Music

When I was 14 I wrote a modular Javascript-based sequencer/sampler that allowed me to modify and trigger samples live. I started studying turntablism and djing sets for friends from eclectic thrift store vinyl over a low-bitrate Shoutcast stream the next year. It wasn't long until I discovered the drum kit and acoustic guitar, which lead me toward other percussive and string instruments.

Since freshman year I've been collaborating and creating music with others: turntablism in an acid jazz group, experimental music, acoustic guitar with electronica artists, drums in a post-rock band, hype in a massive gypsy punk ensemble.

Here's some of my work outside these collaborations:

More Experimental

Infinity (excerpt) Tree of Life (excerpt) — Soundtrack comission, sculptures turned into sound. See Transcoding.

Ring Ring (accompanied) — Instruction piece for organic found-sound delay line. See Ring Ring.

Chips — Music as emergent intelligence from termite behavior. See Chips.

Sympathy — Indirect feedback and distortion system. A Max patch identifies pitches in the audio output and sends the corresponding MIDI notes to Reason for synthesis. Human improvisation introduces new fundamentals, turning the feedback into a massive sympathetic string.

Accidentals — A Max patch generates a dozen or so synthesizer presets for a human composer.

Wacom — Explorations with a custom Max patch for mapping gestures from the Wacom tablet to MIDI control notes for a Reason synth. I set up the mappings and gave it to another musician at performance time, who discovered and controlled the sound while I generated material.

Last Words — An instruction piece for friends to perform at the library.

Summer's First Showers — Composed by the rain and arranged by myself. A large piece of paper is used to collect droplets, then transcoded into a composition for piano.

Less Experimental

Spring Rain — Ngongo bells, claves, tau gourd, guitar, tsweisin, cello, tabla, piano, and field recordings. Composed and recorded in a day.

Hudson — Short, drum oriented downtempo song. Improvised with a Trigger Finger while sitting on a boat dock, on the Hudson river, at midnight.

Immigrants — Alan Watts' "nonsense" acknowledged and aurally deconstructed live.

Kembangan — Inspired by the Gamelan orchestras of Indonesia, and especially Bali (though the term is Javanese).

Hokkaido — Inspired by the instruments and language of the Ainu people of Northern Japan.

Summer Flight — Short, erratic composition made on a plane with samples taken entirely from the headphone jack in the arm rest.