Marc Weidenbaum's Blog, page 103

Sound Ledger¹ (Superman, Noise, Silence)

29: The number of fighting types represented by onomatopoeia found in the comic Superman: The Doomsday Wars comic

300,000: Penalty (in $US) for noise (and dust) pollution for the owner and operator of a scrap metal facility in Massachusetts

40: Percent of surveyed travelers who reported interest “in booking a silent retreat”

. . .

¹Footnotes: Superman: traverse.asia (Thanks, Mike Rhode!). Penalty: mass.gov. Retreat: cntraveler.com.

Junto Profile: Ethan Hein

This Junto Profile is part of an ongoing series of short Q&As that provide some background on various individuals who participate regularly in the online Disquiet Junto music community.

What’s your name? My name is Ethan Hein, which is also my online name; I have never been able to think of a good pseudonym for myself.

Where are you located? I was born in New York City, have lived here for pretty much all of my life, and have never really wanted to live anywhere else. You hear an incredible variety of music just walking down the street here; it makes all the noise pollution worthwhile.

What is your musical activity? I have been making music since I was a teenager, though I did not get serious about it (or good at it) until deep into my twenties. I play harmonica very well, guitar, ukulele and mandolin pretty well, and I hack around on synths and percussion and various other things. For the past decade, I have been making most of my music with Ableton Live and related software. I like funk, jazz and hip-hop, and most of my original stuff aspires to danceability.

What is one good musical habit? My best musical habit is to chase things down with dogged persistence over long spans of time. I find it hard to sustain my focus moment-to-moment, but I make up for it by coming back to ideas or techniques repeatedly over weeks or months. I will chew on some particular riff or rhythm or sample over and over and over, and the coolest things can unexpectedly pop out.

What are your online locations? My main online home is my blog, which has gone from feeling futuristic to charmingly retro. You can now also subscribe to it as a Substack newsletter, which is a thing some people prefer. I post all my music on Bandcamp. I love Bandcamp. I’m also active on Twitter, in spite of its chaotic evilness.

What was a particularly meaningful Junto project? It’s so hard to choose a particularly meaningful Junto project! It has been a formative influence on my musical practice, especially on my music teaching practice. I have Bandcamp compilations of my favorite Junto tracks and more of my favorite Junto tracks. Here are some standouts:

0052: This one just came out well, I think it goes really hard. It was remarkable to discover I could take samples of music by three people I had never heard of and make something that felt so much like me.

0100: I picked a couple of samples based on the fact that their titles mentioned phase transitions — “Boilin’ Water” by the Soul Stoppers Band and “Shuffle Boil” by Thelonious Monk. But then they ended up sounding great together, and I found a tea kettle whistle on freesound.org that played this lovely melody.

0315: This one is important because I spent less than ten minutes conceptualizing, recording, mixing and posting it, and it got the most vocally positive response of any of my Junto projects. It was a real revelation for a chronic overthinker like me.

You’ve mentioned the Junto has informed your teaching. You could talk about that topic a bit more, especially for other music educators who might be reading this interview? I teach music technology and theory. I think the best way to learn these things is by writing and producing original music. The Junto has been a huge inspiration for this approach. I love the idea of giving creative prompts with narrow conceptual parameters but that are otherwise wide open. Junto-style projects can accommodate students with a range of prior knowledge, preferred styles and genres, access to DAWs and instruments and so on. And I like the weekly project structure, too, it gets everybody used to pushing out lots of completed ideas without being too fussy about them.

Unfolding Trios

Each week, the music community I have managed since 2012, the Disquiet Junto, receives and acts on a music composition prompt that is sent out via email. I mention the latest of these projects in each Tuesday’s This Week in Sound issue, as the prompts end each Monday (at 11:59pm, wherever a given participant may be). This week we’ve embarked on what is often among the most popular and active projects of the year, which is why I’m mentioning it while it’s still underway. Barely a day and a half after the project went live, already over 20 musicians had contributed to the SoundCloud playlist, with additional folks posting from YouTube and other hosting services on llllllll.co, where Junto discussion usually takes place. That was Friday evening, when I sent out an issue of This Week in Sound, containing an earlier version of this post. As I update it right now, just after noon on Sunday, there are 35 tracks in the playlist, plus a YouTube video on llllllll.co.

