This entire piece comes out of manipulation of a half-second sample of myself playing a low note on the trombone.  I set up a loop that stretched the half-second sample out to 7.5 seconds, and then applied various synthesis techniques using KYMA to that longer sample.  I then assembled the long sounds into a collage using ProTools, and cut some of them up to create the short sounds that take a prominent role in the later part of the piece.

Since a “tape piece” like this has a very clear day on which it is finished (the day the final mix is made and recorded), I decided well in advance that I would obtain the title for this piece from a newspaper headline on the day I finished the piece.  The headline had to do with unemployment in Oregon being at an eight-month low.

"I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by." -Douglas Adams (1952-2001), science fiction author

The Whooshing Noise They Make As They Go By was composed over a long span of time, on opposite coasts of the United States, studying with three different composition teachers, using about 5 different computer programs. There was no deadline for the piece, but if there had been, it would have made a tremendous whooshing noise.

The piece itself is an exploration of two very different rhythmic techniques: free, non-metered playing and extreme polytempo; as well as two different electronic music techniques: the "chopper" and the "sample cloud". There are three sections. In the opening section, the saxophonist plays along with a pre-recorded track made up of saxophone sounds, including a percussion track derived from the sounds of key clicks. The first phrase played by the live instrument is recorded by the computer and becomes the basis of the other two sections.

In the middle section, the notes of the recorded phrase become the basis for a "cloud" of many short sounds. This cloud slowly changes to encompass every pitch in the phrase, while the performer improvises along. The original phrase comes back to open the third section, but as it is repeated, it gets "chopped" up in various ways to create new tempos. The performer plays and records short phrases in the various new tempos, and then all the phrases are played back at once while the performer and the percussion track shift from one tempo to another.

Dave Camwell premiered the piece at the 2006 World Saxophone Congress in Ljubljana, Slovenia, and recorded it on his 2008 album Aeterna.

After the speed-composing challenge that produced Momentum Piece No. 2 (see under "Solo Music"), I decided to use the "Momentum" nomenclature for any music I wrote quickly.  This piece was written in about a week and I performed it at Dartmouth College as part of a composer exchange program.  It uses the same "sample cloud" technique as The Whooshing Noise, but in a more pulse-oriented way.

Details coming soon.