Opaline was my first attempt at writing ‘absolute’ electroacoustic music; Murder!Murder? was written for fixed media out of necessity in that it was programme music to accompany a play in a small venue and was to be taken on tour abroad. Opaline was my first experiment into a sound-world which could not be reproduced by ‘traditional’ instruments. It is the only work I have ever written for fixed media alone (even Murder!Murder? had a live vocalist).

Opaline was written whilst studying studio composition under Professor Michael Clarke at Huddersfield University in 1995. It was compiled in Pro Tools and used AudioSculpt and GRM Tools for the sound processing. All the raw sounds originate from a piano: inside, outside, scratching, scraping and plucking. Occasionally this initial material can almost be heard in its unadulterated form.

Opaline