Coding

Synaesthesia Visualizer

In addition to my compositional/academic work, I am an independent developer. One project of particular interest to my compositional career is my Synaesthesia Visualizer, premiered in its alpha form at the UA Electronic Music Concert on April 7, 2015. The program is still under construction and will not be released to the public for a while yet. The program analyzes audio (live or recorded) for pitch content and generates a color representation of the most prominent frequencies. This simulates, in a way, the experience of someone with pitch-color synaesthesia. From a listener's perspective, the program reveals interesting patterns in sound that may not be immediately audible. From a composer's perspective, the program provides another way of visualizing a spectral analysis and another possible method of meaningfully structuring a composition. From a performer's perspective, the program allows for a new type of multi-media performance, especially intriguing in its application to improvisatory works, where an audio improvisation can become a visual one in real time, and performers can adjust not only to what they hear but also to what they see. There are additional uses for this program as well. For example, it could be used effectively as an ear-training tool to teach pitch recognition, or it could be used to help people with impaired hearing to appreciate and understand music more fully. The program is written in C# using the SFML and N-Audio libraries.

Other projects

Other substantial coding projects include:

A suite of free tools to improve the experience of tabletop gaming

An application to assist in the modeling and simulation of disaster relief scenarios for FEMA

An independent visual novel for which I am the lead programmer.