About Kent Kleppinger
Biography
I began playing music at 7 but abandoned piano by age 12 and picked up a guitar and taught myself to play. I have never learned to read music and play strictly "by ear". I remember all the popular rock groups I followed couldn't read a note so I assumed it was normal for pop musicians to play and not read. I learned to play a very percussive style of music after hearing Richie Haven's play (though I tried, I could never play what he did). I was very influenced by Paul McCartney recording all his own instruments and vocals on his early albums, and the concept of doing solo albums by yourself always stuck with me.
In college started writing more songs and almost dropped out of school to be a bass player in a band. We wrote as a group maybe 100 songs in a semester but never thought we were good enough to make it so abandoned the project. I went out of music for years while finishing school and starting a career and finally came back to music and writing songs. I finally set up a small recording studio in my home and slowly began doing covers then original music recording all the tracks myself.
I have now accumulated enough acoustic guitars, electric guitars and percussion equipment to make a decent go at recording more properly and felt that downloading my music to CDs and giving them to people to listen to has now fallen into history (I might as well download them to 8track cassettes). A proper website where people can listen, comment and even download the music to a phone seems now to make the most sense.
To one degree or another I play acoustic 6 and 12 string guitars (Taylor brand), bass guitar (Hofner and Rickenbacker), Electric guitar (Epiphone casino), ukulele, limited drums and percussion, and I use a Korg Keyboard for paino and other instruments including synthesizers. I do not claim to be a professional musician or songwriter. I do not sell or protect my music by copyright. If you hear something and like it, I appreciate any comments you might have about a song below. If you want to use or play any of my songs, feel free to use them however you might like. I feel songs belong to whoever listens to them, not to who makes them. They're mine while I make them; they're now yours when you listen to them. ENJOY!
Music Styles
I play several styles of music...many of the songs are in an acoustic-contemporary style and might be similar to some folk rock music from a generation ago. Other styles include, country music but very old "Gene Autry" like country music, blues, some ocassional southern rock music and old traditional folk music. On past albums I explored jazz, 90's pop and 50's rock and roll....if I can hear it in my head, I might use it for a song...
Recording
I use my studio at Holliday Records to record, produce and distribute my music. I purposely set it up similar to how a studio would work between 1970 and 1990. Even though I record music digitally, I use the functions and abilities of the software to emulate tape recordings with "analog recording". I refuse to use over processed synthetic functions and prefer to just record what I do in the studio. There is no looping or auto voice correction on the tracks...
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