Last week, I listened to all five hours of La Monte Young’s “Well Tuned Piano.” Two things that struck me most about the piece:
1. The simple act of detuning the instrument turns it into a completely different beast.
2. The overtones are as much a part of the piece as the fundamental frequencies. At [...]

I recently played a very unique show. It was a performance of Sarah Kirkland Snider’s Penelope featuring Shara Worden of My Brightest Diamond and the incredible chamber ensemble Signal. There were about 25 of us crowding the stage at Brooklyn’s Bell House.

   Hi!!! Can you find meee??
At this particular show, I was playing [...]

I closed my last post saying I would share an example of how this thinking about soulfulness in music has manifested itself in my own music. Here’s an example.
For the past few weeks, I’ve had this little acoustic guitar shuffle laying around. I liked the chords a lot! I thought to myself, [...]

I had never heard of Alex Chilton when I read about his death last week. I still don’t know the man’s music very well, but I am learning. What I do know is that he wrote that song “The Letter,” which is burned into my memory from the hundreds of times I heard [...]

Ambient music for the beginning of what promises to be a sweltering summer:
[Audio clip: view full post to listen]
This is a recorded document of my inaugural interaction with the very first piece of truly musical software I ever created. It’s essentially about a hundred layers of guitar stacked on top of each other, pushing [...]

Hi. I’m Michael. This is a blog. Here you will find little bits of noise and song for your perusal. Please participate as you see fit. If you’re a musician (or not) and you do something fun with a clip or idea you found here, I’d love to hear (about) [...]