Stations combines staged theater, live and recorded music, video installation, and electronic audio effects via ChucK music processing software to create a "tragic drama." Symbolically, Stations retells the story of the traditional Via Dolorosa, the Catholic Stations of the Cross. The theatrical, symbolic, and metaphysical manifestations of elements of the Via Dolorosa that exist in Stations create an aesthetic phenomenon wherein an object's perceived identity conflicts with its physical presence in reality. The works of James Joyce, Ulysses in particular, served as an artistic model for Stations, because the fictional story of Ulysses serves as a symbolic signifier for the quasi-historical events in Homer's epic poem. Similarly, the actors in Stations exist simultaneously as performing musicians (their reality), characters in a play, and symbolic icons of the Via Dolorosa, making a consistent allusion to the Christian ceremony.

The musical and theatrical design of Stations reflects the influence of three American composers for theater, Broadway's Stephen Sondheim, American composer and musicologist Arthur Farwell, and avant-garde opera composer Robert Ashley. Sondheim's muti-faceted treatment of ensemble, presenting large groups as a Greek chorus as well as a party made up of individuals, influenced the character and story development of Stations. Farwell's dedication to American folk music and the presentation of community dramas as a unique American art form became the inspiration for the source material of Stations, the American hymns "Were You There," "In the Garden," "Beach Spring," and the Venezuelan Christmas Carol "Nińo Lindo." Ashley's Perfect Lives utilizes video as a commentary on the action, in the same way that the electronic elements of Stations act as an actor in the drama.

The form of Stations reflects the dichotomy between the biblically accurate accounts of the Via Dolorosa and the apocryphal, traditionally accepted events. The representations of true historical accounts, fictional events, and commentary on religion and the afterlife combine to create the tragic drama in a multimedia theater environment.

This study investigates the affective relationship between music and visual media including projection, color (staging and lighting) and sound (instrumental and electronic). Concerns about color as it relates to music are thousands of years old. There could be many reasons why humans emotionally connect color with music. Color and sound share similarities in the form of audio and visual spectrum and affect humans’ primal reactions. Sound is an ingredient of music in a manner similar to the way color is an ingredient of visual art. Sometimes, in a work designed with music and color together, these elements work toward the same goal. When one element takes a different approach than that suggested by the other, the emotions they evoke are still poetically connected.

As lighting designers manipulate the visual stage by applying different colors, composers manipulate music by applying musical language. Although pop and commercial music frequently incorporate colored light to visualize music, it is rarer to find this in classical music settings.

“What We See is What We Desire to See for Color and Instruments: Color as Inspiration for Musical Composition” includes two parts. One is a new five movement musical composition (ca. 37 minutes) for fourteen performers including eleven musicians, projections, lighting, and electronics (Max for Live and Ableton Live) inspired by the abstract qualities of color. The second is a reflection of the composition concentrating on its inspirational relationship between color and music.

Ceremony of Superheroes is a 35-40 minute musical composition for bass/C flute, bass clarinet, violin, viola, cello, and keyboard, which employs individual and idiosyncratic live electronics intended both to demonstrate digitally facilitated mythological "superpowers" among a representative showcase of soloists and ensembles and convey a philosophical idea of coexistence between the physical and transcendent forces as the instrumentalists integrate their musical powers in a metaphoric battle between creative and destructive forces.

The individuality of the performer is an exciting resource in generating and developing new musical material as well as correlative custom systems for live electronics. In addition, many performers have limited experience rehearsing and performing with live electronics and few opportunities to become acclimated to the challenges unique to new compositions in this area. Rarely do performers have the opportunity to work with electronics throughout the development of a piece. Typical challenges include miking techniques, understanding and hearing electronic/acoustic interactions, rehearsal logistics involving the integration of the electronics with interpretive choices, and developing clear expectations for how the electronics are involved in the musical material.

Ceremony of Superheroes explores relationships between the archetypal and the experimental, the acoustic and the digital, through a musical and mythological narrative that transforms the acoustic and idiomatic properties of each instrument into supernatural expressive tools. Allowing instrumental and interpersonal idiosyncrasies to guide the development of custom electronics and musical material expands the abilities of each instrumentalist and enhances their investment in collaboratively designed poetics by heightening their identification with their characters' roles in the piece's overall narrative arc as a function of a developmentally iterative process.

This process is documented through the inclusion of a full score; original software and documentation; a reflective analysis of the piece's musical development; draft scores showing primary musical material; and a video of a first performance.

