About

“…you’d hardly expect him to be hidebound and conventional, but he takes “radical” and runs off a cliff with it. On just about every recording of him that I’ve heard…he demolishes every conventional notion of what a guitar can sound like.” – Chicago Reader

“Riggs is not only a student of guitar but an ignored master.” – KEXP

“Each piece is a mini-deconstruction of the guitar in the truest form—as if Riggs has grown bored with a fully functioning instrument and is determined to pry open its electronic guts and document the process with the guitar’s death cries.” – Brainwashed.com

I’m an autistic person who also plays experimental music on the electric guitar. I was diagnosed as an adult but wondered since childhood why my inner world seemed so different from those around me. The sonic content of my music and the way in which I perform, record, distribute documentation of my work, and write about my artistic practice are indelibly linked to being autistic.

I use objects (springs, magnets, pieces of metal and plastic) and unorthodox methods of excitation (violin bows and wooden dowels) to play my guitar. The metallic scrapes and low frequency vocalic bursts of sound rarely resemble the sound of a guitar. I consider my guitar playing to be a form of stimming. With the exception of a volume pedal, I do not use FX pedals or other methods of signal processing.

I struggle to understand people and sometimes even to like them. As a result, I rarely collaborate with others.

I release my music for free on my website. The solo recordings of my electric guitar playing are date and time stamped according to the time they were created. I borrow the term ‘musicking” from Christopher Small to describe my music as a verb instead of a noun. Feel particularly moved by my musicking? Feel free to leave a tip or become a patron!

I received my Bachelor of Music in 2007 from the Oberlin Conservatory of Music and my Master of Arts in Music Composition from Wesleyan University in 2012. I studied guitar and composition under Marc Michaud, Anthony Braxton, Alvin Lucier, Ross Feller, Randolph Coleman, and Ronald Kuivila.

You can download my MA thesis here.