Composition

There are all sorts of songs. There are songs for global occasions, private feelings, nonsense, and commercial melodies.

I organize words into lyrics and notes into corresponding melodies and harmonies. I steward rhythms into logical forms and oversee the ideas into fixed tangible media.

As "Mr. Alison" I craft historical data into semi-familiar forms to be delivered in his particular gravelly voice. Mostly that data comes from exhaustive research and is presented as if cobbled together from hastily taken notes while travelling through time.

With Zither Trio I create series of "clouds" within which I can gently improvise. Compositionally, these generally employ techniques borrowed from "pop" formulae but they frequently also come from adapted "chance operations" inspired by the work of John Cage and others.