Out of that Dark Hall and Wander

How she longed to get out of that dark hall and wander about among those beds of bright flowers and those cool fountains, but she could not even get her head through the doorway. “Oh,” said Alice, “how I wish I could shut up like a telescope! I think I could, if I only knew how to begin.”

Out of that Dark Hall and Wander is a love poem dedicated to Alison.

August 2017 | Fixed Media, Stereo

Sources

The source material for this work comes from the spectral deconstruction of an audio track from a not-so-famous 1970’s horror film. The original audio is edited and highly time-compressed, leaving a rough outline of the dramatic pacing and more than enough rich harmonic content to keep the lights on for days.

Look after the senses, and the sounds will look after themselves.

Process

Out of that Dark Hall and Wander is the result of work conducted over several years to compose music directly from real-world sounds using a process I call spectral deconstruction. (You can read more about the software I’ve created for this purpose and how the collaboration works elsewhere on this website.)

This work represents significant enhancements over previous collaborations between myself and the software. Most notably, improvements in the interpretation of musical events in their near-term context, clarity of orchestration, and the development of large-scale form.

I’ll write about these advances in more technical detail at a later date, but suffice it to say that Out of that Dark Hall and Wander expresses a cohesive form (in nine sections), distinct motivic relationships that move between timbral families, and orchestrational elements that establish clear roles and maintain their characteristic identity throughout.

Production

The aim of this production was simple; present a clean representation of the music. Whenever “real” sounds were used, every attempt was made to keep them in the context of their natural environment, warts and all.

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