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Jeanne Parson composes, produces and performs music in a variety of styles, from jazz and pop to video games and New Music. Her studies and work experiences have been interleaved in a ³freestyle² manner, and include a B.A. in classical piano performance; more than a decade of touring performances in pop and jazz ensembles; studies in electronic music at Fresno State, CCRMA and Mills College (culminating in a M.F.A in Electronic Music and the Recording Media); several years teaching music technology at California colleges; and work as an arranger, performer, sound designer and game music composer.
Parson's more recent acheivements include the music and sounds for the popular video games "Primal Rage" (94) and "Area 51" (95). In 1994 she celebrated the release (by Frog Peak Music) of a CD of computer-interactive music which she produced, and which includes works and performances by Parson and 10 other musicians. In 95 she also released the audio CD "All The Rage: The Expanded Soundtrack from Primal Rage" on her own label: Rage On Records. In 1996 Ms. Parson was speech designer for "Odyssey, the talking globe" and also created the music and sound effects for a new video puzzle game designed at Atari Games.
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Education
Master of Fine Arts degree in Electronic Music and the Recording Media, Mills College. Department Scholarship for Composition. Mary & Charles Cooper Scholarship Award. Graduate Assistantship. Composition studies with Larry Polansky and David Rosenboom. Studies also included electronics & computers.
Post Grad Studies at Stanford: 5 units in Computer-Generated Music.
B.A. in Music Performance, CSU Fresno: Graduated suma cum laude. Piano studies with Alan Rea. Various scholarships and awards. Post-graduate studies in Electronic Music and Composition.
Studies in Electronics: Cleveland Institute of Electronics and Chabot College.
Professional Experience
Composer and Sound Designer. Atari Games Corp./Time Warner Interactive, Inc. (1993-1996, music and sound production for coin-op video games). Explore Technologies (1996, speech designer for the talking globe.) Broderbund Software (1990-1991 music and sound design for home video games). Guest composer/performer at C.S.U.Chico and Mills College.
Producer/Composer. The CD ³All The Rage -- the Expanded Soundtrack from Primal Rage² (1995) on the label Rage On Records. Also, the CD ³Hallways² (1994) and the cassette ³one.source: hmsl² for Frog Peak Music, both compilations of works by composers (including self) working with the computer music language HMSL.
College Instructor. (1991-1993) for Cogswell Polytechnical College (Cupertino, CA), Merritt College (Oakland, CA), San Joaquin Delta College (Stockton, CA) and College of San Mateo (San Mateo, CA) teaching Music Technology/Electronic Music.
Professional Performer and Arranger. (1976-1996), performed as a multi-keyboardist in pop, jazz & show music groups. Arranger for various national TV and radio commercials.
Assistant Producer. (1990) for Opcode's software program The Book of MIDI, a HyperCard program which teaches MIDI uses and applications.
Educational/Tutorial Materials. A CSound Tutorial, a companion manual to "CSOUND" (Barry Vercoe, M.I.T.) for use with NeXT and Macintosh computers. Prepared for Mills College graduate seminar in electronic music and Mills Computer Learning Center. For Frog Peak Music, Advisor/Proofreader for HMSL manual (Spring 1988 and Spring 1990 editions).
Music Environment Tools
Languages: HMSL (HMSL is an object-oriented, FORTH based music language developed at Mills College by Phil Burk, David Rosenboom and Larry Polansky. It includes tools for both MIDI and dsp, and is fully extensible and customizable by the user.)
Synthesizers: Yamaha TG-77, Roland JD-800 and JD-990, Casio CZ-1 and VZ10M, Sequential Prophet 5, Kurzweil K2000, SampleCell and others.
Digital Audio Workstation: Sonic Solutions
Music Software: Digidesign SoundDesigner and TurboSynth, SoundHack, LogicAudio, various other sequencing programs, and many other music applications.
Computer Skills
Experience on Macintosh, PC, Unix and Amiga systems.
Computer programming studies in FORTH, C (two semesters) and 68000 Assembly (one semester).
Experience on a variety of game and multi-media development platforms.
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Copyright September 1996,
updated February 2004.
Kristine H. Burns,
Florida International University
Questions? Contact me.