Daniel Corral

composer

Piece Format: Electronic

  • Colours

    Colours

    Watch the full video on Music for Your Inbox

    In the 20-minute video work Colours, Daniel Corral explores color through sound, language, and light. The film samples brief moments from popular songs that name a color, pairing each excerpt with the written word as it shifts hue onscreen. Through repetition, the work produces subtle visual and auditory hallucinations that draw attention to each color’s formal qualities: rhythm, tone, and the word itself. The result is a relationship to color that is both internal—the sensations shaped by individual perception—and shared as widely recognizable cultural references.

    Available from Music for Your Inbox from January 1, 2026 to February 28, 2026, paired with mail art from Kate Gorman!

  • Sextet #7

    Sextet #7

    • Sextet #7 in Ojai

      Photos from Sound+Walk, presented by the Ojai Music Festival and Black Barn Sessions

    Sextet #7 is a generative sound installation in 6 boxes. Each box improvises its own part, using a palette of field recordings, electronic sounds, and audio samples. The result is a spatialized imaginary soundscape that is constantly reinventing itself. Sextet #7 is an evolution of my past work with music boxes.

  • Norri

    Norri

    • Norri images

      by DaEun Jung, with Melody Shim

    A dance quartet combining traditional Korean dance with chance operations and contemporary dance.

    The music combines Lou Harrison’s National Resophonic Guitar with electronics and the powerful pansori voice of Melody Shim.

  • Candoro

    Candoro

    More Info

    As part of the development process for a collaboration with Alexander Gedeon and DaEun Jung, I made a 13 minute video/sound piece for Music for Your Inbox called Candoro.

    In this video, the soundscape around the Candoro Marble Company in Knoxville, TN is treated with JI magical realism, echoing the surreal navigations of our three bodies around the physical space of the building’s Beaux-Arts architecture.

    The video was shot during our time at the Loghaven Artist Residency last September.

    Performers:
    Daniel Corral, Alexander Gedeon, and DaEun Jung

  • Incomplete Open Hexany

    Incomplete Open Hexany

    Written for the Now Hear Ensemble, Incomplete Open Hexany is a harmony study of a 6-note JI scale.

    It was premiered on April 6, 2022 at the Riverside Art Museum

  • Concerto for Having Fun with Elvis on Stage

    Concerto for Having Fun with Elvis on Stage

    A collaboration with performer/director Alexander Gedeon, Concerto for Having Fun with Elvis on Stage combines live music and theatrical performance to reframe the cultural significance of the “worst album in rock and roll history.”

    “Having Fun with Elvis on Stage” is a 1973 album collaged entirely from Elvis speaking on stage between songs at live concerts – no music. AllMusic’s Mark Deming declared “hearing it is like witnessing a car wreck, leaving onlookers too horrified and too baffled to turn away.” Concerto for Having Fun with Elvis on Stage reimagines this vilified recording as the libretto for a sort of ghost opera, combining pop art nostalgia with new technology and classical instruments to create a memetic hologram of the endless purgatory of celebrity afterlife.

    My live musical score is performed along with the original LP as if they were the pit orchestra for opera or musical theater – sometimes harmonizing with the words, painting emotions in the spaces between, or reacting theatrically. Meanwhile, Gedeon’s “Elvis” persona becomes a vehicle to explore all things banal and absurd in pop idolatry, as well as the performative aspects of ‘stage presence.’

    • 2020 press for Concerto for Having Fun with Elvis on Stage

      Sequenza 21: “…carried off with exemplary production values and extraordinary performances, making the case that new music concerts can be experienced online at a high level.”

      LA Times Cultural Pick: “Theater artist Alexander Gedeon and composer Daniel Corral deconstruct the myth of pop stardom in this musical fable with live accompaniment by the Now Hear Ensemble.”

      LA Weekly: Arts Calendar Highlight

    • Concerto for Having Fun with Elvis on Stage (clip #2)

      From the virtual premiere at REDCAT on Nov. 14, 2020

      Featuring stage direction and pantomime by Alexander Gedeon, with music performed by the Now Hear Ensemble.

    • Concerto for Having Fun with Elvis on Stage (clip #1)

      From the virtual premiere at REDCAT on Nov. 14, 2020

      Featuring stage direction and pantomime by Alexander Gedeon, with music performed by the Now Hear Ensemble.

