Photo of Ray in his studio.

I help people discover they can do more than they thought they could. I write music. I think Excel is the best thing Microsoft ever produced. I speak executive, nerd, finance, janitor, design, code, and process. I meditate underwater in sixty-minute sessions. I know that “I” and “We” are required at different times for different things. I’m the quiet dude you’ll tell your life story to at a party. I love finding possibilities and putting old things together in new ways. I ride a GSXR-750 when the weather’s nice.

  • Mid-brained, multi-disciplinary, servant-leader.
  • Artistic geek or geeky artist, your choice.
  • Corporate jester, experiential designer, and change agent.
  • Coach. Mentor. Mentee.
  • Perpetual student and explorer. Aspirational polymath.
  • Speaker, listener, cheerleader, and organizer.
  • Writer, editor, composer, remixer, synthesist.
  • Avid reader, gamer, and purveyor of pop-culture references.

Let’s work together on something cool.

Recent Articles

Caconym

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It’s been a tradition for Song-A-Day participants to hold some sort of get-together wrap party. In recent years, this became a virtual event because more and more participants weren’t in the San Francisco / Oakland area. Typically, this happens a week or two into March, but this year it was…

Baryphonic

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Sometimes writing a song like 509 can cause incredible pressure or an unrealistic expectation that because I did that yesterday, I should be able to do it again today. Happily, I actually found it to be a relief. There are only two days left in the month, I’ve written a…

509

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I’m really torn about what to say about this one. It’s difficult to discuss the writing process for it without getting into what I was writing about. And what I was writing about might change how people feel about the song, despite the fact that the song definitely went way…

Molten Salt Reactor

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We’re on the home stretch now, and sort of in a groove – that part of the marathon where you know you’re going to finish. It’s not any easier, but mentally, there are only a couple more hills to climb, a couple more turns to make, and then you can…

Jigsawz

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Ok, let’s get this out of the way right now – this is an experiment. It was partially successful, and it was interesting, and it’s another song posted, so we’ll call it a win. Most soft synths first load with a default patch. Sometimes this is a nicely programmed sound,…

Constructive Interference

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The final push. Six songs left. Will it be uphill or downhill? If today’s track is any indication, maybe neither. The production break doing the covers was a nice mini-reset, and I’m feeling halfway between “write things for me to listen to” and the experimental day trips that started a…

The Wire Heart

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An area of sound that I’ve been really enjoying for several years now are “broken” things. Normally, I do this with distortion or granular synthesis, or sometimes by adding randomness to some element of a sound. A few years ago, I bought an expansion pack called “Beautifully Broken” and many…

Big Bend

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Ugh. Middle of week three and I’m simultaneously feeling like I’m struggling to find ideas and not having enough time to do the ideas that pop into my head. Neither of those things is true, and I know that, which makes it worse. So am I just being lazy? What’s…

Dogmatic Impressionism

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As is often the case, this piece started off with that very first bell sound and I started building to it. As with the Output plugins mentioned yesterday, the Cycles library from Slate + Ash has become a dark-horse favorite for me – a pleasant surprise because my initial reaction…