COMPEL Omeka Dev

Browse Items (868 total)

  • Juxtaposition between Modern Dance Music and Baroque music

  • Spacious Electronics to reinforce the choreography of William Forsythe

  • beat-based rhythmic complexity; integration of stylistically diverse materials; discontinuity

    Opus Palladianum: voice and drums explores relations and contrasts, from those that are clear, such as the juxtaposition of opposites (soft, loud), to those that are ambiguous, such as the juxtaposition of synthetic and intimate. Contrast is created by presenting the voice and percussion elements in a variety of rhythmic, harmonic and technological settings. These organizations illuminate timbral identities, associations that are connected to production processes, and the relationship between an object and its development. Such juxtapositions and superimpositions invite listeners to consider how context, and not just timbre, influences the aesthetics of recorded, sampled, and synthesized sound. The piece creates unity and connections among these disparate elements through its formal construction. As a result, there is connection despite heterogeneity; there is fluidity despite disruption; there is peace despite agitation; there is continuity despite discontinuity.

  • song-based electronic experimentalism via audio production, microtonality, narration, discontinuity

    Eroding Mountains is about a slow epiphany. It is about one’s realization of the value of nonhuman animal life in a culture that typically defines ethical standards along speciesist lines. It is about the realization and remembrance that such lines are and have been drawn within the boundaries of the human species. It represents confusion and conflict that results when what was normal and comfortable is recognized as ethically untenable. It is about remaining connected with those you love in spite of differences. It is about frustration with apathy. It is about the hope of things getting better.

    Musically, transformations and re-orderings of recognizable materials represent emotional conflict, confusion, and the feeling of a voice that doesn’t reach its listener. Larger trajectories, such as de-tuned -> tuned and distributed -> isochronous represent the journey of coming to clarity. The three sections represent how individuals can come to this realization in isolation and how, unless they connect with others, will continue to inhabit that state. Each section features expression that refuses to compromise its humanity in spite of the confusing factors around it. The piece concludes with a musical statement of hope.

  • Another installment in my found soundscape series; Below the written pitches spectrally extracts sound beneath the written pitches of Brian Ferneyhough's Superscriptio for solo piccolo to reveal recording anomalies, latent undertones, and mechanical noises.

  • Stridulating, dub-like glitch with tilting planes of reverb and echo. Deckle was created as a pocket remix for Wyndel Hunt's album Sunshine Noir released in 2010 by Dragon's Eye Recordings.

  • Held at the University of Richmond in Virginia, Third Practice is an annual festival devoted to adventurous acoustic and electronic music. See www.thirdpractice.org for details. Live and unedited with no post-performance processing or overdubs: I improvised a short set in AudioMulch layering, mixing, and processing acoustic and electromagnetic field recordings.

  • Originally released on the 2000 compilation Owasso Night Atlas, Sylvian's Wood (1996-98) convolves the voices and music of many 1980s pop singers.

  • I find myself sometimes lost and unsure within the compositional process. Whether the work is an acoustic, electronic, or a combination of both, I often find the struggle is the same. A Blade Within is a fix media 2 channel stereo work that found it's conception within the struggle of the composer's processes. I try to express these subjective operandi by means of raw, as well as manipulated sound sources. The final gesture of the work accentuates the nucleus of the main idea.

  • Performance Notes: The Bringer of Life is a programmatic composition representing the Panspermia Theory with musical elements. The sharp rhythms, dense textures, and freely chromatic harmonies are orchestrated in a manner that, in my mind, programmatically represents celestial bodies impacting our planet in it’s beginning stages billions of years past. This work should be performed aggressively, in strict time (no rubato), and with no breaks (rit) in between ‘sections.’ It might be helpful to imagine comets striking our planet’s surface when internalizing The Bringer of Life.
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If you see an error or would like to add content to COMPEL, please leave a comment or contact Hollis Wittman at hollisw@vt.edu.