  • Stellate Hexany Boxes

    Stellate Hexany Boxes

    • Stellate Hexany Boxes prototypes #1–2

    Inside of several cigar boxes, there are animated optical illusions which represent 3D tuning lattices. These objects float in space and play music, corresponding to the notes of a 1-3-5-7 “Stellate Hexany,” envisioned by Erv Wilson.

  • Count In

    Count In

    • Count In demo

    Count In is a meditation on the role of individual voices in an imminent post-human environment, based around a recording of Poly-Styrene (from the 70s punk band X-Ray Spex) defiantly shouting the numbers “1-2-3-4.”

    Count In combines phasing techniques and just intonation (with a tuning system inspired by La Monte Young’s Well Tuned Piano) and the result is a mixture of Steve Reich, X-Ray Spex, James Tenney, and Sesame Street Pinball Number Counts. The layered iterations of Styrene’s voice are reinforced by the visual presence of corresponding numbers, which slowly change color akin to a James Turrell Skyspace.

    • Counting Presence

      Published in Soap Ear Journal Issue 10

      The following is a reflection on the 2019 piece Count In by composer Daniel Corral. In this essay Corral lays out his creative process alongside formal elements of the piece, while considering experiences of stability, change, and presence.

  • Polytope

    Polytope

    • Polytope live at Think Tank Gallery

      Presented by the LAX Festival on October 17, 2018

    • Polytope album

      Released Sept. 28, 2018 on Orenda Records

    Polytope is a multimedia microtonal performance for MIDI quartet. Performed entirely in darkness, it’s a mesmerizing dance of silhouettes of fingers over colorful glowing MIDI buttons, captured on live feed video and projected large and bright as a moving, visual score.

    Polytope is rhythmically charged in the vein of musical minimalists such as Phillip Glass, Steve Reich, or Arnold Dreyblatt, but harmonically inspired by the microtonal explorations of James Tenney, Erv Wilson, or Harry Partch. The multimedia style of presentation is somewhere between a string quartet, Kraftwerk, James Turrell, and an Indonesian dhalang (master shadow puppeteer).

    Onstage, four MIDI controllers sit on a small square table. A single video camera captures the view from above. The controllers are not traditional keyboards; they are glowing grids of 8×8 buttons, rotated 45° to create tonality diamonds. One musician stands before each controller. In the dark, the overhead camera captures the colorful, changing patterns of grid lights and the fast-moving silhouettes of the musician hands. The live feed video is projected in the space, creating a larger than life, colorful multimedia experience inspired by Light and Space art that also acts as an evolving, visual score.

    • 2018 press for Polytope

      Riting: “Polytope embodies ‘the gold standard’ of ambient music — it can hover in the background and cast a subtle vibe, but will also stand up to closer inspection: delicately layered overtones cascade and recede, forming a spellbinding latticework. In moments, it’s not unlike water drops on a windshield, dripping and streaking reflected light with each movement of the wiper.”

      Sequenza 21: “Polytope is an extraordinary piece of musical and visual art… that is both accessible and compelling.”

      Vital Weekly: “Whatever it is, it sounds simply wonderful… worth your every while.”

      The Stranger: “After five minutes of this silvery, undulant tintinnabulation, I was ready to evaporate into another more sparkly and stimulating dimension than the one in which we currently suffer. This piece sounds like gamelan from Pluto—or maybe ’70s Philip Glass as interpreted by Harry Partch on his Cloud-Chamber Bowls.”

      New Classic LA (Interview):  “Daniel Corral’s latest work, Polytope, premieres at Automata as part of this year’s MicroFest, who have named their season after it. We were lucky that Daniel had a minute to answer some questions about this piece…”

      24700: “Composer, CalArts faculty and alumnus Daniel Corral (Music MFA 07) presents the live debut of his latest release Polytope to Automata in Los Angeles on Sunday (March 18). The concert is the featured performance of this year’s MicroFest 2018.”

      SF Gate: “A mesmerizing visual and musical spectacle”

      MetalJazz:  “Musicians who know the turf”

      The Rest is Noise:  Miscellany


    • Polytope

      Published in Xenharmonikon on January 4, 2022

      This article describes the compositional and performance practices involved in my 2018 piece Polytope. This microtonal multimedia piece is performed by 4 musicians playing Launchpad Pros in total darkness, with live feed video and electronic 4-channel sound.

