Music has been my friend for all of my life. If I'm not playing an instrument, then I usually have my headphones on listening to something. The collection of albums below—more "sound experiments" than albums—is a fair representation of my musical interests, from experiments with found audio tapes, to piano and guitar work, to ambient soundscapes. Click HERE to see all of my work, or click on the album titles below to go directly to that collection.
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| There's been a lot of talk lately of the photos that the Jack Webb telescope took of the far reaches of the universe. Thinking of that, and seeing those images, motivated me to record an extended cosmic drone experience (with a little help from my Soma Labs Cosmos, appropriately subtitled a "drifting memory station"). Click HERE for a taste of the cosmos.
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| If you like non-melodic, non-harmonic, non-rhythmic "music," you've come to the right place (although "hippodrone" should probably be titled "hyper-drone"). Enjoy (or not). Click HERE to sample a track.
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| Anthem is a mixtape of sounds and reportage of the Ukrainian-Russian war. The thread throughout the seven-minute-plus audio tape is the Ukrainian national anthem, stitched together from various renditions, from an impromptu military band to the Ukrainian National Opera. Click HERE to listen to a sample from my bandcamp site.
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| Radio Waves is the product of listening to "Hearts of Space" radio program, perhaps too often. To make these long, droning tracks I used a Korg Minilogue XD, an Arturia Microbrute, and, for the reverb effect, an Eventide Blackhole. To bring the tracks into my digital audio workstation, I employed a Scarlet 2i2, capturing the sonic vibrations with a couple of SE 8 condensor mics arranged in an "x" pattern. Click HERE to listen to a sample.
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| Comprised of three 10-minute tracks, each one created using the rise and fall of a rainstick emulating the ebb and flo of the ocean, supplemented by a variety of hand bells and singing bowls, Oceanus is perfect for your yoga or meditation class, or just as a soothing sonic background to your work environment. Click HERE to listen to a sample.
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| Gloam, i.e., "twilight." It's what you'd expect: subdued, droning, ambient music. To make these tracks, I used an Arturia Microbrute monophonic synthesizer run through a Walrus Audio ARP-87 digital delay; a Dave Smith Pioneer DJ Toraiz mono phonic synthesizer without effects, and a Yamaha 88-key digital piano in "vibraphone" mode. Click HERE to listen to a sample.
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| Cicada Serenade arose several months ago when the 17-year cicada poked its head out of the ground, adding a new layer of sound to the environment which inspired me to create these tracks. In order to do so, I remixed found audio tracks of cicada sounds, adding some piano phrases. There are four tracks that loosely follow the life-cycle of a cicada: dreaming, waking, merging, and fading. Click HERE to listen to a sample.
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| Like, Gloam, Factory is a collection of electronic-based ambient tracks, using some of the same digital instruments that I used on Gloam, i.e., an Arturia Microbrute monophonic synthesizer, this time run through a Walrus Audio Slo reverb and Julia vibrato/chorus pedal, and a Dave Smith/Pioneer DJ Toraiz-1 monophonic synthesizer run through the same effects. Unlike Gloam, Factory has a more mechanical, if not metallic, edge to it. Click HERE to listen to a sample.
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| On March 19, 2021, the volcano Fagradalsfjall erupted in southwestern Iceland, not too far from Reykjavik, Iceland's capital. It was a media sensation, every news channel carried it for months—and what a show it was with red-hoot lava gurgling, spewing, and flowing. Like Cicada Serenade, I remixed found audio tapes of the event, which often included background voices of the people visiting the site. That's it: just remixed audio tapes that I found online related to the eruption. Click HERE to listen to a sample.
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| We did it! We landed on the Moon, or Mars, or wherever. Okay, it was Mars, no astronauts though, just a little mechanical robot to soft-probe the surface. Like Fagradalsfjall, the tracks on The Mars Tapes are remixes of found audio tapes (straight from NASA's archive) with the addition of some background droning sounds from my Arturia Microbrute. Put on your headphones, sit back, and relax. And to do so, click HERE for a sample.
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| I began my musical journey as a guitarist, influenced primarily by South American classical guitar composers and the Bossa Nova scene. After twenty years of imitating those sounds, I struck out on my own and began composing, but by then I was also influenced by ambient guitar. New Harmony is the result of these influences. They're original compositions played on a vintage Guild Mark IV nylon-string guitar. Click HERE to listen to a sample.
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| Who lives in a pond? Crickets, frogs, bats, squirrels, birds, mosquitos, you name it. And that's what Pond Life is: a collection of sampled, remixed, and mastered found sounds that recreate the aural atmosphere you might expect to find—or not—in and around a pond. Click HERE to listen to a sample.
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| I'm not sure why I named this album Optical, perhaps more to do with the cover image than the music. I created the tracks on my Arturia Microbrute, which is my go-to monophonic synthesizer. As a stand-alone it doesn't have a lot of depth and often needs additional sonic input (i.e., another monophonic or polyphonic synth), but for these tracks I ran it through delay, reverb, vibrato, and a bit crusher. I'm especially fond of the delay effects on the title track. Click HERE to listen to a sample.
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