There was a month or two when I thought I understood time. Not jazz time, or some kind of world beat rhythm. I mean time, like a clock. The passage of something like a river that flows over us. Back then, it seemed like it was possible to control it, to set a schedule and stick to it. Use a framework to focus myself, to know when to get up, when to do my work, when it was possible to relax. Manage time. But that was a long while ago now and there hasn't been much relaxing at least for me. I suspect we are all moving towards some kind of constant energy state where it is always the moment to be doing something, fulfilling a requirement, making something happen, never a blip of radio silence.

I am fascinated by the concept of multiple infinity sets, as they are called in mathematics. The first kind of infinity that I ever knew about started with the number one and followed in consecutive arithmetic order to ever increasing numbers: one thousand, one million, one billion, and on and on. A mind boggling concept of an unending string of numbers stretching off into the mental distance to someplace I will never be able to reach. Ok, I get that.

Then someone, a mathematician friend of mine, said something like, "You now, there are an infinite number of fractions between one and two." What? Wait a minute. You mean that between every pair of the numbers in that infinite string going off in the distance, there's infinity between them?

It turns out, yes, there are at least two infinity sets. Natural numbers, or the integers, and real numbers, the fractions. So for good reason I get to quote Neo of the Matrix here: "Whoa!"

When I set out to write some kind of instrumental music piece, I wanted to explore the distances between things. At first it was intervalic distance that inspired expanding arcs of melodic shapes, and the well known repetitive patterns, sequences, of music today. The relationship between the stasis of those repeating patterns contrasts in space between the free moving skips and steps of melody.

And then there was harmonic distance. For centuries, theory has been the study of the relationships of one cluster of notes to another, an effort to define the standard properties and to ponder the fundamental factors that make these processes "work" culturally and aesthetically. This was something I knew all too well, having taught college theory classes pretty much each year since 1981. And I have long been aware that this deep knowledge and understanding of a process of music that is completely NOT my own, is a burden and constraint. I often wish I didn't know or hear things in ways that I have learned to hear and understand them. I consciously try to break free.

But we live in a postmodern time and as I have written before, I have been a post-modern composer since before the term even existed. Nearly everything I do is based on the post-modern concept that any element of the past is fair game for the present and can become the means to explore what this world we live in is all about.

Post-modernism existed in me before the art and music books started talking about it because, just like pretty much everyone who has lived in a developed country since the 1960s, the artifacts of history are impossible to miss. The entire timeline of all art and culture, up to this very moment, is simply a part of us all, bouncing off everything we do. We live an historical infinity set.

Which raises the question of infinity in the context of time. Intervalic distances are easy. Time is not. What is time, anyway? Maybe it's a second. But what's that? We all think we have a pretty good idea of how long a second is.

I attended and now teach at a college with a clock tower that strikes the hours. It plays the well known Westminster chime, real carillon bells rung by a digital time piece. It takes one minute for the chime to play, perfectly the same every hour, every week, since I was a student there. But pretty much everyone recognizes that the tempo sounds different, faster or slower, depending on how rushed or laid back life feels are that day or that hour. Moreover, I am often astounded how long a second is, how much insight or creativity can happen in that flash of a moment.

Time is infinite, a real number infinity set. I'm throwing out there post-modern references of artifacts from the great timeline of history, and the amorphous infinity of micro-time across one moment to the next.

So the clock ticks and the rhythm stretches and twists. Time is erratic, it compresses and expands, it defines a framework that never really is rigid. Melodies grow from opening intervalic relationships. Stasis and movement interact upon an infinite stage. I hope you enjoy hearing the ways these ideas manifest themselves in this music. It is not a definitive statement. Time and space are infinite concepts!

These are electronic demos of a composition in development. Projected performances date is unknown at this time. Please check back for more info. Created in Digital Performer with Native Instruments Kontakt and Reaktor.

Most recent update: March 2, 2020.

Thanks for listening!