sketches of dusk

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for fixed media
duration: 9′

Program notes

sketches of dusk is a sound mass composition that takes the listener through a quasi-static journey. The sun is hidden, and the stars fill the dark blue sky while people retreat to the comfort of their homes after a long, laborious day. It is inspired by a poem by Valerie Wiley. This scene is depicted through extended harmonies that have been stretched to lack a sense of meter, voices entering at different moments to blur the harmonic shifts and create a sense of continuity.

The foreground is comprised of two samples. One, the Americana Granular Pad, which is based on pedal steel and fiddle harmonics, created by Joshua Meltzer. The other, a more ‘airy’ texture, is created using Cecilia5’s StochGrains2 plugin, and is based on the opening word of the poem: “icy”. While most of the work has an ‘icy’ feeling, this sample helps create an industrial sound, as if the steam coming from the arduous work in factories makes no distinction between day and night; it will not stop. Most of the other sounds that complement this world were created using Cecilia5’s plugin UltimateGrainer as well as Michael Norris’ Spectral Shimmer plugin, with some stereo delay and reverb.

icy concrete knows my feet
each day in these shoes a mile tread

that cracked ground
is no less smooth
I have thought before

irreverent mind pries doors unopened
and plays unobserved
but by its eager actors

do any live these scenes
or even in sets of their mother’s
god’s design?

though lights dim twice
on stage and world alike
persists a sky aglow revealing

where warmth is a well-known smile
on a billboard dentist
not a man of borrowed cloth

smoothing the cracked ground
crying “turn away angry moon
let up your bright beams

how quickly in our shadow you fall
one face awaiting the grace of the sun”

-Valerie Wiley