Coa Schwab, though primarily an oboist by training, has been composing electronic and computer music for a number of years. While an undergraduate student at North Carolina School of the Arts, Schwab began experimenting with "store bought" tape recorders, eventually developing a technique he calls "hiss chorusing". "Papa Wee" (1992), his largest work from this period, provides a good example of hiss chorusing in the form of a distinctly human-sounding roar occurring throughout the piece. In the years following, Schwab went on to explore the improvisatory sound world of malfunctioning and broken analog equipment, searching for what he now jokingly refers to as "the ghost in the machine". Though much of his efforts along these lines were used for source material in making finished pieces, one exception was a 68 track collection named "Tape Minis" that Schwab realized through a year's worth of work on a single (and again, very "consumer grade") analog synthesizer. Here, Schwab tried to limit his involvement in the miniature pieces to a kind of "time-delayed improvisation", allowing the special sonic characteristics of the partially destroyed synthesizer to manifest themselves. Schwab, a non-pianist, was also sure to stay as "out of the way" of the finished Minis as possible by avoiding tape manipulation/processing altogether.

Schwab went on to graduate studies in at SUNY Stony Brook, where he studied electronic and computer music under Daria Semegen on some of the same equipment used in the legendary Columbia/Princeton studios during the 1960s and 70s. During this period, he devoted a great deal of time to performing and recording oboe music by composers across the country, including electro-acoustic pieces. After completing his Masters Degree in Oboe Perormance from SUNY Stony Brook, Schwab went on to teach electronic music at Berkshire School, in Sheffield, MA, leading students toward an appreciation of both academic and popular electronic music, the latter of which he began studying intensively in the period immediately following graduate school

Coa Schwab has recently come to NYC to pursue an "Ivesian" life of professional by day, composer/performer by night. He recently had a guest solo performance in the American Society of Microtonal Music's "Microthon" festival, though he insists this may have been his last performance on oboe (for a number of years) in favor of turning all his attention to composition. A representative of his new work is provided in the work in progress, "Realizer", featured on this website. He currently resides in Brooklyn, NY.