5 song EP Created by Billy on prototype #2 of the Moog Lap Steel. The Lap Steel features the brilliant engineering of Paul Vo combined with visionary Cyril Lance, with Billy serving as official Slide Guitar Guinea Pig.

About the EP:

Moolodious

- This was the first time I had an opportunity to experiment with writing CV's in ProTools. I co-wrote

5 song EP Created by Billy on prototype #2 of the Moog Lap Steel. The Lap Steel features the brilliant engineering of Paul Vo combined with visionary Cyril Lance, with Billy serving as official Slide Guitar Guinea Pig.

About the EP:

Moolodious

- This was the first time I had an opportunity to experiment with writing CV's in ProTools. I co-wrote this piece with Cyril, and he had several guitar rhythms in mind. We wrote the CV's into PT and PT essentially played the right hand portion of the Moog guitar while Cyril changed chord voicings with the left hand. It was a treat to have Jeff Sipe in the studio. Thanks to Rainbow for holding down the Sipe homestead while we worked on this stuff! Jay Sanders, the musical bass chameleon, has been a long time collaborator and I'm so grateful to him for helping out with several tracks on this project. We originally arranaged this tune to perform at the first MoogFest held in Asheville, NC.

Jet Li - i am a big martial arts fans and Jet Li is one of my favorites. This piece originated in 2 ways. One was i wanted to musically recreate the feel of Jet's body movements, so smooth and flowing. When i first started messing around with the prototypes for the Moog Steel guitar, I realized that one of the benefits of the sustain mode was that there is always energy in the string, so I can use my fingerpick as a slide of sorts, and in doing so access intervals with a whole new inflection and intensity previously unavailable to me on the steel guitar. I thought this technique would be great for the Jet Li song, and the melody developed from there. I had originally thought of this idea a few days before the MoogFest concert in 2010 and my early musings on both the technique and this theme are featured in the first Moog steel video that was put up on the internet. Thanks to my bandmates from The Billy Sea, River and Jake, for the percussion and bass! Also to my homey Ross Holmes for the beautiful violin part.

Looking Forward, looking Back

- This is another tune of Cyril's that I co-wrote. We also arranged this one for Moogfest. The band that took the stage is the same one represented on this recording…Jeff Sipe, Jay Sanders, Ben Hovey, Cyril and I. Cyril brought a pile of gear to the studio including a Taurus pedal, Little Phatty, etc. I used the Ring Modulator with an expression on MIX to weave in and out of the effect during the slide solo.

Stacks

- This tune was written on the spot during a great hang at the ExperimentalSynth home of Chris Stack. The chords for the tune were literally drawn out of a hat, and a melody was developed. Chris, Cyril, Jay and I plugged in a bunch of gear and just started playing music. Chris has an amazing interweb of analog gear. You can walk by any of a pile of keyboards and hit one key and all of a sudden the room feels like it's going to lift off into outer space. At one point, a digital keyboard was sending a midi signal which was being converted into a control voltage which was literally playing analog rhythms on my steel guitar.

The Curious Boo

- This was one of the first melodies I came up with while experimenting with prototype #1, aka Monster. it was called Monster because of the way it was hobbled together, kind of like Frankenstein. Cyril had glued half a lap steel to a Moog guitar, and when I mentioned the scale length was pretty short, he inserted a 2x4 to make up the difference and taped on a xerox'ed fretboard. The tuning pegs weren't all tuneable at first and that lead to some 'interesting' open tunings. As time went on, the 2x4 got more and more curved and eventually, once i'd get it in tune, I couldn't breathe or look at it funny for fear of catastrophe. That being said, there's nothing quite like the Monster and honestly, it was such a pleasure to get to know the technology thru this awesomely down-to-earth prototype. So, the B part of this melody represents a combination of both the Sacred Steel style of playing as well as an Indian approach to vertical slide guitar phrasings. Jake overdubbed a couple extra bass parts and we had fun with the Ring Mod and panning effects.

Moolodious - billy - moog steel guitar and electric guitar - cyril - moog guitar w/ multipedal, taurus - jay sanders - bass - jeff sipe - drums - ben hovey - trumpet and flugel horn

Jet Li billy - moog steel guitar and little phatty,
jake wolf - electric bass ross holmes - violin river guerguerian - percussion

Looking Forward, Looking Back - billy - moog steel guitar, Little Phatty - cyril - taurus, moog guitar - jay sanders - bass - jeff sipe - drums

Stacks - billy - Moog steel guitar - cyril - Moog Guitar - chris Stack - Keys, Programming, Vocals - jay sanders - bass

The Curious Boo - billy - moog steel guitar, programming - jake wolf - bass - andy pond - electric banjo