“Spicy Orange” is an electroacoustic piece written for marimba and fixed media. The title came to be based on two things: my sense of humor, and my synesthesia. Since the piece’s tonal center is G, the music overall sounds orange to me. When asked by the percussionist I wrote this for, Eric Saroian, specifically what kind of orange I was hearing when listening to the piece, I jokingly replied ‘spicy.’ The name stuck, and the rest is history. 

Finished in March 2021.

Spicy Orange

This is an assignment I did in one of my music courses; I took high quality royalty free MP3 files of ducks quacking, edited each individual quack to fit the tempo/beat, created loops to fit the ostinato of Steve Reich's Clapping Music (along with the rhythm offsets), and made the first 'duck' sound increasingly distorted as time goes on.

**Disclaimer: I neither own the rights to Steve Reich's Clapping Music nor do I claim it to be my intellectual property. This cover was created for purely educational purposes and I do not earn revenue from creating this.
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Clapping Music © 1980 by Universal Edition (London) Ltd., London. All Rights Reserved.

Quacking Music

I had a wonderful opportunity in April to have a reading done by members of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra! I worked on this string quartet for them to workshop with me; I think I may tweak some things and possibly extend the piece's length in due time, but I really wanted to post the audio recorded from that reading session.

The performers are Mingzhao Zhou (violin), Sheryl Hwangbo (violin), Eric Nowlin (principle viola), and Una O'Riordan (cello).

Sneak Thief

My first fixed media piece, premiered in November(?) of 2018!

Collage

This is a fixed media piece I finished in early January of 2019 and premiered publicly in February. I just realized now that I've forgotten to make it public after uploading it, so here I am 8 months later changing the privacy settings.

This piece is entirely made up of sounds from my cat Scooter. He was not harmed in the making of this, only annoyed. And since the making of this piece, Scooter has crossed the rainbow bridge (June 16th, 2019) after a long and happy 14 years of the good life as a house cat. I miss him dearly and have decided to dedicate this piece in his memory.

I'd like to talk a little bit about Scooter now. As the title implies, Scooter was a cat who bit people a lot. Regardless of what mood he was in, be it happy and purring and cuddly or angry and puffed up, he liked to bite people. Despite this, he was very lovable albeit not too intelligent; he was able to tell when people were upset and would do his best to cheer them up. He was cross-eyed, bow-legged, overweight, and had 2 fangs that stuck out of his mouth like a vampire. Scooter loved soft blankets and as he got older, decided he wouldn't sit in someone's lap unless they had a blanket. The smell of chocolate chip cookies made him go nuts; I once had a crumb of the dough part of one I was eating fall and he got to it before I did, and since then, would try and steal cookies if he smelled them. He was an amazing cat and one of my best friends.

Not a day goes by where I don't miss him. In fact, I haven't been able to listen to this piece since his death until today, September 20th, 3 months and 4 days after his passing. It makes me smile knowing he had a good life, even through the tears I'm crying because I miss him.

Sir Bites-A-Lot

I wrote another electronic fixed media piece, focusing purely on mechanical sounds in my life. Written in early 2020.

Mechanical

Here is a MIDI mockup (using NotePerformer) of my piano piece "Hoffnung," which is German for hope. Finished in September 2020.

Hoffnung

This is a MIDI mockup (using NotePerformer) of my piece "Fernweh," which, in German, literally means "distance pain." It is a word that has no exact translation in English; it refers to a longing or desire to be somewhere else than you currently are, to be far away from your current surroundings. Finished in October 2020.

Fernweh

Here's my fixed media piece I started and finished during the COVID-19 pandemic! I wrote this piece as a way to work out my frustrations with how the pandemic is being handled. Finished in September 2020.

In These Uncertain Times

I'm a 21-year-old composer with aspirations of working in the video game music industry! I'm a clarinetist and have experience with most of the clarinet family, and I also speak a little German.

In the fall of 2017, I officially began working on my Bachelor of Music in Composition at the Michigan State University College of Music.

Much of the work posted here is older, but newer work will be posted. Feel free to critique anything, leave suggestions, etc.

Emily Mitchell

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