Bachelor of Music Oklahoma University

While at the University of Oklahoma, I recieved a degree that exercized my creative capacity while also challenging my logical and problem solving skills. My focus was on music composition, which means that I regularly worked on large projects that dealt with information over a long period of time.

Writing a symphony, is not unlike writing an application. The currency of construction is the same; there is logical organization of instructions, architecture of along term project and most importantly, debugging. It was when I later learned the craft of programming that I realised that I had been exercizing my "programmers mind" even while working in an unrelated field.

Additionally, my undergraduate work focused heavily on music technology which began my positive relationship with computers, programming and sequencing. As a field, sound design, synthesis, audio editing, audio programming, recording and studio engineering rely not only on signal chains, signal flow and digital logic, but also usually include the vangard of emerging technology.

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Degree in Algorithmic Composition UCSC

This degree is a special degree that followed a period of study under David Cope, Paul Nauert, Peter Elsea and Soren Goodman at the University of California, Santa Cruz. The study centered around the Workshop in Algorithmic Computer Music (WACM).

The program featured intensive classes on the basic techniques of algorithmic composition and algorithmic music analysis, learning and using the computer programming language Lisp. Students will create three significant software projects: a Markov-based rules program, a genetic algorithm, and software modeled on the Experiments in Musical Intelligence program. Music analysis software and techniques will also be covered in depth. Many compositional approaches will be discussed in detail, including rules-based techniques, data-driven models, genetic algorithms, neural networks, fuzzy logic, mathematical modeling, and sonification. Software programs such as Common Music, Max, Open Music, and so on will also be presented and used.

At the end, I had gained facility with Common LISP, the primary language used and had written two compositional and analytical programs with this programming language.