a short film written/directed/produced by Nathan Roberts

starring Hannah Choi, Dorian Burks, Shelby Date and E.C. Timmer

producer + director of photography - Mustafa Rony Zeno

production design - Yani K. de Leon

opening title animation - Marian Wood

original score - Brandon Woo Snyder

editor - Bethany Banks

teaser editor - Nathan Roberts

1AD - Hailey Patrick

Gaffer - Michael Tilly Parks

Location Sound Mixer - Richard Helou

Sound Design - Pete Osterlund

a production of Lightmill 65

Courses

• Music and Computers (Ko Umezaki)
• Post Tonal Theory (Amy Bauer)
• Intro to Max MSP (Mari Kimura)

Live concatenative synthesis featuring music by Sally Daley and 100 Gecs. This instrument is driven by concatenative synthesis using Data Knot in Max MSP, as well as diffusion synthesis with Stable Audio Open, which is performing some experimental corpus-augmentation ideas I’ve been working on.

The synthesis samples “My God and My All” (1990) by Sally Daley, “1,000 Gecs” (2020) by 100 Gecs, and my own voice (recorded live in performance)

Short Reflection on Sampling Other’s Music

Sally Daley, one of the artists I’m sampling here, is an American organist and composer of sacred music in the catholic tradition. I used to think of religious music as something restrained and careful, very mindful to not profane the sacred ideas it’s in dialogue with. And from this I felt conflicted about how to sample music; Songs are sacred texts of people and cultures.

At the same time, these songs that became sacred to me; artists in whom I found pieces of myself; I wanted to intertwine myself with them. Do the exact opposite of keeping them at a “sacred” distance.

More recently I’ve felt that ‘sacred’-ness does not necessarily mean ‘separate’ or ‘distant’. As music is an intensely human act, to make music that regards something as sacred means to pull that sacred being into close, intertwined connection with the self.

I sampled Sally Daley’s music as a way to intertwine myself with her. Sampling, for me here, is a means to be in communion with the texts and figures I revere.

(Shout out to @goldenfinch for turning me on to The Signifying Monkey by Henry Louis Gates Jr., which opened the door for me into the many ways (reverant and subversive) sampling has played in contemporary hip hop culture)

Excerpts

• Provided weekly, 1-hour individual private lessons
• Taught audio recording and microphone fundamentals using Reaper, for the purpose of electroacoustic composition.
• Taught composition fundamentals, as needed for each composer-student, including harmony, voice leading, score-notation, and post-tonal methods.

Jeonhyeon Joo (Haegeum), Xuanqi Liu (Electronics), and Brandon Woo Snyder (Electronics) performing an improvised set of noise music at the Sanctuary Studio in Santa Ana, CA on April 24th, 2026.

Excerpts

Abstract

This paper proposes a theoretical framework for authorship that better reflects the relationships between artists and tools in a work, and situates generative AI within a broader conversation about tool-usage in musical creation. This framework is in four layers: Tool-User, Social-Inscription, Genealogy, and Economic, each identifying a particular aspect of human-tool relationships. The Tool-User and Social-Inscription layers pull on writing by Rama Gottfried and Thor Magnusson to define how authorship has been litigated in over the past 5 decades of sampling and digital instrument design. I then build on Bruno Latour’s writings on tool-human genealogy, as well as Eric Drott’s on machine learning and the musical commons to situate how the economic and political aspects of human-tool relationships intersect with the material of a musical work. I argue that these four layers situate the disclosure of training data as particularly important for how AI tools participate in ethics of authorship.

Slides

Awards

2026 Nominee SXSW Grand Jury Award - Texas Short

Crew

Director/Writer/Editor - Sidi Wang

Composer - Brandon Woo Snyder

Producers - Erik Skattum, Santiago Pacheco

Co-Producers - Yoni Azulay, Monica Suo

Cinematographer - Samvel Tadevossian

Production Designer - Beibei Xu

Sound Designer/Sound Editing - Yueyang Feng

Cast

Mike Liu

Vania Feng

Zhimei Wen

Eric Ramos

Joe Finfer

Emily McDonald

3 Strings and Electronics

Sea Fret is a term for coastal fog that forms when warm, moist air moves over a cold sea. This suspension and transformation of water above, brought about by water below, is a typical trait of overcast weather at the beach. In this performance, the string musicians juxtapose sounds created by quick, light, rhythmic bowing movements with ones created by slow moving, precise levels of pressure of the bow and fingers on the string. Like the moisture above the sea, the actions of the musicians condense into a cloud of harmonics and noise that roll across the performance space and envelop the listener.

Lisa Yoshida (Violin), Fabricio Cavero (Viola), Hayley Qin (Cello), Xuanqi Liu (Electronics), Brandon Woo Snyder (Composer)

December 9th 2025 at the Sanctuary Studios, Santa Ana, California

Micro Documentary about Sea Fret

Excerpts

Electronics contain sounds by Freesound user: juskiddink

December 5th at the SIDIMPRO Festival for Improvisation. This performance is a free improvisation between Xuanqi and I, using our self-built live electronics laptop instruments. I am primarily live processing my voice, as well as a recording I made of a metal bowl. Pitch shifting, time stretching, and a little bit of MLP regression using Data Knot. I have no idea what Xuanqi doing, but you can hear it here! Lugubrious sliding between noise, tones, static and textures in rapid, rhythmic phrases.

Video from Xuanqi Audio recording from Brandon

Excerpts

8 Instruments and Electronics

“bppbch” - a piano when all the keys are pressed.

Bppbch considers the work required to produce a sound. The work of each musician is shown as they make music under certain physical conditions. The string instruments play without a bow, the woodwinds use a whole breath for each note. The keyboard players often use only a single finger, so there is no way to play legato. The pianist also uses his whole body to push large clusters into the piano, while the midi keyboardist plays the same clusters with a single key.

This music is inelegant, brutal and fragmented.

Consideration of the work involved in sound production also focuses on the ensemble as a whole. Normally, a conductor organizes the coordination of the ensemble. In Bppbch there is no conductor, and the musicians take on different roles of leading, following and autonomy throughout the performance.

This piece is dedicated to Luxa Schüttler and Christof Löser. Luxa, because they advised me during my studies in Germany and encouraged me to undertake this project. Christof, whose conducting, directing and curating style inspired much of the ensemble concept in this piece.

Vincent Thomann - Oboe Lyuta Kobayashi - Clarinet in B-flat Tasuku Noguchi - Tenor Saxophone Augustin Lipp - Percussion Alex Waite - Piano Selim Can Kiliçaslan - MIDI Piano Can Boerescu - MIDI Piano Malin Grass - Violin Daniela Petry - Contrabass