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Contents
 CONTENTS |
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 HOME |
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 MEDLEY |
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 SOUNDS |
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 ATTITUDE |
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 PHOTOS |
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 FORMAL |
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 CASUAL |
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 STELLA |
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 50's ROCK |
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 DIXIELAND |
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 COUNTRY |
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 STARFLEET |
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 ELF BAND |
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 LIBRARY |
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 SONGS |
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 RAVES |
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 HISTORY |
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 POLKA |
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 DIXIE |
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 CAST |
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 PLAYERS |
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 SAM |
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 RICH |
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 ALLEN |
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 WES |
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 KIRBY |
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 RED |
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 KIRK |
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 STELLA |
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 TOOMEY |
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 AGENTS 1 |
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 BOOKING |
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 AGENTS 2 |
Dull Stuff
This is my first web page, so I tried to keep it as simple as possible. To speed wait times for users, I decided against employing frames or Java and to keep pages as small as I could and still develop the theme of each topic. Though the logo and button bars are on the large side, they are a repeated element, so once the user is past the first page most of the work is done in terms of waiting for graphical elements to download. Other unavoidable graphics are in the form of thumbnails which are linked to larger images.
Obviously, ".wav" files were out of the question for the sound clips since they averaged four megabytes each. RealAudio proved to be an acceptable compromise as long as I could get users to use the latest free version of the RealAudio Player available, which has the minimum acceptable frequency response at 28.8 at about a 13/1 compression ratio. I tried to make it easy for anyone to get the file from their website and provided concise installation instructions.
I wanted to portray an overall look and feel of quality, professionalism, organization and attention to detail regarding the Toomey Starks Band, but had to balance that with a way of conveying the concept of the band as one you want to have at your party. Yeah, we take our preparation seriously, but once we start to jam, watch out! We have one hell of a good time, and you will, too. Guaranteed. I hope I was able to accomplish that task with humor, bright graphics, sound bytes and style.
I used Microsoft FrontPage 97 for basic editing, along with the accompanying Microsoft Image Composer, which provided the bulk of the images for the logo and button bar. The logo and button bar chrome effects were created with Asymetrix Web 3-D. The musical instrument line drawings on the "Players" page are from Corel Gallery 2 and were manipulated in Micrografx Windows Draw 4.0, but I had to draw the trombone myself. Photographs by Fred Provada, Three Star Photography Studios. Photos were retouched using JASC PaintShop Pro 4.0. The demo was recorded at Southwest Recording Studio, Jeff Smith, engineer. The sound clips were rendered first into .wav files using the Creative Wave Studio and a Sound Blaster 32 AWE, then transformed into .ra files using the RealAudio Encoder. The musical arrangements were adapted by me from my own full-length arrangements for the Toomey Starks Band, except for "Choo-Choo Ch-Boogie" (arranger unknown). Considerable inspiration for the arrangement of "Honky-Tonk Women" was provided by Don Elam, my saxophone player and Houston's premier arranger.