Ken's Blog #12
The Piano Has Other Secrets
A few thoughts about the people, the music, and the sounds that stay with us.
I’ve always had a thing for the piano. But not necessarily the piano everyone knows.
Of course, I love a beautiful melody, a great chord progression, and all the things that make the instrument such a wonderful companion. But I’ve also been fascinated by what happens when you start looking beyond the keyboard. What’s inside that big wooden box? What else can it do? What sounds are hiding in there that we haven’t really paid attention to?
Over the years, a few composers have helped shape the way I think about those questions. Three in particular come to mind: George Crumb, Dave Grusin, and Stephen Scott.
They each approached the piano from very different directions, but they all reminded me that there’s a lot more going on inside an instrument than we sometimes give it credit for.
George Crumb
George Crumb was an early inspiration in that respect. His music opened up a whole new world of sounds for me. He wasn’t afraid to get inside the piano, literally, and find things that most of us wouldn’t have thought to look for. Plucking strings, striking them, creating strange and beautiful textures. It was fascinating. He made me think differently about the instrument.
Dave Grusin
Then there’s Dave Grusin (my hero). His music for The Firm really caught my attention. I loved the piano writing, and the performance. There was, and is, something about his overall musical language, and atmosphere that has stayed with me. He told the story. The music worked. It is so cool!
As someone who has spent a good part of his life writing music for picture, I’ve always appreciated that kind of musical storytelling. Dave Grusin always puts the right notes, in the right place, and I always want more.
Stephen Scott
But the person I really want to talk about is Stephen Scott.
I knew Stephen a little through Colorado College. We had a small, rather personal connection, and I remember him as an absolutely lovely man. I wish I had spent more time with him. I really do.
You occasionally meet someone whose work you admire, but there’s also something about the person that stays with you. Stephen was one of those people.
His work with the Bowed Piano Ensemble was extraordinary. If you’ve never heard it, I encourage you to seek it out.
Imagine a grand piano with its lid removed, surrounded by musicians, each doing something quite different to the strings. Bows, nylon filaments, guitar picks, and other objects become part of the process. The sounds are sometimes delicate, sometimes haunting, sometimes almost orchestral. And yet, somehow, it’s still a piano.
I was fascinated by what Stephen was doing. Not just because it was unusual, but because he made it musical. Anybody can make a strange noise. Finding a way to make that noise say something is another matter entirely.
Stephen understood that.
I never actually had the opportunity to see his ensemble perform in person, which is something I wish I had done. I’ve since watched quite a bit of his work on YouTube, and I’m still fascinated by it.
There’s something wonderful about watching Stephen demonstrate what he’d discovered inside a piano. You can see the curiosity, the thought, and the sheer joy of exploring something that most of us would never think to explore.
I wish I’d spent more time with him. He was a lovely man, and I’m grateful our paths crossed at Colorado College.
For anyone interested, here are two wonderful opportunities to experience a little of what Stephen created:
Stephen Scott demonstrating the Bowed Piano
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Stephen+Scott+bowed+piano+demonstration+Colorado+College
The Bowed Piano Ensemble – Entrada
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Stephen+Scott+Bowed+Piano+Ensemble+Entrada
Finding My Own Way
Which brings me to my own little adventure.
I just finished a new piano-based album for Sonic Quiver, and I’ve had a wonderful time exploring some of these ideas. I’ve been using prepared-piano techniques, working with the strings, finding percussive sounds, little bits of texture, and all sorts of unexpected colors. Some of it leans more airy, and haunting. Some of it is very percussive, and aggresive.
That’s what is part of the fun.
I suppose, after all these years of writing music, I’m still curious. I’m still looking for that sound I haven’t heard before, or that little musical idea that makes me stop and think, “Well, that’s interesting!”
I owe a debt of gratitude to people like Crumb, Grusin, and especially Stephen Scott for reminding me that music doesn’t always have to follow the rules we’ve become accustomed to.
And perhaps that’s the nice thing about being a composer. You never really have to stop looking.
The piano has 88 keys, but there’s an awful lot more to it than that.
The album will be finding it's way into the world very soon. I hope you'll give it a listen. Who knows? Maybe you'll discover a few piano secrets of your own.
