This week’s cue is… a little hard to describe. But it’s safe to call it a rhythmic pastiche of Western folk music elements, also including a few instruments (like bowed vibraphone) that you wouldn’t find on the average ranch.

(Click on the play button to stream, or the cue title to download.)

	Into the West

This week’s selection underscores a scene from the film Against Time, in which a classroom of high schoolers slyly cheat their way through a tough exam, and the film’s protagonist faces a temptation to do likewise. The scene is both a test in the number two pencil sense, as well as one of integrity. My approach here was to both musically capture the subterfuge of the smirking cheaters, and suggest that something deeper was at stake.


(Click on the play button to stream, or the cue title to download.)

	The Test

This week’s selection is my theme for the newest release of Strange Rain, an app for iPhone/iPod/iPad. Strange Rain is an unusual entertainment app, mixing audiovisual immersion and interactive fiction. It’s surprisingly engrossing, and well worth checking out given its modest price.

In the app itself, my score is fragmented and advanced in increments, the music becoming progressively stranger and less predictable as time goes on. Here I present an “album remix”, with the music in a more familiar linear form.


(Click on the play button to stream, or the cue title to download.)

	Cumulus Effect

Michael’s music is included in the newest version of Opertoon’s top-selling iOS app (former #1 on U.S. iPad entertainment charts) Strange Rain.

Strange Rain is an immersive experience featuring music against a changing backdrop of stormy weather and a nonlinear narrative story. Michael’s moody piano score, one of the app’s three musical accompaniments, evolves in tandem with the visuals to become slowly stranger over time.

An “album remix” of the score is available as a free download here.