Browse Items (868 total)

• Antagonism Constellation Factory

  Stereo fixed media; found and synthesized sounds
  In this electronic piece I used the temporal aspect of the material to create contrast; instead of transforming the material over the course of the piece, I tried to make the sounds stay largely the same and build the piece out of the subtleties of the relationship between them. The opening section puts sounds that seemingly have little in common in close proximity; the relationship is not developed, and instead a contrasting section begins, which soon ends up combining with the opening sounds. The resolution of this section is not what would be expected, and instead the sounds are finally transformed into something new; this, however, is short-lived. In a manner similar to Varèse’s Poème électronique, the piece focuses on the unexpected, and creates an evocative narrative through the juxtaposition of material; Antagonism Constellation Factory presents this narrative in a terse and sometimes antagonistic fashion.

• Laniakea

• "Real-Time Processing Improv"

  real-time signal processing of improvisers

• Redundancy in Perceptual and Linguistic Experience

  Algorithmic text based programming; Nyquist Programming Language

• Aphantasia

• Bowing to the Roaring Storm, Their Songs Never Cease

• Fractured Memories

  Fractured Memories is a piece that explores some thoughts I’ve had on my own perception of memory and thinking about the past. The piece presents and opening idea (the memory) and the rest of the piece a reworking of that idea in a dialog between the oboe and electronics. At times the memory is retold with refined accuracy, sometimes it is distorted, sometimes it’s made out to be more exciting than it actually was. The final section of the piece acts as the final retelling of the memory with fragments of each distorted re-imagining making their way into the musical fabric. Is it a true account of what originally took place? Maybe not, but the importance is more with the journey from beginning to end.

• Vous l'Inaccessible

  Vous l’Inaccessible is for soprano and electronics, and was inspired by the Guillaume de Machaut virelai “Douce Dame Jolie.” Machaut’s melody and text are presented in a variety of forms, as a chant, spoken word, and a direct quotation of the melody. As the piece unfolds, the voice becomes more free and independent of the original melody, creating a process of development followed by deconstruction and finally reconstruction into completely new material free from the original melody. The final spoken text is a modern text, related to the theme of unattainable love (like the Machaut text), but presented in modern French as opposed to Medieval French text of “Douce Dame Jolie.”

• Bellowing Thunder, Crimson Sky

  With Bellowing Thunder, Crimson Sky I was trying to capture a feeling I had in the summer of 2013 while walking home just a storm was rolling in over my southeast Ohio town. The sun had not fully set so the sky was an eerie dark red and I could hear thunder rolling in the distance and see brief flashes of lightning. I was on my way home from an evening walk and I started to worry that I was going to get caught in a nasty storm; I made it home just before a massive cloudburst of rain and thunder. I wanted to recreate that sense of the “calm before the storm” that can arouse conflicting feelings of serenity and unease all at the same time.
  
  Bellowing Thunder, Crimson Sky was commissioned by Patchwork Duo (Noa Even and Stephen Klunk) and was premiered in spring 2014.

• Dissociation Sequences (C23H28O8)

  Brutal cello and electronics piece.
  
  Dissociation Sequences (C23H28O8) tells a narrative of being caught in the middle of a hallucination (or series of hallucinations) on Salvinorin A and the cognitive effects the chemical has on the brain. The hallucinations from Salvinorin A (from the salvia divinorum plant) cause various dissociative effects such as distortions of time, space, memory and motor function. In this piece the cellist is battling with these dissociations through the realization of the score and the interaction with the live electronics.
  
  This piece was written for James Burch and is dedicated to Franklin Cox.