Written for amplified Kingma System bass flute and fixed media electronics, the essence of this composition is the expression of the human psyche constantly pondering over the significance of existence, searching for purpose and meaning in life and the act of living. Serving as the backdrop is the unmistakeable sound of breathing. Yet, while we all acknowledge the function of breathing as being essential to life, rarely do we pause to truly listen to it.

For The Sake of Being

Parallaxe. Parataxe is an acousmatic composition that investigates syntactic construction through the juxtaposition of sonic moments in which the different synthesis processes used create pathways that shift in the timbral, spatial and spectral range. Thus the musical processes constantly change the point of view of the sound objects, creating an acoustic equivalent of the parallax phenomenon through their relationship to the artificial sound background that arises from the projection of the properties of the foreground figures and their timbral permutation.

Parallaxe.Parataxe

A modified version of one my prior NES 8-Bit pieces created in FamiTracker for solo double bass (or cello)to be performed live with 8-Bit accompaniment.

Double Bass performed by Aiden Harmon

Dungeon: for Double Bass And NES 8-Bit Fixed Media (2017)

Severe Thunderstorm Warning

Program Notes:

Severe Thunderstorm Warning (2021) was created in response to my observations of the general public’s lack of acknowledgment of the warnings for severe thunderstorm activity issued by the National Weather Service. This piece, composed entirely of audio radio from such warnings broadcasted via a NOAA weather radio, was designed to convey the many hazards and threats contained within these sudden thunderstorm events and enhance awareness of the actions that must be taken in order to minimize the impact to life and property. From my experience, individuals tend to find tornado warnings as far more significant when the threats contained within a severe thunderstorm can be equally as destructive and over a far larger area. To convey the message that tornados can be hidden within a severe thunderstorm without the specific “tornado warning” being issued, one can hear bits of mention of a tornado within the static and vocal cacophony of the final severe thunderstorm alter announcement.
This piece contains severe thunderstorm warning alerts mostly from the Western side of Michigan, thus the locations mentioned in the audio will be most familiar to those living on the lower West side of the state. Only the audio used from NOAA weather radio announcements was used in the creation of this piece.

Performance Notes

Severe Thunderstorm Warning is intended for performance in any venue on loudspeakers. For added impact, play the piece during the spring, summer or whenever your region is most likely to be impacted by severe weather.

Fixed media piece for NOAA Weather Radio recorded sounds with processing

Composed by: Weston M-A Bernath

Severe Thunderstorm Warning (2021)

Dr. Brad Meyer, percussion

"clear and calm pools of tremendous depth" is a phrase I found in the park map of Yellowstone National Park describing the park’s signature hot springs. When visiting the springs, I was struck by the vivid turquoise color of the water and how deep these springs went down; seeing the surface triggered my imagination about what the channel looked deeper into the earth. This piece depicts submerging oneself into the clear blue spring and sinking down into the bottom, hundreds or thousands of feet down. Improvisatory percussion grooves and gestures integrate freely with samples from hot springs, boiling water, mysterious, unidentified deep ocean sounds, and other found sounds from the park.

Video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHQl2Yn_x8Q

clear and calm pools of tremendous depth

Szu-An Chen: Gemini for Piano and Fixed Electronic (2022)
ੈ✩‧₊˚

Program Note:

Sometimes, my thoughts jump around so rapidly that the body (or mouth) can't keep up. However, just when I am struggling to articulate one idea, another new thought unintentionally appears. It is disturbing.

In this piece, I used a piano and fixed electronics to simulate this phenomenon. The piano represents the body, and the fixed electronics represent jumping thoughts. At first, the two played the same material at the same time, but then the electronic sound went off track, becoming more and more staggered and finally gradually losing control...

Gemini for Piano and Fixed Electronic (2022)

I made this binaural piece using 5th Order Ambisonics format. The sound material was mostly borrowed from Ableton’s Operator synthesizer. 

Debris（binaural ver.）

Debris (stereo ver.)

Progetto di musica concreta, giocato (anche) sulla ripetizione ossessiva di camkpioni.
La parte strumentale, loops e droni,  è creata da Reaktor (Korrell ens.) 
Esempio paradossale di incomunicabilità in questa epoca di immediatezza, le voci registrate rappresntano quasi un grido di aiuto, perse nello spazio e nella totale anonimità..

