Category: Collection

Categories
Playlist

Playlist of the Month: September 2018

Man, I didn’t appreciate “back to school” time enough when I had it.
Desert Rose – Jay Brannan
Thin – Aquilo
Silhouette – Aquilo
All I Want – Kodaline
Follow Your Fire – Kodaline
Six Feet Over Ground – Aquilo
Babylon – Oneohtrix Point Never
You Want It Darker – Leonard Cohen
Oceans Away – A R I Z O N A
Antes de Morirme (feat. Rosalía) – C. Tangana
icarus – EDEN
lost//found – EDEN
start//end – EDEN1
Real – Majik
Stronger – Kanye West
Lucky Strike – Troye Sivan2
Crystal Souls – Headphone Activist
No Eres Tú – Jesse Baez & C. Tangana
Away from You – Sound Remedy3
You Moved Away – Death Cab for Cutie
Clouds, Not Clocks – Slow Meadow
What a Heavenly Way to Die – Troye Sivan
Stupid Mistakes – lovelytheband
Postcard (feat. Gordi) – Troye Sivan
wrong – EDEN
Nina Cried Power (feat. Mavis Staples) – Hozier
NFWMB – Hozier4
When We Drive – Death Cab for Cutie
wings – EDEN
Technologic – Daft Punk5
Loyal – ODESZA
Thought Contagion – Muse
lovely – Billie Eilish & Khalid6
Coldplay (feat. Vic Mensa) – Mr Hudson7
Opps – Vince Staples, Yugen Blakrok
Since The Day I Was Born – Lostboycrow
Zero (From the Original Motion Picture “Ralph Breaks The Internet”) – Imagine Dragons
La Ciudad – ODESZA
COPYCAT – Billie Eilish
Forest Green – Big Red Machine
Boy – ODESZA
Line of Sight (feat. WYNNE & Mansionair) – ODESZA
Can’t Forget You – Mr Hudson
Lyla – Big Red Machine
Fix You – Canyon City8

  1. Seriously, I love this one ↩
  2. He’s really going for that Lana Del Rey, “I plan to be young and beautiful and then die the moment either of those runs out” aesthetic ↩
  3. I really like this one, but it really doesn’t agree with the speakers on my phone, which is a bummer when I’m driving; we’re all spoiled by having an aux cord, these days, but I don’t have one. ↩
  4. “Give your heart and soul to charity/’Cause the rest of you, the best of you/belongs to me” is such a creepy, weird line, and I love it ↩
  5. Someone asked me “are all Daft Punk songs like this?” while I was listening to this one. ↩
  6. I’d kinda forgotten about Billie Eilish, to be honest, and then someone reminded me of her and I spent the next two hours just listening to whatever Apple Music had. ↩
  7. Sent this one to a friend. “I like the song, but I don’t like that it’s not by Coldplay.” ↩
  8. This wasn’t the only cover of a Coldplay song I almost included; the version of Yellow in Crazy Rich Asians almost made it in. ↩
Categories
Playlist

Playlist of the Month: August 2018

The problem with listening to music that’s mildly non-mainstream is that anything with a simple name is more difficult to find on iTunes.
How It Is – Majik
The Weight – Amber Run
Technicolour Beat – Oh Wonder
Desert Rose – Jay Brannan1
XO – EDEN
Thin – Aquilo
drugs – EDEN
Silhouette – Aquilo
All I Want – Kodaline
Age Of – Oneohtrix Point Never
Follow Your Fire – Kodaline
Closer – Majik
Silent Movies – Aquilo
Six Feet Over Ground – Aquilo
Babylon – Oneohtrix Point Never2
You Want It Darker – Leonard Cohen
Oceans Away – A R I Z O N A
Summertime (feat. San Holo) – Yellow Claw
The Journey – Sol Rising3
Follow – SKALE – E – TRON
X – Majik
stutter – EDEN
Confidence – Majik
Antes de Morirme (feat. Rosalía) – C. Tangana
wonder – EDEN4
icarus – EDEN
lost//found – EDEN
The Way I Am – Charlie Puth
Song For You (Mansionair Remix) – Rhye
forever//over – EDEN
start//end – EDEN5
gold – EDEN
IMPRINT – FELIX SANDMAN
Guerrera – DELLAFUENTE & C. Tangana
Bien Duro – C. Tangana6
Black Sun – Death Cab For Cutie
Real – Majik

