KHSHK

KHSHK is a series of works exploring musical microtiming as a primary compositional element—particularly how it translates between physical and digital formats, and its relationship to the patterns and shapes of body and environment. The series was developed via residencies and collaborations in Mexico City in 2023-24 and completed in London during 2025-26.

Microtiming refers to timing variations in musical beats, phrases and patterns. It is often linked with human performance and serves as a vehicle for groove, “feel”, expression, unpredictability in a musical piece. In traditional Western music these variations are generally considered part of performance rather than composition. However, in my own experiences microtiming has a significant impact on how I perceive a piece, enough to consider it an essential component of the final work.

Much recorded music has taken advantage of this expressive aspect, particularly in the realm of sampling and groove-based electronic music. These works take the idea a step further, deconstructing and rearranging microtiming as a musical element the way some contemporary composers do with pitch, “macro” rhythm, and timbre. Through a series of live sets and composed pieces, and a variety of genres, the KHSHK series unpacks the different ways microtiming manifests in music, how this is influenced by body, environment and recording mediums, and how these can inform new compositional language with expressive timing at its core.

MTRL

MTRL explores microtiming via sample-based deconstructed club music. It investigates an abstracted, fragmented idea of “groove” beyond pulse. Can the expressive timing embedded in patterns and phrases still make you want to move your body, even without a steady beat?

This work is built from patterns and phrases improvised on a MIDI controller in free time, each with a similar “feel”, but without a common meter or BPM. I translated these via processed percussive samples from the residency space at Radio Nopal in Mexico City. Each section of the track has 6-7 concurrent lines maximum, and each uses a single sample with limited variation, throwing the timing of the phrases and their relationships into sharp relief—akin to a digital graph of expressive timing. The “material” (MTRL) textures of the samples mirror the humanised timing of the performances, while the use of loops and the dynamic rigidity of the MIDI translation make the digital platform deliberately audible, playing with the tension between that which is touchable and untouchable.

Compared with other works in the series, MTRL is more purely percussive and beat-driven. It places particular emphasis on how expressive performance variations collide with the constraints of digital systems. How are these patterns transformed, and how do we hear them differently? Can “feel” emerge as a unifying characteristic, making microtiming the primary factor in the piece? Over the course of four minutes, can the pleasurable aspects of expressive timing eventually override the unconventional time structure, making you want to move?

This work is influenced both by performances I saw in CDMX at 316 Centro and releases by the N.A.A.F.I. label.

SLP (con Elena Solís)

SLP is an electro-acoustic and noise-influenced piece exploring microtiming via handmade ceramic instruments crafted by Elena Solís. It focuses on the textural and gestural aspects of expressive timing through interaction with the material, tactile qualities of these instruments. The composition stretches digitally-generated patterns and phrases between the arcs and shapes of our improvisations, exploring the way variations in embodied performance alter the unfolding of time in a piece of music.

For this piece, we used six ceramic instruments built by Solís. Five of these were clay spheres containing an additional clay ball moving against the inside of the instrument as it turns— both following our gestures and creating some unpredictability to interact with. The sixth instrument was a ceramic chain, which we could fold and unfold against itself as it moved across the floor and surfaces. The sounds coming from these clay instruments are percussive, but also have qualities of continuous movement, offering a broader angle on expressive timing.

Some of the ceramic instruments built by Elena Solís, used in the piece.

I approached Elena about working with these instruments after watching her and Daniela Solís perform with them at a gallery. She was interested in having other artists create work with them, and joined me at the Radio Nopal residency to record some samples and improvisations. Composer and improviser Gonzalo Biffarella joined us for an additional improvisation session, also producing a composition from the results:

To compose SLP, I selected improvised segments which I felt had an appealing shape and recorded additional improvisations in response. I also used the original improvised clips as a framework to “drape” and stretch new MIDI-based percussion clips, calling attention to “invisible” contours and shapes within the physical performances and how these seemed to shape time. I used samples and effects derived from the ceramic instruments for the new material, further blurring the line between digital and physical.

The title “SLP” is a contraction of “slip” which describes both the sounds of the instruments and their movements.

Como un Bosque

This release compiles several explorations in microtiming via SP-404SX and contact mic, developed in CDMX and NYC for live performances in mid-2024. These four tracks unpack my research within a longer format, placing processed improvised phrases and patterns in dialogue with one another through layering, collage, and the physical interface of the sampler. They incorporate a variety of strategies for working with microtiming in a digital context, from subtle variations in pattern and texture emerging from human performance, to splintered, rapid-fire percussive phrasing and stretched MIDI-generated rhythms.

This release is edited together from several improvised performances—each movement unpacks different areas of this emerging territory, offering a deeper exploration of microtiming as a basis for compositional and improvisational language, and how a permeable, playful relationship between the digital and physical can shine a spotlight on the inner workings of this phenomenon. The title refers to the density of sonic voices emerging in this process, chattering like the animals, plants, and natural elements of a national park, filtered through the physical materials of the human-made environment. A cafe, a bedroom, a studio, like a forest.

Radio Nopal Otoño '23

This Radio Nopal residency set from autumn 2023 marks the start of this project—exploring stretched timing, micro-expression, and the borders of the digital and physical through the CDMX sound- and music-scape. These tracks build minimalist phrases and warped loops via samples of the residency space—including floors, chairs, tables, field recordings—exploring the permeable space between human expressive subtlety and its environmental influences.

The recordings presented here encapsulate two months of intensive research on microtiming in an electronic context during a 2023 Radio Nopal residency. I placed particular attention on methods for working with non-grid-based timing in popular DAWs, and means of translating environmental and embodied influences on expressive timing via this context. In many cases, I harnessed sounds from the residency space itself, while also incorporating influences absorbed from excursions into Mexico City’s free-improvisation and experimental electronic communities. Mirroring the diversity of the sonic practices I was encountering, and the medium of radio itself, the piece switches frames or channels between these different worlds and experiments.

This track explores the transmutation of live percussive phrasing through digital tools and techniques, various approaches to warping quantized electronic material via non-grid-based recorded patterns, and the consonance/dissonance that emerges in relationships between the digital and physical. During the process, I investigate how far I can push expressive timing within Ableton Live, and explore non-metric approaches to thinking about time and rhythm. The piece concludes by blurring the territory between human improvisation and environmental patterning, emphasising the ambiguity of the source or rhythmic timing.