Exploring a Single, Evolving Texture

Last night I had a great time composing in Bitwig’s The Grid. I focused on building a single, really complex texture. The music felt like it was constructing solid, physical forms rather than telling a traditional, multi-part story. The processing gave it a huge amount of energy and tactility.

Even within that singular focus, there was still growth. I built the piece through an improvised take, recording automation across a range of parameters inside The Grid. It made me think about how a “single sound” can actually evolve: filtering, gain boosts, spatial tweaks, envelope modulation changes, increases in noise, panning voices outward, and playing with stereo space.

These choices became the “musical narrative.” Large, reverberant spaces made the sound feel huge and slightly washy, building tension, which then resolved as I pulled the reverb back—suddenly placing the sound right in front of the listener.

Working in The Grid was simply fun. I love this kind of composition—building a complex modular system to generate sound. The Grid remains the most intuitive object-based programming environment I’ve used. It’s not as deep as MaxMSP, but it’s still incredibly powerful. Max might be something I eventually lean into, but for now, I’m loving The Grid.

There’s a state I slip into while writing this music where I almost lose track of how the system is actually producing its sounds. I sit back and feel like I’ve “lost control” in a good way—as if the system has developed a mind of its own. That sense of collaboration between artist and instrument is something I treasure.

Processing

Processing was crucial. After listening to the music of emptyset, I wanted to explore smashing voices together to form a new gestalt sound. Toward the end of The Grid’s signal chain, I combined tonal and noise oscillators before running them through various colouring tools—mainly distortions.

There was always a tricky line between not enough and too much, but when the voices were driven together, they fused in a way that felt like gluing on overdrive. The noise filling the top end was especially interesting. Outside of The Grid, placing a reverb before an overdrive added a subtle widening and sense of realism—along with a touch of muddiness and clutter. Those “negative” qualities actually helped create and resolve tension.

Science Fiction, Discovery, and the Unknowable

What draws me so deeply to this music? It feels linked to the science fiction I’ve been reading—an exploration of the unknowable, the alien, the never-before-encountered. I’ve always gravitated toward novel experiences, and I want the musical equivalent of that.

The avant-garde often reaches for this territory, but so much of the music I heard studying at the Con lacked any sort of emotional resonance for me. The technique and attitude were definitely cool, and I appreciated the desire to push the envelope, but the music didn’t feel like much to me. It was innovative in the field of compositional process and techniques, but not in the sense of musical emotional conversation. What I want is discovery, wonder, and a slight sense of danger. The music I’ve been working on feels extreme, even a bit violent, but in a way that pushes boundaries of expression, not just compositional process. This approach to music isn’t written to attempt to ‘blow up’ as an artist; it’s about exploring sound in ways that haven’t been explored before, and sharing that experience.

One of my students said the piece “sounds like I’m in a massive spaceship,” and (obviously) I loved that comparison. There’s no literal narrative being told, no clear meaning meaning, no love story unfolding—it instead attempts to place the listener inside a structure.

I think of the scene at the end of the film adaptation of Annihilation, when Lena encounters that alien being/structure. She’s bewildered by it; it is unknowable. Is it conscious? Is it even alive? That feeling—of encountering something truly alien and new—is what I want while making the music, and what I hope the listener experiences too.

That sense of stepping into the unknown is exactly what I’ve always loved about science fiction, research & education, and composition.