  1. I’d argue that the only reason Jay Brannan isn’t considered a Gay Icon to some degree or another is that he specifically doesn’t want to be known as “that gay singer” which is… even more Iconic(TM), to be honest ↩
  2. can we just take a moment to appreciate the band’s name? it’s so delightfully weird ↩
  3. This one is very calming. ↩
  4. Given how much of this album I’ve got in this playlist, I’m gonna go ahead and make the album art the photo for this post. Why does the post need a photo, you ask? Because it’ll look better. ↩
  5. Top new song this month; I just really love the effect on the piano. ↩
  6. I’m sorta refusing to think about the lyrics of this one, because from the little bit I’ve understood from casual listening, this is such trashy pop music that I’m probably happier not knowing. ↩
Categories
Playlist

Playlist of the Month: July 2018

This one feels a bit more eclectic than I usually am; I think it’s because I pulled some old stuff back in, too.
Punching in a Dream (Stripped) – The Naked and Famous
How It Is – Majik
The Weight – Amber Run
Beretta Lake (Listen2Liri Remix) [feat. SAINt JHN] – Teflon Sega
Home – Blue October
Hail To the Victor – Thirty Seconds to Mars
Another Mouth to Feed – Rebecca McDade
Technicolour Beat – Oh Wonder
Pompeii (Acoustic) – Bastille
Desert Rose – Jay Brannan
XO – EDEN
Thin – Aquilo
drugs – EDEN
Heaven/Hell – CHVRCHES
Silhouette – Aquilo1
All I Want – Kodaline
Love Like This – Kodaline
Crystals – Of Monsters And Men2
Wolves Without Teeth – Of Monsters And Men
Black Water – Of Monsters And Men
Thousand Eyes – Of Monsters And Men
I Of The Storm – Of Monsters And Men
We Sink [explicit] – Of Monsters And Men
Backyard – Of Monsters And Men
We Don’t Talk Anymore (feat. Selena Gomez) [Attom Remix] – Charlie Puth
Age Of – Oneohtrix Point Never3
Follow Your Fire – Kodaline
Closer – Majik
Lost My Mind – Lily Allen
Higher – Lily Allen
Silent Movies – Aquilo
God’s Plan – CHVRCHES
I Could Fight On a Wall – Aquilo
Body – SYML4
Six Feet Over Ground – Aquilo5
Animal – Majik
Brother – Kodaline
No Choir – Florence + The Machine
Arrows – Haux
Black Snow – Oneohtrix Point Never
Lou Lou – Albin Lee Meldau
Babylon – Oneohtrix Point Never
Time – Kidswaste
You Want It Darker – Leonard Cohen6
Wonderland – CHVRCHES
Oceans Away – A R I Z O N A
We’ll Take It – Oneohtrix Point Never
Summertime (feat. San Holo) – Yellow Claw
The Journey – Sol Rising
Follow – SKALE – E – TRON
Come On Then – Lily Allen
X – Majik
Wild (feat. Khai) – Kidswaste
Now & Here – Aquilo
Who Are You – Aquilo
Thunder – Imagine Dragons
The Fault In Our Stars (MMXIV) – Troye Sivan
stutter – EDEN
Confidence – Majik7

  1. Text message I sent to somebody earlier this month: “I think I want to marry Aquilo’s voice” ↩
  2. Is this exactly three years since this album came out? I think it’s right about there, I guess I now associate it with summer in the new neighborhood we live in. ↩
  3. This is just so delightfully weird, I love it. ↩
  4. I’m not sure if the lyrics entirely support it, but from the portion of them that I actually paid attention to, this totally sounds like it’s from the perspective of a trans person. ↩
  5. I love stuff like this, it sounds sad but it’s actually happy! ↩
  6. Go listen to this, it’s amazing and spooky ↩
  7. This might be a dead link, actually; they were just posting it as a temporary sample kind of thing. ↩
Categories
Playlist

