This weekend will mark the premiere of my first electroacoustic work, which will be performed as part of the Hartt Dance Division's senior dance recital. Each of the five senior dancers has been collaborating with a Hartt composer; the seniors are creating the choreography, and the composers are supplying the music. (One would expect it to be this way, although I'm sure it would be a very interesting recital if the roles were reversed.) The dances are being performed by other dance students at the Hartt school. In addition, each of the senior dancers will be featured in a solo performance choreographed by an outside professional dancer.
The piece that I have crafted for the senior with whom I am collaborating (Tiffany Goudreau) is titled A Fresh Start. The title—and the inspiration for the piece—came from one of Tiffany's original concepts for the choreography. (Her concept has since changed, but the music has adapted and still fits – one of the quirks of a collaborative process like this one.)
To help convey the idea of a fresh start, I set out to use only "organic" sounds in my piece, namely, sounds from everyday life that I recorded myself. I was able to stick to this self-imposed limitation, with the exception of using a couple software instruments (which are just collections of recorded samples anyway). The result is a soundscape that sounds very "real." Some sounds are more easily recognized than others (depending on how they have been altered and combined), but the sound world is quite accessible. (Of course, this is far from the only way to put together an effective piece of electronic music!) Some examples of the sounds I've used in A Fresh Start include my own footsteps, cars passing by on Interstate 84 in Downtown Hartford, brushing my teeth, doing the dishes, and a whole host of sounds created from recordings of a contrabass playing in different styles.
Not only is there contrabass music in the electronic component, but there is also going to be a live contrabass on stage with the dancers (in the form of the amazing Doug Lemke). I wrote the contrabass part once I had finalized the electronic component and included a number of allusions to the electronic medium. In other words, the live contrabass will imitate sounds that are present in the electronic medium, particularly the recorded contrabass sounds. In this way, the live contrabass and the electronic sounds are not simply separate media that happen to be unfolding at the same time – they are interacting with each other.
This whole collaborative process has been very rewarding. As this is my first piece of music (acoustic or otherwise) to be written specifically for dance, I have gotten a glimpse into the choreographic process (not that there is only one). The better I can understand the work that goes into an unfamiliar art form (in this case dance), the better I can write music for it, and the better I can communicate with future collaborators.
I have also become better versed in crafting my own electronic music. While I would not go so far as to call myself an expert at this point, I did learn some new techniques while putting A Fresh Start together, and the nature of the sound restrictions I put on myself compelled me to approach composition a bit differently that I had before.
The electronic component is presented below. I do not yet have a recording of the live contrabass to go along with it, and I don't want to spoil the piece with any MIDI realizations. For the full effect, be sure to make it to one of the performances.
UPDATE: A YouTube video has been posted featuring the choreographer I've been working with (Tiffany):
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