Musicians From The United States

"I also want to encourage others to work in this field [of recording sounds] without having to spend a lot of money on gear. Putting a sock on your smartphone and laying it next to a bird’s nest can yield some pretty incredible recordings!"

"[Regarding field recordings] I try not to edit or assign value to what I find...What I'm trying to do is get enough material so the artist and musician in me can develop some sort of beautiful response using those sounds."

"If we think about places sonically, I’d say the Midwest [of America] is more of a whisper than a shout... I suppose I need to hold the microphone a little closer, sit a little more quietly, and be a little more patient. This place—topographically, culturally, spiritually—does not just jump out at you; it takes time to reveal its wonder. It requires a lot of listening."

"I employ a vocabulary from art and design to describe melody and rhythm..."

"Representing a place through sound is my response to our image-saturated media."

"I think sound is still undervalued as a means to measure environmental health, regional identity, and personal narrative."

"My rest as a Black woman in America suffering from generational exhaustion and racial trauma always was a political refusal and social justice uprising within my body."

"There’s a stigma around caring for yourself. Unless it’s attached to capitalism, then it’s okay. You can pay $200 for a facial, and then you’re taking care of yourself. But if you’re caring for yourself with something as deep as sleep, which is one of our most ancient and primal needs, if you’re doing that in public, caring for your body, that’s shameful. I tie that back to capitalism and to white supremacy and these notions around not seeing humans as divine and not seeing our bodies as belonging to us."

"This is about more than naps. It is not about fluffy pillows, expensive sheets, silk sleep masks or any other external, frivolous, consumerist gimmick. It is about a deep unraveling from white supremacy and capitalism. These two systems are violent and evil. History tells us this and our present living shows this. Rest pushes back back and disrupts a system that views human bodies as a tool for production and labor. It is a counter narrative. We know that we are not machines. We are divine."

"He goes around and he ends up unloading, what, sixty rounds, kills two people, wounds a third person."

"Ten years is a long time to be a part of anything and to have a group of people in your life for any reason, let alone one that really was a part of my most formative years."

"I've been told this is R&B, but it could be a few other things. It is certainly pretty neat, Warning: Very Sticky Hook!"

"It is always easiest to write for the mood I'm in... and after a few hours, I am almost always IN the mood of the music. Because... that's what music does."

"All you have to do is give me Credit, which has led to my music being used in like, a million YouTube videos and over a thousand movies on IMDb..."

"I started making music because it was a problem that needed solving; it was very hard for filmmakers to get anything done without going through giant rigor morale, or at least it used to be."

"So this one sounds like what is [sic] sounds like."

"This piece was built almost entirely with arpeggiators. What does that mean for you? Probably nothing. But holy man! Does this sound like it is from 1983! So, pop a tape of "Flashdance" in your VCR... and then spend like 8 minutes rewinding it... because, apparently your cousin couldn't be bothered to do that. Seriously, Sally! You did the same thing when I lent you "Smokey and the Bandit II", and I didn't say anything because you had a hard week, but still managed to make the Jell-o Salad with the grapes for the family reunion... which was nice. Anyway, I'll probably just get you one of those $20 tape rewinders they have at Radio Shack for your birthday. I also enrolled you in the Battery of the Month Club. You're welcome."

"After some amount of introspection, I can only conclude that this is the afterlife, or some entryway to the afterlife... or a really cool club in the Meatpacking district after-hours."

"Welcome to the lobby of the FUTURE! Luxurious automatic ashtrays, and modern green vinyl furnishings set off the shag carpeted walls. Enjoy a Rusty Nail from our cheerful bar staff (with a complimentary cheese and fruit plate before 5pm). We feature prime rib dinners every day that ends in a "y"! Remember to tip the bellhops at least 5 cents per bag. Enjoy your stay! This was written 2 years before it was published, because I didn't have a good enough upright bass sample to make it go."

"What is love? Apparently, it is an odd mix of 1980's synthy love songs and modern trap beats. I don't think there is anything like this out there... which may be a fine thing - or I've just invented a genre. Crooner-Synth Trap-Pop."

"Part alien cacophony, part organic awfulness, part six of seven. If you set this piece as music you wake up to in the morning, you're going to have a bad, bad day. There will be half remembered monsters from the times of not-asleep, not-awake... whose only jobs are to induce unexpected nausea inside government buildings."

"Have you ever heard a 4 bassoon ensemble before? Not likely. While bassoonists may create temporary pair-bonds, they are never found in groups of 3 or more. Much digital trickery was involved in this piece to make them appear as though they were all in the same room at the same time. Tuba players, on the other hand exhibit extreme flocking behaviour, and have even been spotted in mass migrations."

