Brian Tibbs Music

I have always felt a profound connection to music. Because of this, my mother labored for years under the delusion that I would become a performer. She paid for me to have piano lessons. I stank. Guitar lessons. I stank. French horn. Stank.

Amidst all the stinking, however, I was often noodling on the piano, writing my own songs. It took me a while to figure out that I simply did not enjoy performing on stage. What I loved was composing.

My journey as a composer began circa 1985 with a Korg DW-6000 synthesizer, a Korg DDM-100 digital drum machine, a guitar amp with built-in spring reverb and a Fostex X-15 recorder, the kind that recorded four tracks of audio on a cassette tape. Hi-res, baby. I was often "in the field" with the X-15, recording layers of sound then augmenting it with synth and drum machine.

My rig gradually expanded to a range of keyboard and rack mount synths, samplers, effects and 32-track mixer. My musical tastes at that time were punk, post-punk and industrial, but also classical music and film scores (especially those of John Williams and Jerry Goldsmith).

Throughout the 1990s, I pursued film scoring and scored an independent feature film, several independent shorts, an extreme sports segment for ESPN, two film projects for director Bud Greenspan (known for his sport and Olympic documentaries), a documentary featured at Seattle’s Wing Luke Museum of the Asian Pacific American Experience, a video project for United Airlines, and a documentary for the Open Society Institute.

During this time, I expanded my exploration of Western classical music and yearned to create music that synthesized the classical tradition with electronic music and industrial sound and noise. Toward that goal, I began studying classical music theory, harmony, counterpoint and composition at Mannes College of Music in New York City. While there, I composed a three-movement string quartet and was fortunate to have an actual performance of my song cycle The Wheel, a setting of poetry by W. B. Yeats for piano and baritone voice.

In 2005, I put music to the side to pursue a more pragmatic career in marketing.

In 2022, I returned with great joy to making music.

My current studio is essentially Logic Pro X on a MacBook Pro with a keyboard controller, and I am loving the simplicity and control.