Obedience School (2008) [10']

Presentation History:
- Premiere: Queen's University Belfast, Belfast, UK, 9/9/08
- Electronic Music Midwest 2008, Lewis University, Romeoville, IL, 10/18/08
- University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, IL, 3/13/09


The structure and most of the sounds in Obedience School are derived from a 14.5-second recording of a dog. The onsets of different sounds, such as a bark, a breath, or a footstep, determined the beginnings of formal divisions. The length of each section was multiplied by 40 to create the finished form, with a length of 9:40. Each section of the work focuses on a particular process with the original sound, although the other processes often interrupt or emerge from beneath the main sound. The processes were ordered in such a way to reflect the sounds from the original sample, but the correlation is not exact. For example, the metric attacks of the first section reflect the dog's pseudo-metric footsteps, and the brassage-seagulls reflect his soft whimpering.

Listen (excerpt):

The full work is available on the CD Parallel Lives. See my store.