A piece of concrete music, born (also) from the hypnotic persistence of repeating fragments.
Its instrumental  texture—loops and drones—unfolds through Reaktor (Korrell ensemble).
In an age that claims immediacy, it becomes a riddle of absence: voices suspended, neither near nor far, calling into somewhere—perhaps nowhere—until they fade into a quiet without name.

Hey IT's ME EES

The title NEuripides merges “Neuron” and “Euripides,” reflecting both the technical method behind the composition and its aesthetic resonance. The piece is generated using an artificial neural network composed of four neurons - a minimal AI system that produces layered sonic gestures throughout the training process. These gestures, often repetitive and evolving, evoke the presence of an ancient Greek chorus: collective, ritualistic, and emotionally charged.

At the same time, the textures and timbres of NEuripides are deeply rooted in the contemporary world. They echo the spectral fragments that define our current sonic environment - from urban infrastructure to data flows and media noise. In this way, NEuripides becomes a dialogue between ancient voice and artificial system, memory and code, evoking how the echoes of the past can still speak through the networks of today.

NEuripides was first performed as a 4-channel fixed media work in Hannover Musik Hochschule in Kammermusiksaal Uhlemeyerstr as part of the exchange program between MIAM and HMTMH. 28/06/2025, 7:30pm.


NEuripides, for 4-channel fixed media (2025)

In TrajSynth, created for 32-channel diffusion, I explore the use of artificial intelligence as a generative tool - not for producing entire sound materials directly, but for sonifying the dynamic numerical processes that AI methods inherently generate. These constantly evolving numbers, often ignored in mainstream AI-music platforms, carry a latent energy that I find highly effective for sound creation. Rather than rely on derivative outputs, I tap into the internal workings of AI - neural networks, training loops - and translate their dynamics into sound and spatial gestures. With a system like Jean’s, the massive data streams generated by AI find a perfect spatial counterpart. One neuron per channel might be a dream for the future... but even now, the creative potential is vast.

And this, I believe, is only the beginning.

Special Thanks To Jean Voguet, for giving me the opportunity to work on CRANE lab's 32.2 volumiphonic device in 06/07/2025 and for inviting me to participate in his Curated By series on Sounding Future. And to Fränk Zimmer, for organizing the project and guiding us through the process, offering the opportunity to present our works on the Sounding Future platform for 3D Audio Space.

TrajSynth, for 32-channel fixed media (stereo version) (2025)

String Quartet with live electronics and fixed media. Performed in Warsaw on Jan. 19th 2025.

silence unleashed

During my first semester studying composition with Dr. Elainie Lillios, I became deeply immersed in the sonic world of fixed media and the electroacoustic canon. Works by François Bayle, Luc Ferrari, Hildegard Westerkamp, Trevor Wishart, Bernard Parmegiani, Denis Smalley, and others profoundly shaped my creative approach and opened new avenues of artistic expression.
Denis Smalley's "Pentes" (1993) proved particularly influential to my developing aesthetic. The distinctive characteristics of each sound object, coupled with abrupt and explosive gestures, captivated me and fundamentally shaped my philosophy of how electroacoustic music should behave and develop over time. "My Festering Synapses" attempts to achieve a behavior similar to "Pentes" while incorporating everything else that guided me through that transformative semester—a synthesis of multiple influences and discoveries.
Every moment dedicated to discovering new sounds and compositions, exploring different styles and compositional methods, and absorbing the wealth of information accompanying these pieces left my mind in a state of constant mental stimulation. These thoughts began to fester within my psyche, continually pushing me to compose and create in a cyclical pattern of intrigue, discovery, reflection, and creation. This process became both exhausting and exhilarating, fueling an insatiable creative drive.
All sounds in this piece originate from acoustic sources before being digitally manipulated through various processing techniques. Some sounds come from my voice alone, transformed beyond recognition, while others are sonic snapshots captured from my immediate surroundings during the composition process—everyday sounds reimagined and repurposed. The title reflects both the mental intensity of that semester and the way ideas, influences, and creative impulses accumulated and evolved within my consciousness, ultimately manifesting in this electroacoustic work that captures that transformative period of artistic growth.

