*** No Signal ***

Featured Work

Older articles are also available.

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  Drone Day 2026

  2026-05-30

  This International Drone Day, I joined with my long-time collaborator Kevin B. Chatham under the banner of The Disaster Society for a livestreamed performance. We played four original compositions featuring vintage spoken samples, Moog analog synth, ebow, guitar, slide steel, electric bass, and an awful lot of guitar pedals.

  The full video of the performance includes a bonus short film, "Rejected Lines". You can download the tracks for close listening or remixing from Bandcamp, available under a Creative Commons CC-BY-NC-SA license.

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  Four Seasons of Bonkwave

  2026-04-24

  I've got two tracks featured on The Four Seasons of Bonkwave Volume 3: Autumn! This is my first foray into the no-genre-genre of Bonkwave and the community has been super welcoming so far. You can listen and download "A Machine Must Not Feel (Theme from RUR)" and "I've Been Deleting Your Texts" for free at Bonk Knob Records.

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  True Colors EP

  2025-05-03

  I met Randall met via Chicago DJ Jeff Moyer's twitch.tv stream and we decided to collaborate on an EP. We worked together remotely and asynchronously blending my more experimental approach with Randall's happy synthpop roots. A mix of synthesizers, guitars and deep layers of sonic texture.

  The title track features samples from the speech that Lana Wachowski gave when she was awarded the HRC Visibility Award in 2013. That speech saved my life.

  Get your copy of "True Colors" on Bandcamp.

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  Source

  2025-09-23

  My latest album, "Source (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)", is now available! Inspired by the myth of Eurydice and Orpheus and the wisdom of Rick Rubin, "Source" is the soundtrack to a fateful journey through a dream-like Underworld in search of a doomed love.

  The 8 tracks on this album represent a departure from the post-punk sensibilities of my earlier work. Using a wide variety of vintage, analog, and modular synthesizers, "Source" is as much an exploration of the Underworld as it is a recontextualization of vintage sounds in a non-nostalgic, contemporary context.

  "Source" is available on Bandcamp, or free and federated on bandwagon.fm. You can also hear it as part of the regular rotation over at the Indiebeat fedi radio station.

Disquiets

Highlights from the weekly Disquiet Junto prompts. The full archive is here.

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  6000-Volt Symphony

  2025-07-27

  Disquiet Junto 0760 asked us to explore the world of light and energy using a field recording of a flickering lightbulb. So I took a swim in magnetic fields...

  I started by cutting samples of little phrases I heard and quantizing them, then arranging them in interesting rhythmic patterns in time. Next, for some structure, I set up a self-playing patch on the voltage-controlled Make Noise 0-Coast modular (my only modular synth), and ran it through one of my favorite guitar pedals, the Gamechanger Plasma distortion pedal, for the big crunchy electrical sound. This pedal routes the audio through a xenon-filled plasma tube via a crispy 3.5k volt bolt of electricity.

  The bass comes from an arpeggiated Moog Minitaur, also routed through the Plasma Pedal. The lead synth sound that comes in later is an altered sample of an electric buzz from the original recording.

  Listen to "6000-Volt Symphony" by Coraline Ada Ehmke on Soundcloud.

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  Stalagmite Groove

  2025-07-20

  The instructions for this week's Disquiet Junto prompt were simple: "Make music with nothing but rocks." Challenge accepted!

  My partner donated some of the special rocks they've collected on their travels to the cause. (Represented were stones from the shores of Iceland, the English countryside, and the mountains of Pennsylvania, among others.) I used a variety of contact mics to capture the sound of these rocks clicking, banging, dropping, and grinding (even submerged in water). I loaded the recordings into a couple of sampler instruments in Logic and programmed grid patterns to trigger the rock sounds like pieces of a drum kit.

  I wanted something melodic to go with it, but how to make rocks melodic? I took inspiration from a childhood wonder, the "Stalacpipe Organ" I remember from a trip I took as a little kid to Luray Caverns in Virginia. The memory of the organ in the cave inspired me to hook up the Korg phase8 acoustic synthesizer. The phase8 makes sound using electromagnetic hammers striking thin metal tines, all of which are exposed and invite physical preparation and manipulation. A scattering of polished stones on the tines made a nice reference to the Luray Caverns organ and sounds interesting too.

  This is an example of what I call a "situated piece," designed to create the illusion that the listener is in a shared space with the performers—in this case, a quartet playing a minimalist percussive composition live in a cave.

