Scanline Synth January 21, 2020 | Leave a comment Recently I’ve been playing around with different ideas for instruments in MaxMSP. I rewrote my GrainSieve patch as a Max4Live instrument for a performance, sketched out a bunch of stuff in my notebook that will probably never see the light of day, and created what I’m calling the Scanline Synth. Simply put: it converts images… Read More
End of Summer Composing Bender August 29, 2019 | Leave a comment Once again, it’s the end of summer, and I’m gearing up for another year of teaching college students all about the joy of composing and doing crazy things with computers. But since I had a little time after finishing the lectures and course prep stuff, I decided to go on a bit of a bender.… Read More
Needle Point February 20, 2019 | Leave a comment It’s really hard to figure out where to start with this one. I’ve spent more time working on Needle Point than pretty much any piece since my dissertation. In short, it’s a song cycle for tenor, piano, and computer on the subject of opioid addiction. But that’s really a gross oversimplification. It takes a little longer,… Read More
Organism Study February 20, 2019 | Leave a comment I recently purchased a Soma Lyra 8 Organismic Synthesizer. It’s a very interesting, somewhat old-school machine in the sense that there is no keyboard, just triggering contacts that fire off an envelope for one of the eight oscillators. Naturally, all oscillators have to be tuned by hand, making tuning unpredictable and somewhat messy, with a… Read More
Two New Pieces! May 3, 2018 | Leave a comment I’ve been busy. That’s not an excuse, just a fact. But I’ve also been writing. Here’s the results. Commissioned by Catherine Ryu of Michigan State University’s Department of Linguistics and Languages, Heart Doubt was created out of the Mandarin syllables “wo ai ni” (trans. “I love you”) to show off the creative possibilities of the… Read More
L’Esprit Inquiet December 11, 2017 | Leave a comment I’ve been struggling with how to compose a piece in response to the rapid disintegration of norms and rights in the US under the Trump administration. While I’m generally all in for political protests, I’ve always found overtly political art to be hackneyed and ephemeral. Yet, watching the ever-coarsening discourse and the un-accountability of both… Read More
Lingua Incognita October 20, 2017 | Leave a comment For two years, I worked closely with Dr. Catherine Ryu of Michigan State University’s Department of Linguistics and Languages in creating a unique audio database of all monosyllables in Mandarin across the various tonal levels; the Tone Perfect: Multimodal Database for Mandarin Chinese. The goal of this project is to have an easily accessible repository… Read More
Two Movements for Modular Synthesizer September 4, 2017 | Leave a comment Well, I’ve finally taken the plunge into the world of modular synthesis. Here’s the first set of results. Enjoy!… Read More
Linnstrument LED Controls April 23, 2017 | 27 Comments Based on a forum post, I created a quick and dirty (and very inelegantly coded) Max patch to allow control of the individual LED cells on a Linnstrument – both versions should work on either the Linnstrument 128 or 200. Both standalone versions will work with other DAWS and softsynths running (tested with Reaper running… Read More
Live Linnstrument Improv January 15, 2017 | Leave a comment Last night, I had the pleasure of performing live at Wayne State University’s Faculty Electroacoustic Music Concert with a number of other wonderful composers. I did something a little different for me. Instead of having a nice, safely planned set, I decided to do a live improvisation with a Linnstrument. The piece turned out extremely… Read More