Contains a PDF score and audio materials (WAV and MP3) for optional backing track (performed on a Juno 106 synthesizer), click track, and a reference recording.

Program Notes - “Tempo Dilation (No. 1)”

How do we experience the passage of time in music? Do we experience time at a different rate when melting into a crystalline thought-provoking ambient work than racing through a flashy high-velocity head-banger? Does the density of musical events—or relationships between such events—change the perceived length of a composition? Einstein's theory of special relativity has shown us that the faster we move through space, the slower we move through time—a phenomenon is called "time dilation". On an experiential level, might this also apply to music? 

“Tempo Dilation (No. 1)” engages with the concept of time dilation as a basis for musical experimentation. Musically, time is represented on 3 planes in spatial counterpoint: 1. mid frequency linear "melodic" rhythms, 2. a high frequency pulse that recontextualizes the melodic rhythms through a series of changing metric grids, and 3. an ambient pitch cloud that contextualizes these rhythmic elements by providing a meterless, stationary backdrop. 

Throughout the piece, the melodic rhythms revisits a primary theme—forwards and backwards, at different rates, in and against duple, triple, and quadruple meters—while a second theme plays against them, awash in the ambient pitch cloud.

“Tempo Dilation (No. 1)” for flexible percussion ensemble was composed for the 2020 Sō Percussion Summer Institute and remotely premiered by John Kelley, Gavin Kitchen, Austin Richey, Carolyn Stallard, Elijah Shina, Eric Whitmer, and Pascal Le Boeuf (Juno 106 synthesizer.)