This paper provides an overview of the inspiration, research, and creative process involved in the composition of EverWind for orchestra and electronics. EverWind is based on field recordings from the American Southwest. The composition uses pitch material derived from spectral analysis of the recordings, and it incorporates a fixed media element using the field recordings that are then electronically manipulated to various degrees; this fixed media element is played alongside the orchestra. The paper also analyzes John Luther Adams' Dark Waves for Orchestra and Electronics and R. Murray Schafer's Music for Wilderness Lake in order to place EverWind within the broader musical context.

This document accompanies and explains the concepts used in the development of the composition, East is East, and West is West, (and Never the Twain Shall Meet). The process for generation and development of much of the musical content of the composition East is East, and West is West, (and Never the Twain Shall Meet) is the use of quoted musical materials. The second process, but equally as important, for development of the composition relies heavily on the idea of parallel development of modular ensembles and how the interactions created between them by sharing instrumentation can be a tool for development, as well as a challenge to the development of each module. Each module has an influence on at least one other module and is also influenced by at least one other module, creating a puzzle of interactions that must be navigated carefully when generating each individually. Both quotation and modularity are concepts employed by other composers, so this document also briefly explains how other composers have approached these concepts in their works in order to establish a historical relationship within the canon of western classical music to East is East, and West is West, (and Never the Twain Shall …

In the first half of the twentieth century, sporadic attempts of avant-garde composers to include sounds other than pitch in musical composition paved the way for the composers in the second half to embrace the sound of all types in their creative works. The development of technology since the mid-past century has facilitated composers' inclusive use of sound. The recent achievements in electronics and computers have led to cost-effective tools for today's composers to explore new possibilities in sound design and manipulation. Gradual for tenor saxophone and fixed electronics is primarily concerned with noise. Among the infinite possibilities of noise types, metallic sounds significantly contribute to the composition. The title of the piece refers to the compositional process in which the music progressively unfolds itself from the beginning to the end. The methods and strategies used to present the content give rise to a form I call accretion, described as an organic process by which the musical materials grow. Within the process, while established materials are interacting, combining, and forming layers, new materials may be incorporated and take part in the process. Throughout the composition, the interaction between sounds with common properties guides the music toward interactive unity, while the …

Audiovisual concatenative synthesis is an analysis-driven granular technique using a corpus of multimedia data to sequence audio and video streams on a microtemporal level. This text outlines my development of this technique as a tool for multimedia composition, using my work, Replica, as a case study. The paper illustrates how the concepts of granular structure, gesture capture, and replication are integral not only to the software but to the architecture of the composition. In doing so, machine learning approaches to music and visual art are reviewed and related to my personal compositional practice. Additionally, I attempt to show how audiovisual concatenative synthesis provides a composer with strategies for shaping one's sense of time through disorienting audiovisual cues and tightly organized counterpoint between sound and image, stage and screen, and the real and virtual.

"Natural Disasters" is a cycle of five extractable movements for septet, conductor and computer. Each movement in the cycle is inspired by the ways that humans are affected by and respond to five different classes or categories of natural disasters: meteorological, such as hurricanes, tornados, and haboobs; geological, like earthquakes and landslides; hydrological, including flooding and sea level rise; wildfires; and extra-planetary disasters such as meteors and solar flares. The disaster types are used as overarching themes and also as sources for the organization of the movements and their surface details. This paper presents an overview of the conception and organization of cycle, the themes addressed in each movement and the compositional techniques used. The history of composers using weather or disaster-related themes in prior music is reviewed, and a survey of contemporary disaster-related compositions is presented.