon after the Web Board was installed:

Great Sound!

"Eric--I'm eagerly awaiting your next musical project. I mean, let's keep it all real. Remember, you don't have to be funky, you just gotta rock!! I suspect, from what I've heard so far, that'll be the case! With your slithery chicken licks and inventive power chording, you'll be rockin' all the way to fame and fortune. Keep up the good work, my friend, and keep me updated on your progress via this rockin'-n-rollin' website."

At the beginning of the year, a robot visited the website to index it. I was at first excited, but then quickly set up security measures to keep robots out. One of the effects of this will be that secret-beach.com won't be indexed on any search engine. And - it's going to stay that way for a while. Why? you ask. Well first-off, I'm interested in creating a cozy and intimate setting for friends, and friends of friends: a safe-haven, just like the real Secret Beach. The music is still in production right now and the site has some growth ahead of it anyway....Let's give it some time and see how it develops. In the meantime, I will rely on word-of-mouth advertising. You probably have a select group of friends who might dig this funky embryo- so feel free to spread the word. I encourage it.

On and off, I've been taking pictures of the beach and I put a few on the website in the photo gallery. Yep... thats the beach. Hopefully these pictures will give you an impression of the kind of energy that exists here and the kind of music you can expect to hear from this project.

Look for Newsletter #2 during the first week of November. [:-v

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Copyright © 2001 Eric M. Roth. All Rights Reserved. Feel free
to forward this newsletter on to others as long as you send it in
its entirety.
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