Dr. Ethan Hein, a frequent and longtime Junto participant, who has also written a lot about the Junto over the years, has said this particular project is “a horizon-broadening creative experience.” What he’s referring to is not just this specific week’s project, but also the two that will follow in the coming weeks. 

You see, how this sequence of projects works is that the first week, participants upload a solo piece, one that is intended to, over time, with the contributions of other musicians, become a trio. Thus, for the first week, it’s helpful for participants to leave room for who and what will follow. 

The second week, musicians each select solo pieces from week one, pan them to the left, and add a second channel on the right, creating not just duets, but incomplete ones. Then the final week, new participants add a third track in the center, thus completing the trios. 

It’s a pretty incredible project to listen to as it unfolds, especially when, come week two, you can sometimes hear multiple duets built from one initial solo track — and the same, when the trios are complete, come week three. Sometimes there’s even a fourth week, when Junto members remix the trios, utilizing the raw source material from previous weeks. We’ll see what happens. I sometimes consider doing a “quartet” version of this project, but that always feels ever so slightly too busy. Maybe down the road.

If you have interest and time, please join in (details at disquiet.com/0591). And check back in a week when the duets begin to take shape.

Austin Kleon’s Concrete Poetry

An Austin, Texas–based artist and all around generous thinker about creativity, Austin Kleon is a great admirer — as am I — of the late Tom Phillips, who died last November at age 85. Kleon is also a marvelous practitioner of one of Phillips’ primary techniques, which was to extract concrete poetry from pre-existing texts. 

Phillips achieved this most famously in his ongoing project The Humument, which had several editions, all of them exacting reworkings of an earlier book, called The Human Document, by William Hurrell Mallock, who died in 1923, 14 years before Phillips was born. 

Where Phillips often employed dramatic colors and textures, Kleon often brings an energetic, brutalist vibrancy to his pieces. Shown here is a recent favorite of mine, reproduced with the artist’s permission:

Kleon, who often bases such poems on newspaper clippings, explained to me that this one came from a New York Times obituary (gift link) from last August for Sy Johnson, an arranger who collaborated with Charles Mingus, the jazz bassist and composer. I love the “music” that Kleon found within an obituary that had music as its topic, and I love the idea that such a phrase could emanate from the original, unbeknownst to the overall text’s “first” writer. 

The scenario reminds me of an often quoted comment about aesthetics by novelist Don DeLillo: “when I work I have a sculptor’s sense of the shape of the words I’m making.” Kleon is, as well, a sculptor in this manner, making shapes from raw materials provided, unwittingly, by another writer, who in DeLillo’s thinking is also a sculptor.

When granting approval to share this piece, Kleon also explained to me an aspect of his approach: “I don’t ‘read’ the article first when I make these — try to think of them as a raw field of words, like a word search puzzle.”

Scratch Pad: Fog, NCC-1701, the ’90s

I do this manually each Saturday, usually in the morning over coffee: collating most of the little comments I’ve made on social media, which I think of as my public scratch pad, during the preceding week (or in this case, the past two weeks). These days that mostly means post.lurk.org (Mastodon).

▰ Tried to type “Tonka truck.” My phone corrected it to “atonal truck.” Now I want an atonal truck. I assume it’s an EV with bespoke music licensed from the estates of serialist composers and revised by an AI.

▰ I’m so into the music in the TV series Rabbit Hole that last night I apparently dreamed a scene that wasn’t in the show. The composer is Siddhartha Khosla (Only Murders in the Building, The Mysterious Benedict Society, This Is Us).

