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The sounds and processes had a big effect on the musical ideas, textures, and forms. UpBeat was a cool program that was used on half the album’s songs. It allowed the user to set boundaries on random events that varied the notes you played, creating variations in drum pitch patterns. I think the fun of working in this environment comes through in the recordings. The era ended when my Macintosh SE’s screen finally gave out, since UpBeat was not compatible with new versions of Apple’s operating systems. The other important piece of software, Studio Vision also went by the wayside with the demise of Opcode. It had easy-to-construct subsequences that could be linked together, resulting in clear jumps from one texture to another. The computer went out in the trash one day, like my IBM PC-XT did, the one I wrote the first programmable instrument programs on with Rick Bidlack.

“Out of the Blue” is where my music seems to come from, which I consider more a series of discoveries than compositions. I start with an idea and keep exploring it, paying attention to where it wants to go. Along the way I try to make it sound as I would like to hear it, and to stop before it gets spoiled.

“As We Were Singing” is a devotional modification of the phrase “as we were saying”, reminding us where we were, what happened while we were engaged, and where we can go.

“Let Dogs Be Dogs” is another song that uses UpBeat, and the GM dog bark sound. Being with dogs when they are happy is contagious, and one of the reasons we love them so.

Audio clips from Jan Tro’s “Welcome to the Trondheim Composer Group Concert” speech were combined with textures created with the help of UpBeat. He presented a concert of composers from his home in Norway as part of his residence at the Center for Music Experiment at U.C. San Diego. My favorite moments: a little kid says “ow!”, “...so for some small moments Oslo was at the center of the world”, “...at least for the foreseeable future”, and “we’d like to be world champions, at least in Norway.”

“High Lights” refer more to the energy drawing up us, rather than favorite scenes.

“Yucatan” reverberated from a trip to Chichen Itza.

“Little Boy” is the newest song in the collection, coming ten years after the others, when I revived the studio after being away for a time.

“Right as Rain” and “Well Forevermore” were dreams I had while living in Belo Horizonte.

“Snails on the Move” is a piece of program music based on lesser known facts: they can live up to 15 years, are hermaphrodites, usually travel in irregular or circular paths, have poor eyesight, cannot hear, can crawl upside down, are nocturnal, breath with lungs, and hibernate during the winter.

“The Good Part” was an improvisation using mathews mode, where the ostinato played with the right hand is expanded through triggering additional notes. The left hand alternates between reaching over to play the melody, and launching bass bombs. This was recorded in one pass without editing or overdubs.