My Left Hand

My Left Hand was a personal project. It started as an experiment. The day before Thanksgiving, 2021, I broke my right elbow and couldn’t use my dominant hand for a month and a half. So, in the meantime, I wrote a song a day, more or less, to see if my song writing would be influenced by this constraint. The project ended up being much more philosophical and became about much more than just music.

 

A Good Idea at the Time …

One Night from 7pm to 7am philosophy fans gathered at the Brooklyn Public library to attend philosophy talks, drink coffee, drink drinks, and discuss the meaning(s) of life. This piece is an experimental tour of the event.

 

 

The Price of Freedom

The photo below is of a Better Baby Contest. This one took place in Saint Paul Minnesota in the 1920’s. Seems cute, until you learn it was part of the eugenics movement. In Minnesota the eugenics movement wasn’t just a troubling theory people dabbled in recreationally with Fitter Families or Better Baby contests, but It became policy. Eugenic sterilization was legalized in 1925 and was put into practice by declaring certain people ‘feeble minded’, committing them to state institutions, and then sterilizing them before they could return to society. Professor, author, and historian Molly Ladd-Taylor explains how and why this practice took place. Unfortunately, the lessons aren’t as clear as we’d like.

Photo: Minnesota Historical Society

The Price of Freedom: Radio version: 11:37minsThe Price of Freedom: Radio version with conclusion: 14:09minsThe Price of Freedom: Full version with archival tape: 16:47mins

 

Re-Revisionist History

Malcolm Gladwell did a wonderful episode in the first season of his show Revisionist History. It’s about the Granny Shot and Wilt Chamberlain. In true Gladwell form he intrigued us while teaching us a life lesson. I made the mistake of listening.

Photo by Dick Raphael

 

Group Home

This is the larger piece Re-Revisionist History is based off of. This is a feature/essay about working at a group home for adults with developmental and cognitive disabilities. This is a photo of me at the group home. Privacy keeps me from sharing any photos of the clients.

 

 

Cereal Mascots

I wrote a pitch for the podcast 99% Invisible about cereal mascots (Cap’n Crunch, Snap Crackle and Pop etc.) and then heard that Every Little Thing, another podcast, was thinking about doing an episode about cereal mascots. So … I figured that I had some time, might as well do a mock up of the type of producing I can do that’s more on the sonic side.

Similar segments, two different styles. by the way, I love this old school commercial art. Especially Tony the Tiger.

 

 

 

 

Here’s a link to music I’ve made for podcasts.

… and some embarrassing stuff from back in the day. Below are a couple tunes. I play all the basic instruments. For scores I make songs that sound kind of like electronic music boxes of Randy Newman songs, or elevator Daft Punk, but also can do more organic live recording as well.

 

 

Cardboard Box (and a lot of protools) TunePiano Glitch Tune Happy TuneLoopy Tune:Hip Song: Just Piano: Too Chill: Even Hipper: