still life is a collaboration between Katherine Balch (music, field recordings) and Ted Moore (video and sound design) World premiere: Talea Ensemble, James Baker cond. March 20, 2026 in Brooklyn, NY recorded by David Adamcyk commissioned by the Fromm Music Foundation with additional support from the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group Anise Hyssop and Bees Bees Bee on Sunflower

nand was premiered by the Splice Ensemble at their 2023 Splice Festival in Boston. nand is based on the timbre and rhythmic gating of the NAND-gate feedback circuit described by Nick Collins in Handmade Electronic Music. Even though the system is quite simple (producing repeating phrases consisting of square waves, filtered noise, and silence), each gesture has microvariations that increase the entropy and attract my attention endlessly. My favorite timbres from this circuit occur while parameters are being changed–when capacitors are firing at surprising times, before they can settle into a stasis.

Read DigiScore’s analysis of fold fold was commissioned to reflect the theme of “Location Sharing” for the 2023 Browser Sound Festival in Stuttgart. The ensemble in residence for the festival was a pianist who is in the room during the performance and a saxophonist and bass clarinetist who are remote (as in, in other countries). I chose to reflect the theme of “location sharing” by using audio feedback to “sound out” the resonant frequencies of the remote performers’ locations.

created with the [Switch~ Ensemble]: Zach Sheets, flute T.J. Borden, cello Wei-Han Wu, piano Megan Arns, percussion quartet is a remote collaboration between myself and the [Switch~ Ensemble] designed to engage with the added technological mediation at play during the pandemic. The sonic source material of quartet is about two minutes of eurorack synthesizer recordings transcribed for the [Switch~ Ensemble] to record. These recordings were then subjected to data analysis using audio descriptors and machine learning algorithms using FluCoMa.

Commissioned by National Sawdust as part of the Live@NationalSawdust Digital Discovery Festival ​premiered by JACK Quartet ​full score

Commissioned by HOCKET for #What2020SoundsLike full score

Commissioned by line upon line percussion recorded at UT Austin, January 12, 2019 Composing tap began by recording many sounds, gestures, and passages on my eurorack modular synthesizer and then organizing these recordings into a tape part for the piece. I then transcribed the rhythms and timbres of the tape part to create a tight synchronization between the the tape and percussion parts played by the ensemble. The video and lights were then composed to add to the intense synchrony.

shadow exists as both a solo version for no-input mixer and lights (performed at Omaha Under the Radar in 2018) and as a duo with saxophone. In this video, shadow was played as one movement of a longer performance on the Frequency Series at Constellation in Chicago. The sounds of the no-input mixer are analyzed in real-time using timbral descriptors, which are then sent to a neural network for classification into one of four categories: distorted noise, high squeal, low impulses, or quiet sustained noise.

hollow was created in collaboration with saxophonist Kyle Hutchins and is featured on Binary Canary’s album iterative systems out on Carrier Records. Three large PVC tubes (4 inches in diameter and between 7 and 10 feet long–they can be seen in the video) are amplified by placing a microphone on one end and a speaker on the other. The feedback this creates is stable only at the resonant frequencies of the tube.

feed was created in collaboration with bassoonist Ben Roidl-Ward for Experimental Sound Studio’s Oscillation Series. feed integrates multiple modes of real-time lighting control using custom tools that implement DMX parameterization, machine learning, music information retrieval, and Reaper sequencer integration. My DMX parameter control system is a family of OOP classes written in SuperCollider that can be implemented with any DMX compatible lights. It allows for user-defined parameter naming and contains built-in timed fades, LFO modulation, control bus following (for audio reactivity), and user-defined function control of individual parameters.

live performance recorded on April 5, 2018 by Spektral Quartet University of Chicago Chicago, IL full score

alloy uses the same feedback cymbal setup as in my solo work it teaches us that it doesn’t exist, however this duo also includes an instrument that can produce multiphonics. During performance, the feedback cymbal’s audio is analyzed for chroma and in real-time compared to recordings of the instrumetalist’s multiphonics (that were recorded and analyzed earlier). The multiphonic most similar to the current cymbal timbre is displayed on a screen for the instrumentalist, who may choose to either play the displayed multiphonic or deviate from it, as the musical moment offers.

composed for and premiered by Strains New Music Ensemble performance score The video design was created mostly using Processing

FEATHERMUCKER by Ted Moore featuring The Dream Songs Project with text by Timothy Otte text by Timothy Otte Commissioned by The Dream Songs Project Over the work’s 50 minute duration, Timothy Otte’s text sets a crumbled, post-apocalyptic world in which he describes the creative process of making idiosyncratic meaning where objective meaning cannot be found. Musically, FEATHERMUCKER is a combination of folk, experimental, and electronic music; cinematic sound fx; and sound art installation.

samara piece captures the calming stillness of samara seeds (aka. helicopter seeds) that fall in my neighborhood every spring. Premiered by the Spektral Quartet and Tim Munro during their residency at The Walden School in July 2014.

PERSEPHONE was created in collaboration with theater artist Hannah K. Holman and tells an interpretation of the Greek myth of Persephone, the daughter of Zeus who became the queen of the underworld after being abducted by Hades. Our retelling explores the themes of fear, curiosity, rebirth, and growth. The music and sound was composed by Ted Moore and the story and movement were devised in collaboration with the cast.

Commissioned by The Poem is Done Ensemble. full score

Commissioned by the Cedar Cultural Center in Minneapolis.