About:

Though most known to musicians as the founder of Noise Engineering, Stephen has been creating music and sound for nearly his entire life. Early experience started with childhood piano lessons and playing bass in an orchestra throughout his teens. As the use of computers to make music became feasible Stephen experimented with every format he could. This eventually grew into a small MIDI and analog studio. Around this time Stephen was also finishing his undergraduate degree in Mathematics while making his living developing software. Soon after in a fit of extreme wanderlust he uprooted his entire life and moved to Dallas, Texas to get another degree. This degree was for video game programming and led to Stephen moving to Los Angeles for a job. Eleven years of audio software development for video games ensued. Stephen worked closely with sound designers to implement systems and tools for a popular video game franchise. During this time was Stephen’s second introduction to modular synths which rapidly became an obsession and eventually his next step professionally.

Notes on the piece:

This piece is one of many in a series (currently around 35 hours of recordings) of extemporaneous improvisations using a small modular case (208 HP + external sequencer) that has been evolving over nearly two years. This case has been the inspiration and the proving ground for many of Noise Engineering’s recent products. This jam was the first test jam using the recently released Viol Ruina. It is the grittiest in the entire series of recordings in large part due to Viol Ruina. It was recorded on May 16, 2019.

Links:

https://stephenmccaul.bandcamp.com/

https://noise.engineering

@noiseeng