Amanda Cole

Dream Garden

For Lumatone, flute, clarinet, violin, cello and percussion

“Dream Garden creates and explores a surreal and unfamiliar musical landscape through the use of microtonal tuning. The first movement, ‘Unfurling’, is a canon using Fibonacci number patterns found in natural spirals such as ferns. The second movement has a pointillistic texture with insect-like sounds that use an array of extended techniques. Movement three features rain-inspired rhythms, textures and timbres. The final movement ‘Rainbows’ features the harmonic series and spectral harmony. 

The 48-note per octave just intonation scale created for this piece was made using an Ervin Wilson tuning lattice. The scale was then mapped to the hexagonal keys of a Lumatone keyboard, which can be mapped to any MIDI number and RGB colour. In the piece, the Lumatone part plays the notes of each chord as a pitch reference for the acoustic instruments, allowing them to find their microtonal notes accurately.”