This month’s featured artist is Mike Muretisch, or as we know him, Bart50. He is a 36-year-old software engineer by day, musician by night. He’s happily married with two sons and lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Mike hadn’t played any music in well over a year and hadn’t written any songs in probably 5 years.  Since discovering Scratch Audio, he has written two songs in a month’s time.   

 Tell us your story…

I’m primarily a bassist, but I’ve got enough experience screwing around with guitars to pass as a guitarist as well.  In my high school and college days, I played bass in several different bands doing everything from rock covers to grunge originals to some very original grunge/funk music.  None of these bands played more than a couple of shows before breaking up.  Then after college, in 1996 or so, my drummer friend and I decided to form a new band doing something completely different for us — I was going to play guitar, and he was going to sing.  We wrote a few songs at first, then recruited a bass player I knew from college.  We picked up a drummer I knew from high school too, but when that didn’t work out, our singer decided to play drums AND sing.  The three of us called our band “Bootnik Shanty” and ended up playing over 100 shows in the Pittsburgh area over a couple of years, recorded a CD at a local studio, and did a few radio interviews.  Those were the days and I miss the excitement sometimes.   

 Who are your musical influences?

I don’t really have any specific influences that anyone could identify from my music and I don’t have any aspirations to sound like anyone else.  My music is probably the result of all of the various bands I’ve been interested in over the years.   In the late ‘80s, I was heavily into hair bands.  In the early ‘90s, I was into grunge bands and some heavy metal stuff.  By the mid ‘90s, I started getting into ska music – I love poppy rhythms mixed with horn sections!  I was a pretty big Dave Matthews Band fan too.  Nowadays, I listen to Paramore, Weezer, Jack Johnson, and Jason Mraz.  I like anything that’s “catchy”.

How do you describe your music to people?

I usually describe my music as a combination of pure rock ‘n roll and pop, with heavy rhythms – maybe a little funky.  And it’s always happy.  I can’t write a song that isn’t happy – it’s like a chronic thing for me.  I could be writing a song about the death of a loved one, but somehow, it’ll end up sounding happy.

How did you hear about Scratchaudio?

As a software engineer and technology geek, I regularly listen to Scott Hanselman’s “Hanselminutes” podcast.  Recently, Scott had Eric Herbrandson on his show as a guest and they were talking about Eric’s Scratch Audio project.  I couldn’t believe it – a Silverlight-based online multi-track recorder?  I couldn’t resist checking it out.

It’s funny too because I bought a new bass and joined my church’s praise band a few years ago to fill my musical void, but quit when my youngest son was born.  I hadn’t played any music in well over a year and I hadn’t written any songs in probably 5 years.  Now I’ve written two songs in a month’s time.

Tell us about your most recent song published….

My latest song is titled, “A Better Day” and it’s about my recent experience with being unexpectedly unemployed.  It was a trying time for my family and I as I interviewed for several jobs that never panned out for one strange reason or another.  Every time I failed to get a job offer, I just kept plugging away at it and ultimately landed a good job.

 When recording the song, I used Scratch Audio’s built-in drums for my drum tracks, picking and choosing the individual drum sounds and writing several different beats for fills and song parts.  The bass guitar, acoustic guitar, and electric guitar parts were recorded using an old Zoom 3030 effects processor plugged directly into the microphone input on my 3-year-old Dell laptop.  The vocals were sung through an old Radio Shack microphone going into the same microphone input on my computer.

I spent probably 14 hours total on this project — 8 hours composing and recording the music, then another 5 hours writing the vocal melody and lyrics and recording them.

I love to write music, but haven’t been blessed with a very good singing voice or skills as a lyricist.  I’m hoping that as the social networking features in Scratch Audio mature, I’ll be able to meet up with some folks whose strengths compliment my weaknesses and we can do some killer song collaborations.