Interdisciplinary composition · Composer & Project Lead · 2026
And, What Do You Do? was a three-strand interdisciplinary project developed across dance, acting and text, and music technology. Each strand began from the same visual stimulus but developed through a different encounter, allowing another practice, person or process to shape what emerged before substantial musical decisions were fixed.
Stray developed through the Music Technology strand. The stimulus suggested a figure being drawn towards, or caught within, something resembling a black hole. Rather than beginning with a completed musical narrative, I first explored the image through words, behaviours and acoustic possibilities, using solo flute as the initial sound source.
Recording and processing then became part of the compositional process itself. Sounds were played, captured, altered and heard again, with each stage revealing details that could feed back into how I subsequently performed and composed.
STRAY
STRAY
Stimulus: Photo of the inside a flute, held up to the sun.
Image to behaviour
I began by breaking the visual stimulus into words, sensations and behaviours rather than immediately assigning it musical material. Ideas around pull, instability, distance, repetition, silence and distortion gave me a way to think about how the image might behave sonically.
I then tested those ideas acoustically on flute, exploring drones, breath, unstable tones, overtones, repeated gestures and changes in intensity. At this stage, I was less interested in writing a finished piece than in discovering what kinds of sound and behaviour the stimulus could generate
Behaviours to acoustic material
I used the words and behaviours drawn from the stimulus as prompts for acoustic experimentation on flute. Rather than treating them as fixed instructions, I tested how qualities such as instability, pull, repetition, distance and silence might emerge through the instrument itself.
This led to exploratory material including breath, drones, unstable tones, overtones and repeated gestures. At this stage, I was not trying to decide the final form of the piece. I was building a vocabulary of behaviours that could later be recorded, manipulated and listened to again.
Notes on initial reaction to the photo.
Early acoustic experiments
Hearing the material differently
Once I began recording the flute experiments, details that were easy to overlook while playing became much more apparent. Breath, unstable attacks, tuning fluctuations, beating between overtones and the space around individual sounds all became available as material in their own right.Listening back changed what I chose to keep.
Sounds I might normally have treated as imperfections began to suggest new directions, and the process became increasingly cyclical: play → record → listen → respond. Recording was no longer simply documenting what I had played; it was beginning to influence what I played next.
Selected experiments processed through microphone
Phaser effect on C Flute Overtones.
Ideas developed by effects
Distortion on Alto Flute melody.
Sustainer Reverb on Alto Flute melody.
Processing as material
As I began manipulating the recorded material, processing stopped functioning simply as something applied after the performance.
Effects exaggerated small instabilities, overtones and artefacts, sometimes revealing qualities in the original sound that I had not consciously noticed while playing.
That began to feed back into the acoustic material. I found myself returning to the flute with an awareness of how particular sounds might behave once processed — at one point realising that I was effectively improvising for the effect.
The relationship had become cyclical: the flute generated material for the technology, but the technology was also changing how I subsequently approached the flute.This became an important compositional shift.
The electronic layer was no longer decorating a finished instrumental part; recording, processing and re-performing were becoming part of the same compositional process.
Silence and space
As the piece developed, I became more aware of the role of silence and spatial placement. Some gaps initially felt uncomfortably long, and my instinct was to fill them with more material. Leaving them exposed changed the pacing of the work and, in some cases, the gap itself became the transition.
Spatial placement then became part of the composition rather than simply part of the mix. Working with binaural and spatial movement in Logic allowed distance, direction and movement around the listener to shape how material developed, alongside pitch, rhythm and timbre.
Overtones circling listeners head.
Chords passed across listener from left to right.
What changed
Stray changed the relationship between instrument, recording and technology within my compositional process. What began as acoustic exploration on flute developed into a cycle of playing, recording, processing, listening and returning to the instrument.
The technology did not simply alter material I had already composed; it generated new information that affected what I played next, what I chose to keep, and how the structure developed. It also made me more willing to treat instability, silence, spatial movement and apparent imperfections as compositional material in their own right.
The final work emerged through that feedback loop, with acoustic and electronic decisions shaping one another throughout the process.