"Stop it! Stop complaining, it is supposed to end like that! This is a loopable piece. Why? You never know how long your voice-overed tour of the cardboard factory is going to take... Or your real estate tour... Or your appendectomy video... Or your video of that one train by your house."

"Co-written with Bryan Teoh while he was on vacation (Thanks Bryan!) this is all the mystery and chill groove you need. So come on you cats and swingers, enjoy yourself a Jet Pilot (served in a pineapple of course) and help unravel the Secret of Tiki Island! Can you save yourself and the island from the Volcano!? No. Of course you can't. It is a freaking VOLCANO. If the pyroclastic flows and lahars don't kill you, the carbon dioxide and hydrogen sulfide probably will."

"You know when you watch a vampire movie and then you walk out into the real world, but you're still sort of in the fictional world because it looked like the real world... and that's where you are now. I call this Persistence of Fiction, and it feels awesome! Capture some fiction by playing this track while walking to the bus... er the Vampire Bus! or waiting in line at the Vampire DMV or sorting Vampire Direct Mail Ads or doing some Vampire Macrame."

"Part four of seven. This is the pizza cutter of this series, round and edgy. It has a little bit of melodic complexity, but mostly it just sits around being creepy."

"Part seven of seven. A real mind bender. This one is all acoustic, and no artificial synths, so it has an organic feel. Not Certified Organic, just normal organic. So, that means it looks better, requires less fertilizer, has fewer pests and a higher yield."

"You know what's cool? A standpipe in the winter. I imagine this one with a hip mustache and a plaid beret. Enough of the imagery, this is a little downtempo chill piece with lush horn punctuation. Suitable for: walks in the rain, time-lapse videos, sad cooking shows."

"I gotta admit, I've never been to a clambake, only ever fish boils... which are similar, except for clambakes usually involve mollusks and giant sea-bugs, and fish boils involve fish. Also, clambakes are more steaming and fish boils are more boiling. You're more likely to see Green Bay Packers jerseys at fish boils, and more likely to see New England Patriots jerseys at clambakes. This music is west-coast, though... The more I think about it - the less useful this descriptive paragraph becomes."

"Part one of seven. Sort of an edgy-underwater feel... which isn't common. You can feel the struggle just trying to get the sounds out. Imagine a small rhinoceros at a tea party. The image you have in your head has nothing to do with this piece; But it is quite amusing."

"Is it a real Gregorian Chant? Nope. For one - there are no real words in it. Honestly, I don't want a religious exaltation mucking up my fantasy world. So if you're building a historically accurate "Monk Simulator: Year of Our Lord 882!", just move on. The other reason this isn't real is I never learned how to read that notation. There are insufficient sticks for the rhythms in the notation... I know, there is a real convention that you can learn. I just grabbed a few pieces of the sheet music from the 1200s, and guessed at how to do it. Sounds reasonable enough to me! (says the guy who knows virtually nothing about the art)"

"This piece took almost exactly one year to go from initial idea to produced piece. What was I doing for a whole year!? I mean... it doesn't exactly sound that difficult."

"Background to an evil political action ad. Add your own alarmist voice over - this was engineered to make people uncomfortable, and not interfere with human voice range. "Tell your congressman to vote NO on the Pollute Our Drinking Water and Send All of Our Money to Canada Act.""

"Welcome to the tropical paradise of Port Horizon. Not much to do here but listen to the short wave radios and play guitar. There is also food and drinks with those little umbrellas... Other than that - not much. Except snorkeling. Snorkeling is pretty cool. Oh, there is also Art Night on Tuesday - where you get a volleyball and some paints and make yourself a friend! Beach chess... I forgot about Beach Chess. Don't play white against Todd, though - he plays all-Hedgehog all the time. Come on, Todd - just once, seriously ONCE could you play King's Indian or... you know what? I'd even take the French Defence; Exchange Variation, you boring symmetrical jerk."

"Welcome to the Holiday Inn, Airport. The presentation will begin shortly. SUCCESS starts with your ATTITUDE! If you are not EARNING, make sure you are LEARNING! AMBITION is the path to success. PERSISTENCE is the vehicle you arrive in. Success is doing the OPPOSITE of what everyone else is DOING! Actually... don't take this last one too literally. If everyone else is using the door, don't try walking through a wall (or whatever the opposite of a "door" is). I mean... there is a reason most people do the same things. Usually because they make sense. Oh, sure... it is okay to QUESTION what people are doing, but just doing the opposite... probably not great. The future of NETWORK MARKETING is UNLIMITED! Oh... Also a bit of hyperbole here. I mean, it literally cannot exceed the gross output of all the world's economies - and will likely top out far before that due to INEFFICIENCIES and REGULATION."

