Music! Here I store my various music projects. This page serves as an introduction to my musical skills, while I have a separate one for dizi (笛子) materials, and yet another one for compositions. Eventually if I have even more digital music, it will have a page on its own, but for now, it'll just be hosted on this page.
Experience
I have been making music since I was very young. My first instrument was the melodica at 6, but it was for a one-off kindergarten graduation performance. Since then, I have played various instruments over the years, primarily as the woodwind champion at the Teck Ghee Community Club Chinese Orchestra (德义民众俱乐部华乐团). I have also jammed regularly with the Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) Kiltie Band, as well as the Flute Choir of CMU, when I was an undergraduate there.
My proficiencies are provided in the table below, in rough descending order of familiarity.
| Instrument | Familiarity | Year Started |
|---|---|---|
| dizi (笛子, specifically 小笛、梆笛、曲笛、大笛) | Lead/Solo | 1992 |
| xiao (箫, specifically 洞箫) | Lead/Solo | 1999 |
| Mountain Ocarina | Solo | 2007 |
| Concert Flute | Lead (华乐); 2nd Flute (CB, FC) | 2008 |
| Piccolo | Lead (华乐); Amateur | 2011 |
| Bass Flute | Cello-cover (华乐); Amateur | 2016 |
| bawu (巴乌) | Amateur | 2017 |
| Soprano Saxophone | Amateur | 2006 |
| Alto Saxophone | Amateur | 2008 |
| Soprano Clarinet | Amateur | 2009 |
| Pocket Saxophone | Amateur | 2009 |
| Tenor Saxophone | Amateur | 2019 |
| xun (埙) | Amateur | 2020 |
A side on terms used in familiarity: ``amateur'' means I know the basics of the instrument and can play tunes on it, but have never played in an official performance (one-off or consistently). Some instruments have more than one level of familiarity---they represent the manner in which I have been playing them against the expected use case. So for Concert Flute, we find that I have played lead with it in the Chinese Orchestra (华乐) context, but was Second Flute in Concert Band (CB) and Flute Choir (FC).
Such qualitative statements are necessary because I have not and will not take any examinations to obtain a grade for my level of instrument playing. Making music is my hobby---I play these instruments for fun.
That said, I can furnish a performance résumé if requested. Note that since I am not a professional musician, the recorded items will be less stellar.
Instruments
I used to keep my list of instruments here, but the list was starting to get a little unwieldy (haha), so it has been spawned off to its own page.
Digital Music
I used to think that I would spend time creating digital music, either original or from sampling/remixing. It turns out that I did not really have that kind of interest. So this section is currently quite sad and have only one piece of work hosted on Dropbox to avoid bandwidth issues.
- Frogs in the Cave, the final composition for the Introduction to Computer Music class that I took in Spring 2009.
These days, as I am slowly evolving my role from performer to that of composer, I am focusing on composition instead.
Nyquist Tuning Layer
Back in Spring 2009, I took a fun class (Introduction to Computer Music). For my final project, I wrote a tuning layer that sits between the user program and the underlying Nyquist system.
Check out the help file over in the legacy section of this website re-write/re-design and download the code from there.