Smear Music (2014)
string quartet
8 minutes
Note
Smear Music was written in the summer of 2013, immediately after receiving my Bachelors in Music Composition from California State University East Bay in Hayward. All at once, I found myself working a 9 to 5 job in the bustling city of San Francisco, constantly on my feet and amid the whirlwind of living around, and commuting in, a modern major metropolis.
My composing in this new life, formerly a craft I could commit an entire day to, became reduced to sporadic 20-30 minute intervals whenever I could win over an open seat on the various buses and Bart rides that now cluttered my day. Now a part of the "real world" and feeling isolated and unsure of my own place within it, I pieced together the strands of ideas written over the course of my daily commuting. I believe that because of this, Smear Music took the form of a rhythmically fueled piece of music, composed at a time of strong isolation and aggression at a new world constantly shifting and churning with little regard to my seemingly tiny space within it. Recommended listening in a dark room, alone, without moving.
Digital download of all performance materials including score and parts.
Score