Playlist of the Month: June 2018

It’s been a busy month; if I haven’t mentioned Toggl before, let me mention it now, as a convenient way to make charts demonstrating that you’re overworking yourself.
Silence (feat. Khalid) – Marshmello
Punching in a Dream (Stripped) – The Naked and Famous
Free – Kidswaste
Homegrown – Haux
How It Is – Majik
The Weight – Amber Run
Beretta Lake (Listen2Liri Remix) [feat. SAINt JHN] – Teflon Sega
Bloodsport – Raleigh Ritchie
Fast Car – Tracy Chapman
Home – Blue October
22 (OVER S∞∞N) – Bon Iver
One Track Mind (feat. A$AP Rocky) – Thirty Seconds to Mars
L’aérogramme de Los Angeles – Woodkid & Louis Garrel1
Headlights (feat. Ilsey) – Robin Schulz
Hail To the Victor – Thirty Seconds to Mars2
Another Mouth to Feed – Rebecca McDade
Amen (LCV Choir) – Amber Run
Heaven is a Place – Amber Run
Technicolour Beat – Oh Wonder
Faux – Ed Tullett & Novo Amor
Running Up That Hill – Track & Field3
Better – SYML
Big Jet Plane – Angus & Julia Stone
Pompeii (Acoustic) – Bastille
Touch – Haux
Atlas: Four – Sleeping At Last
Alone – Haux
Desert Rose – Jay Brannan
XO – EDEN4
Zombie – Jay Brannan
Callow – Novo Amor
Really Gone – CHVRCHES
My Enemy (feat. Matt Berninger) – CHVRCHES
Sorry – Aquilo
Miracle – CHVRCHES
Never Say Die – CHVRCHES
Thin – Aquilo
drugs – EDEN5
Heaven/Hell – CHVRCHES
Get Out – CHVRCHES
Ricochet – Haux
Hurt for Me – SYML
Lucid Dream – Owl City
More Colors (feat. Chelsea Cutler) – Kidswaste
Silhouette – Aquilo6
The 5th of July – Owl City
Where’s My Love – SYML

  1. I was hoping “L’aérogramme” translated at something neat, but no, it means exactly what it looks like, “aerogram” ↩
  2. I keep saying “hail to the victim” when I’m singing along to this one, which kinda makes me hope Weird Al does that version someday ↩
  3. I’m probably due to rewatch some Warehouse 13 sometime soon, aren’t I? ↩
  4. Honestly, this song is just kinda hilarious to me. Listen to the lyrics, it’s brutal. ↩
  5. “‘cause I’m a f*ckin’ mess inside” and my Millenial Humor makes me mutter “that’s some hashtag relatable content” ↩
  6. I’m gonna go ahead and call this one my favorite from this month, I just really like it. ↩
Categories
Playlist

Playlist of the Month: May 2018

Slightly delayed, as I wanted to let my capstone posts finish up before I posted this.
Silence (feat. Khalid) – Marshmello
Punching in a Dream (Stripped) – The Naked and Famous
Free – Kidswaste
I Like Me Better – Lauv
Homegrown – Haux
Love Lies – Khalid & Normani
Save Me – Majik
How It Is – Majik
Kings and Queens and Vagabonds – Ellem
The Weight – Amber Run
Beretta Lake (Listen2Liri Remix) [feat. SAINt JHN] – Teflon Sega
Bloodsport – Raleigh Ritchie
Fast Car – Tracy Chapman
Home – Blue October
22 (OVER S∞∞N) – Bon Iver
Live Like a Dream – Thirty Seconds to Mars
One Track Mind (feat. A$AP Rocky) – Thirty Seconds to Mars
Rider – Thirty Seconds to Mars
Stay – Pentatonix
L’aérogramme de Los Angeles – Woodkid & Louis Garrel
Dawn Will Rise – Thirty Seconds to Mars
New Rules x Are You That Somebody? – Pentatonix
Despacito x Shape Of You – Pentatonix
Headlights (feat. Ilsey) – Robin Schulz1
Perfect – Pentatonix
Say Love – James TW
Hail To the Victor – Thirty Seconds to Mars2
Another Mouth to Feed – Rebecca McDade3
Love Is Madness (feat. Halsey) – Thirty Seconds to Mars
Amen (LCV Choir) – Amber Run
Issues – Pentatonix
Havana – Pentatonix
Great Wide Open – Thirty Seconds to Mars
Heaven is a Place – Amber Run4
Someone To You – BANNERS
All We Do – Oh Wonder
Technicolour Beat – Oh Wonder5
Faux – Ed Tullett & Novo Amor
Running Up That Hill – Track & Field

