Composer · Guitarist · Producer
Eric Kauschen
A musician and electronic-music experimenter whose work moves through rock, metal, blues, orchestral composition, dark electronics, theatrical songwriting, and cinematic New England atmosphere.
The Story
Instinct, craft, and electricity.
Eric Kauschen began playing piano by ear at four in San Francisco. At seven he began formal study with Francesca Browning, a former concert pianist with the San Francisco Symphony, developing the classical foundation that would later collide with rock, jazz, metal, and electronic music.
At sixteen he turned his attention to guitar and studied with San Francisco musician Alex Guiness. Rather than remaining inside one tradition, Eric absorbed the theory and character of rock, jazz, and classical music and began synthesizing those influences into a personal style.
His work at San Francisco State University’s Electronic Music Studio expanded that vocabulary into synthesizers, studio technology, and experimental composition. Early works were presented at the International Electronic Music Exposition in Italy in 1986.
Eric founded Saundhaus in 1998 as a continuing exploration of music as both art and science. Now based in Northampton, Massachusetts, his work draws together decades of musical experience with the older, stranger atmosphere of New England.
Origins
Piano to guitar
Nine years of classical piano study became the foundation for a guitar style shaped by rock, jazz, classical composition, and heavy music.
Technology
Electronic music
Synthesizers, MIDI, recording systems, and experimental sound have remained central to Eric’s creative process since the 1980s.
Saundhaus
One continuing experiment
Different genres and technologies are treated as parts of one body of work rather than separate musical identities.
Beyond the Recordings
Written Work
Music & Technology
Audio for the Masses
How affordable recording technology moved the power of the studio from expensive professional facilities into the hands of independent musicians.
Music Philosophy
What Is Music?
A consideration of music as movement, story, environment, and lived experience—not merely an arrangement of notes.
Written Work
The Writings of Saundhaus
Essays and experimental texts exploring music, technology, sound, ritual, imagination, and the strange territories where art and science overlap.