In iPod Variations, I return to the music I loved as a teenager in an attempt to recreate my musical DNA. Like a shuffled playlist, each variation juxtaposes the musical styles of two different artists that were on my iPod, a technology that already evokes a previous era. It may seem unusual to pair Hendrix with Handel, or Bob Dylan with Deadmau5, but in my teenage years I didn’t grasp the importance of historical context—it was all just music to me. Here, I put listeners in the same position through eclectic contrasts.
By adding to the flute and violin soloists an arsenal of recorded instruments—harpsichord, fretless bass, Hammond B-3 organ, Persian tār, and video game sound chips, to name a few—I tried to condense ten years of listening into roughly ten minutes of music, paying homage to guitar-shredding heroes (I, II, IV), jazz idols (III, V), and electronic music masters (II, VI). Like Bach’s Goldberg Variations, the piece ends with a return to the opening aria—but now in an idealized rendering, as though seen through the lens of a nostalgic memory.
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