dreamcatcher (2015)
Dreamcatcher is about dichotomy. In the diversion of good and bad dreams, awake and asleep, etc. (stock, I know) but also in music.
The first section is very organic, and slow. I sampled Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata" for the synth part, however the sound is slowed down 800%. The piano part takes on a choral, ethereal quality. Over this opener is a mass of extended techniques for percussion, played without measure numbers or any metric direction. These "cells" of ideas simply float over the piano arpeggio at the performer's discretion. I openly encourage in this section, that the performer improvise and adapt these ideas as they feel necessary.
The B section comes as the contrast. We trade extended techniques for very traditional drumming. We trade temporal freedom for strict rhythmic divisions (the performer must wear headphones with a click track to perform this). And we trade in the ambient acoustic chorale of Beethoven for extreme digital manipulation, that is for lack of a better word, scary. The performer should lose themselves in the wild 5/8 - 7/8, straight-eight patterns indicative of "Marimba Spiritual", and fluctuating tom-tom patterns inspired by "Rebonds".
As an emerging film composer, I got to dive deep into my bag of tricks to create scary dream textures. We hear distorted screams, groans, vocal fry, chopped and screwed synths, and samples from the Ligeti Requiem.