The beginning of an autobiography, or "musical manifesto"

I began my career in music around my fifth birthday, when I learned how to play my brother's old upright piano. I wrote the names of all the notes on the white keys (much to his chagrin) and taught myself the basics before I began lessons in kindergarten.

There was music playing in the house non-stop. Beethoven, Beatles, Bacharach, Bee Gees... you name it. That's how I was able to learn tunes by ear, and gain the (supposedly) rare gift of perfect pitch. I've had a lot of practice. I lucked out in life.

I was discovered John Williams and his film scores for Jaws and Star Wars--but the composition that had the greatest impact on my life: Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring, which we know caused a riot upon its 1913 Paris premiere.

In future years, I picked up other instruments: guitar, bass, clarinet, saxophone, flute--but bass and piano are my favorite two. (I'm a lot better on bass; I've always naturally gravitated toward low pitches.)

I'm amazed I didn't become a serious composer until much later. I played bass in bands (that never went anywhere), and wrote a few piano pieces here and there (most lost), but I never felt like I could be anything but an imitator. I needed to find my own voice.

I had also been a music major at the university in my East Texas hometown, but only attended for about a year before dropping out due to mental health-related issues. Much of what I know I've taught myself, especially concerning modern and postmodern musical trends.

The "gimmick"

Around 2000, I decided I needed to start "painting with more colors", as I like to call it. Being tired of using only twelve notes in the octave, I wanted to expand.

I had heard quarter-tone music before, mostly the work of Charles Ives (such as his three Quarter-Tone Pieces), but until I began to embrace modernist music, I didn't take it seriously. I entered the world of microtonality (or xenharmonia) via a more traditional route: Middle Eastern music.

It turns out that the Arabs, Turks and Iranians have been using quarter tones and even smaller intervals for many centuries, and literally hundreds of scales and modes called maqams. I listened to various popular songs, either as MIDI arrangements or downloaded via P2P (Napster et al), to acclimate myself to this exotic 24-tone scale.

Around the same time, I discovered another American composer: Harry Partch, remembered for using a 43-tone just intonation scale. I started listening to his music and bought his book, Genesis of a Music, and studied it (I still have yet to read all of it).

But it took me a long time to decide which tuning system I wanted to use myself. Eventually, I settled on 72 equal temperament. Not only is a multiple of twelve (dividing the equal-temperament semitone into six equal parts), but it very precisely approximates 11-limit just intonation, which Partch advocated. I started making experimental MIDI files using pitch bend messages at points when appropriate.

Eventually, in 2008, I wrote my first full 72-tone composition: "The Waterloo Rag", a type of stride/novelty/blues/boogie-woogie piece for six player pianos, each tuned 16 2/3 cents apart in a range of -50 to +33 1/3 cents from A=440 Hz tuning. (Waterloo is the former name of Austin, Texas, where I've been living for over a decade.)

I also have had an agenda. While composers like Chopin, Liszt, Dvořák, Sibelius, Copland and the Russian Five sought to promote a nationalistic musical style for their nations, my goal is musical internationalism and eclecticism--a marriage of Eastern and Western styles, forms and techniques (including tunings), past and present, art music and popular and traditional music.

American Mahler

I had an idea for a symphony in my head since my pre-teen years, but I only fairly recently started writing it. Using an old shareware composition program (which I did eventually have registered), I started composing and recording, using old-fashioned SoundFont tech at first but eventually using better instruments when I could afford to do so. Currently, I'm writing two symphonies.

The first one, if I ever finish it, may be four to six hours long. (Mahler's Third, the longest among works of the common repertoire, is a relatively brief 90 minutes; Havergal Brian's Symphony No. 1, the "Gothic", the world record holder overall, is around two hours.) The theme of my First: the Apocalypse more or less. It's a story I've been developing in my head since around the time I started making up the music.

The second would be a more merciful two hours in length approximately, with fifty-two movements: one for each US State plus the District of Columbia and the territory of Puerto Rico (with a larger population than 22 States). Its main inspiration is Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, and like the "Promenade" in the Russian composer's magnum opus, there is a main theme introduced in the first movement, "Maine: Light, Hope". (Another inspiration is the Beach Boys' SMiLE project, itself intended to be a musical trip across America, with eclectic influences.) The grand finale will be titled "California: The Great Gate of San Francisco". All twenty-four major and minor keys are to be used along with atonal movements, and various non-conventional instruments will be used, including banjo, accordion and Benjamin Franklin's glass armonica.

There are also plans for a third and fourth symphony in the more distant future, but I need to work on the first two first. (I have to write things non-linearly, as inspiration comes to me. I can go through long bouts of writer's block.)

The other thing I'm doing currently is familiarizing myself more with the music of India (Hindustani/North and Carnatic/South), as I've studied Middle Eastern music so extensively.

I also may finally finish school someday. I'm really wanting to go to Berklee College of Music in Boston, where there's a nice microtonal scene that also specializes in 72-tone. Still, I probably write more music in conventional twelve-tone, and I do use serialism as a technique (and microtonal rows) on occasion.