About

nature of sound is all one person, me. I do all the visual and all the audio work, all the composition, performance, production, etc. Occasionally someone else steps on board for a track or two, but for the most part, everything you see and hear comes from just one mind.

Which of course is more of a funnel that all the other minds run through. No creation is ever alone; nothing is ever completely unique. Each steps grows from the previous one, each person shares with the next, like it or not.

As to the music I create, I make the attempt each time out to create something I’ve never done before. It may not be new to the world, but its always new to me, and my own journey through the nature of sound. I use computers, keyboards, hand drums, guitars, singing bowls, flutes (recorders), atmospheric sound and more to create each piece. Each individual song is actually more of an audio painting. Visual Art is my first venue, music grew out of it; so my approach to music is not just very visual, but also guided by the sort of thinking that goes into a work of art.

I moved beyond verse-chorus-verse structure years ago. I find classical, jazz and experimental forms much more interesting to work with. Likewise, scales and progressions are not drawn deliberately from any existing forms. This is not to say that I think I’m making scales or progressions that are different from what you are familiar with. Its more of a process of improvisational feedback, where I start with a tone that has meaning and then I extrapolate that into phrases that move the melodic story along. I have a general knowledge of music theory as it is generally understood, in terms of chord formation, but I have no formal training whatsoever apart from a few months bass guitar lessons as a teenager. Everything you hear from me has been constructed by personal inspiration, learning by ear, played from the heart.

I never really wanted to be good at guitar; because in my neighborhood, everyone was. (They really weren’t probably that good, but it seemed so as a teenager). So it was my job to learn how to play bass, to support the guitarists that couldn’t find their beat. Then I was drawn to drums and percussion. From here began a path of having to learn the music parts no else could play or be bothered with, and from this came a perspective. If EVERYONE is learning to play music by learning existing songs, learning scales, learning chords, learning these strumming techniques, and everyone else in the band is just there to support this melody/harmony by the guitarists, then out of the billions of people in the world there’s got to be some guy that just isn’t doing any of that. Even if it sucks like crazy, sounds like einsterzende naubuten (forgive the spelling, its been a long time since I listened to dropping shopping carts), or is just plain bad, SOMEONE has to be out there doing that, because diversity is important. As a global society we have a tremendously rich cultural heritage of music, and the amazing thing is that there is still unexplored territory. But you can’t make something different…by doing things the same.