My Festering Synapses

Rooftop is a fixed media composition inspired by acrophobia, the fear of heights. The piece explores the emotional landscape of someone trapped on the edge of a rooftop, where fear intensifies and lingers. I created and manipulated a variety of sound sources including birdsong, tablet sheets, paper, and guitar strings to evoke this experience.
The narrative draws from personal reflection and sonic experimentation. My pet canary’s song played a central role in shaping the piece; I was especially influenced by certain recurring motifs in his vocalizations. As a guitarist, the instrument naturally became part of my creative language, guiding the piece’s emotional trajectory and textural development.


Rooftop

Ein Ofenrohr

Kontraste

Floating Thinking is a fixed media voice–electroacoustic composition for stereo or 5.1 surround sound. All sonic material derives from the recorded voice of soprano Rose Hegele, transformed in Reaper and Max/MSP through processes such as delay, pitch shifting, and distortion. These techniques extend the voice into layers of vibration, noise, and abstraction, while preserving its emotional resonance. 

Anxiety is prevalent in contemporary life, and deep breathing often emerges as a natural countermeasure. In this work, the multichannel environment reflects this instability: breath-like sounds shift between proximity and distance, while low frequencies generate a physical resonance that engages both the body and the ear.


Floating Thinking

Qambar Batir is an emblematic figure in Kazakhstan’s cultural imagination, an archetypal epic hero whose story is rooted in Kazakh narrative folklore. The text of this work draws on these traditional sources, evoking the mythic and symbolic dimensions associated with his character.
The electronic component is constructed from two principal sound materials: a female voice and the kyl-kobyz—a traditional Kazakh bowed string instrument noted for its warm and velvety timbre. These sources undergo a range of electroacoustic transformation processes, producing a sonic environment that frames a nostalgic chant sung in the Kazakh language, in which the singer expresses her pain, longing, and love for Qambar Batir.


Qambar Batïr (voice and electronics)

contaminant

Martin Evans is a UK-based pianist and composer. Having started his musical career as a session musician (pianist and arranger), Martin’s focus is now on composing in a variety of genres and include choral, instrumental, chamber, and orchestral pieces, some incorporating fixed media electronics.

Notable composition achievements include his setting of 'Sir Christemas' for SATB voices and piano which made it to the final selection of the BBC Radio 3 Carol Competition 2017. This led to a recording of the piece performed by the BBC Singers, broadcast on Radio 3: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p05qrtyc

More recently, he  won Aurora Choir's inaugural carol composition competition (2025), was a finalist in the Charles Wood Composition Competition (2024), shortlisted in the Sir David Wilcocks Carol Competition (2023) and has been twice recognised in the Japan International Choral Composition Competition (2022 and 2024).

He is a fervent advocate for live music and performance art.

polish composer born in 1994 in Ełk. He has learned to play violin and piano since his early childhood. In 2013-2018 he studied Film Studies and Media Culture at the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Poland. In 2022 he has completed Postgraduate Studies of Composition in the class of Rafał Janiak at the Fryderyk Chopin University of Music in Warsaw. His musical interests cover mainly symphonic music. Currently, he has been working on his debut album consisting of chamber pieces.

Music Theorist - Composer - Arranger - Audiophile - Teacher - Multidisciplinary Enthusiast

Ben Morris is a composer whose music tells unconventional stories and crosses genre boundaries. He is Assistant Professor of Composition at Stephen F. Austin State University.

How can form  evolve under a nowadays psychological framework? Is it more difficult to compose long or short pieces and is there any morality in it that serves as a proof of the composer’s skills? My musical interests are focused on a personal composition method that started from my late integrated masters years in Thessaloniki and which eventually was the subject of my PhD research in York. It used to serve as a preliminary stage for an instrumental composition; however, since 2017 the “Selective Subtraction of tone and rhythmic material” composition technique serves as a tool to create but mostly to sculpt the tone and rhythmic material of the instruments that will interweave with the electronics. As its name signifies it is based on a subtractionprocess that gives a certain amount of material. This material forms the basis for an evolutionary process where finally, all these elements are combined in order to give the final piece. Under the scope of electronics it incorporates computational methods like Csound software, Ableton Live and MaxMasp (Sound Synthesis private patch library) in the direction of finding new ways of pattern development and thus evolution of the form.

