Reed and I will be moving to Seattle before September 7, because that’s when the Pacific Northwest Film Scoring program starts. Totally awesome!  I’m currently immersed in a world of apartment hunting, which is exciting.  I like to think about how this decision would influence a lot of potential outcomes, and therefore would theoretically work as a central point from which several alternate realities spring.  But that’s really nerdy so I’ll just ponder that one on my own.

The school itself will be on Mercer Island.  We may end up moving into an apartment on the island itself, which is cool.  I’ve never lived on an island before (unless you say “This Island Earth” but then that’s less unique because there’s X Billion others in the same boat).  The alternative would be to find a place in Seattle or Bellevue and then ride the bike to class, which I would also be fine with.  There’s also the question of finding some kind of part-time weekend or evening job to make ends meet.

I recently completed a 4-week class on the history of electronic music.  Interesting stuff.  My appreciation for cerebral music is increasing, but I think I’ll still be able to handle “that sounds nice”.  The class was taught by Christopher Penrose, who is working on a spectral synth for the iPad called Synthtronica.

I’m sure there’s more to say but I’m not sure what it is just yet.

Here’s a youtube video of one of the pieces I presented at my recital:

First and foremost is the project I’ve been kind of working on for most of the year: a miniature for each of the bridges that cross the Willamette in Portland.  The instrumentation is Violin, Cello, Flute, Clarinet, Piano, and Percussion.

As far as the movements go, Sellwood, Ross Island, Marquam, Hawthorne, Morrison, Burnside, Steel, Broadway, and Fremont are all finished (save some editing).  I’m partway through the movement for the 10th bridge, which got me interested in this project in the first place: the BNSF (Burlington Northern Santa Fe) Railway Bridge 5.1, which I didn’t know existed until last summer.  Last is the St. Johns movement, whose inspirational bridge is pretty and large, which means the movement should be as well.

Next up is a score for short film.  The film is 7:45 or so, and only about 3 minutes of it has any kind of a temp track set up by the director.  I’m not sure if that means I should just write music for the parts just with temp track or take the initiative and score the whole thing (something to ask the director).  Most likely the film will be projected during my recital, accompanied by live string quartet and piano.  Then, this summer, the performers will be recorded for the film’s actual release.  Exciting!

Those are the only two “I’m going to do these on my recital for sure” pieces I’ve programmed so far.  I have a few other ideas to write between now and then (June 5, come see my recital!)

Some possibilities include:

• Sonata for Clarinet and Computer
• Electronic music for short silent film (emphasis on public domain)
• Percussion piece for non-standard instrumentation (details to follow!)
• Electronic, Musique Concrete style piece using mouth samples
• Viola duet

My target duration is an hour, let’s see if I make it!

In other news, I picked a new theme and title for my blog’s site, which was a very productive waste of time!  And I’m thinking about trying to get into a 1-year film scoring certificate program up in Seattle… mostly because Reed said he was going to do it, which is another copycatism (but would be totally awesome).

Everybody Wants To Chip The World

On reflection, we probably would have needed to get permission from the original bands before distributing the game.  Eh!

zath_wayoutvrc6wip01a.mp3

17-Jan-2010 03:16

2.2M

I’m not going to let myself complete it until I’ve got some breathing room at school, but… it’s so fun making chiptune covers!

Album by Wyatt and me from some ten years ago.

Also, listen to it on TheSixtyOne.com and give us some hearts!

zath_starbuild-tape.mp3

17-Jul-2009 23:13

2.2M

It’s the “tape-part” for the second movement of the sonata.  The sonata as a whole was called “Take It Back” and investigated the idea of being able to reverse your decisions.  Kinda like Braid, I guess, but far less developed an idea.  This movement is the “Oh, Hey, I Can Reverse Time” moment of the piece.  Or something.

It was created using sampled sounds from my viola, mostly me tapping on it or swishing my bow in the air.  There were also tones from the viola or a piano, manipulated by a neato program called HyperUpic.  There was some additional jiggery-pokery in a program called SoundHack.

It’s… ambient?  And it’s about two-and-a-half minutes long.  Really it’s a wash of sound that belongs behind a cello.  Someday I’ll get a good recording of the rest of the piece and put the complete version online too.

Video by Zaratustra,

Oboe by William McGlothlin,

Composition and Sequencing by me!

I’m sure all three of you who read this (including however many of you who are actually me) are familiar with this tune, but it jumped out at me tonight while perusing some of my old stuff, so I thought I’d upload it.

Fugue

Later, Zara was looking for music to use in Zeta’s World.  I volunteered some music from earlier games, and since he didn’t plan to sell Fugue, its music was up for grabs.  I assumed he’d want a remix of the music, so that way he could have the main version of the level play the above song and an alternate version play the remix below.  It was used for a level called “Sunspot”.

It kind of diverges from the original, but that’s alright.  This version was made in late 2004, according to the timestamp on the Impulse Tracker file.

Fugue-Sunspot

Most of the Zeta’s World soundtrack is by Troupe, and it’s good stuff. I guess I’m the “guest artist” for that soundtrack :)

We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.

Count_the_Ways.mp3

06-Mar-2009 21:34

8.5M

The piece was written in 6/4 (because it had bits with a 6/8 feel and other bits with a 3/4 feel), so it seemed best to write it so that either division of the beat could be played… but that meant conducting it in 6 and it ended up slower than written (it also had some tricky parts).

But it turned out pretty well.  I didn’t WIN, but that’s cool because we were told all four of us wrote very respectable pieces. :)

It’s exciting to have a piece performed by a traditional ensemble!

Summertime Class

I took a Computer Music composition class last summer where we learned about MAX/MSP and digital multitrack stuff.  Here’s what I wrote for two assignments.

Lies

The assignment was to take a couple of recorded samples and fiddle with them in MAX/MSP.  I used a vocal sample with a famous (?) quotation and a bell-like percussion sound.  All the fiddling was done with commands and envelopes, so it was the playback that was affected and not the actual sample.  What’s that called, non-destructive? 

Wetworks

Wetworks used a lot of modified samples jammed together.  I kind of fell in love with the AT&T text-to-speech generator and made use of it for the background sound of hard-to-discern voices.  Vocoded.  There’s also underwater sounds made from pouring water into a cup and then slowing it down to 1/16th its normal speed.  And my long-suffering Roland XP-80 that I lusted after for nearly a decade and then proceeded to ignore… provides a sample!

The teacher said “it sounds really wet, did you make this wearing headphones?”  (lots of post-processing) Well, in my opinion, wet… works (see what I did there?) so long as you’re wearing headphones when you play it back.

What else is new?

There are some other projects in the works.  I was selected as one of four composition students to write a piece for the New Music Ensemble.  I was also working on a piece last term for oboe with Nintendo accompaniment.  They still need work before they’re ready to present, so I’ll get to it and upload more things to listen to ASAP.  Enjoy these two oddities for now.