Stephen Goodman

Born in New Orleans in 1956, later in Kansas City, Missouri and Ridgewood, NJ, and then Los Angeles, then London UK, Stephen P. Goodman was cartooning by age three, imitating James Brown screams and declared to have "perfect pitch" by age five, absorbed AM radio via a transistor radio under his pillow at night by age seven, picked up a guitar at twelve, and spent most of his teen years looking for a place to sneak a cigarette.

Stephen has been recording music or experiments since 1980, though some recordings from 1973 have recently been uncovered. Exposed to classical music and sporadic piano lessons from age 6 to 26, he began playing by ear early on, and having learned most of his chops from non-traditional sources, hopes to bring a new viewpoint to the music scene wherever he is. Like many of his age group Stephen was sucked into the software business in the early eighties, and out to LA where he met many like-minded creative people, migrating from software support to network design-support and ultimately MIS Director at Jobete Music Co from 1997-2000.

In 1996 he invented a software-encapsulated loop player for short wav files on the PC to provide ?an ambient backdrop for your desktop.? Since its creation, the Loop Of The Week has been posted online at EarthLight Studios on a (mostly) weekly basis, and is still unduplicated today. Stephen assisted lots of musicians in putting their music online in the advent of the Internet, and in the latter 1990s began playing ambient-psychedelic material in the proto-rave scene there. A request from a nurse in a terminal hospice in Texas for his music on disc prompted Stephen to produce a collection of under-six-minute pieces that had 'no hard edges' or bits to overtly distract from whatever the listener is thinking about: finally "Club Meditation" is now available for download on last.fm.

After living in the LA area for 16 years Stephen married an English woman and moved to London. Music work in this period is in the ambient-situational area, creating both hypnotic material for meditative activity, and variable soundtracks for everyday thoughts.

Work commenced on restoring an 1860 house in London in 2004, sold in 2009, he's returning to his creative beginnings, covered here under "interests". EarthLight Studios UK was completed in the Devon countryside in 2010, and works are commencing in the areas of video broadcast-shows and situational music composition-performance.

A desire to enhance otherwise 'folky' or 'ordinary rock' music as well is leading to work with other disparate artists; and other musical projects are set for launching in 2010-11, including a DVD, online video performances via ustream and other sites, and other works to be announced.