“Hope After Heartache” Music by Richard Hart (2007)

I started studying music in the early 1960’s. Loved it(!)… and I loved the affect it had on me and the people around me. So digging in and learning how to play and understand music became a priority early on in life for me. My folks had a piano… and soon came a trumpet, ukulele, drums and a whole orchestra of sounds as my friends learned to play too. As I progressed, I was playing a french horn in the school band, and eventually wound up in several rock and funk bands in the Pacific Northwest. The french horn is shockingly funky… well… maybe not! I consider myself a keyboard player, but the guitar is romancing me too.

Anyway, I discovered I really enjoyed writing my own music, and at times adapted other people’s music to the way I wanted to hear it. I was fortunate in college to get to play with some really talented people – who encouraged me to start writing down my ideas on paper. This quickly lead to recording the music I was writing, and with the “digital revolution” that was happening with computers, my efforts wound up solidly in creating my own home studio.

I started writing “Hope After Heartache” in 2003 with my loving wife Donna’s encouragement. The project required some new tools (keyboards, audio interfaces, microphones etc) if I was going to get this project off the ground.

As I started the project, I realized too that the brass sounds I needed were coming off really thin in my audio playbacks. I called my great buddy (Il mio migliore amico) Mark Ceccarelli and explained my problem. Within the week he was in my studio helping me replace my brass samples with some really fresh sounds and ideas. Mark had recently added a Monette Flumpet to his expansive quiver of brass instruments, and the tone he was achieving was awesome! By the time the Album was finished, I had dumped my Roland and Yamaha brass samples in favor of Mark’s tone samples.

Mark also provided some solos and lead work to the effort, and it really came out beyond what I had even dreamed about. Listen to “The Way They Are…” as an example.

Musicians / Instruments / Credits :

Richard Hart–
Yamaha XS8 Digital Workstation , Roland Fantom X8 Digital Workstation, Roland Super JV-1080 Synthesizer, (3) Roland JV-880 Synthesizer, Roland D-110 Synthesizer, Roland V-Drums, Alesis DM5 Drums, Yamaha Motif Rack ES Synthesizer, Petosa Stroller Accordion, Ibanez Bass Guitar, Breedlove Concert Acoustic Six String Guitar, Oscar Schmidt Baritone Ukulele, Various Rhythmic Instruments

Mark Ceccarelli–
Monette Raja (Bb) Flumpet, Monette 993 (Bb) Trumpet, Bach Stradvarius (Bb) Trumpet, Various Rhythmic Instruments

Donna Hart-
Executive Producer, Photographer, Caterer

Phoebe Hart-
Chief Woofer and Interrupter

Rusty Ceccarelli-
Backup Woofer and Interrupter

“Hope After Heartache” by Richard Hart is available on Amazon, iTunes, and CD Baby