MUS 3123 - Introduction to Electronic and Computer Music
Final Projects

Hear the kinds of pieces students create in the UTSA Electronic Music Studio

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These works are from several different years.
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Jack Stamps
"a suspicious, ticking, neatly packaged box of whimpers" (an elegy for piccolo and electronic media)

inspired by the technique of composers edgard varese and james mobberley, this elegy laments the civilian casualties resulting from the US war on terror. written for and performed by jim rains, flute performance major at UTSA, the electronic media consists solely of prerecorded flute passages by debussy, prokofiev, and CPE bach performed by rains himself. i sought to study the nature of the flute wave form through various magnifications and rearrangements of the passages. the harmonic qualities of the piece are hybrids of the composers 'sampled' and in places where multiple harmonic concepts appear, the melody borrows from all of them. my goal in writing this piece was to create an open space where, even though the accompaniment is electronically altered, the source of all sound, including the performer, is noticeably one. it's unlikely that puff daddy will ever be in a class with me but if he ever is, i'd be ready to argue a case for creative sampling.

Jake Owen:
Heart’s Swing (text by Rainer Maria Rilke)

Matt Chesnut: springkler

I started with a sampled shaker used to imitate the sound of a rotating sprinkler head. Following that is the introduction of a bass synthesizer line in which every four bars a sixteenth note is added until there are no rests left. Throughout the rest of the piece, one note at a time is changed every four measures to gradually shift chords. At about two minutes, the shaker samples are taken away, and two more instruments are introduced: a MIDI marimba line and two guitar parts, one in each channel. The end is something of a reprise of a pattern from earlier in the piece, reintroduces all lines that had previously stopped. Elements are gradually taken away or faded out until there is nothing left.

Chad Richardson: Untitled

This project was designed to mimic our train of thought. We are constantly losing our focus throughout the day as we have many things to worry about. We move from calm to a more open area with much motion. I find myself with so many things going on at once that I feel like I can gear my heart beating and my brain thinking as well as the blood flowing and my body doing what it does best – adapting.

Chase Gorman: Morning

This song consists of two main parts. The beginning was written using only circuit bent instruments and their sounds. All of the drums in the beginning come from a bent keyboard. The voices come from kids toys modified with pentiometers, pushbuttons, and toggles. The second part is led into by harmonizing computer voices, and the drums (playing different patterns) and synth-like sounds enter. Near the end, most of the sounds are put through a chopping effect that breaks the sounds into smaller bits.

Gordon Ulmer:
Fetus Memory

The piece is made up of three movements, the first being very mechanical and industrialesque, the second movement poignant and more organic, and the third a climax of the previous two movements. The first stage of birth is conception, the second is the life developing in the womb, and the third is the frightening undeniable birth. When listening to this piece, envision the coordination between the three movements and the three stages that occur before our complex life has begun.

Jocelyn Nisi
My Chicken Lickin

As a child, I was taught this cute little music/creative movement song. While I listened to this piece, very random and strange ideas scurried through my mind. I tried to demonstrate these little "ideas" (i.e. insanity), in this piece.

Jesus Gachupin:
Untitled

Devin Ryan:
For Certain Persons

John Lugo
Walk With Groceries

In an ABA form, Walk With Groceries pays homage to those without vehicles who spend hours a day waiting, walking and riding slow moving mass transit.

Patrick Morgan
Plektricized Cricket

Largely based on the sampled chirp of a cricket, Plektricized Cricket employs the use of the Kurzweil 2000, Pro-tools, SoundEdit, and Peak for sound organization and manipulation. Its form is A B A'.

John Ruiz
Contingency

As I started working on the piece, the musical idea I started out with changed. The piece is in four sections. The first and fourth are very difference. The two middle sections are similar - the main material of the second section is reversed for the third. The fourth section is manipulated bird and room sounds with a heart beat added.

Michael Tudyk:
Flight: Beast to Man to American - a Metamorphosis

In the beginning a story of chaotic instinct is told, a thunderous storm in the background is the only constant... nature is the ruling authority. The metamorphosis occurs over time and through the storms of the age the beast grows and a separation takes place, where once there were many voices now there are only two heard above the thunder. The next step suppresses instinct and chaos... man is now totally separated from nature and the beast...

The piece is not be taken in a negative light and does not look down upon our great nation with the eyes of disdain...but rather provides social commentary on the separation of people and nature. Beast is represented by the instinctual sounds of chaos and the beginnings of a story told by the narrator. Man is heard, growing and learning, separating from, but at the same time keeping the peace with, the beast, singing along with cries of praise tot the gods and mother nature... We lose sight of nature and all that was once held sacred. Applauding our own triumphs and progression into the future without remembering and giving credit to the past will create a new chaos, one whose control will ultimately cause our own extinction.

MUS 3123 - Introduction to Electronic and Computer Music Final Projects

Hear the kinds of pieces students create in the UTSA Electronic Music Studio

MUS 3123 - Introduction to Electronic and Computer Music
Final Projects