  1. The album art on this one is hilariously bad ↩
  2. Catchiest one off the new album, if I do say so myself ↩
  3. The guitar line in this is beautiful, I love it so much. ↩
  4. I was gonna say ‘probably my favorite off this EP’ and then I thought about it and realized that all three of the songs I’ve got on this list are my favorite of the EP. I’m indecisive, okay? ↩
  5. There’s a good amount of throwback music in this playlist, I’m aware. ↩
Categories
App Music

Variations on the Theme of Life

Grey Patterson

Download on the iOS App Store
I have always been fascinated by the emergent properties of mathematics: simple rules create complex structures. When you get down to it, this is how all of our modern technology works. Variations is based on that concept and was composed for performance through an application written for the iOS® operating system.
At the core of the application are cellular automata based on Conway’s Game of Life (1970), which is a grid where each square is either ‘on’ or ‘off’ and follows a strict set of rules. A square that is off (‘dead’) can become alive (be ‘born’) if it has the right number of living neighbors. A square that is alive can die if it has too few (loneliness) or too many (starvation) living neighbors. The rules are simple, yet they can create astonishingly complex patterns; there is an entire field of mathematics devoted to studying these patterns, Automata Theory.
Variations allows these patterns to play out both visually and aurally. Tap the screen to allow the grid to move through another cycle of living and dying, or just listen to the music created by a single frozen moment. No two people will ever hear the same set of sounds: the starting point for the patterns, as well as their evolution, are uniquely generated every time the Variations application is run.

(The recording above is from the premiere, in which the audience was asked to open the application simultaneously.)

Categories
Music

Five After Six

Sophia Reinhardt

 Five after Six for Two-Channel Fixed Media (2017) was realized in the Composers’ Studio at Linfield College using Logic Pro X and recorded audio. In her poem, my sister shakes off sleep and drags herself to the coffeemaker to brew a mug, while she groggily waits for her sweetheart to stop by and say good morning. I set this musically with soft pads/synthesizers in the background behind the recording of the poem, while pre-recorded “early morning sounds,” like a brewing pot of coffee or chirping birds, play quietly throughout the piece.
Five After Six
Anastasia Reinhardt

Still dark. The coffeemaker
in front of me sleeps unawares
as I fill its craw with tap water.
The foggy glow of the streetlights
creeps into the kitchen through
the window behind the sink, thinking
that I won’t notice if it tiptoes soft
enough. I plunge my hand into the
solemn, self-important sack of coffee
grounds and measure out my life
for today. My other hand is holding
your voice close to my ear, while my eyes
flicker from the grounds to the window,
watching for your headlights. As a little
bird lights on the tree just outside
the window, I hear the heaviness of the
sliding door behind me, and your soft
voice hangs itself in the room like the fog,
smothering my slowly bubbling troubles
as your arms surround me.

Categories
Music

Halcyon

Grey Patterson
Listen on Apple Music, Spotify, Google Play Music, or most other streaming platforms.
I started working on the piece while abroad in Austria, following a summer spent in Louisiana. In between the two trips, I was home for just over a week, during which my family went camping in Eastern Oregon. It’s a long-standing tradition in my family – we went when I was very young, and I caught my first fish off the docks by Pelton Dam. A couple years after my parents got divorced, my dad started taking my sister and me up to a property his then-girlfriend had on the other side of the river. A year after they broke up, my mom picked up the tradition, and it soon expanded to include cousins, aunts, uncles, and grandparents.
The frequency with which my parents moved – they traded off, more or less, but I worked it out recently and I have, on average, moved twice a year over my entire life – has meant that I don’t really associate anywhere I’ve lived with the concept of ‘home.’ In general, I think of people – my parents, my sister, and so on – instead of a place. But, occasionally, the concept of home has to be linked to a place; it’s what the term means, after all.
This piece is devoted to the place I think of when I’m homesick; to weekend afternoons playing video games with my dad; to the halcyon days of my childhood.