▰ Morning sounds: ticking clock (the only one in the house that ticks, in the kitchen), passing cars, distant motorcycle revving (now drawing closer), overhead jet plane, low level hum of the refrigerator

▰ The foghorns are in full-blown Wookiee-in-heat mode

▰ The Roddenberry Archive (roddenberry.x.io) of all the major Star Trek Enterprise ships in 3D is pretty cool, but it feels like a missed opportunity in that, far as I can tell, there’s no sound, which was such an important part of the place-setting in the shows and movies:

▰ Now this took me back: “The History of the Bay Area’s Most Notorious ’90s Rave Warehouse” (sfgate.com). The article itself was published a year ago, but the events at the Oakland International Trade Center (near the Home Base store, from which the space took its name) were back in the 1990s, not long after I’d moved to California. I used to joke, back at the time, that it shoulda been called Home Bass. I recall one night with Juan Atkins and Derrick May, where they played for hours without seeming to look at each other once and yet remained perfectly in sync. Magic time. I remember a DJ — maybe someone in Cold Cut, or maybe Kid Koala? — had a camera focused on the turntable’s tone arm, projected on a huge screen. Anyhow, lots of great memories. My favorite spot was standing in the void between two different simultaneous acts, and enjoying how the contrasting music overlapped. Eventually cellphones changed everything. You no longer got lost in the crowd. Safety-wise, definitely a good thing, but it also changed the experience irreparably.

Numbers Stations by the Numbers

I knew that the band Wilco had used audio from a “numbers station” in some of its music long ago. The song, “Poor Places,” appeared on the album Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, which took its title from the source audio. Numbers stations were (and in some cases apparently still are) peculiar vestiges of Cold War times, simply voices sending out coded messages as sequences of spoken numbers, fully in public, usually on shortwave radio. Presuming the utilized code is strong enough, this information can exist out in the open, and be easily received by its intended audience, with no one else having any knowledge of what is actually being communicated.

This new video, from a YouTube channel called Ringway Manchester, runs through source numbers station audio that has been sampled on numerous music releases over the years. I had no idea this many songs had used numbers stations. And the comments below the video are full of additional examples and details (Thanks, Mark Rushton, for having shared this with me!)

Disquiet Junto Project 0591: The Loneliest Number

Each Thursday in the Disquiet Junto music community, a new compositional challenge is set before the group’s members, who then have just over four days to upload a track in response to the assignment. Membership in the Junto is open: just join and participate. (A SoundCloud account is helpful but not required.) There’s no pressure to do every project. It’s weekly so that you know it’s there, every Thursday through Monday, when you have the time and interest.

Deadline: This project’s deadline is the end of the day Monday, May 1, 2023, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, April 27, 2023.

Tracks are added to the SoundCloud playlist for the duration of the project. Additional (non-SoundCloud) tracks appear in the lllllll.co discussion thread.

These following instructions went out to the group’s email list (at tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto).

Disquiet Junto Project 0591: The Loneliest Number
The Assignment: Record the first third of a trio.

Please note: While this is the start of a three-part project, you can participate in one, two, or all three of the parts, which will occur over the next three weeks.

Step 1: This week’s Junto project is the first in a sequence intended to encourage and reward collaboration. You will be recording something with the understanding that it will remain unfinished for the time being. Your part will be done, but more will happen. Read on.

Step 2: The plan is for you to record a short and original piece of music using any instrumentation of your choice. Conceive the piece as something that leaves room for something else — other instruments, other people — to join in.

Step 3: Record a short piece of music, roughly two to three minutes in length, as described in Step 2.

Step 4: This is important: be sure to make your track downloadable because it may be used by someone else in the next Disquiet Junto project, and then after that.

Eight Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:

Step 1: Include “disquiet0591” (no spaces or quotation marks) in the name of your tracks.

