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Arcana Composition Notes The pieces on this CD represent the evolution of compositional ideas and techniques, which were generated and refined over years of collaboration in our personal studios. Though we share a common musical language from our studies at the Mills College Center for Contemporary Music, our compositional concerns were quite different. The process of working together has brought our musical ideas closer together in many ways, but there remains a healthy creative tension and a bit of technical specialization in our respective collaborative roles. Five sets of ideas and techniques are common to all of the music on this CD, though used in differing proportions in various pieces. • Musique Concrète Environmental sounds play a large role in our music, both in the use of samples in place of instrumental sound sources, but also as architectural elements that determine the shape of large sections of the music. • Generative Grammars We have tended to generate most of the sonic material and much of the phrasing and orchestration from a small number of sources, which give the pieces an internal consistency, a larger architectural rightness of proportion and shape. • Harmonic Series and Just Intonation We have made extensive use of ratio-metric and harmonic series tunings, which give the tonality a more unique cast as well as making the both consonances and dissonances more powerful. • Long timbral evolutions Much of the structure and propulsion of these pieces comes from the evolution of timbre in field recordings and tracks generated from studio feedback networks. • Improvisation Although we tend to set up somewhat regimented formal parameters for our pieces, most of our work together leaves a space in the process for improvisation. Sometimes this is heard within the final piece (as in Lake of Time), and sometimes it's relegated to a more traditional pre-
