Peter Grenader's Secret Life

Above - the analog synthesizer used to create The Secret Life of Semiconductors.

Secret Life is a collection of my electro-acoustic music from the period from 2002 to 2010. It consists of studio works created in a controlled environment where the final result - the sounding music- was self-produced with no live performance involved*.

Much of Secret Life was produced on instruments of my own design, the best example being the title track. I began developing modular analog synthesizers in 2003 after tiried attempts to bend digital instruments in that manner. It's not the sonic differences between these two extremes which put me to this task. While different, both are viable and I think it's good to have these choices. It was the control limitations of the closed architecture associated with most digital instruments which presented the challenge. For many composers this wouldn't be an issue. For me however it was a hinderance.

The album's name is an abbreviation of the title track - The Secret Life of Semiconductors. I often struggle with names, yet have come to appreciate the mystery that Secret Life suggests.

Thanks are extended to Wendy Carlos, cEvin Keys, Loren Nerell, Ms. Alex Shapiro, Barry Schrader, Steve Roach and Thighpaulsandra for their assistance, encouragement and art.

POSTSCRIPT

We come to periods of loss in our lives and mine as been without exception. In the last decade I've lost my grandmother (104 years), my mother , my dog Chuck, and my close friends John Waddell and Bebe Barron. I've taken the opportunity to dedicate much of this music to their memory in hope that this seemingly inconsequential diligence parallels the generosity of their friendship, support and love.

* Definition taken from Barry Schrader's An Introduction to Electro-Acoustic Music. (Prentice-Hall 1982)

Peter Grenader studied composition with an emphasis in electro-acoustic music at the California Institute of the Arts under the guidance of Barry Schrader and Morton Subotnick..

In 2002, Grenader's Electrolux won the Periòdic Experimental Music Festival in Barcelona, Spain. Other appearances include an evening performance at the 2003 SEAMUS National Conference, the University of North Texas, California Institute of the Arts, Stony Brook University, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champagne, University of Texas at Austin, Georgia State University's Pulse Field, the Florida Electro-Acoustic Music Festival and the Electric Rainbow festival at Dartmouth; the Oden Dance Company's production of Chronicals; CKCU-FM, Ottawa, Canada; WOBC 91.5 FM in Oberlin, Ohio and Resonance FM, London, on various podcasts including Sonic State and KCET and as guest host for Los Angeles based KCSN-FM's Galactic Voyager radio program .

Further palmares include The Institute of Sonology in Utrecht, Holland and IMEB in Bourges, France as well as two wins at the Virginia Commonwealth University Music Festival.

More recently Grenader was a featured composer at the 17th American Composer's Forum Salon in Venice and at the invitation of composer and sound artist Steve Roach served as a panel speaker at the fifth annual TapeOpCon in Tucson, AZ along with Dave Wright of Not Breathing.

In 2007 Grenader contributed to a Library of Congress project with Morton Subotnick and returned as a TapeOpCon panelist with Steve, Dave and Alessandro Cortini of Nine Inch Nails/. Later that year in an event that composer Barry Schrader termed as historic, he performed before a sold out audience in AnalogLive! - a large-scale collaborative ensemble performance with composers Gary Chang, Alessandro Cortini, Richard Devine, Loren Nerell, Chas Smith, Thighpaulsandra of Spiritualized and video artist Paul Tzanetopoulos at the REDCAT Theater, located in the Disney Music Hall in Los Angeles. Photos frorm that event can be seen here

A past member of the SEAMUS board of directors (Society of Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States), he is the co-founder of the Electro-Acoustic Research which produces analog electronic music instruments under the guise of Plan B, which is in the collection of instruments used by Aphex Twin, Chemical Borthers, Richard Devine, Thighpaulsandra, Skinny Puppy, Download, Guns N; Roses, Trent Reznor, Charlie Clouser, Chilli Peppers guitarist John Frusciante, film composer Gary Chang and Steve Roach.