Compositional practice:

My compositional practice is quite varied and so I will give some examples of my approaches. They include restrictive, pastiche, procedural, systematic, dissociative, and indeterminate approaches, as informed by the genre I may be working in.

Crickets Of Doom (2022):

This was composed for the Xenakis100 event (a celebration of the composer Xenakis at WAAPA). Instrumentation and presentation was defined prior, with six percussion desks (each with a skin, a wood, and a metal) arranged in a circle around the audience of approximately 50.

 I noted that Xenakis was very interested in mathematics and numbers. Therefore, as a starting point, the layering of multiple polymeters seemed one way to reflect this.

Therefore, for the six percussion desks, two were written to play in 5/4, two in 7/8, and two in 9/8. All players would share beat 1 of any bar. During composition, I found that woodblocks in the 9/8 and 5/4 parts could give a satisfactory illusion of the sound of crickets. The ‘phasing’ of different crickets could also be evoked, and this begins at bar 23. The entire group falls silent at bar 39, and any hopes of reprieve for the listener from the approach of the crickets of doom are dashed when they return in bar 42. While most of the piece involves only two players on wood blocks at any one time, at period beginning at bar 46, all four player in the 9/8 or 5/4 time signatures are playing the phasing cricket motif. This is intended to raise the menacing, quality of the motif in this period. All other motifs, in all time signatures, are intended to be disorienting and reinforce the sense of menace. The final iteration of the cricket motif at bar 121 is supposed to evoke the arrival of the crickets of doom, heralding final annihilation.

Preparing the polymeter score and click tracks was challenging. While Musescore (the software used) allows for such ‘local’ time signatures, the program is extremely unstable. Furthermore, in generating click tracks in these meters, every single bar had to written out and could not be copied and pasted in Musescore (a known problem) with the exception of the 9/8 parts. This created a laborious process.

However, the restrictions I was given (instrumentation) and the restrictions I imposed on myself (pre-defined polymeters) led to a satisfying creative process, forcing me to engage with sounds that I would not have otherwise explored/ .

In Space No Cares If You Scream (2021):

During the composition of the piece ‘In Space No One Cares If You Scream’ I was recording various interesting sounds that I could get out of an analogue synthesizer. I then cut and pasted them into something of a narrative, including spatial distribution of sound. When I listened to it after exiting my ‘creative dissociative state’, I realised I’d made something like the soundtrack to a murder in outer space. Someone vulnerable being attacked, while all alone in a vast nothingness. It felt like I was touching the moment when I was taken from my mother at birth. The screams of the synthesizer were mine. This experience is pre-verbal and exists in my body, but I can’t remember it. Yet I can unconsciously reach into it through sound.

Abandonment (2023):

Four-part vocal motet, initially inspired by ‘Osculetur me’, Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (1584). Piano accompaniment was included to support the four voices, although ideally this is omitted.

This piece was developed by using the cadences of the 16th century in the piece as structural pillars. These were then compositionally linked using the rules of counterpoint that I studied in the works of R.O. Morris and W.Piston, which are themselves based on treatises from the 16th and 17th century by early composers/educators such as Fux and Fenaroli. I wanted to stay true to the style and ‘rules’ of this period.

Resources:

‘Cadences in the 16th and 17th centuries’, Early Music Sources

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jaCRUdxTRSM

It’s Time, from ‘Stuffed’ (2022), film score:

The director for this was suggesting ‘dark gothic’. So, I suggested ‘Funerailles’ (1849) by Liszt as a reference. I rearranged the piano score within an inch of its life to fit the action in the film. I am unashamed to take wonderful older works and re-purpose them from a piece about the Hungarian Revolution to apply them to a 21st century comedic horror film. I consider it part of the role of a composer to be a musical re-user, working within the musical tradition.

Loose Groove, from ‘Chookas’ (2024), film score:

The reference track I was given for this by the director was ‘Strut Part 1’ by Antonio Sanchez from the film ‘Birdman’. (link here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgMQMr0DoE0&list=PLMhXC1P5yiBD__LZx-9go-zRvpGdbCHHC&index=1)

It is trying to be evocative of a theatre company getting ready for a performance and somewhat diegetic. Therefore, I wanted the sound of jazz drummer sound-testing then dropping into a loose groove. I knew a great jazz drummer, William Wallace. I set him up in a recording studio and then told him: ‘Do a sound test across your kit, cymbal splashes, tom rolls etc. Then drop into a loose groove’. That he did. Hence, my instruction was the entire composition, for my part!