Dwarf Alphabet: "weaving," for solo flute

Psychadelic Chopin (etude 10/1). Created in SuperCollider 3.6.6.

Chopin Remix 5-8-15

a meditation on the fragility of memory--both human memory and memory in the material world. this is a very shortened version of the piece; ideally, the erosion process would happen over the course of a week. generated in SuperCollider 3.6.6 using a custom-built neural network framework.

image: Edgar Degas, The Millinery Shop (1885) [slightly cropped]

Memorialized

Written for and performed by The City of Tomorrow woodwind quintet. Recording from April 2nd, 2015 at the Illinois State University RedNOTE Festival.

Scorrevole (in Italian: “flowing”, “gliding”) is a work about just that: fluidity and motion. This is not to say that the piece is a stream of consciousness, or that its dimensions are in constant or continuous flux. On the contrary, at many points the energy of the music comes up against obstacles, and must suddenly rearrange itself in a new formation. In this way, the piece is also about energy gliding between “states of matter,” whether the process of transformation is evaporation, or sublimation, or solidification.

Scorrevole's pitch world derives from a particular conception of harmony and melody: rather than use traditional musical intervals, such as major thirds and perfect fifths, to determine the relationships among notes, I instead developed a system where the differences in Hertz frequencies among notes are restricted to a small list of possible values. This has surprising results. Since frequency is a logarithmic scale relative to pitch (for example, a semitone up from middle C is a change of 15.6 Hertz, but a semitone down is only 14.7), an interval of 70 Hertz may be an octave for the bassoon, but only a semitone for the flute at the top of its range. Naturally, because not every frequency corresponds precisely to a note on the piano, I had to go outside of the standard twelve-note scale and make use of quarter-tones and eighth-tones. This is not something that is necessarily meant to be audibly perceived—after all, I think I would get quite bored if I tried to identify every interval in a Mozart sonata. Nonetheless, this method of working is very flexible and gives the whole work a certain unpredictable flavor, and I find that very colorful and attractive.

Image: from Van Gogh, Olive Trees in a Mountainous Landscape (1889)

Scorrevole (2015) for woodwind quintet

Performance by Third Coast Percussion, November 7, 2015

Cymbal Quartet (2015, revised)

for orchestra

performed by heejung park conducting the yale philharmonia
dec 10, 2015

please don't listen to this track on soundcloud, which transcodes to mp3. download the wav file which offers higher definition in the upper end of the frequency spectrum, and as a result more accurately represents the live performance of this piece in particular and noise-rich works in general. thank you.

yale philharmonia, heejung park conducting

performance 10 DEC 2015

image: van gogh, tree trunks in grass, 1890

ANOTHER FOREST (2015)

written for and premiered by:
Rich Liverano, trombone
moss heim, electronics

composition and electronic instrument design:
moss heim

integer (2016) [incomplete]

kandinsky string quartet
moss heim, electronics & objects
matthew lefevre, recording engineer

recorded at norfolk chamber music festival

all gone [2016]

programmer at ableton, previously maintainer of supercollider

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