Browse Items (868 total)

• Mitochondrial Dreams

  The mitochondria within my body will perish at the time of my death.  Like all men and women who will not in the course of their life carry a child within them, the long chain of information passed through these cells exclusively from mother to child will be destroyed and forgotten.  Mitochondrial Dreams is a musical work for found percussion items and electronics produced using Csound, Pure Data, and Logic.  It explores the wonder that can be felt when contemplating the ancient genetic history these cells carry.  They are part of us; indeed we could not exist without them, yet these small creatures are genetically dissimilar from our own code.  They are an essential part of our shared human heritage.  The community of mitochondrial cells within me has propagated in a line unbroken since before the first humans walked the earth – yet this genetic lineage will unquestionably end with me.  Mitochondrial Dreams is a celebration of the marvelous complexity of life and a reckoning with mortality.

  Score and Pd patch available at www.vidiksis.com.

• Modus Operandi

  ... there is a proper measure in doing things...

• Modus

  a mode of procedure :a way of doing something

• Moiré

  Moiré is the soundtrack for Jordan Belson’s 2001 video Bardo. It also appears on Asphodel label’s Swarm of Drones CD set. Most of the source materials are derived from natural sounds that are highly processed using extensive layering, resonant filters, equalization and SoundHack algorithms, resulting in a complete disassociation from their origins. Spatial location and modulation are of primary concern.

• Moment of First Awakening

  In the spring of 1985, conductor Clive Wearing suffered from a virus that attacked his brain’s ability to form short-term memories. He was left with less than 2 minutes of recall at any given time.
  
  To this day, Clive keeps a journal in a stilted attempt to record his existence:
  
  8:31 AM: Now I am really, completely awake.
  9:06 AM: Now I am perfectly, overwhelmingly awake.
  9:34 AM: Now I am superlatively, actually awake.
  
  Clive lives in a perpetual state of temporary standby. His entire awareness is limited to a tiny window of time — a momentary gap that creates for him a continuous moment of first awakening.

• Monochrome Variations

  Spectral work that uses color notation to indicate gradual shifts in timbre.
  
  Commissioned by cellist Craig Hultgren, this work takes on the idea of developing simultaneously two separate pieces juxtaposed side by side. The two disparate pieces (one dealing with high, fast microtonal passages; the other dealing with slow timbral transitions) are unified by similar pitch materials based around a C- fundamental harmonic series that transforms into an E-fundamental harmonic series). Electronics are used to twist and transform the timbral shadings that occur in both compositional streams. A notational system of colored lines is used to indicate specific elements of timbre control throughout the score.

• Monument III: Charleston, Summer of 2015

  Two movements for wind ensemble and live electronics, dedicated as a tribute and memorial to the nine men and women murdered in an act of racist terrorism while at prayer in Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina in June 2015.

• Murmurations of the Krell

  Experimental hardware-based live performance electronic drone piece.
  
  I’ve always been very interested in the idea of limitations when it comes to creating music. Whenever I start work on a new piece, I begin by establishing meaningful limitations to work within. I find this to be very freeing. (Stravinsky was right when talked about the freedom of limits.) Last Summer I did a live electronic music performance that involved a large amount of equipment in an elaborate setup. At some point shortly after that performance while discussing it with a friend, I mentioned, (kind of half jokingly) that I could do an effective live performance with a Quad Oscillator and a wah wah pedal. Though I had meant it as a joke, the more I thought about the idea of working within that kind of extreme limitation, the more attracted I was to the idea. So, I set about creating this piece.
  
  Murmurations of the Krell is improvisational, though it is following a general plan and has been rehearsed. I would call this an experimental electronic drone piece. The only sound source being used is a Quad Oscillator that was built by Tim Kaiser. It has only a single output that I am splitting multiple times and running through a couple of loopers and various hardware signal processors, (including a wah wah pedal). The piece is notable for what it does not use. There is no computer, no sequencer, no keyboard or other conventional musical instrument interface. Just knobs, switches, faders and pedals. I found this to be a challenging set of limitations, but at the same time, stimulating.
  
  The title of the work is a direct reference to the classic 1956 sci-fi film, “Forbidden Planet”. In this film, the Krell were an ancient, long-extinct race of beings with highly advanced technology – a technology which eventually lead to their own demise. The electronic score for the film was created by Bebe and Louis Barron, and I feel that some of the general aesthetic character of my piece is evocative of their work.

• Music for 88 keys: to Conlon Nancarrow, in memoriam

  Music for 88 keys is the first example of a composition based on the sonification and remix of materials property data from the online computational materials repository AFLOWLIB, the heart of the materialssoundmusic project.The sonification algorithm behind Music for 88 keys maps the materials information into sound by encoding data into MIDI events in an automated high-throughput fashion. The sonic data are fed to audio generating patches written for MAX and Ableton Live through a DataPlayer app. The algorithm used in the creation of Music for 88 keys maps data to the MIDI notes 21 through 108 (the 88 keys of the piano) and associates an amplitude (MIDI velocity) to each note derived from a manipulation of the same dataset. The duration of any MIDI event (that is a representation of rhythm and meter) is inferred from the rate of variation of the data (i.e. their derivative in time), making each material soundscape completely internally consistent. The MIDI stream so generated is then treated as a collection of musical structures for further compositional elaboration. “Music for 88 keys” is a suite born from the remix of the data from Diamond, Zinc Oxide and Gold. The piece is scored for player piano and electronics and is dedicated to the memory of Conlon Nancarrow, the American composer who made the player piano his instrument of choice throughout his career. In Music for 88 keys the original datasets from AFLOWLIB.org are variably manipulated through different techniques: from simple variations of tempo and meter to extensive reordering of pitches or regions and various orchestration choices. The suite starts with a preludio that uses the sonic mapping of the data for Diamond as starting compositional material. The same concept is used in the interludio, but with data from a different material, Zinc Oxide. Interludio separates the two principal sections of the suite: largo and andante, with the piano accompanied by sampled percussions sounds and based again on data from Diamond, from continuo, based on the data for Zinc Oxide for piano with a drone of brass, and  contrappunto aureo, based on the data from Gold, where the brass and the percussions are both combined with the piano. The suite ends with a postludio, where the piano alone states again a sonic mapping of data that now combines the three materials.

• Music for Ciona

  Score for a dance by Pilobolus; also on PBS ‘Dance in America’.