Music

As a teenager, music was very important to me. I started playing percussion in my school band in sixth grade, then picked up the bass guitar in middle school. In high school, I was in my school's marching band, orchestra, and jazz band. I formed a metalcore band, Trounce, with several of my school friends, and played in the Flynn Theater's Jazz Ensemble in Burlington, VT.  I dabbled with music in college, finding increased interest in noise, experimental, and atonal music, but did not remain connected to a community of musicians. I stopped playing music in my mid-20's.

In my early 30's, I reconnected with music after completing my Master's degree. In 2019 this connection took off as I sought a means of expressing and processing grief from the death of my childhood friend Sam, who was in my school jazz band, and an avid electronic music enthusiast. It was the first time, as an adult, that I experienced the loss of a friend, and it led me to contemplate my own mortality. I could not find the words to express myself. I took a class on clinical improvisation at the Open Center, taught by Alan Turrey, the Managing Director of the Nordoff-Robbins Music Therapy Program at NYU Sternhardt. The class helped me to make sense of how music can be a vehicle for expressing difficult emotions, and how to de-center language - both written and spoken - from therapeutic processes.

Although the music I created during this period was fairly simple, it was an outlet, and its repetitive structure I found calming. Most of this music was recorded on Audacity, an open-source audio recording software. I fed an analog bass guitar line converted into digital audio via a USB input to my computer (so it had multiple overlaying tracks prior to its digitalization). I often created chains of effects using analog and digital audio effects, including loopers, delays, harmonizers, and synthesizers. I used four, five, and six-string bass guitars in these audio creations.

Short samples of those recordings is below. Click the play icon to listen.