"Oh! The horror! This is NOT a fun piece. It WILL make you feel like there is something seriously wrong. Did those veins on my forearm always look like that? I mean, they're doing a weird criss-cross pattern... and they look REALLY blue. I would have noticed that before, surely! I wonder if this has anything to do with the meteor that came down in Mr. Wilson's pond last night?"

"I say! It is such a lovely brisk day! Aren't the horses lovely? I mean... look at all the horseness they have! They are scoring quite high on the horse-o-meters today! Nothing bovine on this street, Nay! ... ... ... Wait... I was trying to make a joke involving a horse's "neigh" combined with the archaic positive/negative usage of "nay". Then everything went wrong, and I said almost the opposite of the intention. So, without the joke: Picture a street where the only animals are the horsiest of horses... No cows or pigs. Okay, there are two dogs... but one of them is pretty small... and you can see a cat in one of the windows... but MOSTLY horses. If you added up the weights of all the non-horse, non-humans in the picture, they would weigh less than one horse."

"I Think if I wanted to be famous, I would be working hard at doing that -- I am kind of working hard at not doing that."

"What is meditation for one may be cause for concern in another. - Some Elf"

"Picture a pixellated medieval village... cause that's what this is. It is the kind of music we think they played back in the day. It is not historically. But I'm okay with that, because we also didn't have lich-kings, lich-mages, lich-illithids, lich-warriors, or lich-archers. We did have lichens, though... I like lichens!"

"Part three of seven. Part pipe organ, part broken pipe organ, this isn't just spooky, it is crazy spooky. It also has a musical theme, which not all of this horror moody stuff has. Consider it the jelly filling in your horror doughnut."

"Yeah Boyzzz! BGM Music in the HOUSE!!!! In this case, "BGM Music" means "Background Music... Music". You want royalty-free!? You got it! You want ukulele mastery!? You got that, too! You want a piece that's a GNDN piece!? DONE! It's like a whole new genre of undistinguished music! It is sort of bouncy, and cheery. So... somewhat distinguished. It is really hard to hype this piece, but it is wicked-useful!"

"Could be the thinking music for a quiz show about the paranormal? "Where does the Sasquatch typically vacation... is it A, The High Mountains... B, Unexplored Cave Systems... C, Graceland... or D, In another dimension - similar to, but not strongly coupled with our own reality. Take your time and answer whenever you're ready.... A, B, C, or D... Would you like to consult the Tarot or do an entrail reading?" I love the flute bits in this piece."

"Part five of seven. Airy, but not in the "I'm outdoors, and everything is great 'airy'" way. More like the "the alien machine that sustains our life is slowly breaking down and poison is beginning to seep from its core" way. Whatever is happening... it isn't fast, and it isn't good."

"Southern trap influenced rap pile of musical forklift platypus... okay, I don't know what these words mean. But if you understood them - we're all good. You know what you're getting, and... that's all I can hope for really. Truth in advertising!"

"The animation can go anywhere, and the music has to go with it. What is especially great from a composer's point of view is that the music in these shows gets featured, not buried; these shows appreciate the value of what the music is doing."

"The majority of people that get involved in film music are kind of like me, who had a dream and fell in love with it and then pursued it on the base of their mad love for it. My advice to the young aspiring composer is that film composing is about the long journey, about developing over a period of time, of hopefully creating a career that is constantly rising."

"I find the science fiction community, in general, is a very positive group of people. Yes, sometimes they may be a little awkward or not mainstream, although I think over the last decade they’ve had to become more mainstream because of the Marvel films and things like that. But, in general, the sci fi community is very involved in the environment. They are very pro-space program. They want to reach beyond our own horizons. They’re never prejudiced against any race or religion or people like that. It’s a good group, generally speaking. But there’s always a percentage that take it a little too seriously, perhaps. They buy into Klingon reality a bit more so than it was intended by the creators. I’ve been doing the science fiction conventions and personal appearances since they were formulated, so I’m quite used to some oddities."

"I thought it was silly when people have that “my dog is better than your dog” mentality. I enjoyed Star Trek as a kid and I’m sure there were plenty of Trekkies who secretly liked Lost in Space."

"Goodbye to the brilliant June Lockhart … A one of a kind, talented, nurturing, adventurous, and non compromising Lady. She did it her way. … June will always be one of my very favorite moms … 100 years here. Wow! R.I.P. 👍🏼✌️❤️🙏🏻"