About
About me: I’m a musician who’s always had a passion for language…
My undergrad degree is in Music Performance (piano), and I minored in French. My graduate degree is in Electronic Music and Recording Media.
Between undergrad and grad school, I took off with my degree in classical piano and played in a pop band – go figure. I was out on the road for quite a few years. I didn’t get famous, but had a lot of fun and earned a plenty-decent income. I developed more of a love for pop music than I thought possible.
After grad school I enjoyed a stint as a part time instructor at 4 different colleges – including College of San Mateo, where I set up some of the first classes in “Music Technology” (1991-1992). That was great fun – and the teaching was what I really had wanted to do. But a full-time job teaching college was hard to come by and I felt I needed FT work. So, in 1992 I landed a job at the premier video game company – the famous Atari Games: I was a staff composer in their arcade games division in the mid-90’s, where I created music, sound effects and speech for arcade games. At that time, getting sound into a game was very tech-heavy, and I learned a ton working closely with programmers, hardware designers and animators.
From 1999-2007, I was the Director of Audio at Leapfrog (toys), where every product had sound effects, music and usually concatenated speech. During this time, I worked closely with hardware and R&D groups in choosing ICs, speakers and codecs for use in Leapfrog products. I also served as the Principal Composer for the company and wrote many of the songs that were featured in their products. Then the company downsized and I started contracting while looking for my “what’s next”.
I landed at Microsoft in 2010, where I worked for 12 years as a Principal Audio Design Manager. My team focused mainly on the design of TTS (text-to-speech voices) AI voices, which now often sound amazingly human. The AI-voice and related “Language Model” products, it turned out, was a great fit where my music, language and technical skills had significant impact.
In 2022 I retired from corporate work. I’ve continued to play keyboards in a funk & RnB band, still enjoy fresh air activities and, of course, friends & family. These past 2 years added the challenge of learning to manage a few new health challenges – but I’m getting the hang of it!
Plans for my musical expression are in a re-design phase. The feeling reminds me, in a way, of being a teenager and having so many options of what dreams to chase.