davidad

18-year-old Ph.D. student at MIT,
studying the nature of human cognition through programming language theory;
amateur photographer and musician

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An attempt at playing clarinet. It’s bad. Really, you shouldn’t listen.

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“The Snowman” - from the animated feature (not Frosty!).

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“The Snowman” again, but with significantly more artistic liberty in terms of vocal harmony.

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“Simple Gifts” - rendered simply, with voice and ukelele.

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Latin guitar/percussion/vocal vamping. Not actually very authentically Latin at all. Whatever. :D

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A prototype arrangement of a Jewish tune, “Eshet Chayil.” All voices are me, and all were recorded in about a couple hours without actually writing down any music.

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An attempt at singing in French. You have been warned.

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A solo piano piece, maybe a little influenced by Jason Robert Brown.

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This is a remix of a bunch of in-jokes involving my good friend Demetri Sampas, who spawns in-jokes constantly. Perhaps it’ll still be funny even if you don’t understand any of the references…

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“Carnelians,” a piece written by sci-fi author Catherine Asaro as part of her Diamond Star project, was arranged by me as above (all K2000VP-synthesized instruments). She wound up re-recording it in an actual studio, but based on some of the ideas I introduced here. (I like my version better, but I’m obviously biased. :D)

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An attempted cover of Gary Jules’ “Mad World.” This was before I learned to sing at all. >_> And before I got a real microphone, too.

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The famous MIT rap: “Yo, it’s me, I’m David A D…”

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“Soerdwa”: A very long, loop-assisted improvisation by myself and my suitemate Greg Little.

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This was a demonstration of my ability to play guitar without actually being able to finger chords properly - I multitracked all six strings. :-D

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“Jazzy2.” Synthesized on K2000VP, but sequenced using seq24. (Cutting edge!) I was under the impression that using an offboard sequencer would make my composition technique better somehow. >_>