Ken's Blog #11
A Little Change in the Sound Gallery
You may notice something a little different in the Sound Gallery, and I promise to make this one brief.
The music previews are now short clips—about 30 seconds each, beginning at the start of the piece. If you’d like to hear the complete, full-length version, simply sign in as a Site Member. Membership is free.
Why the change?
Well… I’ve been thinking about the strange new world we find ourselves in as composers.
I want people to be able to discover the music, hear what a piece is about, and decide whether it speaks to them. But I also want to be a little more careful about putting complete recordings out in the wild where they can be easily captured, repurposed, fed into AI systems, or otherwise used without my knowledge or permission.
So this is my compromise.
The short previews let you explore the music. Site Members can listen to the complete works.
The Sound Gallery is intended to be a collection of finished music for picture, film, documentary, installation and visual storytelling—not a traditional production-music library. These are full pieces of music, and I want to keep them that way.
And, of course, if something catches your ear and you need a particular version, edit, arrangement, or something entirely new, that’s where I come in.
Thanks for listening—and thanks for supporting music made by an actual human being sitting in a room somewhere, still moving notes around by hand.
— Ken
Ken'Blog #10
A Small Change of Direction
Every once in a while, you have to step back from what you’re doing and ask yourself a fairly simple question: Is this still working?
I’ve been asking myself that question lately.
For much of this year, I’ve been putting a lot more energy into the Art Music side of my work. I’ve enjoyed it enormously. I still do. There’s something wonderful about making music simply because you want to make it, without having to explain where it belongs or what it’s supposed to accomplish.
But somewhere along the way, I realized that I had been looking at my own music a little too narrowly.
Art Music isn’t something I suddenly discovered this year.
It’s one part of what I’ve been doing all along.
For more than four decades I’ve written music for films, television, documentaries, commercials, theater, performances, libraries, publishers, and all sorts of things I probably couldn’t have predicted when I started. I’ve written serious music, silly music, beautiful music, strange music—and occasionally music that manages to be several of those things at once.
That’s the part that feels more like me.
So I’m making a small change.
I’ve changed the name of the Art Music page to The Sound Collection.
Not because I’m moving away from Art Music. Quite the opposite.
I’m making room for it.
The Sound Collection will be a place for the music I’ve created and published myself—the pieces that are perhaps a little less tied to the traditional production-music world and a little more personal. But they’ll sit alongside the other things I’ve always done.
In other words, I’m not starting over.
I’m embracing more of what I’ve already done.
And that idea also carries over into the new rate card that will be coming shortly.
Some of the music in the Sound Collection will be available as finished pieces, but it can also be customized. A piece might have the right basic idea for a film, a documentary, a podcast, a presentation—or something I haven’t even thought of yet—but need to be shorter, longer, rearranged, re-orchestrated, or otherwise shaped to fit the project.
That’s something I’ve always enjoyed: taking music and making it work.
So rather than thinking of the Sound Collection as a shelf of finished recordings, I’m thinking of it more as a workbench.
Here’s some music I’ve made.
Maybe something catches your ear.
Maybe it’s almost right.
And maybe we can make it exactly right.
That feels like a much better representation of what I actually do.
There’s also something appealing about simplifying things. Not just in music, but generally in life. I’m discovering that I don’t necessarily need to keep creating more and more categories to explain what I do. Sometimes it’s better to take everything you’ve learned, everything you’ve made, and simply put it together in a way that makes sense.
So that’s what I’m doing.
The Art Music isn’t going anywhere.
It’s just coming home to the rest of the music.
And there’s more on the way. Neoteric Volume Two is already taking shape, so this little change of direction is hardly the end of anything.
If anything, it feels like the beginning of a much bigger—and much more me—collection.
Baby steps.
But occasionally, baby steps take you somewhere pretty interesting.
Ken's Blog #9
Why Composers Need to Talk to Each Other More
Composing is, by its nature, a solitary profession.
Most of us spend our days alone with our thoughts, our instruments, and increasingly, our computers. We wrestle with melodies, deadlines, orchestration challenges, technology, and the occasional existential question about whether anyone will ever hear the cue we’re working on.
