Dear Reader

I love detail. I want to look deep inside the moment, hear it again and again, look for and revel in the tiny changes. I want to hear the micro-rhythm in the note, the catch of dissonance in that first hundred milliseconds of an erstwhile pure sound - and if it's not there I'll put it there - I don't care if you can hear it or if it will ultimately disappear beneath melodic narrative or theatrical dialogue. I want the details to have something tying them, an over-arch but not a structural integrity. It is still about the moment, not the form. I need to hear the sonic moment as it grows, to take the sound and shape it, to make aural sculpture and to match the developing sound in my head with that in my ears. I don't imagine music fully formed and then create it. I like it to grow in some organic way and put roots into the rock. I can lose myself in that.

While "...in the details" was destined from the start to be included in this dissertation, it gave me an opportunity to write something for its own sake, something I don't seem to get much time for these days. On the other hand, in the discussion of global vs local coherence, the detail of the carefully placed notes is far more important to me than the piece as a whole.

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2. Stopping Time: Some people describe being swept along by the structural tide of a piece, anticipating the return of a theme in another guise, but for me music is a place to retreat into a moment, where I can stop time and be fascinated by some tiny accident or design, where I can marvel at the very intimacy of a moment frozen.
3. Control Freak: My compositional style is based on controlling as many elements as possible. But how does this relate to instantaneous expression?
4. Composition Processes: A description of compositional process and its relation to local coherence and other factors.
5. Tell me is this Real Life?: Tell me, is this real life or is it just an effect?
6. Discovery, Epiphany, Catharsis: How do you feel when you don't know what you feel?
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