Open Mic Performance - September 24, 2026

I've had the Santa Cruz Electronic Music Open Mic (EMOM) events on my calendar for maybe two years. This recurring event is a place where musicians can perform on their synthesizers, showcase their compositions, and share their cool, experimental sounds with like-minded folks. The series is hosted by Indexical, an experimental art and music collective located in the Tannery Arts Center, and is held monthly. I always intended to go, but every time the fourth Thursday rolled around, there seemed to be something else going on, or I was tired, or I was traveling... You know how it goes. Well, I finally made it to the show in June, and I was hooked. The music was quite eclectic. One artist combined their composition with generated visuals. Another performed a quadraphonic piece based on field recordings. There was EDM, of course, and the night ended with a guy named Digital Larry playing Hawaiian lap steel guitar through a series of effects pedals. Very groovy!

I was really impressed by the quality and originality of the performances. By the end of the evening, I was filled with a strong feeling that I could do why these musicians were doing, too, and that I really wanted to perform at the next open mic. I approached Dan, one of the organizers, and said, “This is great! I want to sign up!” and told him a little about my analog synth hobby. He gave me the web address of the application form and said, “Hey, you’ve found your tribe.” I signed up for a slot at a future EMOM that night.

Fast-forward to late September, and I found myself hauling a plastic tub containing my DFAM, Subharmonicon, Eurorack, and pedals into the performance space. I was the third on the bill, and was fortunate to be performing on a night when my Mastodon-friend Steve was recording video. Heather and our friend Lisa showed up to support me, braving the experimental music scene.

I’m really happy with how my set turned out. I had a 20 minute slot and only ended up playing for 12. I felt like my jam had a pretty good energetic arc, starting in a sort of minimalist way and building up with layers of sound with the Subharmonicon and rhythm with the DFAM. I feel like I have a pretty good handle on how to evolve the sounds from the Subh, though I am still sometimes surprised when I tweak knobs on the DFAM. I love my new Earthquaker Towers reverberant filter pedal; it transforms the output of my synths to wonderful swirly echoey soundscapes. I also have a Zoom MS-70CDR multifunction pedal that I used to add delay to the DFAM. Unfortunately, it wasn't behaving that night. During sound check, I was getting noise when the pedal was engaged. I thought I got it working right before doors opened, but as you can hear in the video, when I tried to trigger the pedal, it put out a huge squelch. Yikes!

You can check out who is playing at future EMOMs at https://emom.subvurt.net. If you're a synth-head like me, consider signing up for a slot! The organizers are fantastic, and the audience is always interested in new, unique ideas. If I can get up there, so can you!