Alien Robots Unite!

Oddly enough, the original creative spark of this piece came from flapping my hand over the lips of my five-month old daughter Zoey while she made rudimentary moans and coos. By having muted trumpets imitate this sound, I was able to create burbling sounds that reminded me of the wonderfully bizarre sounds in robot and alien movies from the 1950s and '60s. I then set forth to create a fantastical concert piece that used these bleeps and blurps to make a palette of sounds that I had never before explored. Further inspiration for this piece was drawn from a bizarre hodgepodge of sources, including memories from sci-fi soundtracks, sound effects from the old Lost In Space TV series, atonal techniques blended with overtone harmony, 8-bit video game sounds, ring modulators, "color music" pieces by Michael Torke such as Ecstatic Orange and Green Music and the soundtrack to Mars Attacks! by Danny Elfman, the sound of a 2400-baud dial-up modem, and elementary school science filmstrips.