1. In the rain (4:53)
2. Midnight sun : midday moon (4:59)
3. Outside snow falls (3:24)
Commissioned by the Institut International de Musique Electroacoustique de Bourges / IMEB
Rather that presenting a monumental approach to musical structure, these three miniature each present fictional moments, each blown up into a few minutes of sound and metaphor.
1. In the rain
The burning in my head subsides as I lie in the grass in the rain.
Fat droplets falling.
Vegetation flickers
Freshness returns
The structure of this setting is based around the statistical computation of rain drops falling onto a 2-dimensional surface. Drops fall in a uniform distribution on the time line independently from other drops (called a Poisson process). The X co-ordinate is translated into left-right space, the Y co-ordinate as front-back space and pitch shift. Score files were created for use in Csound, and then many sound materials were gradually slotted into the mix. The 'rain' is sculpted to increase and decrease in intensity.
2. Midday moon
Cool midnight sun. Dream awake..
Midday moon..
North of the Arctic Circle there are periods of the year when the sun never rises, and periods when it never sets. Experience of the midnight sun can embody the calming feeling of subdued activity, while continual darkness can evoke mad delusions. During the summer months, the path of the northernly sun is approximately sinusoidal. This path has been divided into units of equal altitude, giving varying time segments. These time segments were then used as an event framework for the sound materials.
3. Outside snow falls
White crystals slowly fall.
A gate slowly sways.
Inside it is warm.
The location of events are calculated in a similar way to the rain in the first setting, but in this instance the sound materials are all placed by hand from a time-space listing, and have a lighter, icier character.