Statement, Thoughts, and History
Who am I? I am a professional performer, producer, recording engineer, studio designer, teacher and consultant with twenty years of experience. I have produced, recorded, and performed every type of music— jazz, pop, classical, electronic sound making, voice manipulation, world music, experimental stage, theater and dance music, old time standards…. I’ve worked in piano bars, music for dance and live theatre, contemporary stage productions, recording studios, pit orchestras and in stage bands, and many things in-between. I have also professionally shot, and edited moving and still picture. My primary work medium for both sound and image is the computer. Thoughts on Teaching The foundation of solid musicianship, technical discipline, and an awareness and sensitivity to other disciplines, is the fundamental approach I take in introducing students, including those who are not musicians or designers of sound, to the world of music/sound production technology. I have had the opportunity to teach this material to students and faculty in college settings and privately in my own studio. I have also had the opportunity to work with, teach, and integrate sound and music with those across disciplines. I have learned how to help students analyze music and sound and then discover the possibilities of technology, and the reasons and substance of the technological tools. I believe it is important for the students to understand what music/sound does, and what technology does, in order to develop their own point of view toward what they want to produce, and then to investigate the tools to make that happen, particularly as computer technology continues to evolve. This kind of aesthetic and technical foundation serves students/artists as specific software and hardware changes, appears or disappears. A good music or sound design artist can produce anything well, if he or she has a full understanding of the elements in play, and not simply a superficial knowledge of software packages. I know that students come with varied backgrounds and a host of images for their own lives. It is not a teacher’s job to replicate his or her own experience in the students but instead to take each student at whatever point he or she enters and help him or her to the kind of full understanding I speak about, as they learn the basic tools of technology. Every student knows some music and sound design ideas—probably much more than they think they do. One job is to corral that hidden knowledge and to take it apart so they can view its underpinnings. What they know can be explored in relation to the learning of the technology. The goal in teaching music technology is to understand that the whole experience is an aesthetic one. It is the composer, sound designer and studio engineer/producer’s job to help the sound and music realize itself technically. Regardless of the specific technical tasks the basic philosophy must be to understand completely the capacity of the technology in relation to the intentions of the music and sound. Professional Work and Academic Path My musical experience during the past twenty years has been a rich and varied intertwining of professional and academic work. I have had the good fortune to make all of my living performing, composing, recording, editing, and teaching music and audio technology. I have been a performer on keyboard, saxophone, flute, drums, and world percussion. I am also a vocalist. Having performed throughout the United States and much of the Caribbean, I have performed jazz, blues, rock, Latin, classical, world music, and many genres in-between. Outside of the years I returned to school (1991-1995), I have always performed in excess of two hundred dates per year. This has always kept me firmly rooted as a musician. Since my undergraduate years at Virginia Tech I have combined my passions for musicianship, performance, composition and recording with continually evolving engagement with the technology driven environment for music recording and design. My own career has paralleled the growth and development of the computer, its software, electronic keyboards, and interfaces. My own musicianship, recording and producing techniques have become more subtle and complex as the technology has permitted and encouraged it. I think I have a distinct advantage in my Peabody Conservatory background because I made the connection at the outset between the foundations and disciplines of both the classical and pop traditions and the possibilities of recording, composition and sound design in contemporary, experimental, and popular music. This connection carries over to works created to support other art forms and media types such as dance, video, and Internet media. This foundation of solid musicianship, and technical discipline underlies all of my work. The technology serves as a tool to enhance and extend musical and audiovisual design possibilities. In addition to keeping an active performance schedule, I have been the owner/producer and engineer of Rivers East Recording and Media Development Studio in Lake Worth, Florida for the past eleven years. Rivers East is a state of the art digital/analog recording audio and visual studio. At Rivers East I record and produce local artists from all genres, compose and realize music and sound design for dance and theater companies, privately teach, and routinely consult others on the use of music technology tools. Instruction in the studio includes performance, composition, sound design, recording and engineering techniques using computers and digital audio software. I have particular expertise in the areas of group recording, multi-tracking and editing digital audio, and with all facets of using the MIDI protocol for music production. I am a veteran of Digital Performer as I have used and taught the program from its earliest stages of development. The studio is also equipped to shoot and edit professional video and still image photography, and I have done both. I have been fortunate to work with artists in many fields including theater, dance, video, Internet development, visual art, animators, and of course music. For example, I have worked with notables such as singer and dancer Ben Vereen in a 2000 production at the Kravis Center in West Palm Beach, and with contemporary choreographer Shawn Womack out of Cincinnati. Most of my work and development has been in settings that are interdisciplinary by nature, and this has made communication with those in other fields of art and technology second nature. Initially earning a psychology degree in 1986 from Virginia Tech, I returned there in 1991 as an employee hired to assist and maintain two music technology studios, introduce traditional music faculty to the world of music technology, and as a student. My position was as Technical Director for Virginia Tech Center for Digital Music Studios from 1991-1993. While working at the university I completed a second undergraduate degree in music in 1993 by designing a theory/composition program that focused on new music technologies. My undergraduate recital involved a first ever inter-departmental collaboration between the schools of architecture, theater, dance, and music. Involved in the production were video display, stage sets, computerized light programs, choreographed movement and scene changes, multiple acoustic instrument performers (including myself), as many as sixteen dancers, and computer-generated music. The Computer Music Department of Peabody Conservatory at Johns Hopkins University seemed to be a logical choice to focus on musical and technical discipline in the fall of 1993. The years at Peabody allowed me to exercise the foundations and disciplines of the classical tradition and contemporary computer music making and provided opportunities of emergent technologies in realizing my composition. During my two years of course work, I continued to perform regularly, founded, designed curriculum, and directed The Electro-Acoustic studio at the Baltimore School for the Arts (a highly selective art school for high school students), and in addition, was appointed charge of the graduate students and studios in the Computer Music Department at Peabody. During these years of study I came to a fuller understanding of my compositional motivations and aesthetic and to what extent they fit into designing works with artists from other disciplines. My Master of Music in Computer Music Composition from Peabody Conservatory at Johns Hopkins was designed as a terminal degree. My work at the studios of Virginia Tech, Baltimore School for the Arts, Peabody Conservatory, and my own studio business of eleven years, has informed me about the skills and organization required to manage multiple studios and staff in both academic and professional settings. My professional work since the completing the Master of Music program at Peabody Conservatory has been highlighted with commissioned dance and theater work, audio and video recording and editing, performing, and producing music in a state of the art professional sound and media studio. Along with teaching both in a local college and privately, and as a consultant on music and music technology, I have a continuing commitment to live performance performing well over two hundred dates per year. I recognize that the contemporary artist finds him or herself in a world where a full understanding of music today involves digital audio technologies. These tools are now a natural part of creating, capturing, editing and distributing music and sound. back Teaching Philosophy click me