The past few months have reminded me why getting out of the studio matters.
I recently had lunch with composers Jerome Gilmer and Ofer Ben-Amots, and also a late-night beer with video game composer Bonny Baez. Three great composers. Three very different careers. Three different musical worlds.
Yet I walked away from each conversation energized.
What struck me wasn’t how different our careers have been, but how much common ground we share. Whether writing concert music, teaching, scoring video games, composing for film, or creating production music, we all face many of the same questions.
How do we stay creative?
How do we adapt to a changing industry?
How do we balance artistic aspirations with the practical realities of making a living?
How do we continue growing after years—or decades—of writing music?
The answers are different for each composer, but the conversations themselves are invaluable.
There is a tendency among composers to work in isolation. We become so focused on our own projects that we sometimes forget there is a larger creative community around us. Yet every meaningful conversation with another composer seems to open a door. A new idea emerges. A different perspective appears. A challenge that felt unique suddenly turns out to be shared by many others.
I’ve discovered that some of my best professional development hasn’t come from just a book, a class, or a conference. It has come from sitting across the table from another composer and simply talking.
Not networking.
Not competing.
Not comparing résumés.
Just talking.
Listening to another composer’s journey reminds us that there is no single path through a creative life. Some careers are built in academia. Others in film, television, games, libraries, concert halls, or combinations of all of the above. Every path is different, and every path contains lessons worth hearing.
After over four decades of writing music—and a lifetime admiring composers—I’ve come to appreciate these conversations more than ever. They remind me that while we often create alone, we don’t have to navigate the journey alone.
A good conversation with another composer won’t write the next piece for you.
But it just might help you hear it more clearly.
Ken's Blog #8
“The AI didn't replace the composer.
It replaced the empty room.”
I expected a calculator.
Instead, I found myself having the kind of conversations I once had at Juilliard — long, searching discussions about structure, pacing, orchestration, and whether an idea was truly saying what it needed to say. At times, the experience has felt strangely familiar, as though Vincent Persichetti and Stanley Wolfe were once again leaning over my shoulder, asking questions, nudging me forward, and reminding me to trust the music and keep working through the uncertainty.
In other words, what I found was not a machine generating answers, but a remarkably useful conversational partner in the composing process.
For most of my career, writing music meant sitting alone in a room with manuscript paper, a piano, and eventually a computer screen. There are wonderful moments in that process, but also long stretches of uncertainty that nobody really talks about. You write eight bars, then delete six. You wonder whether an idea is clever or terrible. You question form, pacing, orchestration, and even whether you should continue at all that day.
That solitude has always been part of the profession.
Recently, almost by accident, I began using AI during the writing process. Not to write music for me, and certainly not to replace musicians or composers, but as a kind of ongoing conversation while I worked.
To my surprise, it became genuinely useful.
Not because it generated finished art. It doesn’t. The music is still mine, every note of it. But it helped in ways I did not expect: discussing form, reacting to titles, helping me think through ensemble sizes, suggesting alternative approaches to structure, and sometimes simply helping me continue moving forward when a project felt stuck.
In other words, the AI didn’t replace the composer.
It replaced the empty room.
That distinction matters.
Composing has always involved an enormous amount of internal dialogue. What AI offered was an external version of that dialogue — available instantly, endlessly patient, and oddly effective at helping organize creative thought without demanding ownership of the work itself.
I understand the fear surrounding AI in the arts.
Some of it is justified. But my own experience has been far less dramatic and far more practical. I have not found a machine capable of replacing artistic identity, life experience, emotional intuition, or musical taste. What I found instead was a tool that helped reduce friction between ideas and execution.
Oddly enough, it has made me feel more creative, not less.
That may ultimately be the most important point. Creativity is not merely the production of material; it is the ability to remain engaged, curious, and willing to continue exploring despite uncertainty. Anything that helps sustain that process without diminishing the humanity behind the work deserves, at the very least, thoughtful consideration.
And perhaps even more surprisingly, it has made the process feel a little less isolated — although I should immediately point out that my wife has never allowed me to spend much time feeling isolated in the first place. She remains, quite enthusiastically, my most consistent conversational partner.
