I never cared about whether what I wrote was playable for the instruments I wanted. That might be because I never imagined anyone actually playing my music. It was almost a problem when I got to college, but it was never required to have anyone perform my stuff.

Celtic Lullaby

I wrote this along with a paper about the 12 tone method for a high school project. The painting is by Arnold Schoenberg.

Dodecaphonic Serialism - Wind Quintet

This piece has been REVISED. Please listen to STARLIGHT instead! It's way better!!!

Meteor Shower

Made possible by copy/paste and the key change feature in Finale 2010.

Flight through Beach Space

My final project for Digital Audio and Modeling required me to write a piece for an ensemble of 5 or more (I kinda cheated). I used "First Step," which is heavily inspire by music from Nintendo games (namely Mario Galaxy), and added another section featuring an oboe and celesta. The image is by Vladimir Kush.

First Step

I've been studying the soundtrack for Howl's Moving Castle. The composer for these Studio Ghibli animations is nothing short of a genius. HMC and Spirited away sound very similar, but HMC was intentionally written in a more western style, since the book was written by a European author.

My goal through middle and high school was to become a composer for movies or video games. John William's work on Harry Potter was another huge inspiration. My goals have changed now, but writing music like this is still fun.

Distant Storm / Well-worn Path

This is a Logic Pro revival of a theme I wrote 3 years ago. The image is concept art for a game called Monstrum.

Disembark

Baroque Invention

Howl’s Moving Castle was a huge inspiration for me. I listened to multiple versions of the soundtrack, and it made me feel like my habit of just mashing different themes together wasn’t so bad. No structure, no thoughts, just hard work to accomplish nothing. Like moving heavy rocks for no purpose.

Starlight

My college professor wanted me to write a piano piece, so I made this. He never wanted me to write tonal music, but I didn’t understand what he wanted me to write. Luckily this was shown to a professional composer who had only really nice things to say - otherwise I would have thought it was a failure, because I valued my biased professor’s opinion too highly. I can’t listen to this without thinking about how horrible and hypocritical that professor was - something I didn’t realize until I transferred out of that school and became a student to professors worth their tenure. I had actually changed my major from music to psychology. Now I wish I had stayed out of music programs.

A Walk

Inspired partly by imagery from Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and Dark Souls 3.

Catacombs

I've worked on this theme for a long time, I think it's time to move on. This is one of those things I wrote on which my mom would usually comment, “you always ruin it with long pauses.”

A Love Theme

This was intended to be paired with “a walk” but I can’t finish it. This is as close to “done” as I could manage. Since the melody and harmony weren’t all that interesting, I played with the sounds to a gaudy, video-game-esque result.

Synth Play

I want to delete all this. When I was a child, I thought I wanted to be a score composer. Now years after graduating college with a BA in music theory, I realize I would rather be almost anything else. I tried to know everything about music, and I obsessed over classical composers, and I listened to professional musicians speak so highly of their careers, and I believed I could be anything I put my mind to - but now I’m certain that I was forcing myself to try and be something I never really wanted to be. But having spent my whole life being lead to reject the idea that I would be anything else, I can’t imagine a future for myself.

J

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