Album - String Theory
Released On March 14th 2025
Listen on bandcamp here
String Theory is both a musical and conceptual homage to the mysteries of the universe. Named after the theoretical physics framework that seeks to unify all fundamental forces, this album explores the idea that everything, from the tiniest vibration to the grandest emotion, is connected by invisible threads.
The album draws inspiration from the TV series The Big Bang Theory. Particularly its quirkiest physicist: Sheldon Cooper. As well as from real scientific concepts like superposition, resonance, and quantum entanglement.
The album was released on March 14th which is Pi Day. It’s also Einstein’s birthday and the anniversary of Stephen Hawking’s death. The release date commemorates the pioneers of physics.
Built primarily using AAS String Studio, UVI IRCAM pianos, Pigments, and GForce M-Tron Pro, the album features both traditional and unconventional uses of stringed instruments, often blending prepared piano textures with ambient synths, layered drums, and sample-based performances.
Track Highlights
Andalusia
Andalusia opens the album with warmth and atmosphere, offering sounds reminiscent of southern Spain. At its heart is a Spanish nylon-string guitar, whose melodic phrasing evokes twilight serenades and flickering firelight. The guitar carries the emotional core of the piece.
Supporting it is a simple groove with kick, snare, and a hi-hat, giving the track its steady rhythm without drawing too much attention. Beneath the melody sits an acoustic bass, run through a tube bass amp for a rounded, vintage tone that keeps everything grounded.
Adding a human dimension is Bronte, whose wordless vocal lines thread delicately through the guitar’s melody. Her presence brings warmth and intimacy.
You can almost feel the Andalusian air.
Khoomei
Named after the Tibetan throat singing tradition, Khoomei is a homage to both the vocal technique and Sheldon Cooper’s obsession with it in The Big Bang Theory.
The piece begins with a simple kick and snare pattern, sometimes joined by hi-hats, that sets a deliberate, hypnotic pace. Anchoring the center is an IRCAM Prepared Piano; a quirky, detuned instrument with metallic overtones that evokes plucked strings or an ancient dulcimer.
The real magic, though, lies in the vocal elements. A bass vocal employing the deep harmonic textures of throat singing: humming and resonating. It’s joined by a tenor vocal that floats slightly above, providing contrast and melodic phrasing. One is primal; the other is serene.
Balancing these elements is an FM synth patch from Baervaag, panned right, adding shimmer and harmonic glue to the arrangement. Panned left is the tenor vocal, creating a stereo dialogue around the central drone and prepared piano.
Resonant Threads
Resonant Threads is a minimalist, percussive dialogue between rhythm and resonance. The track features only two instruments, yet manages to carve out a strikingly full and compelling atmosphere.
The backbone is a boutique mallet drum kit, delivering a rich, boomy groove that gives the piece weight and momentum. Layered over this is IRCAM Prepared Piano 2. The mute-pick articulation of the piano makes it act like a rhythmic partner to the drums, blurring the line between melody and percussion.
The interplay between these two elements gives the piece a kind of primal energy. The title Resonant Threads nods both to string theory and also the literal resonating strings of the piano.
Eastern Entanglement
Eastern Entanglement is a rhythmic, percussive piece that blends organic grooves with Eastern melodic sensibilities.
The rhythmic foundation is laid by a tight, organic drum kit. Supporting this is a semi-electric acoustic bass, which plays in close lockstep with the drums, reinforcing the pulse with subtle groove variations.
The harmonic backbone of the piece comes from Galaxy Instruments’ Avant-Garde Claire, a prepared piano that feels both percussive and melodic.
Floating above all of this is a Tomophone patch. It’s a synthetic wind instrument, part flute, part reed organ, and is the key to the track’s Eastern flavor. It weaves expressive notes over the rhythmic bed, bringing a sense of spaciousness and cultural character.
The track evokes a sense of mystery and connectedness and is a nod to quantum entanglement with an Eastern twist.
Orbital
Orbital captures a sense of circular motion and spatial drift, evoking planetary orbits, subatomic spins, or the quiet pull of gravity in space.
The track is anchored by a subtle yet steady drum groove, consisting of kick, snare, side-stick, and hi-hats.
Supporting this motion is a Pigments bass patch, which blurs the line between a synth bass and a processed electric bass guitar.
