Devices

Symbolic Sound Kyma (Paca / Pacarana)

A graphical sound-design environment. The Paca is dedicated DSP hardware, a small orange box, rack-mountable, not a plugin inside a laptop. Maker: Symbolic Sound Corporation (Carla Scaletti and Kurt Hebel), Champaign, Illinois. kyma.symbolicsound.com

I beta-tested Kyma and am credited on the Kyma X startup screen. Lucibel Crater looping and processing. Metal Machine Trio: live Kyma processing of the band. 2011 Lou Reed European tour: multiple rack-mounted Pacas. Lulu at the Berliner Ensemble: Kyma processing and Continuum/Kyma playing. The Book of Sarth score is Kyma-drenched. I built SeqOSC in it, a new kind of synthesis, a relative of AM synthesis derived from exploring the analogies between rhythm and timbre. Junior Dad: Wasserman’s electric upright through Kyma, first session at Lou’s apartment.

Euro tour · Book of Sarth

Haken Continuum Fingerboard

A long neoprene playing surface that tracks finger position and pressure in three dimensions. Continuous pitch, not keys. Often driving Kyma. Maker: Lippold Haken / Haken Audio, Champaign, Illinois. hakenaudio.com

Lucibel Crater and the Reed years. In Metal Machine Trio, Lou and I both had Continuums onstage. Yellow Pony: Continuum plus live resampling of Reed and Anderson’s voices. Lulu: dual Continuum improvisations with a live string section. Wikipedia names me as an advocate.

After watching videos of me playing it at Lollapalooza, Lippold Haken said: I lost sleep. I even dreamt about it last night. It was one of those thousands-of-people-watching nightmares.

Continuum Fingerboard · Walking the road that only you can see

Ableton Live

A DAW that treats clips, warping, and devices as a performance instrument. Maker: Ableton AG, Berlin. ableton.com

I was an Ableton Live endorser; the 2008 REDCAT program and the 2014 Asia Society Sunken Cathedral notes say so. The Book of Sarth track “Awakening (To Blacklist)” was built in Live: 60 cycle hum run through plugins until a frequency shifter became the melody. How I did it, with the audio.

Runway

Generative video and image studio. The motion end of Visual Reference Prompting. Maker: Runway AI, Inc. runwayml.com

Burlap connects to Runway. I entered Runway’s 48-hour film competition in the spring of 2025, and Burlap came out of that: the toolchain was just unworkable, just completely unworked for anything I wanted to do or how I thought a professional workspace should be.

Bass

My first instrument. In my teens I stopped buying comic books to save up for my first bass guitar. Number19: bass and keys. Lucibel Crater: keys, bass, loops. Reed’s “Peggy Sue” (Rave On Buddy Holly): bass, a Moog Little Phatty.