My music is published as individual "albums," each assembled according to a specific concept (some obvious, some not). As i have alluded in previous posts, i don't necessarily consider the individual pieces as an end to themselves (or particularly important for that matter), they are simply necessary for my larger, more abstract, artistic goal: i call it "assemblage."
I am fascinated by the interpretation of constucted meaning of sequential experiences (a wordy way to say the way two things next to each other create a new meaningful relationship, an interesting detail of semiotics). Had i finished my PhD, that would have been the framework for my dissertation.
In other words, in order to have material to play with, i have to create as much actual music as quickly as possible (sometimes at the expense of technical dexterity and tone quality). Whether obvious or not, much of my work draws from the world of electronic dance music and DJ culture, a world defined by stringing together disparate sounds and pieces of music. The titles, cover art, and release notes all try to approach the unifying concept of each album, some more clearly than others. Like painting, i want the total end product to "speak" about its creation in some tangible way. Each album reflects my auto-biographical chronology, similar to the way each successive track builds upon the overreaching concept.
There are, however, several compositional paradigms that transcend this segmentation. In other words, you could trace the chronological evolution of a particular style across my entire output, a much more normal musicological topic. In some cases, doing so would result in much more familiar/traditional ways of constructing an album stylistically.
Some of these paradigms are:
Fixed composition vs. Free improvisation
Loop pieces
Traditional genre works (rock/metal/blues/folk/etc.)
Ambient/non-metrical soundscapes
Rhythm/lead pieces for guitar
Academic scale/harmonic systems (tonal/modal/12-tone/gesture)
Sectional vs. Through-composed formal structures
Contrapuntal relationships
So to sum up, i think of the album in its entirety as a larger piece of music with multiple movements. Likewise, a group of albums that share similar characteristics point to an even larger structural relationship.
My current project is a group of albums centered around the process of creating albums with only my left arm due to shoulder surgery (that's a real life thing, i'm not insane enough to preemptively orchestrate that as an artistic scenario). What type of album would you create with one arm? How would your choice of project be influenced by staying home alone all day? Would you find yourself thinking about the past? Would you finish old projects or plan new ones for after recovery? Would you re-orchestrate older pieces? Those are the kinds of ideas i'm addressing by creating new synth realizations of my old pieces. Volume 1 is published and volume 2 is nearly complete. I've planned a 3rd volume, but i can't guarantee it will properly materialize...
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