Last Snow: An Analysis of an Original Electronic Music Suite

Abstract

Last Snow is a suite of compositions in a genre that most closely approximates a contemporary jazz style with electronic elements and shifting meters. While there are clear examples of imitative synthesis within the work, many abstract examples of a more diffuse, impressionistic bent are also discernible. Much of the programming for these last mentioned tonal colors and synthesizer leads was accomplished by the composer. The suite has as a unifying feature the tones of the natural scale beginning from various alternate root pitches. The compositions, therefore, operate for the composer as something of a study with several challenges unique to each of the four resulting scales. There is a desire to more fully incorporate some concepts regarding synthetic chromaticism that the composer was considering during a month while he was convalescing in a hospital after a near fatal heart attack that was endured during the summer of 2009