the concept
While Ashley looked to many sources for inspiration and concept, I chose to
focus the music through one specific conceptual idea. Early in the collaboration
she and I discussed several classic horror movies and how they related with
what the piece was going to be. One of the movies that we kept coming back
to was Frankenstein. Since the final piece was going to be a series of episodes
in different moods and styles it seemed natural to take the metaphor of Frankenstein’s
monster as the model for the score. To that end I found fragments of existing
music which I took, manipulated and sewed together to create an entire composition.
The sources include Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in d minor, Bach’s
Mass in b minor, Saint-Saens’ Dance Macabre, Shostakovich’s
Jazz Suite no. 1, and a traditional church chorale, as well as references
to the music of XTC, Marilyn Manson, and Michael Jackson.
the construction
As with any creative effort, this piece was often changing as sections were
added, refined, and re-ordered. I wanted to make the music flexible enough
in its construction to deal with that. Plus I wanted it to be flexible in
the performance setting so that the dancers could be expressive in their movement
without needing to worry about getting ahead of or behind the music (a constant
challenge of using pre-recorded and electronic music in conjunction with live
performers.)
My solution was to build a patch in Max/MSP that allowed me to tie certain cue points in the music with specific moments in the choreography. I ended up creating 27 separate audio files that were designed to overlap in certain ways so that I could jump to the next cue when needed without there being an obvious change of track to the listener. In addition, there were another 12 audio files that would come in and out of the background as needed. The primary challenge then was not the construction of the Max patch, but the creation of a score that could flex to take up more or less time as each performance required.
the music
Part
1 – Opening
Part
2 – Horrors
Part
3 – Brains
Part
4 – Fight
Part
5 – Postmodern / Running
