Category Archives: Composition

195: To remember summer

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a close up photo of grass and clover

Episode 195, To remember summer. Not the first summer on a calendar, but the first summer in feeling. The one that seemed to stretch on forever. The one that felt full of joy, play, and discovery. Maybe it was real. Maybe it’s just a mix of memories, TV shows, and time.

The clatter and rush of a roller coaster, the soft conversation of the crowd, the sounds and thrill of being a kid again. The guitar drifts in and out, soft and slow, sometimes bright, sometimes hazy. The comfort of sunglasses. Glowing.

No ending, no big moment. Just the warmth of the sun.

The episode features a binaural field recording of Santa Monica Pier, recorded in 2018, and processed guitar.

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194: From

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It starts with just a few notes, a hum of a choir—soft, hesitant—and moves gently, the wind blowing in the distance, low, dark waves of sound roll through, like deep ocean currents under the surface. The calm is broken, light tapping, distant and unclear. Ocean waves roll in and out, soft and steady in the background, mixing with the low hum of a worn-out machine. Voices! The crowd erupts with joy! Neon buzzes faintly in the dark, footsteps, around the corner. stopGOstop is proud to present episode 194 of the podcast, From.

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177: Unknown Movement

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Concrete blocks, a bit of feedback, a slow melody, erosion, moving, turning to a beat to move forward, sitting and thinking about the future.

A recycling of some of the sonic elements from 103 of the podcast, Unknown Movement Underground, originally uploaded in July of 2018. Sine waves rearranged for sample instruments, field recordings are replaced by a drum machine.

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165: How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life.

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A field recording of Lake Michigan, interweaving chromatic scales, and arpeggios, episode 165 of the podcast features a new composition for a small ensemble (or rather a computer pretending to be a small ensemble).

The piece was partly inspired by several bike rides I took this weekend, from Evanston to a nature preserve near South Shore Cultural Center(Chicago). The weather was near perfect for bike riding, 70 degrees, with a slight wind. But the waves were rough, tossing and turning from every direction.

The piece takes its first note, middle C, from the book I finished this weekend, Orfeo, by Richard Powers. The title also appears in the novel, as the lyrics for an experimental piece Peter Els, the composer/DIY microbiologist in the novel, sees at a coffee house. He identifies it as Reich. Wittgenstein. Proverb. To paraphrase Els from later in the novel, I will never have anything to break; everything is already broken and glued back together in a mosaic of pretty bits…

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