Nothing says "we have a lot of oil to burn!" like spending a lot of hours on electricity music.
Autonomous Fantasies for General MIDI
Electronic music has a inherent problem of being non-interpretive due to the fact that its medium is more often than not becomes "fixed" as a form of recording which is eternally unchanging. In recent years composers have been utilizing autonomy as a way to address this problem (e.g. start this process as a certain time, but the result is indeterminate), but I thought it might be interesting to attempt to create "interpretive" electronic work without the use of autonomy.
The solution to the problem largely involved utilizing a standardized medium, the General MIDI format, as a piece in itself. The rendition of sounds using MIDI would effectively lock its output into another typical electronic work, but if music written in the MIDI format in itself could be labelled as a "piece", then depending on the MIDI drivers involved, the number of possible renditions couild be near infinite. Experimenting with this idea resulted in a lot of different results, where a lot of different outcomes could result out of the same MIDI file through different MIDI drivers. In the long run, however, I realized that since the instructions contained within the file always remained the same no matter what, the changes in timbre were largely illusive -- hence the title.
This piece can be played either as a video work, video installation, or just from the comfort of one's own home. Download the player from Stephen's site, then load the MIDI file into the player, change the display type to "BALLS", then press play. The player is currently in its developmental stages so it's only available for PC computers for now, sorry!
Complex Emotions (2004)
Electroacoustic work produced at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champain EMS (Electronic Music Studios) under the direction of Scott Wyatt. Sound sources - Male Voice, Female Voice, Choir, DX11 Synthesizer, TX81Z Synthesizer. Software - Galaxy, ProTools, Vision DSP.
I had a few actors recite these words with the mannerisms put in parenthesis:
Happy (Happily), Happy (Sadly), Happy (Angrily), Happy (Peacefully), Happy (Emotionless)
Sad (Happily), Sad (Sadly), Sad (Angrily), Sad (Peacefully), Sad (Emotionless)
Angry (Happily), Angry (Sadly), Angry (Angrily), Angry (Peacefully), Angry (Emotionless)
Peaceful (Happily), Peaceful (Sadly), Peaceful (Angrily), Peaceful (Peacefully), Peaceful (Emotionless)
When Happy (Happily) is put next to Happy (Angrily) or Angry (Happily) they can usually be heard as being related...so using this idea I tried exhausting the possibilities by modulating from word to word using emotional qualities as pivot points. There's a man's voice, woman's voice, and a group voices so counter-point is also generated in that manner as well. One of the more stranger sounding works ones I've written.
"Ninja Village" Theme (2003)
Video game music
Written for a video game that never got around to being made. Sort of my attempt to write music that loops around indefinitely, which was a fairly interesting exercise. The soundtrack uses a pentatonic scale that moves slowly outwards and eventually collapses back on itself after having moved out an octave.