Opaque Melodies: Chronological List of All Works, Pt.2

Fixed Music on Disc by David Mooney

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Chronological List of All Works, Pt. 2

<1971 - 1998><1998 - 2000><2001 - 2002><2002 - 2003><2004 - >
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2001 - 2002

American Lives and Property 2001 16:30: Recording: LARVA04: Life After College; This piece is the first of a series of works focusing on continuity and cycles that led to the Ancient Chinese Enclosing Game Compositional Matrix. In addition to musical continuity and cycles this work uses text that reveals a continuity of a different nature: the cycle of armed interventions. The text is a list of 85 such interventions that occurred from 1812 to 1932. The stated purpose of many of these interventions was along the line of "to protect American life and property." Questions such as why was there American life and property to protect in Shanghai in 1927 are left unasked. The list was compiled by the US State department as part of its justification for sending armed forces to Korea in 1950. When I started this piece the US and Great Britian had just bombed radar sites in Iraq. As I finished, 24 crew members of a US spy plane were released by China after making an emergency landing on Hainan. Two months after the piece was completed, terrorists attacked New York on September 11, 2001. So far, the response of the US has been primarily armed intervention with little or no attention given to rectifying the conditions that generated such deep hatred. Just another item on the list.
Dogs Working in Respirators 20014 12:00: According to the British "Report on Work of Dogs when Wearing a Respirator," dated 18.8.44, the dogs were "...all quite comfortable in the [gas] mask and walk and sit without agitation." However, they were "[c]ompletely confused when asked to work...just walking around and unable to make sense of it." Don't you know the feeling?
New Traffic Patterns 2001 8:00: Mp3. Archived at Sonus.ca; Recording: LARVA04: Life After College; Broadcast: art@radio, University of Maryland Baltimore County, 2003; The Pennsylvania Turnpike is under constant construction. One sign commonly used is, "Caution: New Traffic Patterns Ahead." Hmmm... Aren’t there always new traffic patterns ahead? This programmatic piece is built around the text of this sign. The sounds are primarily various types of granulation used to convey the gritty noisy environment of speeding through construction zones on a hot day in an unairconditioned car. "New Traffic Patterns" is part one of my Road Work series.
Expect Delays 2004 8:00: RealAudio: 1:42; Mp3 archived at art@radio; Recording: LARVA04: Life After College; Broadcast: art@radio, University of Maryland Baltimore County, 2003; When the highway is under construction we are often warned to "Expect Delays." This text is the basis of this programmatic piece. Delays figure prominently within sounds, the repetition of sounds and in the spoken text. "Expect Delays" is part two of my Road Work series.
Be Prepared to Stop 2001 8:00: Recording: LARVA04: Life After College; Mp3 archived at art@radio; Recording: LARVA04: Life After College; Performance: Electronic Music Midwest. Kansas City Community College &
University of Missouri-Kannsas City, 2002; Broadcast: art@radio, University of Maryland Baltimore County, 2003; This is part three of the my Road Work series and continues the risky excursion through the pylons, barriers, and lane shifts of the highway under construction. Repeating musical cycles and patterns reflect the simultaneous change and endless sameness of driving the Interstates in the U.S. They always seem to be under construction, don't they? Caution: new traffic patterns ahead. The lanes are narrowing. More barriers. Expect delays. Feels like driving down a toboggan run. Is that 18 wheeler going to make it through there? Oh no! Be prepared to stop!
Positions of Effective Proximity 2002 6:00: Though when he used the phrase "...position of effective proximity," Winston Churchill was referring to battleship maneuvers it seems an apt description of much music composed in the European tradition. Here many layers and layers within layers maneuver about each other in the choppy seas of frequency space passing through many kinds of proximity before resting at last in comfortable harmony with one another.
The Influence of the Nickelodeons 2002 5:35: Mp3. Archived at Sonus.ca; Recording: LARVA04: Life After College; Performance: Electronic Music Midwest. University of Missouri/Kansas City, 2003;
     3rd Digital Art Festival in collaboration with NewMediaFest2007, Rosario,
     Argentina, 2007 (Included in NewMediaFest's SoundLab Edition V); FILE 2008
     Electronic Language International Festival, Fiesp Cultural Center, in
     collaboration with NewMediaFest's SoundLab V, Sao Paulo, Brazil, 2008; This text piece uses notes of a librarians' meeting dated February 10, 1910 in which the influence of the nickelodeons "...upon the reading of the public" is decried. Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose.
Spin Cycle 2002 7:00: Recording: LARVA04: Life After College; Performance: International Computer Music Conference (ICMC2003). Singapore,
2003; It was recently asserted that all academic electroacoustic music sounds like a washing machine. This was meant as a put down. I'm not sure what "academic electroacoustic music" is but I've always been rather fond of the sound of washing machines, thus this piece, the sounds of which were derived from said appliance.

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2002 - 2003

Ancient Chinese Enclosing Game 2002 -: The following compositions are extractions from The Ancient Chinese Enclosing Game Compositional Matrix. Compositions are extracted from the matrix using a variety of pseudo-random operations.; For the first use of the matrix all sounds were derived from readings from the text of an unpublished novel, The Ancient Chinese Enclosing Game, which depicts a time when the game was played in earnest. With one exception, titles relate to the music at the discretion of the listener.; For the second use of the matrix all sounds were synthesized. Except for 4th and 5th extractions, the titles of the pieces were inspired by films in the Unseen Cinema series.; For the third use of the matrix most sounds were derived from recordings of a pin dropped onto a metal cookie sheet. Ambient sounds recorded from 5:30-6:30 am on a midsummer morning were edited and highly processed for one of the matrix layers. The inspiration for this iteration came from a preponderance of pieces at a recent conference composed in a "wall of noise" style. What happened to dynamic range? How about some quiet works!

Birthday 2003 5:00: Mp3. Archived at Sonus.ca; Recording: LARVA04: Life After College; Performance: 33rd Festival Synthese. Bourges, 2003; SoundLab Edition III,
ConcertHall at le Musee di-visioniste and NewMediaArtProjectNetwork, Cologne,
October, 2005; Composed for the 33rd Festival Synthese Bourges 2003. The piece uses a recording of my mother's bridge club, made around 1964. On it one of the few intelligible phrases contains the word "birthday."
Final Assurances 2003 8:00: Recording: LARVA04: Life After College; The text for this piece, read by the composer and Maxine Heller, comes from an early 20th Century book of phrases suitable for letters and conversation. Respectfully yours...

Usage note

The sound clips on this page are protected by copyright. If you want to use them as they are, or wish to hear the complete works from which they come, please contact me. However, if you want to sample from these sound clips and mutate, permute and mutilate bits and scraps for your own creative purposes, I encourage you to do so. In the end, it's all one big project.

"Opaque melodies that would bug most people."
Don "Captain Beefheart" Van Vliet