Daniel Powers

Archive for March, 2009

Links II was written in 2006. The original version, for clarinet and cello, was commissioned by William Conable and Jane Ellsworth, who premiered it in Nanking, China. The transcription for alto saxophone and cello was done in 2008 at the request of Paul Bro and Kurt Fowler.

The work is a continuation, in a way, of the original Links, written in 2004. This work was one of a series of works, by myself and three other composers (Dorothy Chang, Sue Dellinger, and John Roscingo) commissioned by hornist Brian Kilp. All of us were commissioned to write a suite of four short movements for clarinet, horn, cello, and piano, with the idea being that a performance could consist of randomly selected movements from each suite, and would change from one performance to the next.

Links, my contribution to the project, included a fifth movement as a sort of bonus track, a duet for clarinet and cello called The Opposite of Orange. At a performance that took place at Ohio State University, the clarinettist and cellist were Jane Ellsworth and William Conable, faculty members there at the time. Later they would perform my little duet as a stand-alone work, and soon asked me to include it in a suite of short pieces for them.

The resulting piece, naturally, was Links II, which shares a movement in common with Links. It can also be used as a continuation of the same idea, with movements from both pieces being mixed, as well as any future works in the Links series, or even movements from the other three works involved in the original project (assuming it’s all right with the other composers, of course).

Recordings below are from my composition recital of January 30, 2009, performed by Paul Bro, alto saxophone, and Kurt Fowler, cello.

1. Keep Going!

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2. Cloudy This Morning

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3. The Opposite Of Orange

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4. Rain This Afternoon (tango)

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5. Flight of Fancy

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The twentieth, and (for now, at least) last entry in the Omnisphere one-hour challenge.

Liquid Colors

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 Patches used (in order of appearance)

• Giant Hornpipe Drone
• Bowed Bicycle 1 Reverse
• Magma Chaos Gate 1
• RS-09 Chorus Organ
• Rainbow Dawn Lead
• Gentle Awakening

Loaded but not used

• Analog Authority

• Club Ready

I was already planning to quit after this one whatever happened, but luckily I ended with a good one!

I think this one could be quite a bit longer. It’s the kind of mesmerizing idea that could play out well over an extended time frame. Definitely one I want to come back to.

And that’s all I have for now. Phew! Even though I think the idea is played out, it was fun, and it’s something I might be drawn back into in the future. If so, I’ll be sure to post it here. Thanks for listening.

Spaceship Omnisphere made its ninteenth journey, and its third visit to the Ice Planet, on February 25, 2009.

Ice Planet 3 (Glacial Dawn)

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 Patches used (in order of appearance)

• Plucking the Glacier

• Dawnlands

• Lush Ambient String Orchestra

• Fizzphonics Build

• Timefreezing the Path

• Boy’s Choir Soloist Ah

• Glass Harmonica

• Aesop’s Finger Drum

I’ll admit I cheated on this one. Some of the patches that came up in the random selection process just didn’t work for me, so I let myself replace them. I think this was just another indication of the fact that I was starting to lose interest in the whole project.

On the other hand, I think it made for a better piece. It’s also the longest one in the whole series. It turned out to be a bit more Enya-esque than is usual for me (not that I have anything against Enya) but I think it works pretty well.

The only thing I don’t like is the drum track. “Aesop’s Finger Drum” could have been more interesting, but with the one-hour time restriction I didn’t have time to do more than record one pattern and repeat it. Yet another reason to want to move on.

Oscar and Claudia met at the Omnisphere one-hour challenge on February 23, 2009, and soon number 18 entered the world.

When Oscar Met Claudia

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 Patches used (in order of appearance)

• Dystopian Clock Hit 2

• Claudia’s Cluster

• Cresting Swell

• Pure VCO Strings

• OSCar Bass 1

• Clocking the Timeshift

• Freezing Vinyl Pad

• Jazz Stacks Mixed Doo-Dah^

After the train wreck of the previous piece, this one restored my confidence in the whole enterprise. For a while, I was hoping I’d get to do something with a laid-back jazzy feel to it, and this one provided just the combination of patches I was hoping for.

The Jazz Stacks were fun to work with, as was the OSCar bass, and I liked the rhythmic background provided by “Clocking the Timeshift.” I don’t think the “Pure VCO Strings” worked very well; I would have preferred a more natural sound.

The Omnisphere one-hour challenge, number 17, recorded February 20, 2009.

Rheostatic Breakdown

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 Patches used (in order of appearance)

• Breaking Up In Reno

• Mellow OrganRhodes

• Evil Circuitry

• Power Trance Octolead

• Crystalline Towers

• TranceChords

• Rheostatic Music Box

• Wobbling Bass

I think by the time I recorded this one, I was starting to get tired of the whole idea, but I was determined to keep going because for some reason I wanted to reach an even twenty pieces. If it weren’t for that irrational concern, I don’t think I would have bothered to post this one.

