Music Bed for Guido's Lounge Cafe

I write about art, artists, and the goings-on at the local level in northwest Oregon. I also write some music, never using AI which is so ubiquitous today that actual, organic, human made music needs a qualifier! I post my music here, but if that is not your bag of tea, a new text post will be dropping soon.

If you have four minutes to calm your frazzled nerves, break out those earbuds or play this on the stereo because the lame speaker on your phone will make it sound like doo doo.

The Short Story:

Guido is a DJ for several global web-radio shows. His flagship station is “Guido’s Lounge Cafe“ which is on multiple platforms but primarily on Substack. In mid December, Guido asked if I would be willing to write what’s known as a music-bed for his 2026 monthly “In The Zone” shows. A music-bed is the song you hear playing whilst the DJ is going yakkity-yak.

After I pondered the question for about 0.003 giga-seconds, I said something like, “#@%& YEAH!”

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The song I wrote appears here in its uninterrupted form with a small gap to bifurcate the intro and outro. Below is how it will be used in all of his 2026 ‘In The Zone’ mixes. The show selected here is for January, it’s an hour-long voyage of chillout and downtempo styles. The first song you hear during the intro is the first half of what I wrote. At the tail end of the show, the last two minutes will be the last half of the song.

Just so you know, this is a tremendous honor for me as Guido has a very large following!

[mixcloud https://www.mixcloud.com/Jazzmo/in-the-zone-february-2026-guidos-lounge-cafe/ width=100% height=60 hide_cover=1 mini=1]

When it comes to playing music, I certainly am not the most accomplished, nor do I have the finest pedigree of learning. Frankly, I know almost nothing of music ‘theory’ as it’s called and I haven’t the polish of anything approaching the real cats out there. However, when it comes to artistic creation, I pour my heart into whatever I turn my attention towards.

For several years I had been making noise and floating it out there for anyone who would listen. I’d nail these creations to my website and onto sites such as SoundCloud, M-X Cloud, and Facebag, all to mostly a few atta-boy’s, but... meh...

That’s when Guido said, “You’re making some cool sounds, want to get together on a project?”

I had to read the email several times because Guido van der Meulen is not just anybody, he’s a legend! He lives in the small Dutch town of Geleen, Netherlands. He has a large presence in the DJ world with several web-radio broadcasts, from Costa Del Mar, Dublin FM, M-Sol Records, and he even got on board with Substack!

His main influence is on M-X Cloud with his Guido’s Lounge Cafe where his love for chill, downtempo, and mellow Belearic moods infuses all his work. He has been familiar with my musical endeavors for quite some time. Back when my efforts were made solely on a decrepit old laptop, he was very charitable with his kind words and did a great deal to encourage me to keep writing and posting my work.

I did, but there was only so much a laptop can do, so I finally scraped together the funds and found a nearly 25-year-old Kurzweil PC-88 that allowed me the dexterity of a real piano but with the functionality of a modern synthesizer. It was in really good condition, unfortunately, I was not - for now came the hard part.

It took me a year to knock the rust off my fingers that had been gnarled up by an illness that I won’t bore you with. I played and I played, I cursed and I cursed, but slowly the music started to take shape.

I already had the multi-track software needed, but now I needed an actual mixer. I got fortunate and found a beauty in excellent shape - now I was writing for real this time!

The reason I say all this is because whenever I posted my songs, I would always rant about all the flaws and other issues I had with them. I would express every criticism and find fault on everything. It wasn’t until Guido, plus a few others on M-X Cloud, kept telling me to keep going and to continue pursuing my music, even though I thought it was dogmeat.

As any creative person will attest, self-doubt is not only the hardest thing to overcome, but it is also the single-most destructive force to work against the artist.

Guido told me I could do this, I didn’t believe him for the longest time, but positive comments kept coming from more and more people. Finally, after much internal struggle, they convinced me that perhaps my music wasn’t all that bad. It took a lot more practice and learning before I made anything I would even consider worthy of publication. I created this song Summer Twilight [it was accidentally identified as Alpine Snow]. I liked it, and said it was - good.

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So, here it is, and here I am, and so are you. I would welcome any comments you have.

Or if that’s not your thing, you could always chip in and...

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