In 2007, I worked with Spore's Audio Director Kent Jolly and Composer-Producer Brian Eno to implement and develop an innovative procedural music system for Maxis' SPORE (release date 9/07). My contributions included numerous melody, chord, and rhythm generators and a general compositional approach. I was also the lead procedural algorithm designer (composer) on 7 editors in the game. I also gained experience working in more traditional sound-design areas for video games such as vox sound-design, ADR and field recording, and studio recording and editing.

GDC 2008 presentation

Kent and I presented SPORE's procedural music system at the GDC 2008. The following is an audio recording of the presentation. You can purchase it at the GDC store. [ link ]

Some audience members made a few videos of the presentation and posted them on youtube:

Creature Editor

UFO Editor

City Music Planner

I was commissioned in the summer of 2007 by Italian composer and sound designer David Monnachi to develop a probabilistic additive-based synthesizer for use in his beautiful eco-accoustic compositions. [ link ]

I wrote Armonia in MaxMSP and designed it such that every synthetic parameter is determined via authored probability distribution functions. I also incorporated into the synthesis model frequency modulation as well as amplitude modulation per additive harmonic.

Here is the code: [ link ]

Here is a screenshot of the program with many distribution functions open: [ link ]

Here are two examples of probabilistic musical output:

I wrote Pythagoras after visiting SPORE's audio team in 2006 after a workshop at UC Berkeley. The basic approach in implementation is similar to SPORE's initial approach but with a much different objective. Pythagoras was intended to be a live-performance procedural music tool. It gives higher-level compositional and structural controls to a performer while leaving literal rhythmic and melodic choices to be determined through procedural methods.

Here is the code: [ link ]

Here is a screenshot: [ link ]

The following examples were recorded live in one take with no post-editing or rehearsal or composition. The last is a live performance at UC Berkeley's CNMAT with 3 graduate student performers.

This was a final project in my first quarter at UC Santa Barbara in the fall of 2007. I wrote a 10-voice additive synthesizer in C++ using the open-source JUCE graphic libary for the synthesizer's GUI and the CREATE Signal Library for it's DSP. Then I created an abstract interface in JAVA to the synthesizer using the Processing API. The abstract interface both visualizes and controls all synthesis parameters over UDP using the Open Sound Control in an intuitive fashion.

Here is the source code: [ link ]

This is a screenshot of the C++ synthesizer: [ link ]

This is a screenshot of the JAVA interface: [ link]

Here is a video of a performance of the synthesizer:

I also DJ and write commissioned music under the psuedonym "minus kelvin". Here are a few samples of my electronic DJ work: