Senior recital presented at the UNT College of Music Voertman Hall in partial fulfillment of the Bachelor of Music (BM) in composition degree.

Senior recital presented at the UNT College of Music Recital Hall in partial fulfillment of the Bachelor of Music (BM) in Composition degree.

Senior recital presented at the UNT College of Music MEIT (M1001) in partial fulfillment of the Bachelor of Music (BM) in Composition degree.

Senior recital presented at the UNT College of Music Voertman Hall in partial fulfillment of the Bachelor of Music (BM) in Composition degree.

Recital presented at the UNT College of Music MEIT in partial fulfillment of the Master of Music (MM) degree.

Senior recital presented at the UNT College of Music MEIT (M1001) in partial fulfillment of the Bachelor of Music (BM) in Composition degree.

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.

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 …

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.

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 …

"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.

Senior Recital performed at the UNT College of Music Voertman Hall.

Recital presented at the UNT College of Music Recital Hall in partial fulfillment of the Master of Music (MM) degree.

This paper discusses technical and conceptual approaches to incorporate 3D spatial movement in electroacoustic music. The Ambisonic spatial audio format attempts to recreate a full sound field (with height information) and is currently a popular choice for 3D spatialization. While tools for Ambisonics are typically designed for the 2D computer screen and keyboard/mouse, virtual reality offers new opportunities to work with spatial audio in a 3D computer generated environment. An overview of my custom virtual reality software, VRSoMa, demonstrates new possibilities for the design of 3D audio. Created in the Unity video game engine for use with the HTC Vive virtual reality system, VRSoMa utilizes the Google Resonance SDK for spatialization. The software gives users the ability to control the spatial movement of sound objects by manual positioning, a waypoint system, animation triggering, or through gravity simulations. Performances can be rendered into an Ambisonic file for use in digital audio workstations. My work Discords (2018) for 3D audio facilitates discussion of the conceptual and technical aspects of spatial audio for use in musical composition. This includes consideration of human spatial hearing, technical tools, spatial allusion/illusion, and blending virtual/real spaces. The concept of spatial gestures has been used to categorize the …

Senior recital presented at the UNT College of Music Recital Hall in partial fulfillment of the Bachelor of Music (BM) in Performance degree.

Astronomy and music are both fundamental to cultural identity in the form of various musical styles and calendrical systems. However, since both are governed by incontrovertible laws of physics and therefore precede cultural interpretation, they are potentially useful for insight into the common ground of a shared humanity. This paper discusses three compositions inspired by different aspects of astronomy: Solstitium e Equinoctium, a site-specific composition for four voices and metal pipes involving an inclusive communal musical ritual and sonic meditation; Helios, a short symphonic work inspired by helioseismology; and Perspectives, a piece for soprano and percussion based on a logarithmic map of the universe.

This paper presents the history and the theoretical study of mixed music and focuses on two piano solo works and two mixed electroacoustic compositions for piano and electronics. By discussing the working process and giving the analysis of the original composition Alchemy for piano and electronics, this paper investigates the relationship between cause, source and spectromorphology, reflecting how the concept of energy-motion trajectory are embodied in this mixed electroacoustic work. Alchemy is a mixed composition for piano solo and 8-channel fixed electronics focusing on the gestural play and sonic expression. The live piano part explores the gestural sound played with a slide (cup), paper clip, and objects placed inside the piano. The 8-channel electronics part is mainly derived from the recorded acoustic piano. It extends the sonic potential of source materials and presents the diverse vectorial movements of spatialization.

Act one of The Metamorphosis is based on the novella by Franza Kafka of the same title. In the writing of the act, George Benjamin's Into the Little Hill and Oliver Knussen's Where the Wild Things Are provide a model of using musical material as a storytelling device. Benjamin emphasizes the parallel nature of Crimp's text through the manipulation of similar music between the acts. Knussen uses form and color to emphasize Max's childlike energy and his desire to return home. In act one of The Metamorphosis these approaches are combined to enhance Kafka's absurd narrative through a rapid collage of texture and form that is influenced by both events and characters in the opera.

This paper presents a discussion of functional silence in contemporary classical music with a particular focus on the music of Salvatore Sciarrino and Jürg Frey, two composers whose drastically-contrasting bodies of work both occupy the interstitial space between the audible and inaudible. To begin, I address three main questions: what are the functions of silence in a musical context, how do the characteristics of a work affect our perception of these silences, and how do these functions relate to our perception of music on the edge of silence. In answering these first two questions, I discuss three categories of silence---temporal, spatial, and gestural---which I use in a silence-centric analyses of Sciarrino's Let me die before I wake, Allegoria della notte, and Infinito Nero, as well as Frey's Streichquarttet III. To further apply these concepts to music on the edge of silence, I provide a fourth category---timbral silence---which describes the perception of absence or silence within the presence of sound and allows for the application of existing functional principles of silence to sounding events. In turn, this allows us to understand the music of Sciarrino and Frey in terms of timbral completion and timbral dissolution, respectively. Having established a theoretical framework …

Senior recital presented at the UNT College of Music Voertman Hall in partial fulfillment of the Bachelor of Music (BM) in Composition degree.

Recital presented at the UNT College of Music Voertman Hall in partial fulfillment of the Master of Music (MM) degree.

Recital presented at the UNT College of Music Voertman Hall in partial fulfillment of the Master of Music (MM) degree.

My recent compositions are situated within a postmodern theoretical framework. The heterogeneity of materials and hybridity of musical formation in these works are interpreted and contextualized within a personal reading of postmodern theories. The critical essay traces my aesthetics through a historical investigation into the definition of musical postmodernism. Through extensive citation and analysis of the writings of Julius T. Fraser, Italo Calvino, and Richard Rorty, the essay aims to provide a theoretical context for the interpretation of the musical examples. The creative documentation contains three newly-composed musical works: Piano Trio from Opus 3/c, Opus 6 for Violin, and Opus 7 for Piccolo. The works' postmodern features include creative approaches to the fragmentation of musical time into separate levels, historical allusions, and the exploration of multiplicity.

The Replenishment cycle contains five works that allude to the experience of sleep, beginning with awake drowsiness and ending with the piece inspired by rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, titled Conceiving Realities. This last piece is an intermedia work composed for chamber ensemble, live painting with biofeedback, computer, and audiovisual processing. This critical essay describes the composition of Conceiving Realities within the context of the Replenishment cycle, followed by a thorough analysis of the research involved in the technological aspects of the piece, and finally, a description of the instrumentation, notation, intermedia elements, and technology comprising the work. Conceiving Realities uses a system of interactions between painting, biofeedback, music, and video, in which a painter wears brainwave and heartbeat sensors that send data to a computer patch processing the sound of an ensemble as the painter listens and creates the painting while responding to the music. This requires a passive biofeedback system in which the painter is focused on listening and painting. The computer uses the data to process existing sounds, instead of synthesizing new lines. The score blends elements of traditional notation, graphics, and guided improvisation; giving the performers some creative agency. This alludes to the way in which …