Opening track and lead single of the upcoming 10th anniversary reissue of our debut album SEDITION.  Originally released 2011, each track has been remixed and mastered at our current, superior production level so they can be heard as they were originally intended!  More remastered SEDITION songs to come and with the completed reissue will be a Making Of Sedition documentary so keep an eye our for that!

Pandemonium (Remastered)

CAPTCHA for Baritone and Piano
Duration: 16'
Text by CAPTCHA
Performers: American Modern Ensemble, Jesse Blumberg, baritone; Blair McMillen, piano
Publisher: Bill Holab Music: http://www.billholabmusic.com/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=1473
Online Perusal Score: https://issuu.com/robertpaterson/docs/paterson_captcha_perusal
For More Information: https://robertpaterson.com/captcha-baritone-version

PROGRAM NOTES
CAPTCHA originated with an assignment I was given as a participant in the American Opera Projects (AOP) Composers & The Voice program. Throughout the year, we wrote a variety of arias and songs and were given various "challenges." Some of the challenges included using no more than four lines of text, using found text, using prose, and also trying to avoid the passagio (a term used in classical singing to describe where different voice ranges cross over, for example, where the chest voice and head voice cross). I neglected to incorporate any of the challenges into previous pieces, and I only had one song or aria left, so I had to incorporate all of the remaining challenges into a single piece.

For found text, I decided to use CAPTCHA texts. The term CAPTCHA (for Completely Automated Public Turing Test To Tell Computers and Humans Apart) was coined in 2000 by scientists at Carnegie Mellon University. A CAPTCHA is a program that protects websites against bots by generating and grading tests that only humans can pass. For example, humans can read distorted text presented as a graphic, but current computer programs cannot. To find interesting words and phrases, I spent many tedious hours in front of my computer loading CAPTCHA texts. Actually, what I ended using are reCAPTCHA texts, which are derived from a free version of CAPTCHA that uses combinations of real words from scanned books that need human confirmation and gibberish text.

I initially wrote one song entitled CAPTCHA, but later decided to compose an entire song cycle that incorporates the original song. Each songs uses a few key words (the few that are actually real words and phrases) as a springboard. I attempt to phonetically interpret the other words and phrases that don’t make sense, infusing emotion where none exists. Ultimately, my goal is to create an emotionally moving experience, despite the nonsensical nature of the words.

Winter Songs

CAPTCHA - IV. voix Gustroor

The reflections of a man recognising the strength of the woman who has shouldered all of his failures.

YOUR TRUEST FAITH
(Paul Ariss)
Every time you look at me
I know just what you’re thinking
You wish that I would change my ways
And maybe stop this drinking
It’s too much to admit I know
But I’m not the man you married
I’m not the man you knew before
I’m just the man you’ve carried

Even when the child was born
I was somewhere else instead
You never even asked me why
When you should have wished me dead
I carry all the benefit as you
Suffer all the blame
I took from you the years of youth
And you took from me my name

And now as you see another line round your eyes
Do you think of the years passing by
Do you wish for that optimistic wind on your face
As I hang on to your truest faith								   As I hang on to your truest faith

A man as weak as this one before you
Will always find excuse
To seek a home for his easy anger
With occasional abuse
I still hide behind your charity,
But I know the price you pay,
Do you still believe in me
Or has hope just blown away

REPEAT CHORUS 

If you would only scream a little and let me see the pain
Would I carry on regardless and do it all again?
Or take another chance to show you the man I wished to be
Recall those years I stood beside you so strong and straight and free






Every time you look at me
I know just what you’re thinking
You wish that I would change my ways
And maybe stop this drinking
It’s too much to admit I know
But I’m not the man you married
I’m not the man you knew before 
I’m just the man you’ve carried

And now when you see another line round your eyes
Do you think of the years passing by
Do you wish for that optimistic wind on your face
As I hang on to your truest faith
As I hang on to your truest faith
As I hang on to your truest faith

Your Truest Faith

Believe

waiting for the last flight to leave Narita airport to go back home, drinking vodka in the lounge with poorly tinted windows by the terminal where the carpet really needs to be vacuumed

💦FLUCTUATIONS

Song about my lovely Cat.
We lost Knickie over 20 years ago but she earned legendary status in my life story by being the perfect cat!
(c) 1998 One my !st attempts at Computer recordings.
Guitar, Bass, Vocals, Programming, mixing, producing and mastering by Robert Grigg. Comments by family and friends!
Recorded at home. (I was learning)

Knickie

Written: 2019
Duration: ca. 12'
Instrumentation: flute (doubling piccolo), oboe (doubling English horn), clarinet (doubling bass clarinet), and piano (pianist plays from score)
Commissioned by the Exponential Ensemble, with funding from the New York State Council on The Arts (NYSCA)
World Premiere: Exponential Ensemble, Opera America, Marc A. Scorca Hall, New York, NY, October 30, 2019