The harmonic heart of the track comes from UVI’s IRCAM Prepared Piano. It’s this piano part that most literally suggests the track’s orbital nature, with rhythmic pulses that glide and loop like celestial bodies.
Rounding out the arrangement is a Pigments patch: a bell-like tone, drenched in reverb, that adds an ethereal, crystalline sparkle. It floats above the mix.
Orbital captures the motions that are present everywhere around us.
Superposition
A single-instrument piece that manages to say so much with so little. Taking its name from the quantum mechanics principle that particles can exist in multiple states simultaneously.
The entire composition is built on a single AAS String Studio patch. The sound blends the warmth of a Rhodes-style electric piano with the airy resonance of bowed strings.
The track floats along in B Dorian, a scale often associated with introspection and unresolved emotion. There are no drums, no bass, no other instrumentation. Just the fluttering, wistful phrases of the String Studio patch reverberating through space, giving the piece a feeling of limitless suspension.
The mood is contemplative, dreamlike, and wide open. Superposition feels like standing still in a place where time and space haven't yet made up their mind.
Dark Echoes
The foundation of the track came from an experiment with AAS Chromaphone 3 (CV3), specifically its Objeq Oscillator. What emerged was a dark metallic bass patch: not a walking bass line. Each note in the B Dorian scale lingers, reverberates, and decays naturally, giving the piece its namesake. Dark echoes, spreading ripples through the track’s sonic fabric.
Supporting this sparse but striking bass is a DMX drum kit, heavily tape-saturated and compressed, giving it grit and vintage punch.
Floating above it all is Bronte’s ethereal voice: wordless, distant, and atmospheric. Her presence adds emotion and a sense of humanity.
Bending the Fabric
This track lives at the intersection of physics pun and retro playfulness. The title Bending the Fabric nods to “bending the fabric of spacetime,” a foundational concept in relativity. However, it also doubles as a reference to the pitch bends that define the track’s expressive guitar lead. It’s a moment of lighthearted fun on an otherwise reflective album, and it fully leans into the boomer-bends vibe.
The centerpiece is a Pigments 6 patch that mimics a rock-style lead guitar. The MIDI pitch bend wheel gets a workout here, warping the notes into dramatic curves and slides, as though channeling a solo straight out of a 1980s stadium anthem.
Supporting the solo are two more layers:
A drum groove made up of electronic indie-style kit sounds. It’s punchy, tight, and synthetic, giving the piece its modern rhythmic drive.
A synth bass, also from Pigments, using a Juno like patch. It’s not quite a traditional electric bass, but rooted enough to keep the groove moving forward.
There's a confident swagger to the track like a space physicist moonlighting as a rock guitarist.
Under Night Skies
This evocative instrumental captures the stillness and introspection of stargazing. Under Night Skies is a contemplative track with a sense of warmth and solitude, like sitting on a quiet rooftop or desert ridge, eyes skyward, lost in thought.
The track features five instruments, each playing a specific emotional role:
Drums: A modern soul and R&B kit lays the rhythmic foundation. The groove is syncopated, built on a punchy kick-snare backbeat with expressive hi-hats.
A fingered electric bass, walking gently beneath the drums, locks in with the groove and adds weight.
An arpeggiated Latin guitar.
UVI’s Prepared Piano 2. The patch creates textural fifths from single notes that mesh well with the Latin guitar.
Baritone Guitar: Around 1:54, the track takes a cinematic turn with the introduction of a Desolate Baritone Guitar from e-instruments. It feels like it wandered out of a Tarantino western. Its reverb-soaked, sparse, and haunting, evoking a windswept desert under the stars.
M-Theory
A fitting finale to the album, M-Theory is a sweeping, cinematic piece that blends orchestral grandeur with futuristic pulse. Named after one of the boldest ideas in theoretical physics. It’s the unifying theory that links all string theories into a multidimensional framework. The track captures the scale and mystery of that concept through a powerful fusion of analog depth, Mellotron textures, and industrial rhythm.
The arrangement unfolds in three movements, each layering new dimensions of energy and texture.
Final Thoughts
String Theory tries to capture the sounds of space, time and the universe. It tries to teleport you to other places using sound.
Where Preternatural was ghostly and internal, String Theory stretches outward. It invites the listener to tune into something far deeper and more ancient: the universe itself.