PROGRAM NOTES

Master of Computer Music Composition Recital
October 28, 2024

Yoonjae Choi

The Horizon is Too Dark (2023)

for piano and live electronics

“I was standing on a dark, deep horizon. The deep dark horizon in the dead of night, cold, quiet echo lingered there.”

I imagined an invisible horizon of tones extending far beyond the chords produced by the piano. Just as the clouds clear and reveal something beyond the horizon, the piano’s reverberations disappear, and spectral tones are revealed. Through spectral analysis of the resonance of chords through the piano, the overtones of a chord can be recreated through a sine waveform or reprocessed through an input signal.

Chant (2024)

for cello and four-channel live electronics

Chant is a live electronic piece that phonetically augments instrumental language. By reinterpreting the abstractness of the instrumental expression and combining it with the formant from the vowel, the cello serves as a medium for singing something akin to chant. It sings in the form of primitive language that precedes the formation of sentences with clear meaning. The voice of Chant expresses sentimental emotions that go beyond what can be conveyed in a human’s voice.

Fluid (2024)

for video and four-channel audio

Fluid is an audio-visual improvisation work using a noise displacement algorithm. The sound was made based on improvisation using immersive sound material. The visual work was also improvised using a self-made device, “Visual Noise Generator,” based on the sound work. Visually, fluid noise distortion responds to impulses and flows with sound, simultaneously showing unity and contrast with the acoustic flow. The picture shown at the beginning of the video is my family home.

Diffusion (2023–24)

for string quartet and live electronics

Diffusion seeks to capture a scene in which the light and dark tones gradually spread. The sound produced by crossfading from low overtones to high overtones depicts the spread of tone as if a scent spreads. The image of the sound that started from something visible, gradually evaporating, and fading, became the most profound idea of the work.

Digital Rain (2024)

for four-channel fixed media

The sound of rain can give us a sense of security but also evokes the fear of death. Rain is a symbol of life that saves organics and symbolizes purification as a natural disaster such as a flood. Rain is the sound of life and death, containing a deep meaning that stimulates our spiritual imagination.

This piece has a wide range of textures similar to rain sounds generated from the sound of flowing water recorded in a lake. The granulator transforms flowing sound into fragmented particles, and the size of the particles makes a different sense of an acoustic landscape of the rain. Although it is not the actual sound of rain, the textures are abstract objects that convey symbolic images of rain. These sounds describe the life, death, and purification that rain can bring to our minds.

---

Yoonjae Choi is a South Korean electronic music composer. He is a master's student in computer music composition at Indiana Jacob School of Music. He has been studying composition and electronic music with Richard Dudas, John Gibson, and Chi Wang. He is primarily interested in musical applications of the extended tones and spectral sounds of acoustic sound media, including instruments and non-instrument materials. He compose live electronic and soundscape works through related computer technologies and software and also collaborates with various media arts and experimental music. His music and research are published and performed in ICMC, ACMC, CECM, and the New Music Festival in Seoul.

Credits

Yoonjae Choi - Composer
John Gibson - Academic Advisor, Technical Advisor
Wang Chi - Academic Advisor, Technical Advisor
Minho Kang - Technical Assistant
Hsuan Chang Kitano - Stage Assistant
Wyatt Cannon - Stage assistant
Yechong Jeon - Staff
Jieun Ok - Staff
Nate Sassoon - Piano
Hyejin Choi - Violin
Dimitri Volkov - Violin
Andrew Stump - Viola
Owen Aycock - Cello

Special Thanks to

Mom and Dad, Dahyun Kim, YeongKwang Choi, Richard Dudas, IU Korean Composers, Troy Family, 3rd Street KUMC Church Family

and lastly, I would like to express my gratitude to the Lord