My Compositions

Mini Bio

As a student of piano, it quickly became obvious that I derived a lot of joy from composition. Indeed, at many of the yearly piano recitals my piano teacher held, I played my own compositions instead of the traditional pieces.

My earlier compositions were highly influenced by my favotire composer, Bach, whom I listened to often during my junior high years.

High school was a good time for my playing. I was finally getting good enough that I was able to write compositions that I could be proud of (such as the successful Alternate Real). The peak of my high school creativity came when I joined the school's jazz band my senior year. Before that point I had become a huge fand of many types of jazz, especially that of the 30s big bands.

In college I had less time for music, but utilized my access to a rather nice Steinway Grand to keep composing. Despite my jazz experience, most of my compositions combined my earlier Bach influences with those of James Horner (whose film scored include Braveheart and Sneakers), resulting in improvised fugues and the like.

By my last two years of college I had decided to do two things which have since affected my own compositions in new and intersting directions. The first is that I took up the playing of the trumpet, almost exclusively playing jazz pieces. The second is that I was in the Javanes Gamelan ensemble, which has greatly expanded my musical thinking and hence my own compositions and instrumentation.

My most current works still utilize the sounds inspired by Bach and Horner, but have added influences of Javanese Gamelan, and the renowned composers Thomas Newman (whose film scores include American Beauty and Erin Brockovitch) and Philip Glass (whose music includes the scores of Koyannisqatsi and The Hours).

Listening Room

The following is a few of my favorite compositions and a short description of each. They have been recording using many technologies, from simple sound inputs from my cheap synthesizer into Adobe Premier, to Apple's Logic Pro sound package.

• Alternate Real (Circa 1995, 2000) - 4.6MB (4:02)

  Originally inspired by Amiga MOD files of the early 90s, this title was my first transition into mature composition. Although the original invention of this song dates back as far as 1995 (my junior year of high school), this recording is nearly five years newer and utilizes a synth fugue in the middle that was composed in the late 90s.

• Not Just Any Trip 7 (Circa 2004) - 9.9MB (8:36)

  Like an artist may make a mosaic out of choice photographs, I made a remix of my favorite Amiga MOD song by U4IA in Apple's Soundtrack. Although mostly a good use of royalty free loops that ship with Soundtrack, I incorporated a few of my own loops, and, of course, used the main loop from the original Not Just Any Trip 7. This song is fun and high paced, and I often find myself writing code to it.

• February Spring (Circa 2005) - 3.1MB (2:16)

  I utilized this Thomas Newman inspired composition to try my hand at making a completed piece in my newly bought copy of Apple's Logic Pro 7. Don't let the lame name fool you, I think this sounds pretty good for two short evenings work.

• Spring Fugue (Circa 2000) - 7.9MB (6:56)

  This piece was created around the year 2000 when I was recording several pieces for an album. It was composed and fully recording in a single night. The three intertwining melodic lines were fully improvised; though I recorded all four improvisations I attempted (two for the high/mid voice, and two for the low voice), only the second pass of the two improvisational runs were used. Since I had no MIDI sequencer at the time, all the parts are reproduced exactly as I played them, mistakes and all (though a few mistakes worked out to create the required dissonance to make for a few of my favorite parts)! I also wanted to note that this piece was mostly an attempt to write something something in the same style as Alternate Real, but became its own sound.

• Goodbye Waltz (Circa 2004) - 3.1MB (2:40)

  This piece was one I had written and had floating around during the first half of 2004; This recording is actually meant as a soundtest of the grand piano instrument in Apple's GarageBand.

• Space VI (Circa 1998) - 7.8MB (8:32)

  In 1998 I used BeOS as my primary operating system. I acquired a set of applications that let me play MIDI input and record it to AIFF in real time. This is an improvisational test of my favorite BeOS synth sound. (I'm still trying to get a Logic synth to reproduce this one just right so that I can finish what I started.) As the Space series of recordings were meant as notes to myself for later, there are severalrought spots in it--just ignore those.

These recordings are protected under copyright law. Authorization is given to redistrubted and use these recordings for non-commercial purposes only. (e.g., if you do a cool remix, as long as you aren't making money off it, that's cool... I'd even like to hear it.)