Step 2: If your audio-hosting platform allows for tags, be sure to also include the project tag “disquiet0591” (no spaces or quotation marks). If you’re posting on SoundCloud in particular, this is essential to subsequent location of tracks for the creation of a project playlist.

Step 3: Upload your tracks. It is helpful but not essential that you use SoundCloud to host your tracks.

Step 4: Post your track in the following discussion thread at llllllll.co:

https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0591-the-loneliest-number/

Step 5: Annotate your track with a brief explanation of your approach and process.

Step 6: If posting on social media, please consider using the hashtag #DisquietJunto so fellow participants are more likely to locate your communication.

Step 7: Then listen to and comment on tracks uploaded by your fellow Disquiet Junto participants.

Step 8: Also join in the discussion on the Disquiet Junto Slack. Send your email address to marc@disquiet.com for Slack inclusion.

Note: Please post one track for this weekly Junto project. If you choose to post more than one, and do so on SoundCloud, please let me know which you’d like added to the playlist. Thanks.

Additional Details:

Length: The length is up to you. Usually between one and a half and three minutes works well for this project.

Deadline: This project’s deadline is the end of the day Monday, May 1, 2023, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, April 27, 2023.

Upload: When participating in this project, be sure to include a description of your process in planning, composing, and recording it. This description is an essential element of the communicative process inherent in the Disquiet Junto. Photos, video, and lists of equipment are always appreciated.

Download: It is always best to set your track as downloadable and allowing for attributed remixing (i.e., a Creative Commons license permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution, allowing for derivatives).

For context, when posting the track online, please be sure to include this following information:

More on this 591st weekly Disquiet Junto project, The Loneliest Number (The Assignment: Record the first third of a trio), at: https://disquiet.com/0591/

About the Disquiet Junto: https://disquiet.com/junto/

Subscribe to project announcements: https://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/

Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co: https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0591-the-loneliest-number/

This Week in Sound: Sing Reliably in the Depths of Night

These sound-studies highlights of the week originally appeared in the April 25, 2023, issue of the free Disquiet.com weekly email newsletter, This Week in Sound.

▰ STRING THEORY: HARP stands for Heliophysics Audified: Resonances in Plasmas, a program that combines data from a quintet of NASA satellites. An article in the Washington Post announces that it “is now open to citizen scientists.” HARP is like neighborhood watch — but with your ears … in space. Writes Erin Blakemore: “The hope is that volunteers can help trawl through the massive amount of data while sussing out sounds that reveal more about the vibrations. Researchers will use their increased understanding of those interactions to help humans better prepare for future space weather events.” 

Learn more at listen.spacescience.org, where this accompanying image (by QiuGang Zong of the University of Massachusetts Lowell) depicts how “types of space waves are analogous to vibrations in air made by musical instruments.” (Thanks, Mike Rhode!)

▰ FIELD REPORT: I recently ordered an AudioMoth, an open-source device intended for use when making field recordings of sound in nature. It’s a great tool for acoustic ecology. (As The Economist has explained, “The device takes its name from the fact that moths can hear sounds across a wide frequency spectrum.”) I love that the mobile app for the AudioMoth does exactly one thing: it emits a chime that can set the device’s internal clock. 

▰ BRAND SLAM: WPP, an advertising conglomerate, has acquired amp (the name is all lowercase), a sonic branding company with such clients as Cadillac, Adobe, Dove, and Lay’s. Michele Arnese founded amp in 2009. I think the big question now is what this means for other small agencies that focus on sound branding: will they continue as standalone entities, or will we see an uptick of such acquisitions in 2023 and 2024? For my part, I think sound branding as a standalone operation isn’t as effective as within a larger organization, where it can be part of a broader, coherent strategy — though as in any field, there will always be small teams that push norms in a way larger organizations struggle to do.

