The Listening Room

February 23, 2009

Old-ish Content Warning!

You are viewing a post that’s more than three years old. There’s a good chance that a lot of the following is seriously out-of-date (or at least not reflective of my current thinking on this topic). Proceed with caution.

It’s been a while since I’ve done a music post here, so it seemed about time. For the last few months, I’ve been working on a commission for the choreographer Daniel Charon called The Listening Room, and I thought I’d post a few excerpts from the score as it develops.

This score has, for whatever reason, proved to be a difficult one to get a bead on–it’s gone through multiple iterations, each one evolving significantly from the last. The piece is in roughly four contiguous segments, with two themes evolving gradually throughout the piece’s 15 minutes. I’ve been attempting to strike a balance between harder rhythmic elements and more free-floating melodic sections, with varying degrees of success. On a purely technical level, I’ve been separating out rhythmic elements for more clarity, stratifying snares, bass drums, and cymbals in separate layers rather than mixing them together all at once, as I would normally tend to do.

Anyway, here are some excerpts. Hope you enjoy them!

Excerpt the first:

Excerpt the second:

Of possible further interest: