duo, Aulphon Logistics, here.
Liquefy / Kissing Rays (CR-78)
2026
SuperCollider, Sound Thread, Pulsar Synthesizer, Reaper
All material in this piece comes from samples of the Roland CR-78, and is assembled through improvisation using pulsar synthesizers, with one-shots from the 78 serving as the pulsaret waveforms. Using custom synthesis in SuperCollider and Kissing Rays, my hardware pulsar synthesizer, I improvised material which I then cut up, stretched, and convolved using more CR-78 samples.
Like many drum machines, the CR-78 has been continuously sampled, resampled, and absorbed into popular musical aesthetics, its individual sounds have been recycled in the grabbag of compositional potentials. The instrument itself has become a collectors item, going for thousands, while the sounds and patterns it produces live on, divorced from the instrument. While this is certainly not a critique of sampling or popularization more generally, it is a consideration of how an instrument’s identity fluctuates and becomes varyingly obscured or brought forth. I hope to make a ripped apart, contorted, removed, but maybe suggestive mutation of the CR-78, sometimes returning it to its woody, plasticine origins.
All samples from Alex Ball’s CR-78 sample pack: drive.google.com/file/d/1iV0Z3LAepqdaMLeyhkKAebBa3NFrGpAz/view
The Ventriloquist's Temper
(2026)
SuperCollider, Pulsar Synthesizer, Reaper
The ventriloquist crawls through the wood as it petrifies into something pretending to be a ferrous metal. It's knocking at your door, wondering to what extent you'll take it on.
if he could be any angrier,
the drainage pipe may have ceased to exist, taking with it the time
this classic, the riddle, he asked you for details, but the backlight won’t allow that.
“worry yourself,” he asks. “worry yourself
with all the answers which are correct.”
thank God for the endless light of answers, emitting from the shuddering chest of the dummy.
pluvial episode
(2026)
SuperCollider, Pulsar Synthesizer, Poetry
Heed a new arrangement. The Carninan Pluvial Episode was a two-million-year period at the end of the Triassic which was characterized by intense global humidity and acidity. This was a period of major ecological destruction as well as the diversification of mammaliaformes. Imagine your own subduction. Best to heed.
Link to full text
the contortionist
(2025)
SuperCollider and joystick, flexible spatialization
Exploration of the mis/re-translation that occurs in the intermediation between physical gesture and computer synthesis in MIDI controllers. Sounds are specifically designed in SuperCollider to be imbued with the sound inherent in the joystick.
Download the code here (requires Fergo Joystick MIDI and loopMIDI if on Windows)
Dead Ports
(2024)
CD playback
“While technological failure is often controlled and suppressed—its effects buried beneath the threshold of perception—most audio tools can zoom in on the errors, allowing composers to make them the focus of their work. Indeed, “failure” has become a prominent aesthetic in many of the arts in the late 20th century, reminding us that our control of technology is an illusion, and revealing digital tools to be only as perfect, precise, and efficient as the humans who build them.” Kim Cascone, The Aesthetics of Failure: “Post-Digital” Tendencies in Contemporary Computer Music
“The MP3 does not do justice to our penchant [for return] as much as the twin circular phonographs, the record and the compact disc. Their circular shape recalls the Aristotelian model of the cosmos, with earth at the center and other celestial bodies revolving around it. Early records were engraved with a spiral indentation whose last smallest revolution ended in a cul-de-sac, forcing the needle to jump backwards to its penultimate orbit, effectively closing the circle. If left unattended, such a record could play its last moments repeatedly, forever or at least until the electricity died. I ask you to regard recordings as orreries, mechanical models of solar systems whose orbits are already mapped, foregone conclusions.” Joanna Demers, Drone and Apocalypse
Listen here
examine it carefully, before it’s set ablaze
(2024)
4 or 6 percussionists
Comissioned by the Portland Youth Philharmonic
an ache in the polyisoprene gut
(2023)
acoustic guitar and feedback system
score
rain gathering in a small room
(2023)
string quartet and piano
Written for the JACK Quartet for New Music on the Point
score
words of other affirmations
(2023)
no-input mixing and Max/MSP
figures without form
(2022)
solo acoustic guitar
score
looking for a way to get out
(2022)
solo acoustic guitar
imaginary skin
(2022)
orchestra
Written for the University of Michigan University Philharmonic Orchestra
score
humidity
(2021)
drumset and pre-recorded electronics
Commissioned by Ancel Fitzgerald Neeley
things we depend on, they disappear
(2021)
piano and pre-recorded electronics
ligatures on the processor
(2021)
bassoon and saxophone
Written for Maya Grossman and Drew Hosler
eight point compass
(2021)
processed security camera
brain empty
(2021)
solo piano
Commissioned by Portland Piano International
genesis hallucinations and reiterations
(2020)
piano, percussion, and synthesizers
listen
only love in the opulent
(2019)
solo vibraphone
score
osho
(2018)
2 percussionists
for sun to rot
(2018)
electric guitar and pre-recorded electronics
my face is blank
(2018)
contrabassoon and live processing
Written for Ezra Gans
The Peaceful and Mask of Sanity
(2016)
violin, cello, clarinet, saxophone, piano, percussion
Written for Fear No Music