▰ PHONE HOME: The CBC reports on a payphone in the middle of a forest. It is intended for “visitors dealing with the loss of a loved one to pick up the receiver and speak to those they miss.” (My dad died last June just shy of his 87th birthday, and I have an urge to use a wind phone as I type this.) Apparently the concept of the “wind phone” originated in 2010 thanks to Itaru Sasaki, a Japanese garden designer. You can find a wind phone near you at mywindphone.com. The nearest one to me (I live in San Francisco) is across the bay in Oakland on 5th Street below where Interstate 880 and Interstate 980 connect. According to that website, it was created by Jordan Stern in the memory of the three dozen people who died in the 2016 Ghost Ship Fire. Here’s a partial map of wind phone locations around the world. (Via Christof Migone)

▰ TRACK TRACKER: If film music is your thing, then you are probably already (or should be) checking out soundtrack.net’s regularly updated news, such as that Kevin Kiner, known for his work on some great Star Wars animated series (most recently The Bad Batch) is scoring the forthcoming live-action Ahsoka (based on a character who originated in the animated series; now starring actual human Rosario Dawson), and that Mica Levi has a new assignment (The Zone of Interest, based on a Martin Amis novel from 2014 and from the director of Under the Skin, which Levi also memorably scored). Related topic: still no word on an album release for Siddhartha Khosla’s exceptional score for the TV series Rabbit Hole. 

QUICK NOTES: Wind Bag: A scientist explored an idiomatic expression and learned it’s mistaken: “It isn’t harder to shout into the wind; it’s just harder to hear yourself.” (Thanks, Glenn Sogge!) ▰ Orchestral Maneuvers: “The Los Angeles Metro is using classical music on its light rail system to deter homeless people from congregating and sleeping in a downtown station.” (Thanks. Rich Pettus!) ▰ Bird Brain: The podcast from Emergence Magazine recently had an episode titled “The Nightingale’s Song,” featuring “acclaimed folk singer, conservationist, and song collector Sam Lee, who steps into the forest each spring to sing with these beloved birds.” ▰ Channel Surfing: What appears to have been an intercepted comment on a taxi radio “has become a sensation in Argentina after the driver’s taxi radio interfered with the signal from the International Space Station and popped up live during NASA’s live broadcast of a spacewalk.” ▰ App Alert:“Voicemod, the popular voice changer and soundboard, has just landed on macOS, allowing Mac users to transform their voices and trigger sound effects in real time.” ▰ Hearing Aid: A new tool in speech-to-text recognition is modeled on the human ear. ▰ Speak AI: Speech recognition software is increasingly part of the medical world, and a recent study, using mock patient encounters, explores its effectiveness in history-taking. ▰ Planet Rock: Jenna Jones and Joseph Joyce, for Ableton, summarize the benefits of data sonification as a tool for climate action. ▰ When a Problem Comes Along: A podcast called the Wind has a new episode about the politics of the whip: “How a small sonic boom came to represent homelessness in Reno, and how the city responded to unhoused people taking up sonic real-estate.” (Via Rob Walker’s always excellent The Art of Noticing newsletter) ▰ Avian Squad: One of my favorite online nature features is the “Shriek of the Week” by Charlie Peverett of Birdsong Academy, who this week highlighted the nightingale, one of the “few birds to sing reliably in the depths of night and during the day.”

Sound Ledger¹ (AI Survey)

60: Percent of surveyed musicians “already using AI in their productions”

11: Percent of surveyed musicians who’ve used AI during the “songwriting” process

1,299: Number of musicians surveyed

0: Amount of credence I personally put in this survey

. . .

¹Footnotes: musicradar.com.

Junto Profile: Nick Sinnenberg, aka Sinny

This Junto Profile is part of an ongoing series of short Q&As that provide some background on various individuals who participate regularly in the online Disquiet Junto music community.

What’s your name? Nick Sinnenberg, although I am known in certain circles as “Sinny.”

