Heterophony means something like “different sounds” and is often used in music to describe a texture whose orientation is primarily horizontal. That is, in heterophonic textures, a single melodic line spawns a larger texture that is neither harmonic (homophonic) in nature nor contrapuntal (polyphonic). However, heterophony can and often does produce harmony—and it can produce counterpoint. There are other ideas of what constitutes heterophony, but I’ll let the theorists and musicologists argue over that.

The texture of this piece is mostly heterophonic; it’s derived from some quite simple melodic snippets that govern larger sections of the work. These are manipulated in a variety of ways and create at times a general harmonic sense for those sections.

All sounds were created through my fairly extensive collection of Make Noise modules, chief among them those comprising the “NUSS” (New Universal Synthesizer System): Multiwave, Polimaths, and two QXGs. (Maybe you know what those are; maybe you don’t and want to look them up; maybe you don’t care. In any event, it doesn’t really matter.) What appeals to me most about what I can achieve with this system is that it can produce textures that are highly reminiscent of acoustic composition but that aren’t easily attainable—if they’re attainable at all—with “standard” instruments.