🔊 and 🧮 and 😑
1. The Music
Performing & Listening
Glimpses inside performance practice — plus inspiration for intentional and open-minded listening. Special love for contemporary classical and electronic music, drum & bugle corps, just intonation, and the NYC freelance musician’s world.
The Art of “Splitting” — on multiple brains doing the work of one.
Rhythmicon — the mysterious musical device is a glimpse into Henry Cowell’s Grand Unified Theory.
Stone in Focus — how the classic Aphex Twin rarity simulates the sensation of being alive (and dying).
Discovery Mode — Zhea Erose and discovery that doesn’t happen on Sp0tify.
The Way We Tune Now (episodes #1-3) — exploring intonation through the ears of a drummer and percussionist.
On Preparation, Part II — an honest look at getting the job done — in contemporary music, and on broadway.
The Language of Landscapes — collaboration for introverts, and the joy of remixing.
The Aphex Index — one megafan’s complete Aphex Twin playlist collection.
Sampling NASA — the dinks and donks you won’t find on Splice.
2. The Math
A Rational Music Theory
Sound, explained by sensation, in the language of mathematics.
Visual Tuning — hearing consonance and dissonance with your eyes.
The Just Intonation Primer — life after noticing the edge of the canvas.
How to Harvest Scales — Erv Wilson’s musical phyllotaxy, and the organic growth of chromatic, diatonic, pentatonic, and Madonnatonic scales.
Wonking Bass — Conlon Nancarrow’s charming, slippery, “Study #6” for player piano.
A Beginner’s Introduction to Exploring the Lattice (Parts I-V) — the beautiful mathematics of organizing an infinite pitch space for composition or analysis.
Harmonic — Spread The Word! Bear witness to the natural harmonic series.
Click-tracker’s Delight — how I became a polytempist. Animated visualizations of the hidden music under the music.
1:1 — what Destiny’s Child are trying to teach us about human modes of perception.
4:3 — your favorite DJ’s favorite ratio.
Ticker - mathematical elegance, and a universal reference point.
⬛️ 🟦 🟥 🟩 🟪 — four minutes of tones and pulses visualized with five emojis, an oscilloscope, and two mathematical operators.
What’s the Deal With Just Intonation? — the exclusive interview.
A Drifting Key — fourteen extraordinary measures from Ben Johnston’s String Quartet No. 9, animated.
Majorly Shocking — the Science and the Not Science of music theory.
Land of Winter — the first eighty-five seconds of Donnacha Dennehey’s December, visualized.
3. The Feelings
Artist Psychology & Mental Health
The psychology of creation, and the psychological minefield of living in a musical world other people created. Stories about the mental game of being a professional musician, and ideas for navigating the musician’s internet.
Art & Fear — an homage to the most important book on my shelf.
On Preparation, Part I (and Part III) — coping with life before (and after) the gig.
Selfie of a Selfie, Taking a Selfie in a Mirror — a transparently objective description of every item in your instagram feed, shortly after the robot apocalypse.
Wendy Carlos in Web 1.0 — best musician website ever.
Untitled, 2025 — rescuing our work from the social media dumpster fire.
Museums of Obsolete Media — the time I found a recording of my grandfather rapping.
Garden of Clear — stability as represented by clarity of intonation.
New Music Releases
I’m proud to say that my most popular post ever was a new composition I released exclusively on this substack. There have been several new pieces I’ve premiered here, and there will be many more going forward.
These posts (indicated with the white-background thumbnails) also have an audio feed that you can subscribe to in several podcast players. I recommend Overcast.
If you like my music, please visit my bandcamp page to listen to all five of my official album releases.
Backstory
I’ve got two posts so far that focus specifically on my musical origin story. One is words (it’s short), one is audio (it’s long). There’s also the about page.
Each post is meant to stand alone, but if you see an unfamiliar concept mentioned there’s a good chance I’ve previously covered it in-depth.
In that way, the publication as a whole is pedagogical, and its archive serves as a reference manual for itself. I’m hesitant to call this a “newsletter,” although new issues do arrive via email!
I continually update previous posts to add links, update content, and improve clarity.
Creating this publication often amounts to a full-time job, which is in addition to my other full-time job (being a freelance contemporary music and broadway percussionist in NYC). If you find that you get value from your subscription, you can upgrade.
🔉😊 Thanks for being here.
