Sunrise Sonata: the beginning of home ownership. These are pieces written and recorded in my first home studio. To accommodate what I had available to me at the time, these were sequenced and then recorded in one take with my job being to pretend I was an automation system for my rather primitive mixer. The cover art is actually a sunset, taken somewhere in the vicinity of North Port, Florida, and manipulated in Photoshop to achieve a synthesized image reflecting the synthesized sounds.
“Night Begins” introduces the instrumentation: bells, strings, an old-school synthesizer, and a harpsichord. Listen as the cold harpsichord of night gradually takes over.
“Midwinter” is a collection of five themes in a minimalist style. The themes are connected using a Gray code, which is a binary numeration system in which increasing a number by one changes exactly one bit. In “Midwinter” the code is expressed by turning on or off one of the themes.
“Freeze/Thaw” is the darkness of strings taking over the lightness of bells. Listen for the bells to change character, taking on the dissonances of the strings over time.
“Warmth” comes alive with the optimism of new light. The majority of the piece was sketched out on a piece of scrap paper over Thanksgiving dinner at my Dad’s place.