Categories
Music

somnus

Grey Patterson
Watch on YouTube

Ehren Cahill, piano
As the title implies, somnus is based on sleep. The opening section first took shape two years ago, as part of a Musicianship III assignment exploring the ambiguity between the parallel major and minor keys. The second section is more nervous, following the dreamer into restless sleep, before finally returning to opening material as the dreams settle once more.

Categories
Music

flight,

Sophia Reinhardt
Watch on YouTube
flight, for video (2015, 2018) is a nostalgic piece, which reflects on personal difficulties while working through those challenges toward change. This is realized musically through the conflict between the F major and E minor chords that open the work; this idea ‘interrupts’ the musical progress when it returns throughout the piece. The version presented today is the result of a collaboration with animator Kailyn Nelson, choreographer Ivanna Tucker, and dancers Bella Reese and Jared Lingle.

Categories
Music

One Giant Leap

Sophia Reinhardt
Watch on YouTube
The soundtrack for the movie, One Giant Leap (2017) was made in collaboration with George Fox University students for the Fox Film Festival in Spring 2017. In it, a girl learns about the first moon landing while watching television with her parents. The events inspire her to build a rocket with her friend so they can follow in the astronaut’s steps.
To support the story, I scored the movie simply, using childlike melodies, simple harmonic language, and instruments that might be found in an elementary school music room. This is an alternate version of the film, which includes my montage sequence.
The movie was written and directed by Emily Hamilton, and produced by Tayla Yogi.

Categories
Music

A Prairie

Grey Patterson
Watch on YouTube

Hannah Terrell, alto; Koa Tomich, bassoon

To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee,
One clover, and a bee.
And revery.
The revery alone will do,
If bees are few.
Emily Dickinson, 1755

Categories
Music

Project Happy Days

Sophia Reinhardt

Project Happy Days for Two-Channel Fixed Media (2017) emerges from a creepy texture that develops into a peppy exploration of recorded audio, distortion effects, spatialization, and several software synthesizers native to Logic Pro X. The title is a bit of a misnomer: upon reading it before hearing the piece, one would expect a happy tune; instead the piece opens with the distressed wailing of sirens. However, a happy little melody does emerge eventually, playing over the sirens and pushing them to the background. This interplay stands as a metaphor for the way in which happiness can be achieved despite not-so-happy situations.
This piece was created in the Composers’ Studio at Linfield College using Logic Pro X software synthesizers and pre-recorded audio.

Categories
Music

bioluminescence

Grey Patterson
Watch on YouTube

Kristen Huth, vibraphone; Pedro Graterol, viola; Hannah Terrell, cello; Keelan Wells, mixed percussion; Sophia Reinhardt, conductor
Bioluminescence is inspired by the experience of diving in Puget Sound after sunset. The water swells to life with bioluminescent microorganisms – every move you make is trailed by a swarm of glowing blue lights.
The piece follows the course of a dive – walking from the shore to the water, swimming out to the dive site, and then the descent. Underwater is a very different world compared to our normal lives; you can see your own breaths drifting away, or get a taste of what it’s like to walk on the moon. But in the end, returning to the surface is a must; accordingly, the piece comes to a close with a mirroring of the opening motions.

Categories
Music

GSV Empiricist

Grey Patterson

The GSV Empiricist, or General Systems Vehicle Empiricist is a ship in Iain M. Banks’ Culture series of novels. In its first physical appearance, the Empiricist is described as having “no single outer hull surrounding [its] hundreds of individual components, just colossal bubbles of air held in place by field enclosures.” And it’s enormous:

Comfortably over two hundred kilometres long even by the most conservative of measurement regimes, fabulously, ellipsoidally rotund, dazzling with multiple sun-lines and tiny artificial stars providing illumination for motley steps and levels and layers of riotous vegetation – belonging, strictly speaking, on thousands of different worlds spread across the galaxy – boasting hundreds of contrasting landscapes from the most mathematically manicured to the most (seemingly) pristinely, savagely wild, all contained on slab-storeys of components generally kilometres high.

In short, it’s a mobile city with a population of ten billion, and I wanted to try to capture a little bit of that scene here. In truth, exploring a space this vast would take hours, even moving incredibly quickly, so I composed the work from the perspective of a static drone, observing the passage of this behemoth. The piece moves throughout the ship, bringing forth several novel acoustic spaces.
(Both quotations are from Iain M. Banks’ The Hydrogen Sonata.)