ambient

The Sentinel

Mary left this morning for an extended business trip, so I’m a single-parent for the next week. And Olive, our 9-month old puppy is a harsh and jealous mistress. She’s matured a lot in the last few weeks, but she still needs a ton of attention and exercise. Now this may come as a surprise, but the writing music process doesn’t do so well with interruptions every 5-15 minutes. With this in mind, I figured I’d write something that could tolerate the interruptions and worked on another drone. I’ve been experimenting with various textures, and a lot of … Continue reading

Black Obelisk

Day two and I’m already behind. I didn’t post the first track until about 11:30 PM, and then worked into the wee hours only to realize nothing worthwhile. When listening to the various sketches this morning, nothing really seemed like it would gain traction. So I decided to work on the website, writing my post for day one, as well as day one of 2024. I’m sure this will come as a massive surprise to anyone who knows me, but I’ve kind of made my entire process overly complicated. I like what the end result is, but it’s a lot … Continue reading

Mare Marginus

Note: This post was written in 2025 and backdated to appear on the day I wrote and published the track. I tend to have a pretty strong self-deprecating sense of humor. I’m not sure if that’s a defense mechanism, an outgrowth of my early humility training by my parents, a natural extension of my sarcasm, or some deeper psychological thing that some therapist would like to talk to me about because they need to send their kids to college. To expand on the “humility training” thing a bit, I started acting in (little) musical theater at age seven and was … Continue reading

Mare Australe

Note: This post was written in 2025 and backdated to appear on the day I wrote and published the track. Back to the moon. This one is much more ethereal. There are moments where a sense of time emerge, but for the most part it’s something to sink into. The sounds are already quite complex and programmed, but I added a bit of motion or granular processing here and there to just give it a bit more. This was actually a pivot. I started the day with a different track, but very quickly realized that I didn’t have time to … Continue reading

The Match Went Out

Note: This post was written in 2025 and backdated to appear on the day I wrote and published the track. Grimecake got posted pretty early in the day, so I had the luxury of noodling time before any sort of panic set in. I didn’t need to worry, though, because I was still in that quirky mood and had the basic bit of this track, consisting of the electric piano ostinato and weird random notes done pretty quickly. I don’t think I ever thought that would be the main focus of the piece, but I knew I was probably heading … Continue reading