Where are you located? My primary base of operations is New York’s capital region, although I spent four years in Syracuse while attending Le Moyne College. During that time, I encountered a professor and musician named Edward Ruchalski, who opened my horizons to minimalist, drone, and musique concrète music from composers such as John Cage, Steve Reich, Terry Riley, and La Monte Young, many of whom were associated with Fluxus, an interdisciplinary and holistic approach to art creation that has guided the restraint-based prompts found in Disquiet Junto. In the summer of 2022, I also had the pleasure of visiting La Monte Young’s Dream House, a sound and light installation situated one floor above Young’s dwelling unit.

What is your musical activity? Prior to joining Disquiet Junto in late 2021, I was a drummer/percussionist in various bands. While I certainly relished these opportunities, I also sought an outlet to create more experimental compositions that took advantage of multitracking and audio processing. I recognized that drone and ambient music was untenable within the confines of most standard rock bands, so I directed my attention toward audio production through the use of digital audio workstations (DAWs), eventually settling on Logic Pro as my software of choice.

Despite my roots as a drummer, I usually eschew the standard drum kit in favor of auxiliary percussion, found sounds, and programming to supply desired rhythmic elements. One reason stems from the difficulty of miking an entire drum kit — I simply do not have the necessary equipment to accomplish this daunting task! Another reason can be attributed to personal preferences — the timbral qualities of a slapstick are far more appealing than a standard snare drum.

In addition to my 100+ Soundcloud releases, I also have around 30 unreleased compositions that are currently collecting digital dust. Some of these songs are earmarked for my Cave Utensils project, a collaboration with an amiable British lad. A series of donkey oriented compositions and an eight minute deconstruction of Mambo Number Five will be released under the Cave Utensils alias in the foreseeable future. Other unreleased material include unfinished Disquiet Junto compositions, a dozen comedy songs intended for Babbling Blubber, plus some miscellaneous covers and originals that have yet to find a home.

Over the next few months, my focus will be shifting towards a musique concrète album titled Objects Around the House. The idea of fostering resourcefulness through the use of common household fixtures had been percolating in my head since late 2021, although the concept was formalized when I compiled my musical New Year’s resolution for 2023. Progress began in early January, when the prompt for disquiet0576 instructed participants to get a musical New Year’s resolution out of the way. The byproduct of that prompt was “Objects Around the House 1,” which is slated to be the opening song on the album. “Objects Around the House 2”  followed a week later, and additional songs for the project are also in development.

I’m also preparing an album called Solitary Statue, which will include nine reworked Sinnyseven songs released from 2017-19. A re-recording of “Calculation” was used for disquiet0579, although the album version will be slightly longer. Two previously unreleased songs that were created prior to 2017, namely “Market Square at 7:00” and “Robot’s Bath,” are slated to appear on the album.

What is one good musical habit? I occasionally go into music creation without having a preconceived notion of the finished product, and instead let the sound of an instrument or object dictate the general trajectory of the composition. This was particularly the case for disquiet0561, where Disquiet Junto participants were tasked with creating a composition using Samplebrain, a piece of sample mashing software designed by Aphex Twin. As prescribed by the prompt, I fed various bird and rain WAV files through the software and mangled the samples beyond recognition, eventually settling on a soundscape that resembled a glitchy sprinkler system. These unconventional means of song composition can manifest in unique creations that deviate from the chordal hierarchies ubiquitous in tonal music.

For those experiencing creative lapses, the use of prompts can be useful in spurring inspired musical output. My first exposure to this concept was through Oblique Strategies, which I discovered while browsing through Wikipedia. Developed by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt, Oblique Strategies is a series of card-based aphorisms that encourage lateral thinking as a means of overcoming writer’s block. Some of these prompts include “change specifics to ambiguities” and “abandon normal instructions.” An online version of Oblique Strategies is available for those who are interested.