MOVEMENTS
I. Pascal’s Triangle
II. Noether’s Theorem
III. Einstein’s Daydream
IV. The Hammers of Pythagoras

PROGRAM NOTE
Relative Theory is a four-movement, ca. 12 minute work for flute (doubling piccolo), oboe (doubling English horn), clarinet (doubling bass clarinet), and piano. Each movement is inspired by a mathematician or theoretical physicist. I was inspired by a story that the commissioning ensemble, the Exponential Ensemble, told me about how much they enjoy performing programs for children that relate math to music. In a fun, yet hopefully meaningful way, the movements of my piece are designed to draw parallels between these two distinct, but interrelated worlds.

The title Relative Theory is a play on words: it loosely refers to Albert Einstein’s famous Special Theory of Relativity, but also to musical theories and theoretical principals that are used between each of the movements. All of these movements are inspired by mathematicians or theoretical physicists, and their theorems and theories inspire the music itself.

In Pascal’s Triangle, triads and intervallic content are structured so as to use binomial coefficients in musical ways. In Noether’s Theorem, the music mirrors her theorem, which states that every differentiable symmetry of the action of a physical system has a corresponding conservation law. Einstein’s Daydream, perhaps the most fanciful movement, quotes a few themes from Beethoven, J.S. Bach and Mozart, three composers who’s music Einstein loved to play on his violin. The work ends with a movement entitled The Hammers of Pythagoras, inspired by a legendary, apocryphal but nevertheless playful tale of Pythagoras passing by a blacksmith at work one day, and discovering that musical notes could be translated into mathematical equations.

There are some fascinating programmatic relations that dictate how thematic materials are used in various movements. Albert Einstein thought very highly of Emmy Noether, a mathematician who never achieved the fame she deserved because she was female. In fact, some of her theories inspired Einstein. Therefore, some of the themes in the second movement are used in the third. Einstein and Pythagoras both figure prominently in music history, albeit for different reasons, so themes from each of these movements permeate back and forth.

Relative Theory was commissioned by the Exponential Ensemble, with funding from the New York State Council on The Arts (NYSCA).

LINKS
https://www.exponentialensemble.com/
https://www.robpaterson.com/
https://robertpaterson.com/relative-theory

EXPONENTIAL ENSEMBLE
Anna Urrey, flute
Kemp Jernigan, oboe
Pascal Archer, clarinet
Geoffrey Burleson, guest pianist

Relative Theory - IV. The Hammers Of Pythagoras

Hello! This is my version of X japan song forever love. With piano and strings. Hope you enjoy!

Youtube link to the music video I made for this song.

https://youtu.be/AuckJqoBVTE

X japan - Forever Love (cover)

Tres

CE-5

A spacey piece given some cosmic vibes by the use of a theremin.

04 Amalthea

From third album - "TOO BLUE"
available where all digital music is sold

Too Blue

Pushy Cushion

American composer Robert Paterson is a true New Yorker—born and bred in Buffalo, he lived in Rochester and Ithaca for over ten years, in New York City for over twenty years, and now lives in Saratoga Springs, near the Adirondacks. Paterson’s colorful music embraces a wide variety of themes, everything from goddesses and online dating to mathematics and the environment. His music is filled with emotion and fierce rhythmic energy, marked by elegance, wit, and meticulous craftsmanship. Named Composer of The Year by the Classical Recording Foundation at Carnegie Hall, Paterson is the winner of the Alfred I. DuPont Award, and his opera Three Way won the Grammy® under Best Classical Producer of the Year. His music is often a Best of the Year pick on National Public Radio. His orchestral tone poem, Dark Mountains, regularly airs on NPR’s Performance Today. Three Way premiered with Nashville Opera, then BAM (Brooklyn Academy of Music), and across the United States. Minnesota Orchestra, Louisville Orchestra, The Oratorio Society of New York, Buffalo Philharmonic, Albany Pro Musica, Albany Symphony, Musica Sacra, Austin Symphony, Vermont Symphony, and ensembles worldwide perform his works. Paterson gives masterclasses at the Curtis Institute of Music, New York University, the Aspen Music Festival, the Cleveland Institute of Music, and more. He is the Artistic Director and house composer for Mostly Modern Projects. Robert is a lifelong vegan and advocates for animals and the environment, celebrating the natural world with ground-breaking works such as his Triple Concerto, A New Eaarth, Listen, and I Go Among Trees.

Relative Theory - IV. The Hammers Of Pythagoras

Robert Paterson Composer