nand (2023, rev. 2025)

nand was premiered by the Splice Ensemble at their 2023 Splice Festival in Boston. nand is based on the timbre and rhythmic gating of the NAND-gate feedback circuit described by Nick Collins in Handmade Electronic Music. Even though the system is quite simple (producing repeating phrases consisting of square waves, filtered noise, and silence), each gesture has microvariations that increase the entropy and attract my attention endlessly. My favorite timbres from this circuit occur while parameters are being changed–when capacitors are firing at surprising times, before they can settle into a stasis.

full score

nan is a version of the piece that is “video-and-audio-only.”