Doyle and AuCoin

In the summer of 2012, I heard Brian Doyle play guitar and was immediately awed by his playing ability. A good musician has virtuosity, a great musician has virtuosity with style and emotion, but the finest musicians have a third quality that is the ability to spontaneously create music with great virtuosity, style and emotion. Brian Doyle is among the finest of musicians that his music and legacy will continue to show. Go to Brian's website in the menu item Links for more information about his legacy.

--Bill AuCoin

About me, I am a retired College Professor. My mother and father are originally from Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, Canada. I have spent most every summer here for the 65 five years I have managed to keep breathing. I have dual citizenship, but was brought up south of Boston, and now have retired to Cape Breton because in my heart, I will always be a Cape Bretoner.

Everyone knows that the heart of the Cape Breton culture is its music. Both my parents played piano as an avocation. Mom played Classical and traditional Celtic music; Dad played Jazz and Popular (1940-1950s). When I was 9 years old (1959), I found an audio recording machine that my dad brought home from the Navy. The device was able to record audio on to green vinyl discs. And thus my enthusiasm for recording music began and has continued ever since. Learning to love all kinds of music due to my parents influence, I never decided who I was as a musician. And never was able to find a good fit with a band. So, along with learning to play piano, I learned to play the other rock band instruments including guitar, drums, bass, organs, and synthesizers. So, I spent many years writing and playing and recording music by myself through many dramatic changes in recording technology along the way.

In 1982, my friend showed me his Commodore 64 computer, and my life as a musician and audio technician dramatically changed. I immediately embraced the MIDI programming language and waveform synthesis technologies for creating and recording music. And that was the beginning of my interest in fusing live computer generated music with live human generated music. I was a pioneer introducing Digital Music Production and Recording courses in the early 1990's, although I did not know this at the time. Today I am still using the MIDI programming language to create music and instruct high quality music synthesizers to play live musical parts while simultaneously incorporating live human parts into the mix that ultimately produces a "Live" recording. I put live in quotes to make clear that some parts like drums, bass, and rhythm guitar are being produced "live" for everybody to hear and be recorded, but the music is generated by taking commands from a MIDI computer language program that I create earlier.

So Brain's guitar playing genius and my ability to rapidly create digital music foundations for songs to frame his musical talent has resulted in Doyle and AuCoin. It has also allowed us to create an extensive library of recordings that we will be sharing in the future. We thank you for your support.

--Bill AuCoin