  Listen to "Stalagmite Groove" by Coraline Ada Ehmke on Soundcloud.

Music Projects

• Solo Work

  My latest album, "Source (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)", is now available! Inspired by the myth of Eurydice and Orpheus and the wisdom of Rick Rubin, "Source" is the soundtrack to a fateful journey through a dream-like Underworld in search of a doomed love.

  The 8 tracks on this album represent a departure from the post-punk sensibilities of my earlier work. Using a wide variety of vintage, analog, and modular synthesizers, "Source" is as much an exploration of the Underworld as it is a recontextualization of vintage sounds in a non-nostalgic, contemporary context.

  "Source" is available on Bandcamp, or free and federated on bandwagon.fm. You can also hear it as part of the regular rotation over at the Indiebeat fedi radio station.

• Gangs of Ireland

  "Gangs of Ireland" was an experimental sound collage project inspired by a 1983 Irish television talk show featuring interviews with young people from goth, mod, and punk subcultures. Every International Drone Day for five successive years starting in 2021, I created and performed a new composition exploring one of the interviews.

  The final performance took place at the Drone Day Festival on a farm in the Hudson Valley of upstate New York on May 24, 2025.

  You can hear the complete "Gangs of Ireland" collection on SoundCloud.

• Sudre's Violin

  After wrapping up A Little Fire Scarecrow in early 2021, I started a new solo project, Sudre's Violin, to reconcile the guitar-centered approach of my pre-transition music ("Dust and a Shadow") with the synth-centered music of 2016-2020.

  You can listen to the first Sudre's Violin EP, "Five Lies Left", on Bandcamp, or stream it on Apple Music, Pandora, or Spotify.

  Following their 2022 debut is "The Nine Doors", a full-length album featuring 9 original songs. The wordless narrative of "The Nine Doors" unfolds through the dark instrumentation, hypnotic rhythms, broken synths, and haunted piano that is the signature sound of Sudre's Violin. The theme and feel of "The Nine Doors" is inspired by the modern literary classic "The Club Dumas" by Arturo Pérez-Reverte. Listen or pick up "The Nine Doors" on Bandcamp.

  In 2024, Sudre's Violin released "Seven Souls", a journey through 7 sonic landscapes haunted by broken synths, throaty guitars, eerie pianos, and hypnotic rhythms. You can listen for free on Soundcloud or download the album on Bandcamp.

  The fourth and final release from Sudre's Violin, "Figure Six", was released on April 6th. Six new tracks explore new rhythmic territory while maintaining the dark, atmospheric, and literary mood that the project is known for. Get your copy of "Figure Six" on Bandcamp, or listen on bandwagon.fm.

• Auntie Kismet

  A collaboration with composer and experimental musician Craig Chin. We worked asynchronously, taking turns adding or removing layers to compose these pieces.

  The name is a reference to the band we were in together in the 90s, Uncle Karma. We had a manifesto. Like I said, it was the 90s.

  Listen to Auntie Kismet on Bandcamp.

• Shapes with Two Edges

  An unlikely collaboration with synth pop duo Eloquent,Shapes With Two Edges an experiment to see what happens when crisp, precise, crystalline digital meets messy, analog, and atmospheric. The name come from an obscure Euclidean degenerate.

  We've got plans for a 4-song LP, digital and vinyl. For now, you can preview our cover of Cyndi Lauper's "True Colors".

• A Little Fire Scarecrow

  A Little Fire Scarecrow was a recording project featuring percussion by Jeremy Greenand contributions from Kevin Chatham (bass), Frederick Wells (bass), and Alva Snædís (guitar and bass). It was my return to music after thinking I had lost my creative center. It was an important part of my journey, not only musical but also personal.

  4 years, 8 albums, 65 songs. Only 8 songs left standing. RIP 2016-2020

On the Fediverse

• Bandwagon.fm

  Follow my releases on the Fediverse at @CoralineAda@bandwagon.fm.

  • Source (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
  • Figure Six
  • The Puzzle Box Waltz
  • Seven Souls
  • The Nine Doors
  • Five Lies Left

  (You can also find me posting about music, tech, and life at @CoralineAda@ruby.social.)

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  The Indie Beat Radio

  The Indie Beat Radio federates with Bandwagon.fm, so you can support indie artists and stream music like mine ad-free and algorithm-free all day.

  https://theindiebeat.fm/electronic/