This is probably the worst entry in the whole project. I was just so uninspired that I couldn’t even come up with a good ending; you can hear the piece just kind of fizzling out at the end. If every piece I wrote were this bad, I think I’d just have to make myself give up.

Fortunately, they got better after this.

Counting down the Omnisphere one-hour challenge Greatest Hits, we arrive at number 16 on the charts, recorded February 13, 2009.

Going Nowhere Fast

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Patches used (in order of appearance)

• Resonant Nanorobotics

• Ebowed Grains

• Rippling Rays

• Vector Bellkeyz Fifth

• Simple Synth Bass

• Reloaded Bass

• Long Distance Runner

• Phase Vocodor Choir

Mixed feelings about this one. I like a lot of what happened, but I can’t help but feel that it got stuck in a rut and never went anywhere (which explains the title). Still, there’s a lot of potential here, and I’d like to come back to it sometime.

The 15th entry in the Omnisphere one-hour challenge, recorded February 10, 2009.

Cosmic Junkyard

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 Patches used (in order of appearance)

• OB Resosweep

• JP Sawtoothy Octavo

• White Avalanche

• Punjabi Drone

• Tuvan Male 1 – Drone 4

• The Atonal Playground

• VP-330 Octavox Ensemble

Loaded but not used

• Glitchfield Swell 2

Finally, something with a drum track! “The Atonal Playground” provided a rather odd percussion background, which was just me programming a rhythmic pattern in the arpeggiator and holding down random keys. Worked nicely, and could be a useful effect sometime.

This is one of my favorites, and always gets a smile out of me.

February 8, 2009 saw the creation of number 14 in the Omnisphere one-hour challenge.

Signal to Noise

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 Patches used (in order of appearance)

• Plectrophonic

• Polyphonic Minimoog

• Choir Ees

• Half a Kingdom

• Dystopian Life

• Ceramic Bowlimba Flute

• Dynamic Violence

• Sifting Through The Noise

The “Ceramic Bowlimba Flute” was the most fun I had with this one. It sounds exactly like some kind of ethnic flute, but it actually comes from the sound of a bowed Kalimba! That’s one thing I’ve really loved about working with Omnisphere, the sheer number of unexpected sounds it contains.

Lucky number 13 in the ongoing Omnisphere one-hour challenge. Recorded February 1, 2009.

Pulse

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 Patches used (in order of appearance)

• Harpsipipes

• Percussion Squares

• Mic’d Rhodes Tines

• Chaotic Fingerbells

• Big Boom Balaphonia

• Chromachords 1

• Symphony of Pulsing Harmonia

• TB Killerz

The “Big Boom Balaphonia” bass line is my favorite part of this one. I modified the patch a little to make it ”woodier.” I like most of this, but the lead line could have used more work.

The Omnisphere one-hour challenge, number 12. Recorded January 30, 2009.

Tropical Ice

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 Patches used (in order of appearance)

• Mara Birds

• Sinusoidal (0:07)

• Hammy Hell (0:46)

• Scary Trinidad (0:49)

• Harsh Rip Cords (0:52)

• Space Gliders (0:53)

• Reloaded Bass Pattern (0:58)

• Tickle the Icicles (1:04)

Three pieces in one, kind of. A tranquil opening with jungle noises, a scary interlude, and a more laid-back final section. At the end, I didn’t have many ideas and not much time, so I just held chords down and let the arpeggiator do its thing. It worked better than I had any right to expect.

Some useful ideas here, but not much coherence. Could have been better.

Number 11 in the Omnisphere one-hour challenge, done on January 18, 2009.

Magnetosphere

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 Patches used (in order of appearance)

• Harps are Singing

• Graintable Seq

• Classic Moog Reso (0:17)

• Wheelio Magma Bass (0:17)

• Rock Harder (0:17)

Loaded but not used

• Air Klang

• Model Lead WOW

• Glitch-o-plex Organ 3

Another one that suffers from the lack of a percussion track. And I would have liked a little more time to work on the bass line, but apart from that, I think it turned out pretty well.

Also created on January 3, 2009, the only time I did two in one day. With number 10, we arrive at the half-way point (for now) of the Omnisphere one-hour challenge.

Synchro City

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 Patches used (in order of appearance)

• Nursery Rhymes

• Shining Voices (0:02)

• Soviet Flute Mutterings (0:04)

• Electrocoder (o:24)

• Orchestronic Trance (0:42)

• Buenos Aires Arp (0:42)

• Harmonic Synker (0:48)

• Wanky Euros (0:48)

Before I even started this one, I knew I wanted to try something a little more atonal and dissonant. This is the result; not actually very atonal, but definitely dissonant.