"Q: How is a bad violist like a good cryptographer? A: They mix up their strings so thoroughly that you can't tell what key they're using!"
Some attempts at writing and playing music
Banach-Tarski
My dad wrote this song a long time ago, and has for a while wanted me to record a version of it for him, so for Christmas this year I finally put something together with some instrumental backing / a little video / a second verse. Production quality isn’t super high (especially with regards to the video) but I think it’s a cute song.
The Scream
I recorded this as an assignment for my jazz class last spring. I wanted to make something based around augmented 7ths, and it sounded so angsty that I decided to put a spoken-word excerpt from Edvard Munch’s diary over the solo section.
Vexations
This was also an assignment for jazz class (I could put some more of these, but I feel like these are the two that turned out the best). I’m not playing here; we were lucky enough to have a proper jazz combo there to play our final arrangements (including my amazing professor Lihi Haruvi on alto sax!). This is a jazz arrangement of Erik Satie’s Vexations, which is a project I’ve wanted to do for a while. Trying to fit vaguely tonal-sounding chords to this was a bit of a nightmare (as I’d expected), but I think the result ended up sounding decent.
Tarjan’s Waltz
Ok fine I lied, here’s one more piece from jazz class. It’s not super polished, but this was me trying to do a waltz. I don’t really know why I named it after Tarjan; I think I was just thinking about splay trees while recording it.
Ancylid
This is another class project that I was lucky enough to have sight-read by some real professional musicians. I’d never tried to write a string quartet before – was a fun experience.
Wollaston
I took a class called “Electronic Music Composition” – here’s an example of the sort of thing we did. The degree to which this counts as music is perhaps open to debate, but I definitely learned some useful DAW tricks as the class progressed.
Gåte for Døden
This is probably my favourite on the list at the moment. I made this in high school as part of an elaborate prank on a friend of mine. It’s a bit of a long story, but we were learning some Norwegian together, so I made a website for a fake Norwegian indie band and then hid a string of puzzles in the song that eventually led to a rickroll. The puzzle chain isn’t followable anymore, but I still think the song is fun (if you can excuse my terrible Norwegian pronunciation).