David S. Carter is a music theorist, composer, and teacher who serves as an Assistant Professor of Music (Theory/Composition) at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. He has published two research articles examining popular music in Music Theory Online as well as an article co-authored with Ralf von Appen in the journal Theory and Practice, with two additional accepted articles forthcoming 2025 in the journal Intégral: The Journal of Applied Musical Thought, volume 38. He has presented papers at the Society for Music Theory annual meeting, the National Conference of the College Music Society, and at both the U.S. and International conferences of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music (IASPM). His compositions have been performed or recorded by the JACK Quartet, the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), Ensemble Dal Niente, Ensemble Court-Circuit, Ensemble Signal, and the Callithumpian Consort, among others. Composition prizes he has been awarded include first place in the 2012 Iron Composer competition at Baldwin Wallace University, Northwestern University’s William T. Faricy Award, and second prize in the Rhenen (Netherlands) International Carillon Composition Competition. He earned his doctorate in music composition at Northwestern, where he studied with Lee Hyla, Aaron Travers, and Jay Alan Yim, earned a J.D. at the University of Southern California, and earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in English Literature at Yale University.

CV (current as of June 29, 2025)
David S. Carter on SoundCloud