This week’s selection comes from a concert project I’ve been tinkering with for years, called Gideon and the Blundersnorp. This is a fantasy story for narrator and orchestra, in the tradition of Peter and the Wolf but targeted at an older audience. The orchestra accompanies the narrator like a score for a film, occasionally coming to the forefront.

Gideon had a premiere performance a number of years ago, and now sits patiently waiting for me to have enough time to return to it.

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This week’s cue is a rhythmically-driven blend of Western folk music and orchestral minimalism. Some of the instruments here would feel at home in an actual country/Western context, whereas others (like marimba and bowed vibraphone) are more unusual, providing color and personality.

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In the game Empire Earth 2 a player can complete campaigns as various nations. Each nation received its own musical themes, which I wrote to evoke a general sense of a culture without referencing any particular national anthem.

This week’s cue accompanies the victory for the United States campaign, and also subtly invokes the main theme for the game itself. (We composers love allusions like that; our challenge is to make them feel musical rather than intellectual.)

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The Cue of the Week is back! (Having taken a few weeks off for the composer’s trip to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.)

The hollow tone that starts this moody piano cue isn’t a synthesizer as you might expect, but the sound of two plastic tubes swung overhead in a circle. The resulting sound has a distinctly organic quality, though it takes a special effort to mic correctly. Should I have just held down two notes on a synthesizer instead? Take a listen and decide!

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This orchestral cue, written for the Extreme Music Library, creates a dramatic sweep suggestive of sturm und drang (hence the name) but with a fantasy-adventure flavoring.

And speaking of European artistic traditions: the Cue of the Week will be on hiatus for a few weeks while its author heads to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Have a happy August!

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