Greg Wilder

Category: Composition

List of compositions by composer Greg Wilder. Many works in the catalog were co-created with AI software.

  • String Bees

    String Bees

    String Bees is the result of an audio experiment in which a brief piece of spoken dialog was sonically analyzed, transcribed, and then orchestrated by a computer.

    Not all of the dialog analysis was used in the output. The goal was to to generate a single coherent phrase by identifying and extracting only the musically interesting aspects of the dialog sample.

    The video was edited together from a film called “Insects on Flowers” which is freely available from the Moving Image Archive at archive.org.

  • Out of that Dark Hall and Wander

    Out of that Dark Hall and Wander

    How she longed to get out of that dark hall and wander about among those beds of bright flowers and those cool fountains, but she could not even get her head through the doorway. “Oh,” said Alice, “how I wish I could shut up like a telescope! I think I could, if I only knew how to begin.”

    Out of that Dark Hall and Wander is a love poem dedicated to Alison.

    August 2017 | Fixed Media, Stereo

    Sources

    The source material for this work comes from the spectral deconstruction of an audio track from a not-so-famous 1970’s horror film. The original audio is edited and highly time-compressed, leaving a rough outline of the dramatic pacing and more than enough rich harmonic content to keep the lights on for days.

    Look after the senses, and the sounds will look after themselves.

    Process

    Out of that Dark Hall and Wander is the result of work conducted over several years to compose music directly from real-world sounds using a process I call spectral deconstruction. (You can read more about the software I’ve created for this purpose and how the collaboration works elsewhere on this website.)

    This work represents significant enhancements over previous collaborations between myself and the software. Most notably, improvements in the interpretation of musical events in their near-term context, clarity of orchestration, and the development of large-scale form.

    I’ll write about these advances in more technical detail at a later date, but suffice it to say that Out of that Dark Hall and Wander expresses a cohesive form (in nine sections), distinct motivic relationships that move between timbral families, and orchestrational elements that establish clear roles and maintain their characteristic identity throughout.

    Production

    The aim of this production was simple; present a clean representation of the music. Whenever “real” sounds were used, every attempt was made to keep them in the context of their natural environment, warts and all.

     

  • Bundles of Superstition

    Bundles of Superstition

    Bundles of Superstition began as a spectral experiment. A short musique concrète work that was carefully assembled to explore the general properties of Isomer’s model analysis over a wide range of sonic sources.

    February 2017 | Fixed Media, Stereo

    To help foster a familiar musical setting, I separated the resulting material into a small group of foreground instruments (harpsichord and a few solo woodwinds) and accompaniment (concrète samples). I selected several partial areas to provide material for the solo instruments, while numerous layers of upper partials created trigger points for the concrète sources.

    The effect is that of a rather free monodic line colored by extreme (often unrealistic) orchestration choices.

  • Other Tiny Magic

    Other Tiny Magic

    Other Tiny Magic is part of a series of artistic collaborations with custom software called Isomer using a process I call spectral deconstruction.

    How this process unfolded during the creation of Other Tiny Magic is described below…

    February 2017 | Fixed Media, Stereo

    Sources

    Other Tiny Magic started life as a short recording (~3 min) of an actor reciting a dramatic monologue. This particular recording was chosen for its sonic potential (extreme emotional range and spectral variation) and served as an experiment to test if an expressive human voice might translate into a reasonably coherent musical experience.

    Process

    Instead of relying on analysis and resynthesis techniques to directly transform audio, custom software called Isomer was used to deconstruct source sounds into corresponding models. The software then interpreted the resulting layers of the sound models as musical language and generated output that could be shaped into a complete musical work by the composer.

    To help present a familiar musical setting, I separated the material into a solo instrument (marimba) and accompaniment (concrète). I selected several active partial areas within the vocal range to provide material for the solo marimba, while numerous layers of upper partials (sibilance) created trigger points for the concrète sources.

    Production

    Given the frenetic surface created by the marimba and the heavy presence of concrète sources, it was necessary to separate the sounds into layers using various spatialization techniques.

    The marimba tracks were routed to two separate buses: one with a fairly direct signal and one that contributed a dramatic, ghost-like effect through some fancy phase shifting and resonant filtering. The concrète sources were routed through four buses with varying degrees of spatialization.

    The resulting effect is that of an otherworldly marimba performance shadowed closely by hundreds of familiar (but out of place) sounds swirling around the listener.

     

  • Dead Man’s Palace

    Dead Man’s Palace

    Dead Man’s Palace is the result of a short piano improvisation I performed from some sketches.

    January 2017 | Fixed Media, Stereo

    To create the current recorded version, I exchanged the piano for harp (and organ) and added a few bits of ambient landscape to hold it all together.

    I plan to expand this sketch into a proper work for piano and electronics, but for now it remains a simple meditation that is (oddly enough) 100% human generated.

  • Radio Project: Valley of the Tharsans

    Radio Project: Valley of the Tharsans

    After many long months of development and testing, I’m thrilled to announce Isomer’s composition debut! And if that’s not exciting enough, Isomer’s first project was recently selected for programming on basic.fm this fall.

    About

    Mars Global Leadership“Valley of the Tharsans” is a sci-fi radio play with a keen sense of nostalgia for the science fiction of the early- to mid-20th century, when finding intelligent alien life on nearby planets seemed completely feasible. The piece is narrated by the head of Lanscorp, a mega-corporation that is the first to send colonists to Mars in 2016.

    The aliens’ “natural” music, created entirely by Isomer, is based on models from the 1922-3 work “Hyperprism” by Edgar Varèse, an important early 20th-century composer who elevated the role of rhythm and timbre to equal that of pitch and harmony, thereby adding new dimensions to the way music is structured and perceived.

    The sound of the narrator was created using acoustical analysis and resynthesis techniques to transform the natural sound of the actor’s voice. Additionally, the speech patterns found in the narration were fed into Isomer as models, allowing the musical output to tightly conform to the actor’s performance.

    “Valley of the Tharsans” is science fiction through and through: its narrative surrounds the discovery of an intelligent alien race, and its musical score was created by artificially intelligent software from musical models that, when originally conceived, evoked a futuristic musical landscape.

    Script: Alison Wilder and Greg Wilder
    Voice Actor: Beau James Fisher
    Music Composition: Isomer
    Production: Greg Wilder and Alison Wilder