Of German origin, John-Philipp Gather studied piano with Jeanne Ghika at the Ecole Normale de Musique in Paris. He obtained a Masters degree in Computational Musicology at the University of Amsterdam in 1992 and is currently a Ph.D. candidate at the State University of New York at Buffalo.

As musicologist his goal is to explore, describe, and analyze, a part of the early electronic and computer music repertoire. He feels that this area of Western Art music is currently underrepresented in Musicology and sees Csound as an excellent tool to provide additional insights into the acoustical structure of compositions.