For examples of the Selective Subtraction of tone and rhythmic material” composition technique enter here: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/alutmo3h0ue30ec/AAC-LmZExoUMBr6lVgabz1YOa?dl=0

Sound Synthesis private maxmsp library: https://1drv.ms/u/s!AvxYMmv9_S-sgfRtKB-Vq4t2l1PE_g?e=o8BN6A 

PhD thesis: http://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/20111/
Website: https://manolisekmektsoglousite.wordpress.com/
email: ekmektsoglou8@gmail.com 

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

Manolis Ekmektsoglou was born in Thessaloniki, Greece. He studied composition at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece, with Dimitri Papageorgiou and in the University of York, UK (PhD) with Thomas Simaku. He also spent a year at Hannover Musikhochschule studying acoustic and electronic music with Joachim Heintz, Gordon Williamson and Ming Tsao. He is an Assistant Professor of Instrumental and Electronic/Computer music Composition at İTÜ, Center for Advanced Study in Music (M.I.A.M.).

Manolis participated in the “Labor Beethoven 2017-2020” project, funded and organized by the Berlin Academy of the Arts. He received the third prize in the Karol Szymanowski composition competition 2023 with the work Motion, in Two, for solo violin.

His pieces have been performed by many ensembles in several festivals in many countries such as Greece (OutHear Week, DissonArt ensemble, Off Borders Festival), Germany (Neues Vocalsolisten Stuttgart, Earth, Sky, Space festival, Hitzacker 2018), Italy (Soundiff project), Turkey (MIAM 20 year-Gala), Iran (Reza Korourian Awards electroacoustic music festival 2017), Hong Kong (AMGA ensemble) Spain (Mixtur festival 2016), Austria (NAMES ensemble, Synaesthesis ensemble, Crossroads festival, KUG), the UK (Resonance FM 104.4, Kinetic nights festival, Manchester, Gallois trio, Diotima Quartet, Psappha ensemble, Resonance FM, RNM Call 2022), France (Viberation#2, Réseau inDREAM Network), the USA (MISE-EN festival, NYCEMF, Impulse festival 2024), Argentina (Atemporánea festival 2022), Romania (EELISA 1st conference, 2023) and Switzerland (UMS n’ JIP).

An upcoming publication by Manolis in the MIT Computer Music Journal (Volume 48, Issue 4) explores the impact of emerging AI technologies on music composition and performance. It also proposes an alternative approach to generating textural and timbral transformations in mixed-media composition through the use of a dynamically trained neuron.

Musical Practices in the Contemporary World is his first book, where he tries to sum up what has happened in New Music after the 70s, making meaningful connections with the past and providing suggestions from contemporary repertoire. 


For a detailed CV follow this link: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/ph47cs1c2geuni87r4yhp/CV.pdf?rlkey=eejehdl2u0fc9kgdxcenlhsij&st=6rjxtt9z&dl=0

Kei Wing Chan is a composer and multimedia artist from Hong Kong, currently based in New York City. Her music draws inspiration from nature, the humanities, and psychology, with a distinctive focus on timbre shaped through spectromorphology and spatialization. Her work spans solo, chamber, orchestral, electroacoustic, and sonic art installations.

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https://linktr.ee/Yuting_Wu

composer sometimes, weirdo always

phd harvard university
director of harvard group for new music

Nicola Cappelletti (ITA/FRA) is an electroacoustic sound artist, performer and composer. He focuses his artistic research on the relationship between acoustic sound and electronic processing in various expressive contexts of the contemporary arts, such as dance, visual arts, theater and poetry. He collaborates with numerous artists, performers and musicians in various fields of contemporary music.
As a performer his activity ranges from popular music, with forays into rock and club music, to concerts of radical improvisation for prepared instruments, concrete sounds and electronics. As a composer, his work has been presented at ICMC, SMC Conference, NYCEMF, Ars Electronica, Muslab, Atemporanea, Colloqui di Informatica Musicale, Lund Contemporary, Simultan Festival, Mantis Festival, Cantiere internazionale d’Arte of Montepulciano, Festival Nuova Consonanza, Seoul International Computer Music Festival, Festival Orizzonti, Encode, Dancity. He is a member of the Opificio Sonoro ensemble directed by Marco Momi and he holds the chair of Electroacoustic Music Composition at the Conservatory of Music in Cuneo.

New tracks tagged #fixed media