Welcome!

Welcome to Pentoloux dot Com, the website for Clay Westman, a Composer from Durham, North Carolina!

I’ve been needing to rebuild my web presence and so we’re finally here! I plan to use this website as both a storefront, to be able to distribute my music in both digital and physical form, and as a portfolio, to display what I have written in one place. I plan to use this blog as a way to talk about projects that I’m working on, and to elaborate on my process for pieces I’ve already posted. This may include sharing parts of scores or my sketch book, or MIDIs and more. But now a bit about myself –

My name is Clay, a composer of both concert and electronic music. I grew up playing in Concert Band, Marching Band and Percussion Ensembles, with some acting experience in my high school’s musicals as well. I completed a degree in Music Composition at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro in Spring 2017, and have been living the life of a Composer-With-A-Day-Job ever since. I have moved back to Durham, where I live with my wife, Mal, and our three cats, Penelope, Bento and Milloux. Like any good composer, when at a loss for what name to use online, I just combine the names of our pets to get Pentoloux! Milloux will be standing in in photographs until I have some professional photos available.

In my works, I try to blend my love of music with my love of gaming, finding inspiration not only in the music of games, but in their characters and stories. My work for Concert Band, Yrro and Pthia, takes direct inspiration from a story found in Marathon 2: Durandal, a game published by Bungie Software in the mid-90s that I grew up playing. Wispy Dragon in a Cotton-Candy Sky may not be directly inspired by video games, but the feel and melodic structure were definitely inspired in part by the music of Super Mario Galaxy and The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. I’m particularly fond of the music from both Maplestory and Mabinogi, two free-to-play MMORPGs that I played a lot of while growing up, and I even wrote a few tracks for an unofficial Mabinogi Private Server, when its admins were developing new content. Non-video game inspiration comes from a wide number of places, including Gustav Holst (particularly The Planets and his suites for Military Band), Bela Fleck (both his solo work and his work with the Flecktones), and my all-time favorite band, Guster.

That’s a bit about myself. Enjoy the website and enjoy the music!