Trinity is a large-scale piece of program music for a symphony orchestra expanded to include two electric guitars (doubling on acoustic guitar), piano (doubling on Fender Rhodes Electric Piano), electric bass guitar and drumset. The main philosophical impetus for this piece is the programmatic depiction (in the manner of a tone poem) of a concept which is based on and combines archetypal characters drawn primarily from literary sources. This dissertation is titled Trinity and uses the thesis that the three chosen archetypes, The Architect, The Leper and the Gunslinger, are three aspects of the same über-archetype which is representative of both humanity the human individual - this concept being a composite of Ayn Rand's "Fountainhead," Friedrich Nietzsche's Übermensch and god (as a human construct). The description of the trinity is - in a similar manner to Christian belief - the description of an individual through the lens of three contrasting, complementary and singular personalities, which is both god and human; it is a deified version of the Übermensch as represented by the Architect, Leper and Gunslinger.

This piece utilizes symmetrical and asymmetrical synthetic scales (and their associated aggregates), multiple and simultaneous tonal centers, drone and repetition/sequencing and looping and a rhythmic concept which uses the employment of multiple and simultaneous rhythmic cells in various meters and subdivisions (of the meter) in a manner reminiscent of melodic counterpoint. Trinity is five movements long and arranged similar to a Romantic-era symphony- an introduction, followed by three movements - one for each archetype, then a finale. The five movements are bookended by related music intended to function in a musical analogue to "Once upon a time..." and "...happily ever after."

Included with the musical score is a prose document - which explicates the philosophical and metaphorical construct and associated personal implications and which details the compositional techniques used - and a folder containing audio files of the entire score. The audio files were created using live musicians and MIDI-realizations.

Strategies of musical symmetry can partition an aural space in a manner similar to the way that scales partition an octave. In an exploration of a 12-channel diffusion system, I will compose three musical pieces expressing various methods of designing symmetrical based aural spatial premises with the goal of creating an experienceable spatial harmony. To achieve this, I will first design a cuboctahedral speaker array capable of representing multiple spatial harmonies. Second, I will develop a notation system that symmetrically visually represents the spatial harmonies for compositional intentionality. Finally, I will program a Max MSP software patch capable of integrating the array and notation for playback experiences and compositional interpretations. After these processes are outlined and described, I will then compose three etudes to demonstrate diverse methods of compositional strategies; they are dedicated to, and inspired by the works of Terrence McKenna, Nicola Tesla, and Carl Sagan.

Automated methods of musical composition have a broad range of history and techniques. Throughout the last seventy years, digital technology solidified the field adding stochastic computational methods and machine learning models, multiplying both efficiency and possibilities. Lately, procedural music generation shifted from ‘possible’ to ‘commercially viable’ driving a new wave of services and products. Videogames use procedural methods to modify audiovisual conditions in real time. Game developers currently use pre-produced music/sound design audio sequences, aiming for sound quality, balancing storage space and variety. In this paradigm, real-time manipulation is limited to adaptive mixing procedures (e.g., rules for overlapping, EQ, and effects), and recombination (e.g., random or sequential containers, stretching/pitch shifting, fragmentation). Those are standard options in popular sound design middleware platforms (FMOD and Audiokinetic’s Wwise) designed to allow adaptation, transformation, and multiplication of existent material according to gameplay. Nevertheless, recurring audio clips (especially music) are recognizable. In extended gaming sessions, the resulting repetition is unpredictably tiring, and reduces the musical storytelling support through generalized reappearance. Although generative adaptive music has been implemented in select cases, it is not part of current commercial game development pipelines. While algorithmic note-by-note generation can offer interactive flexibility and infinite diversity, it poses significant challenges such as achieving human-like performativity and producing a distinctive narrative progression through measurable parameters or variables. In this study, I introduce the Progressive Adaptive Music Generator (PAMG) algorithm, which uses parameters derived from gameplay variables to produce a continuous music stream output that transitions seamlessly between moods/styles and progresses among tension/complexity levels. I cover methodological bases found in the literature, identify implementation challenges, sample PAMG produced material, and present a test scenario that includes a trial videogame and a preliminary comparative perceptual experiment. The test shows that players tend to prefer PAMG over conventional music implementation in a number of capacities although results are not globally conclusive. It additionally suggests particular priming effects that occur in connection with incidental generative game music perception. Lastly, I assess current experiment and PAMG’s limitations and future directions, and present a debate about authorship in the upcoming generative-AI context.