A selection of recordings of compositions gathered over the years. Gives an indication of where I have come from musically, but not necessarily where I am heading. I hope to add some more recent examples as time permits.
Crossings
Instrumentation
Duration
Year(s) of Composition
Guitar plus live electronics
9:20
2000
Crossings was composed in April-May 2000, as a follow-up to Ripples, and makes similar use of a rhythmically timed electronic echo effect, which enhances the textural density of a solo melodic line. Crossings also uses a live sampling technique – in which a series of patterns are captured into a recorded loop and repeated back – allowing the soloist to play an additional melodic layer while the sampled pattern continues. Aside from the crossing of harmonic and melodic lines existing on the musical level, the title also refers to a book I had recently read, Crossings: A White Man's Journey into Black America, by Walt Harrington. The book describes one man's sadness and occasional hope concerning the condition of race relations in contemporary America as he travels through a number of states meeting a variety of black people. While my own research has not been nearly so extensive, I nevertheless share many of the author's sentiments, and the subject was on my mind while creating this piece. Also intersecting with my work on Crossings was the sudden and unexpected passing of my father in Scotland. Only a few days before I had been discussing the composition with him over the phone, as I wondered about some additional material with a distinctive mood. This material (now the coda section) later seemed like a musical premonition of my sadness over this loss. And with its incorporation came the realization that the title, Crossings, would take on an additional meaning: a crossing over from life into death. Crossings is dedicated to my father, a pianist and composer himself – Mr. Gerald Hind.
Ripples
Instrumentation
Duration
Year(s) of Composition
Guitar plus live electronics
6:12
1995
The composition of Ripples was inspired by a transcendental experience I had one night while floating on my back in a swimming pool. This was an outdoor swimming pool at a motel situated in the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument in the southern-most part of Arizona. It was late at night, and I was attempting to find out how long it would take for the water to become completely still, while I floated, motionless, staring up into a cloudless, star-filled sky… After some time, the water had become very calm. But it was not completely still, and it seemed that so long as I was breathing – even in slow, steady breaths – some ripples would be created. And these ripples, reflecting back from the perimeter of the pool, would eventually return to me—denying my wish for perfect stillness. After some more time, I realized that the closest I could get to this stillness was to time my breathing with the reflection of the ripples, harmonizing myself with them and with the water that supported my body. This seemingly trivial experiment however, revealed to me a great truth. That so long as I am alive I cannot avoid action (even breathing is an action!), and that my every action will return to me in some form: harmony with my actions will tend to bring peace, and lack of harmony will increasingly perturb that peace. The experience was for me, a striking illustration of the nature of karma. I hope that the action of composing Ripples, may somehow communicate the sense of harmony I felt that night.
Quest
Instrumentation
Duration
Year(s) of Composition
Electronics
4:02
1994
Quest embodies the dynamic energy of growth: reaching upward, outward, and beyond; from darkness to light, from coldness to warmth, and from form to the formless. Growing pains, as well as joys, are part and parcel of the journey.
Cosmos
Instrumentation
Duration
Year(s) of Composition
Electronics
7:04
1997
Cosmos is an attempted realization of a number of important aesthetic concepts to me as a composer: the unification of the micro and macro dimensions of sound (wave motion being common to both); an assimilation of influence from non-Western musics; and the desire to produce electronic music in harmony with nature.
Rain
Instrumentation
Duration
Year(s) of Composition
Electronics
6:14
1991
Rain is a moment of pensive reflection, as if stirred by the sight and sound of gently falling raindrops. The synthesized sounds that form the main component developed from some of my early experiments with 'algorithmic composition' – the nebulous art-science of generating music (pitches, rhythms, plus the parametric data that defines the timbre of a synthesizer) through judiciously constrained randomness in a computer program. The shifting texture of sonic raindrops is interspersed with sampled fragments of speech, the echoes of once familiar voices so faded from memory they can be only partially recalled.
Slumber
Instrumentation
Duration
Year(s) of Composition
Electronics
4:26
1995
Slumber describes nature in a state of dormancy, a gathering together of essential elements that will be needed for future growth. Attention is focused on the concept of body. Anything external seems distant and remote; anything internal is intimate and integral.
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