Step Forward Into

Music only unified in how much I strove for lyrics that *intentionally* couldn't quite pass the Turing test, as an alternative aesthetic.

Feathers Without Flight

This piece is designed to evoke aesthetic similarities to Kafka’s work (and uses some of his texts freely). Many of his texts describe something strikingly ordinary, but with hidden, unhappy meaning. Intentional ambiguities in this musical work are: the placement of a tonic, the feeling of hovering between life and death in imaginary matters, and lexical ambiguity in the title. 7-tone equal temperament is well suited for this task because of its simplicity and symmetry (which echo the feeling of a blank, motionless thing existing in a context of isolation). Rhythms are made simple, but strange, and the pentatonic subset of 7-equal is purposely avoided; the entire scale is used for heptatonic implications (this is also idiomatic for the dulcimer, which plays a 7-note scale). Extended techniques are used for expressive effect and contrast between storytelling sections.

Performance and composition by Stephen Weigel. First performed at the BSU Student Composers' Forum, April 6, 2017.

Death Giving Monolith (7-EDO) (premiere)

I'm a composer-researcher interested in ensuring diversity of expression as AI plays a bigger and bigger role in areas core to our humanity.  Note: while in the past I have worked (professionally and artistically) on music generation algorithms, most of my music write now uses suno.com as the "foundation model" doing the actual music generation process - I'm just working on diversifying the inputs it takes in meaningful ways.

Step Forward Into

Halley

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