It's a big desk. Bigger than it needs to be, probably... certainly these days, given how much can be done inside the computer instead of walls and walls of racked equipment and rooms and rooms of cabling and power conditioners. It’s got multiple levels and shelves and racks front and back, with the main surface made of curved wood beams reclaimed from a felled barn, built to hold the weight of monitors and outboard gear and the kind of work that doesn't finish in a single session but lingers over weeks and months… notes and cables and microphones and pedals scattered about.

I've worked at it every day I’ve made music, for years now. I hadn't thought about it much in detail anymore, which is probably the highest compliment you can pay a piece of furniture.

My dad built it for me. He passed away quite suddenly and unexpectedly this past week and it’s got me reminiscing and contemplating.

He wasn't a musician, not in the sense that you and I think when we assign that descriptor to someone. If you'd asked him what kind of music I made, he would have given you an honest answer and it likely wouldn't have been very specific. Maybe something about licensing. “Songs in commercials.” Or “tv music.” That's not a criticism, not at all… just accurate. Music was my mom's territory. She was a choir director and a piano teacher for my entire life, the kind of person who always had melodies in the air at home, who understood instinctively that music was a daily practice and not one reserved for special occasions. She's where that love of mine came from.

My dad was where this other thing came from.

He was a creative thinker and builder in the literal sense—the desk is proof of that, along with his robotics work and engineering patents—but also in the way he approached any problem that needed solving. He wanted to understand how something worked before he used it. He planned…. measured twice, cut once. He thought about what a thing needed to do and then he figured out how to make it do that. Not flashy. Not rushed. Simple, methodical and correct.

I watched him do this for years before I understood I was trying to do the same thing.

This desk project came out of a conversation about what I actually needed—not necessarily what looked good, not what was standard issue. A barn had fallen in their neighborhood and he was going to grab some of the beams to use in a variety of projects. I mentioned wanting to get a better work surface for my mixing and production work. We talked through my workflow, where things needed to live. What I'd reach for constantly versus what could be further away. How much surface area was needed. What angles the displays would be best viewed at. He asked the right questions and then he went and built the answers.

These are photos from that time together. The framing, the measurements, the iterations, finishing it proudly with a stamp bearing his name. It also looks, to me now, exactly like how I try to approach a catalog build or brand structure or any system that has to hold weight over time. The specifics are obviously different, but the internal logic and motivations are the same.