Bill Wynne's Music...
So, this is the "room" where I keep some of my musical "doodles." I began recording in the bedroom of my childhood home when I was about 14 years old using a 1963 Sony TC-200 open reel recorder. (This was that era's equivalent of the "boom box" - complete with detachable speakers. Regrettably it weighed 17 pounds and was about the size of a small valet - which made bootlegging a concert a little conspicuous.) I have graduated through every recording medium, many of which no longer exist or (at the very least) are now highly disregarded - two-track open reel, two-track cassette, four-track cassette, the Digital Compact Cassette (DCC), the MiniDisc (MD), and, now, the PC.
Without any musical partners, I have made all of these sounds in solitude using the technique pioneered by one of my heroes - guitarist, inventor, and fellow New Jerseyan Les Paul. He invented the technology which allowed "multitrack recording" - today simply referred to as "tracking" or "overdubbing" - which entails recording one layer of a song at a time. And so I became a virtual "one-man band." At times, the process was very, very lonely, but it also allowed me complete artistic control. (This also means I had nobody to blame but myself when the result was not as I had expected.) Recording a single three-minute song using this process - one track, one instrument at a time - can take up to five hours. At the end of this effort, you are either delighted with the process or sick to death of the song. I have experienced both feelings and so often I would record songs piecemeal - jumping from one song to another to keep myself engaged and amused.
I estimate that over the last 20 years or so I have recorded more than 300 songs in my home studio - pop, rock, R&B, jazz, standards, and, of course, Hawaiian. So from time to time I change the selections on this page depending on my mood...
...Ever Evolving
Falsetto music, according to an encyclopedia of Hawaiian music edited by the late George Kanahele, is a combination of pre-European Hawaiian chanting, early missionary hymm song style and popular European 19th century music, and it soared to popularity in the late 1800's. Others attribute falsetto to the paniolo, or Spanish-Indian Vaqueros who came to Hawaii in the 1830's. Regardless of its origins, the Hawaiian falsetto is distinguished by an important added element called the "ha`i," or break in the voice. Falsetto was considered an art form to the Hawaiians that was originally forbidden to females. Male performers instead, threw their voices into the upper registers of the musical scale to sing stories of Hawaiian culture. The Aloha Festivals Hawaiian Falsetto Contest continues this tradition and annually rewards one worthy contestant with a recording contract with Hula Records. Although there are few practitioners of this unique art form outside of Hawai`i, Bill humbly took the prize in 2005. Listen to Bill's proud moment and then check out his CD here. There are a few more examples of Bill's Hawaiian style falsetto below.
Click on a title to play a song or right-click on a title to download a song to your PC.