Brad Garton is an American composer

Composer

A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...

 and computer music

Computer music

Computer music is a term that was originally used within academia to describe a field of study relating to the applications of computing technology in music composition; particularly that stemming from the Western art music tradition...

ian who is professor of music

Music

Music is an art form whose medium is sound and silence. Its common elements are pitch , rhythm , dynamics, and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture...

 at Columbia University

Columbia University

Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...

.

He has written, or helped to write, a number of computer music applications, including Real-Time Cmix

Real-time Cmix

Real-Time Cmix is one of the MUSIC-N family of computer music programming languages. RTcmix is descended from the MIX program developed by Paul Lansky at Princeton University in 1978 to perform algorithmic composition using digital audio soundfiles on a VMS mainframe computer. After synthesis...

, music synthesis and signal processing

Signal processing

Signal processing is an area of systems engineering, electrical engineering and applied mathematics that deals with operations on or analysis of signals, in either discrete or continuous time...

 language for real time composition. He received his doctorate in composition from Princeton University

Princeton University

Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....

. Garton is director of the Computer Music Center

Computer Music Center

The Computer Music Center at Columbia University is the oldest center for electronic and computer music research in the United States. The Center was founded in the 1950s as the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center....

, Columbia University, formerly the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center.

Garton grew up in Columbus

Columbus, Indiana

Columbus is a city in and the county seat of Bartholomew County, Indiana, United States. The population was 44,061 at the 2010 census, and the current mayor is Fred Armstrong. Located approximately 40 miles south of Indianapolis, on the east fork of the White River, it is the state's 20th largest...

, Indiana

Indiana

Indiana is a US state, admitted to the United States as the 19th on December 11, 1816. It is located in the Midwestern United States and Great Lakes Region. With 6,483,802 residents, the state is ranked 15th in population and 16th in population density. Indiana is ranked 38th in land area and is...

. His father, Robert, has served more than 30 years as a Republican in the Indiana state Senate, including a long term as Senate Pro Tem. Garton majored in pharmacy as a Purdue University student, but spent much of his time on music. Billing himself as "Mr. Science", Garton provided sound effects and keyboards for the band Dow Jones and the Industrials

Dow Jones and the Industrials

Dow Jones and the Industrials were a punk band from West Lafayette, Indiana from the late 1970s until about 1981. During this time, they released a split LP with The Gizmos, entitled "Hoosier Hysteria", and a self-titled 7" EP...

 in the late 1970s and early 1980s. He also produced many acts, making a heavy contribution to the Indiana music scene, and with Richard K. Thomas founded Zounds Studios, which continues to produce music and sound for theater.