I'm a guitarist and analytical musicologist whose scholarly interests include post-tonal theory, formal analysis, and rock music, particularly improvisation and psychedelia. The music of the Grateful Dead has been my primary research area in recent years.

Recent Work (~10 years)

“‘Beneath the calm face of the sea,’ aggregate completion in ‘Crazy Fingers’.” Popular/American Culture Association Annual Conference. New Orleans, LA. April 19, 2025.

“Prepare Yourself to Be Open”: In Memoriam, Phil Lesh.” Popular/American Culture Association Annual Conference. New Orleans, LA. April 18, 2025.

“More Weir(d) Guitar.” Popular/American Culture Association Annual Conference. Chicago, IL. March 29, 2024.

“A Lost Prelude: When Robert Hunter Directed the Grateful Dead.” Popular/American Culture Association Annual Conference. Chicago, IL. March 29, 2024.

“Weir(d) Rhythm Guitar.” Popular/American Culture Association Annual Conference. San Antonio, TX. April 7, 2023.

“Rambling and Wandering: Grateful Dead Harmonic Progressions.” In The Grateful Dead Studies Association Proceedings, Volume 2 (2022): 46–61. Originally presented at the Popular/American Culture Association Conference. Virtual Conference (Seattle, WA). April 15, 2022.

“What Does Psychedelic Music Sound Like?” Popular/American Culture Association Annual Conference. Virtual Conference (Boston, MA). June 3, 2021.

“Workingman’s Dead?” Southwest Popular/American Culture Association Annual Conference. Albuquerque, NM. February 21, 2020.

“‘Silence in the Studio!’: Collage as Retransition in Pink Floyd’s ‘Atom Heart Mother Suite’.” The Routledge Companion to Popular Music: Expanding Approaches, edited by Ciro Scotto, Kenneth Smith, and John Brackett. Routledge, 2018.

“Psychedelic Masquerade: Sgt. Pepper and the Summer of Love.” Revisiting the Summer of Love, Rethinking the Counterculture. San Francisco, CA. July 29, 2017. Also presented at the Summit of Creativity: A Celebration of the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Ann Arbor, MI. June 1, 2017.

“There’s Nothing Like A Grateful Dead Analysis.” “All Graceful Instruments,” The Grateful Dead in Context – An Interdisciplinary Symposium. New York, NY. June 23, 2017.

“The Road[s] Not Taken.” Southwest Popular/American Culture Association Annual Conference. Albuquerque, NM. February 16, 2017.

Recent classes:

• Listening to Pink Floyd
• Fretboard Skills

Additional classes:

• Rock Analysis
• Post-Tonal Theory
• Tonal Harmony

Ph.D., Music Theory  (1997)
Graduate Center, City University of New York