New Site

Friends,

I no longer maintain this blog. Please visit http://nkromsdavis.net instead.

Automatic Prélude No. 4

Sound. Score.

This is short, but I'm pleased with it.

Temporary Hiatus

Friends,

I've had an incredibly productive month-and-a-half of composition, but I need a break! I'm going to take a few days off from music and then begin work on an acoustic composition. Since this blog is devoted to my electronic music, I probably won't update it for quite a while - perhaps months - but I'll keep it up for those who wish to listen to the music that I've posted.

Thanks for listening!

No Ostinato Composition

Well, despite the fact that my last two posts were studies for a forthcoming work involving ostinati, this work won't be forthcoming after all. I didn't like the direction the composition was taking, and it had several problems - mostly, though, it was boring and ugly. You win some, you lose some, and this isn't a major loss.

Another Ostinato Study

Sound. Score.

I think that within a week or so, I'll be able to post the composition towards which these Ostinato Studies are leading.

Ostinato Study

(For the nonmusician: Here is a definition of "ostinato". "Ostinati" is a plural of "ostinato".)

Here are the sound and score of a quick study for a yet-untitled work involving ostinati. I haven't composed anything with an ostinato for quite a while - mostly because it's really hard! Many young composers have fallen into the trap of using ostinati without good reasons, and the results are generally directionless and forced. The difficulty, as always, is narrative: how can a narrative progress if it is bound by a repeating pattern? It's not impossible to compose interesting narrative music bound by such patterns, of course (I'm thinking of the music of Bach and Brahms here in particular), but the challenges of doing so are significant.

Ecology No. 4

Sound. Score.

Ecology No. 4, I think, is my most ambitious (and certainly one of my most successful) electronic works to date. It is structured according to a refinement of the reproduction/inhibition paradigm that I've been exploring in my last three Ecologies. More important to me than its modest technical refinement, though, is the fact that this Ecology begins to show glimmers of an interesting narrative structure while remaining true to a consistent set of underlying algorithms. The algorithms organically generate the narrative. This, I think, is the ultimate goal of my enterprise: to compose algorithmic narrative music - a task which is much more difficult than it sounds!