ABSTRACT
Listening to Riverrun by Barry Truax more closely connects the listener to the physical world through a metaphor of water sounds, creating an experience related to that of a natural wonder. While the work was created with realtime synthesis, it is heard as a river soundscape. The flexibility and power of granular synthesis techniques give the composition its fluid and timbrally diverse character. Granular synthesis techniques resemble some natural phenomena, but the power of the work goes beyond technique. Immersed in evolving complex timbral textures with many transformations and only a few distinct borders, the listener perceives anew his or her relationship to the environment.
