This short musical poem features an undulating piano riff and a long, extended coda that sounds like laughing on the seashore.
This short musical poem features an undulating piano riff and a long, extended coda that sounds like laughing on the seashore.
for string sextet (two violins, two violas, two cellos)
Water is emotion, and every body of water I visit makes me feel a different way. Lake Pontchartrain is a shallow estuary in Louisiana just wide enough that one cannot see the other side. To get to New Orleans, one must travel across its waters on a freeway or train elevated just above the surface. On a cloudy, rainy day, the gray waters of Lake Pontchartrain evokes feelings of sadness, serenity, intimacy, and longing. The piece begins and ends like the lake’s gentle, unending waves: instruments play long single notes at different times, creating a chord progression that sways between dissonant clusters and tonal harmonies. The quiet middle sections are inspired by nature: wind rustling, birds chirping, and stillness. It features sparse triadic gestures, microtones, and cellos bowing on the bridge.
“Snowy Shore” is a short, four movement electroaccoustic work featuring a narrator. In this work, I explore combining poetry with music. The text, which I wrote, describes the beach in the winter, culminating in a shamanistic journey through the icy ocean swell. The electronics intensify the experience of the poem’s narrative and imagery.
The music includes recordings of nautical buoys, wind, waves, synthesizer, toy recorder, piano, and Inuit throat singing. Additional techniques include panning, doppler, and frequency shifting to create microtones.
Pranayama is an acousmatic work in four movements. The title derives from the Sanskrit word meaning “breathing in life.” Like Indian music, each movement centers around a single note with a swirling timbre (much like an tambura), and an abundance of tiny ornaments. Like much Western classical music, the piece is structured around four movements, each with its own expressive arc.
I created this work from about one hundred recordings of piano chords. Some of these samples I recorded by striking the keys; in other cases, I silently depressed some keys, struck others, and recorded the vibrations from the resulting harmonics. For each sample, I edited out the initial strike of the key, and faded in the rest of the track so that it sounded more like a stringed instrument than a piano. I sequenced and layered these tracks to create the piece. In certain sections, I added recordings of my own voice, as well as synthesizer pads. One might also hear the pedal, as well as other ambient sounds.
Beyond fading in and out, adjusting the gain, panning, and adding synthesizer pads, I used no additional software (i.e. SoundHack or Max) to write this piece. One only hears the raw recordings of the piano, synthesizer, and voice. Optional visuals may accompany this work created by my father, Vin Grabill, a video artist at UMBC.
So far, the work has been presented three times in its entirety in Washington, DC. The third movement was also featured at the 2011 International Computer Music Conference in Huddersfield, England. This piece is meant to be listened to in its entirety. However, if time is limited, the third movement can serve as an adequate representation of the full composition.
Part I
Part II
Part III
Part IV
Listen to a continuous playlist of all four movements here:
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