Recent works exploring relations with environments, featuring instrumental music and sounds, studio and field recordings and electronic manipulations.

Electroacoustic and instrumental works and soundscapes

Erik Satie's first Gnossienne for piano (1890) translates well onto the guitar and has been arranged many times. My arrangement places the melody in the same register as the accompaniment, creating an earthy sonority from the extensive use of the ringing open strings.

Score: https://musescore.com/user/40298281/scores/7039441
Video: https://youtu.be/Ohk0ZfSJejo

Gnossienne No. 1 by Erik Satie, arranged for guitar

This short PIANO THEME came about from a desire to create a wintry, dreamy and somewhat nostalgic piece for the solo piano. It expresses something personal while also bearing hallmarks of its influences, namely works by Frédéric Chopin and Nils Frahm. 

Pianist Gustavo Velasco performed the work on a Steinway piano during a recording session at Conservatoire 93 in Aubervilliers, France in February 2022.

Parts of the piece were used in the score for my entry in this year's Montreal International Film Scoring Competition: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEHMu320y2w&t=14s

Piano Theme

A suite of immersive soundscapes based on recordings made from 29 to 31 October 2019 during a trip around the Millevaches plateau in central France. 

1. Treignac 0.00
2. Plateau 3.23
3. Meymac 4.37 
4. Oussines 6.21
5. Eymoutiers 12.27

All recordings were made with a Zoom h4n handheld recorder equipped with Rycote shockmount and wind protection.

Plateau de Millevaches, une balade sonore

NOCTURNE is another bagatelle for the guitar. As the name suggests, this one is evocative of the night.

Nocturne, guitar bagatelle #4

MAESTOSO is the second in a series of bagatelles for the guitar. The title comes from a musical indication in the central part of the piece that means majestic in Italian. That notwithstanding, so far it's the shortest work in this collection.

Maestoso, guitar bagatelle #2

CANYON is the first work in a series of bagatelles for the guitar. Exploring a variety of colours, tempi and dynamics, it sets the tone for this suite of short and whimsical pieces.

Canyon, guitar bagatelle #1

UNDULATIONS is another bagatelle for the guitar. As the name suggests, this one is wavy and flowing, with legato lines over shifting time signatures interrupted by syncopated rhythms.

Undulations, guitar bagatelle #3

DEATH METAL is the tongue-in-cheek title of this last of five bagatelles for guitar. Metal-inspired shredding and riffing in the early sections gradually meet other styles and are absorbed by the harmonic language that marked the preceding bagatelles, culminating in a lively and challenging conclusion to the collection.

Death Metal, guitar bagatelle #5

Audio updated December 2024.

REVE D'ONTARIO (Ontario Dream) is a composition for flute, trombone, percussion, double bass and electronically processed field recordings. This work evolved from recordings made in summer 2022 around the farmhouse where I grew up in Canada. By mixing the electronically processed recordings with the amplified acoustic instruments, the composition explores the influence that environments and music exert upon one another, how music emerges from our environments just as it affects and informs how we apprehend our environments. This dialectic is approached through the idea of a dream, with a series of musical and sonic images weaving in an out of one another in a nocturnal soundscape. 

Contemporary music ensemble 2e2m performed REVE D'ONTARIO at the conservatory in Aubervilliers, France, on 28 June 2023. Léo Margue conducted the performance with Jean-Philippe Grometto on the flute, Lucas Perruchon on the trombone, Charlotte Testu on the double bass and Alain Huteau on the vibraphone, glockenspiel and tam-tam.

Video of the concert performance: https://youtu.be/R4XcNsZ68AQ

Rêve d'Ontario

a bunch of strumming

This track presents a restitution of a thunderstorm of the kind that pass over the southwest Ontario farmlands. From the shelter of a patio, the thunder passes and the rain builds up and flows in the eavestroughs on the roof overhead. The storm subsides and gives way to the dawn chorus of birds. Listen for the passing train.

Excerpts feature in the composition REVE D’ONTARIO for flute, trombone, percussion, double bass and electronically processed field recordings: http://bit.ly/3KrcSfy

Recorded on Churchill Line near Watford, Ontario, in the early morning of 24 July 2022.


Southwest Ontario Thunderstorm

ROOM OF ECHOES is an electroacoustic composition with field recordings and sounds pulled from a guitar with a cello bow. It was born from an exploration of sounds of an unusual location. In the Auvergne region of France, a room in the fourteenth-century abbey of La Chaise Dieu, known as “La salle de l'écho” (the echoing room), resonates in a curious way, and its function remains mysterious. This composition delves into the mystery by combining instrumental sounds with sounds of the room (of the kind heard by visitors to the abbey since the Middle Ages) using electroacoustic composition techniques. Composed in three movements, ROOM OF ECHOES responds to the whispers, breaths and murmurs of the room, while creating a space of its own.

This stereo version was performed as part of a concert of works played on acousmonium (orchestra of 24 speakers) of the association Cidma at the conservatory in Aubervilliers on 5 December 2024. It has been slightly reworked for posting here. 

An earlier version, constructed from field recordings alone, was written for and performed on an 8.2 octophonic setup in the same location on 31 May 2024. 


ROOM OF ECHOES (Salle des échos) est une composition électroacoustique fabriquée de field recordings et d'une guitare jouée avec un archet de violoncelle. La pièce est née de l’exploration de prises de son réalisées dans un lieu insolite. En Auvergne, une salle de l’abbaye de La Chaise Dieu, appelée « La salle de l’écho », résonne de manière curieuse, et sa fonction demeure mystérieuse. J’ai voulu percer le mystère de ce lieu en faisant dialoguer ses sons — ceux entendus par les visiteurs de l’abbaye depuis le XIVème siècle — avec des prises de sons instrumentales, utilisant des techniques de composition électroacoustique. Composée en trois mouvements, ROOM OF ECHOES répond aux chuchotements, aux respirations et aux murmures de la salle, tout en créant son propre espace.

Cette version, en stéréo, a été jouée dans le cadre d’un concert sur acousmonium (orchestre de 24 haut-parleurs) de l’association Cidma dans l'auditorium du conservatoire d'Aubervilliers le 5 décembre 2024. Elle a été légèrement retravaillée pour être mise en ligne ici. 

Une version précédente, construite uniquement des field recordings, a été écrite et jouée sur un dispositif octophonique 8.2 au même endroit le 31 mai 2024.


Room of Echoes

The new bells of Paris's Notre Dame Cathedral rang for the first time on 23 March 2013. 

bells of notre dame

From empty streets at dawn, the rain fell overnight and the neighbourhood was still wet and so quiet and empty this morning, bringing sunday melancholy and nostalgia and this old composition finally set to recording... in bedroom demo quality :)

guitar composition with harmonics

Composer of electroacoustic and instrumental music, soundscape artist, field recordist, guitarist
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Mike Woods

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