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Ancient Scrolling: A Social Media Detox Soundtrack In a world moving at full-digital-speed-ahead, the intention for this record was crystal clear: to create music that can accompany someone during a ‘social media detox.’ And, in order to best reflect such an intention, that music was to be created whilst the musicians – ourselves – were undergoing a seven-day social media detox. It wasn’t known exactly what lessons would be learned, or what kind of music would emerge… But over only seven days, a plethora of experiences emerged to inform us musicians during the creative process: observations of a dichotomy between loneliness and peace-of-mind, the recognition of differences between authentic communication and staged conversation, and the discovery of opportunities to cultivate personal discipline and renewed relationships with social media, to name a few. And what was particularly fascinating for the three multi-instrumentalists (Johnny Butler, woodwinds; E Scott Lindner, guitar/bass/engineering; and myself, Adam Ahuja, keyboards/drums), was that musical communication itself became an ultimate prescription for human connection. The music was conversationally-driven, mainly improvisational, dynamically sensitive, and more often than not, spacious and ambient. The album is diverse in instrumentation, yet consistent in its feeling. The music was created over a two-day span.

The People 2020: 40 composers co-write and record album on the events of 2020 in a 14-day span 40 composers from the NYC music community and around the globe, seeking a way to deeply speak about the times, collaborated to write and record an album called “The People of 2020” over a 14-day period (a ‘quarantine length’ from 3/29/20 – 4/12/20).  Each musician had a 24-hour window to write and record their own part and pass it to the next musician.  The album’s songs and moods are based on the ‘social curve’ of 2020, entitled “The Climb,” “Flattening,” and “Slide Out.”   Our lives have all been transformed.  In so many ways.  No question.     As musicians, we document the times in our own way.  We use sound to express ideas, culture… and experiences.  But in a way, the events of this year have been so unreal, that it’s become almost too obvious or even easy to achieve the goals that artists usually toil upon to ultimately transmit to society.  Case in point: perhaps a simple springtime photograph of the streets of Manhattan is all that is required to catalog enough meaningful sentiment right now.  Looking back, maybe we will

“The Shaping of Harmony” A Brief History of Temperament in Western Civilization by Adam Ahuja   The modern quantum physicist finds himself in a moment of imperfection when studying particle physics. As soon as he comes to understand the position of a particle, he cannot measure its velocity. On the other hand, as soon as she measures the velocity, she knows not the particle’s position. It is a game of constant trickery.   Humanity’s relationship with harmony, in many ways, has been similar to the quantum quandary. There is an inherent complication when considering the tonal position in a passage of music and its related harmony. On one hand, harmonies and melodies can be understood as flowing forth as natural whole number ratios stemming from a single position, the key center. However, when the tonal center moves from one position to the next, the ratio of harmonies must then move to accommodate the new key, as we strive, on some level, to maintain mathematically purity from one key to the next. In theory, this doesn’t sound too complicated; we may just shift harmonies to accommodate their new tonal center. This does tend to be the case when performing music for

“Over the Rainbow (live-looping)” releases on Infinity Gritty / Ropeadope Records In the 80th year anniversary of its original publishing, Adam Ahuja gives us a re-imagined, chill-synth, indie-jazz take on the beautiful classic melody, “Over the Rainbow.” The remake is performed as a multi-instrumental live-loop, and features a slow-evolving 30-chord progression paired with a somewhat-mysterious, dimly-lit, alt-pop vocal. Ahuja draws out simplicity amidst complexity, and conjures up feelings of yearning and intrigue as he builds the performance instrument-by-instrument in a single studio take: layering stereo keys, electric bass and vocals, swaggy live drums, a baby-grand, and robotic live-looping effects, sending the listener off through the caverns of singularity. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fgPSJAezfI

I had a blast playing at Relix Magazine, a live set filmed by Will Schwerd. And as usual, I brought up some audience members to make and produce a song together at the end (in this case, some chill Relix staff members). Had an awesome time. Check out the video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpmDbZXae4w