Played by the Cory Band under the direction of Philip Harper on December 9, 2019. Note: this is a read-through of the piece and is not a polished performance.
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FACT(IONAL) is a frenetic piece that explores questions having to do with living in a post-truth sociopolitical landscape in 21st century America. While arguably in a quasi Bb minor, the piece uses a variety of techniques, such as poly-tonality, chromaticism, and synthetic modes to obfuscate and disrupt any sense of a tonal center. Instead of deriving emotional meaning from traditional harmonic function, the piece relies more on a dialogue between dissonance and consonance. I was interested in calling attention to rhetorical meaning as a construct. 

Rhythmically, the piece relies on an interplay between fulfilling and disrupting expectation. The piece starts, for instance, in 2/4 with a steady (symmetrical), but “invisible” pulse that is all but erased by the structural use of syncopation, whereas later, at rehearsal 49 the pulse itself becomes syncopated (asymmetrical), but now the structural accents fall on the “downbeats” of this syncopation and the pulse is made “visible.” 

The chromatic texture at rehearsal 140 is meant to reflect the rhetorical deluge that humans living in the information-age face daily. Major thirds (and a pair of seconds) emerge from the din in turn, suggesting a psychic/informational landscape with no center, where all rhetoric (no matter how irrational) potentially carries equal sway — a cultural condition that has perhaps been intentionally engineered by way of disinformation. 

Special thank you to Dr. Robert B. Childs for his feedback and helpful suggestions.

Factional for Brass Band

This is a binaural mix. Please listen to with good quality headphones for maximum effect. This was made using Max / MSP and Logic Pro.

16-bit Forest Nocturne No. 1 (binaural - use headphones)

Guitars and electronics - Dylan Champagne
Bass guitar - John Shiurba
Drum set - Brantley Bacon

I AM JET AT BASE OF FIRE:
I. AM I FIRE AT BASE OF JET (Presto con moto)
II. AT FIRE AM I JET OF BASE (Presto con fuoco)
III. AIM BASE AT JET OF FIRE (Prestissimo estremo con molto agitato)

Composed by Dylan Champagne

I AM JET AT BASE OF FIRE III. (Aim Base at Jet of Fire, Prestissimo estremo con molto agitato)

I AM JET AT BASE OF FIRE II. (At Fire am I Jet of Base, Presto con fuoco )

I AM JET AT BASE OF FIRE I. (Am I Fire at Base of Jet, Presto con moto)

Premiered Oct. 24, 2018, New Music for People and Machines, Seligman Theater, Chapter Arts Center, Cardiff, Wales

The Imaginary Iceberg is a timbral exploration of a single sound source. The idea was to perform in real-time, several minutes of raw material to be manipulated after the fact. The parameters were as follows:

1)	the performance must be a single sound source
2)	the resultant source should ideally be spectrally rich and have a wide frequency footprint to allow for spectral exploration
3)	the recorded performance material can be manipulated in any way so long as the source remains temporally intact – it need not remain contiguous; meaning that it can be muted temporarily, but it cannot be spliced, have any portion shuffled or displaced in time, or have any portion of it reversed, stretched, squeezed etc., so that the resultant manipulated piece remains an exact temporal analog of the original performance
4)	all manipulations should emphasize different “spectral,” or “timbral,” aspects of the source material

To this end, I used a Mexican Fender Strat plugged into a tremolo pedal into a distortion pedal and then into a Fender Super Twin amplifier and improvised about 5 minutes of noise. I then isolated and treated different aspects of the recorded material using EQ and various other effects and attempted to create a layered soundscape.

At the beginning and ending of the piece, you can hear the original source material unaltered and unadorned.

The Imaginary Iceberg

Premiered Oct. 14, 2017, ElectroAcoustic Minifest, Washington State University, Pullman, WA

Sweep and Crinkle Storm

Premiered Nov. 14, 2019, Soundbar at RWCMD.

Rocket Surgery

And Then, Lights On The Horizon

Concert music, movie music, songs, Immersion Composition experiments and rock and roll simulations.