What are your online locations? I was relatively late to hop on the social media bandwagon, although I eventually bent to pressure by creating an instagram account in 2017. A Facebook and Snapchat account later followed, although these have since been abandoned. While I occasionally contemplate abandoning Instagram altogether, I might instead launch another account exclusively dedicated to music releases. As of early 2023, my songs have been released with very little, if any, promotion, and most of my followers are probably unaware that I release music on a near-weekly basis.

YouTube, Spotify, and Soundcloud are my primary means of listening to music, with Spotify being my primary streaming service. If an artist does not have their entire discography on Spotify, I will usually turn to YouTube to fill in the gaps. SoundCloud is the only platform I use to release my own music, although I might explore other websites such as BandCamp and Spotify once I finish Objects Around the House and Solitary Statue. I am also an avid user of Wikipedia and have made several thousand edits on the website.

What was a particularly meaningful Junto project? Most of my Junto submissions are recorded without the help of outside musicians, but I find collaborations to be the most fulfilling projects. One such opportunity was provided through disquiet0527, where participants were tasked with completing the final third of a song created by another musician.

“Even More Reflections (disquiet0527)” originated from Noodle Twister’s “Collab 1 (disquiet0525)”, a glitchy backing track with several percussive elements. A week later, Daniel Diaz overdubbed some tasteful bass work, culminating with the release of “More Reflections (disquiet0526).” Work on “Even More Reflections” began on February 1, 2022, two days before the prompt for disquiet0527 was officially announced. For those who are unfamiliar with Disquiet Junto, participants are usually given five days to submit their song, (from Thursday-Monday), although disquiet0527 was a rare instance where the prompt was hinted at weeks in advance. As such, I took advantage of the extra time to layer a compelling yet relaxing rhythmic blanket over an already percussive song.

One of the main rhythmic motifs was played on a miniature djembe from Ghana. Sometime around December 2017, a friend from college was visiting Ghana for a vacation, so I implored him to return with some cool percussion instruments, and he happily obliged. Sonically, the mini djembe is more akin to a high pitched bongo, and the instrument itself is quite portable. Much of the percussion on “Even More Reflections” was inspired by Herb Alpert’s “Rotation,” a jazz funk instrumental released in 1979 that managed to reach the top 40 on the Billboard Hot 100.

Also featured on “Even More Reflections” are three rototoms, which were tuned in real-time throughout the recording by rotating the drumheads. At certain points (such as the 2:40 mark), the rototoms created audible squeaks, and I even failed to hit the small rototom at one point, instead striking the rim (at 2:58). Ultimately, I opted to include these “blemishes” as they worked surprisingly well in context with the rest of the song.

Does being a drummer in some way give you a different perspective on making music than someone with a more generally chordal/tonal background, like a pianist or a guitarist? And if so, how?

Guitarists tend to write songs on a guitar and pianists usually compose on a piano, yet I rarely craft songs on a drum kit. Unlike the piano and guitar, most drums are unpitched instruments, rendering them largely incapable of producing recognizable musical notes.

To branch out beyond the drum kit, I learned how to play virtual synthesizers through a computer keyboard. The layout of a computer keyboard is very familiar to me; it also helps that the computer keys are compactly spaced, especially when compared to a standard piano. Furthermore, the “F” and “G” keys on a computer correspond with the same notes found on a piano, which made the process of learning “musical typing” relatively easy. Drums and percussion are still included in my compositions, but only when a song requires it.

My approach to music creation centers around a desire to create a compelling sound environment that makes use of both tonal and atonal elements. While my songs generally adhere to the 12-tone scale, they are often augmented with sounds not usually associated with music, such as animal noises and household appliances.

One such example can be found on “Soft Concrète,” which features the use of car keys, a flag pole, and a cuckoo call in addition to more conventional instruments such as an acoustic guitar and electric piano. Instead of relying on the guitar and electric piano for chordal accompaniment, I interpret these instruments as raw materials that can be melded and manipulated to construct brand new sounds. Conventional playing is thrown out the window in favor of amateurish experimentation, which in turn yields unconventional results.