My work resides between the fields of sound art and music. My primary activity has been the development of the Long String Instrument, in which rosin-coated fingers brush across dozens of metallic strings, producing a chorus of minimal organ-like overtones which has been compared to the experience of standing inside an enormous grand piano. Biba Kopf, in The Wire, wrote of the Long String Instrument,
“Listening to it, you feel like you are inside some cyclopean subterranean grotto… its bejewelled walls glistening with an alien lustre (and) sounding like something that shimmers, iridescent shapes bend conventional pulse-based time and impose their own paradoxical temporality, where constant movement teems within a vast stasis.”

My interest is in composing music on multiple levels, constructing not only the fundamental harmonic content, but also creating a phantom composition by choreographing the performer’s movement through a multi-dimensional matrix of unfolding overtones. With my research I hope to illuminate the physical nature of sound and the geometry of harmonic space existing in nature.

Most recently I have become more attuned to strategies for manipulating the resultant artifacts in my sound. Strings vibrate in mathematical subdivisions of the total string length. When passing over the harmonic nodes of each string, bowing with rosin-coated fingertips, overtones associated with that location emerge. By taking into consideration these divisions or nodal points, (where pronounced overtones emerge) musical events can be aligned to coincide with specific overtone combinations. By examining the waveform produced by the Long String Instrument through a spectrum analyzer I have observed that every harmonic overtone of the fundamental being played is represented nearly equally. Just Intonation, a tuning system based on pure intervals, lends itself to a consideration of not only the tuning of the fundamental frequencies, but also the resultant relationships among overtones. Through accurate tuning of the fundamental tones, combinations of extended overtones can also be distinguished as having harmonic relationships. Variations in overtone production can transform a single chord position through multiple tone colors.

My music explores this multi-dimensional matrix where threads of resultant melodic fragments emerge and intertwine, unfolding with a natural logic. Through sympathetic resonances, the acoustics of the entire room become my instrument, receptive, even vulnerable to what is put into the room. Metaphorically, the effect is like puffs of wind blowing at a candle flame from different directions. The flame projects upwardly, but responds fluidly to manipulation.