Joshua Ralph, better known as J. Ralph, is a musician whose songs are regularly featured in modern commercials. His music can be found in advertisements for Volkswagen and Volvo. Surprisingly enough, J.

Ralph is unable to read or write music. His lack of training in music theory may explain the diversity of his songs, which make his work as a whole difficult to classify. He has recorded two CDs: Music to Mauzner By and The Illusionary Movements of Geraldine and Nazu.

Music to Mauzner By had previously been released with J. Ralph working under the name Spy without the track One Million Miles Away.His studio is in a former vaudeville and silent-movie theater on New York's Lower East Side.

It's lit by candles surrounding a burbling nineteenth-century iron-pedestal fish tank and mini spotlights focused on gilded cherubs thirty feet up. To one side is Duke Ellington's piano, and to the other, a celesta, which sounds like a toy piano tuned to your nightmares; vintage guitar amps flank a five-foot gong.

It's the Playboy mansion of music gear.