Composer, producer, multi-instrumentalist, and electronic artist recording and performing under the artist name Tone Ranger. Last month he released a full-length handcrafted fantasy film paired with his most expansive and immersive album to date. The 14-song album had come out last August and he also released two singles in 2025. Since releasing his debut in 2018, he has not only performed at Burning Man, but – beyond his solo work – has scored for film and produces across genres ranging from indie folk to RandB. For his own artist project, he has put up big streaming numbers, with approximately 24 thousand monthly listeners on Spotify, where he has over four million streams on his top five songs alone. He also talks about his studio, plus getting a couple songs licensed for a film that’s coming out this year.
“It sort of hints at a larger body of ambient work that I'm working on at this moment, which is kind of like stepping away from the grid element of music making, which I love and makes so much possible. But really just like the long flowing nature of ambient is really nice.”
“I heard this word when I was in music school and hearing about how Beethoven compositions would feel, it, just everything just feels inevitable. That inevitability really comes from making the right choice at the right time and though it is more intuitively led, I really have to be in the right place to approach it and to be really listening while I'm working instead of just moving everything with the hands.”
“I had been making music that was more – desert electronic is sort of the name that I give to it – it’s very, it's like house rhythms, pretty four on the floor and has the twangy guitars and all sorts of kind of desert elements to it.”
“The movie is always there. In any kind of music that I'm making there's sort of this mental image in the mind's eye that I have that sort of sees a movie going on.”
“I had actually gone out in a van in the four corners area, which is Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, that kind of area, and I was composing music out there in a van for about a month.”
“I had seen a music video that she did, and you see the music video for what it is not what it's going to be in your music video.”
“As a kid I was really into sports, actually. It took me a while to make the full conversion over to music. I did that fully when I was in college and I had to pick a major and I just loved my music classes the most. So, I went up to … UC Berkeley in the Bay Area and just I think I went to that school because of the record stores.”
“All the instruments that I play; man, it is a long list. So, anything that is shaped like a guitar or resembles a guitar I’m good on… piano, synthesizers. Drums would have been my main instrument but … actually there was no drum set allowed in the house, so I learned guitar and that was good to be able to write music.”
“It's a studio designed by my wife and I to just be a really inspiring place to create so when people come to stay and record, they have their own space. It's kind of like being on retreat. Here in Santa Fe, we're sort of out of the main, it is not a huge city but we're out of the hub of the downtown, kind of out pretty rural but close enough and people can really be in their compositional world when they're here.”
“I just love music; like, love for music knows no genre boundaries.”
“I just really love fitting music to picture. It just, it brings it to life in this very three-dimensional way.”
“Nebula”
“Over the Moon”