Steam

Many of my compositions revolve around transformation of materials. Compositions often evolve around creating a “stream” of material which can then be transformed and manipulated to achieve many aesthetic, intuitive, and creative ends. In Steam, I used segments of source recordings to generate granulated streams of materials according to parameters I could control and limit, such as time between grains, grain size, transposition, and panning location. After various streams were produced, I was able sculpt a musical form. Steam begins with a granulated section and closes with a phasing section reminiscent of the work done by Steve Reich. The first part introduces the materials with sound gestures, wherein transformations occur between beans, bubbling, dripping, and between steam and waves, as well as abstract transformations created through manipulation of the source recordings. Interspersed between the granulation and phasing sections are some un-manipulated source recordings including a brief soundwalk. My vision is that the momentum and musical rhetoric provides an organic modulation between these different domains.