Sockpuppet.

Okay, not really

This “band” is actually the solo musical project of a single person, who goes by “fluffy.” They feel awkward about writing about themself in the third person, however, so the rest of this is going to drop the conceit.

Some history

Hi! I’ve been making music since I was quite young. I started playing piano at the age of 5 (and wanted to start even earlier than that). Some of my earliest memories are of wanting to make music and being fascinated with how sound works and makes feelings happen.

By the age of 7 I had outgrown the “neighborhood piano lady” and started taking lessons with a university professor who was quite generous with his time and attention. By this time I had also already started composing. These pieces were… not particularly great, but they were mine.

For the next several years I was convinced I would be a musician when I grew up, and had been put under a lot of pressure to go above and beyond. I spent a summer at a music camp, took lessons in cello and violin, and participated in many classical music competitions, generally placing pretty well for my age.

Then at the age of 12 or so I learned the basics of jazz, and quickly burned out on classical music. I eventually parted ways with the professor and formal musical education, and then at 14 I learned about tracker music and that became my main form of musical expression for a while.

When I started college I had intended to double-major in music and computer science, but that very quickly proved to be too much for me and I focused purely on computer science, keeping music on as a hobby.

At some point I taught myself to play guitar and drums, and while in grad school I discovered Song Fight! which rekindled my interest in songwriting. This was also a means for me to express myself as a trans person on the Internet. There’s way more about that in my album Transitions.

For the first several years of this rediscovery I could not decide on what name I wanted to release under, nor did I want to stick to a single genre, or instrument, or really be stuck in any single set of identities. And then it occurred to me: I could own this, and adopt some Internet slang. I did my due diligence and found that the name “Sockpuppet” had not yet been taken by any musical acts.

So in April 2006, I started releasing as Sockpuppet. My first song posted under that name was Bad Cat.

Current setting

As of right now, I live in a small town just outside Seattle, where I operate a small recording studio from my basement, and in which I make music for myself and others, especially games, films, short videos, podcasts, interactive experiences, what have you.

While I was pretty successful as a software engineer, the stress of that industry combined with a chronic pain disorder eventually led me to essentially retire from working in tech, and now I have music as my main thing, although I also do some video editing, and still do some programming as well.

I also run Novembeat, and sometimes help to run Song Fight!.

I am always willing to take on commissioned work for others; please drop me a line if you’re interested in working with me!

I am also interested in collaborating with other musicians! If that’s something you’d like to do, feel free to reach out!

Other stuff about me

• Pronouns: she/her or they/them
• Age: older than Pac-Man, but younger than Pong
• Favorite colors: purple, red
• Favorite pattern: plaid
• Homepage: I have a more general website which is essentially a shrine to my ADHD
• Also I have ADHD

What’s with the footer text?

The footer text on the page is randomly chosen at page render time and can be used to test my website’s caching behavior. The text sources include, but are not limited to:

• Inside jokes
• Random lyrics, both from my own songs (including ones I haven’t written yet) and from some of my friends, plus a few you might have actually heard of
• Brian Eno’s Oblique Strategies

Originally it was just going to be a copyright notice, but where’s the fun in that?