Billy Currano's Solo Music

While Billy’s guitar lessons were focused mostly on classical repertoire and his bands focused on rock or metal, he always believed versatility was one of the greatest strengths a musician could have. Limiting himself to neither a single style nor instrument, nor shunning any genre of music as entirely “bad”, Billy strove from the outset to compose as wide a variety of music as he could muster.

As a student of Bruce Casteel of Columbia Music Studios, Billy was introduced to improvisation, the necessary foundation of composition, from the very beginning of his guitar lessons. As such, it wasn’t long until Billy started transcribing his own music, starting with basic rhythms and riffs and moving into full songs and solos within less than two years’ total experience with music.

Shunning the tendency of the modern music industry to reward homogeneity and copycats, Billy always prioritized original music over cover songs and deliberately ensured every song he wrote for his high school rock band was unique. And although he only took lessons for classical guitar, he began working with piano as soon as his father bought one for the family, bass when a friend asked him to play for his band, and drums when he found a dirt-cheap drum set in the local classifieds.

So it is that in Billy’s solo work that you will find:

• Original solos for guitar, bass, and piano or keyboard in a variety of styles
• 8-string guitar and harmony arrangements of traditional classical guitar favorites
• New arrangements of other traditional music, such as Pachelbel’s Canon in D or Happy Birthday to You, with often extensive original additions
• Songs designed as background music for video games, including a stalled, unofficial fan remake of the classic PC adventure game King’s Quest IV by Sierra On-line
• Synth music drawing from genres like techno, ambient, and more
• Other music that may not have fit into any of the bands Billy played with or the general categories mentioned here

In any case, hopefully you will find something in either his solo work or band projects that you enjoy.