  • Refractions

    Refractions

    • Refractions album

      Released May 5, 2017 on Populist Records

    Refractions expands on my ten years of exploring the sonic and sculptural possibilities of music boxes. Composed for string quartet, electric guitar, and electronically processed music box, Refractions combines ethereal ambient electronics with contemplative acoustic timbres. Featuring performances from prog rock/metal guitarist Jeremy Kerner, the Isaura String Quartet, and Daniel Corral on music box and laptop, the music is a spacious continuum of composed structures, improvisation, and overlapping textures.

    • Refractions (live at Automata)

      From the album release show on May 6, 2017
      Featuring the Koan String Quartet
      The Isaura String Quartet couldn’t do it due to scheduling conflicts.

    • 2017 press for Refractions

      Christian Carey:  “this slowly evolving piece of music is spellbinding in its execution. Rather than foregrounding the incremental shifts of material, the listener is encouraged to bask in a wash of sounds, varied and lovely timbres that are deployed with enough independence to seem to have minds of their own.” 

      Sequenza 21: “The cool ambient tranquility of Refractions is a much needed antidote to the raucous confusion that infests our daily lives; this music works to elegantly recharge us in a moment of restorative calm.” 

      National Sawdust Log Journal: “A sublime study in anxious stasis and fleeting repose for string quartet, electric guitar, music box, and digital treatments…” 

      Textura: “The music blossoms in the most peaceful of manners… the piece… presents an ever-mutating weave of softly glimmering electronics and fluttering acoustic timbres, and as it advances the impression forms of a spacious, ambient-styled composition that’s rooted in both pre-formed structures and improvisation.” 

      MetalJazz: “Open-aired, shivery…”

      Avant Music News: Pick of the week 

      The Rest is Noise: Nightafternight playlist of “New and recent releases of interest” 

      24700: “Refractions is a 45-minute electro-acoustic chamber piece that expands on Corral’s 10 years of exploring the sonic and sculptural possibilities of music boxes” 

      Talk Classical: “Experimental yet attractive new music” 

      Chicago Reader: Today’s Playlist 

      Best of 2017 Lists: Bandcamp Daily, Avant Music News (Honorable Mention)National Sawdust, a fool in the forest, Asociacion Intonarumori, Steve Hoffman

  • One Line

    One Line

    One Line was composed with a scale described in Lou Harrison’s Music Primer, and continues my work featuring multimedia representations of microtonal systems. Many of my similar pieces use complex tuning structures, but One Line is instead quite streamlined, restricted to only 8 notes.

    • One Line

    • Livestream Launchpad performance, 4/26/21

      A livestream performance of Comma, One Line, and Diamond Pulses

    • Vicki Ray playing One Line

      At Zipper Hall, Los Angeles as part of the Piano Spheres series, April 3, 2018

  • Space-Time

    Space-Time

    • Space-Time, live at Automata

      Premiere on May 7, 2016 by Accordant Commons

    Based on text from Christine Wertheim’s book +|’me’S-pace, Space-Time uses a tuning system derived from La Monte Young’s Well-Tuned Piano.

    It was commissioned by Accordant Commons and premiered at Automata, Los Angeles on May 7, 2016 as part of MicroFest.

    • 2016 press for Space-Time

      New Classic LA: “The mood set for meditation and rhythmic swaying and shifting, the singers clapped and recited and sang and slurred and whooped. The words philosophize about reading and comprehending, and shift tiny elements to change entire meanings, … atomizing the language and investigating the relationships of its components… The result reframes consonance and dissonance, making the audience rethink on the fly what they think is pleasant and what clashes. What is usually instinctive to our ears here required conscious thought, fitting the space journey of +|’me’S-pace. The beat was constant but the meter shifts, making the steady time feel like it was swaying in the wind. Between the sonority and the flux of time, it is all the listener can do to hang on and enjoy the ride. “

  • X-Ray Glass

    X-Ray Glass

    • X-Ray Glass EP on SoundCloud

  • Diamond Pulses

    Diamond Pulses

    • Diamond Pulses (Live Performance)

      Album release show performance at Automata, 9/12/15
      You can see my hands in the lower left corner of the video

    • Diamond Pulses album

      Released Sept. 12, 2015 on Orenda Records

    Diamond Pulses is a 32-minute musical experience combining just-tuned harmonies, driving minimalist rhythms, noisy ambiance, and electronic timbres.

    • 2015 press for Diamond Pulses

      Downtown Music Gallery: “Is this some sort of Kraftwerk-like nirvana? As the tempo speeds up, so does the the inner pulse and ours as well. The adrenalin is pumping and we have to hold on. The nervous energy actually feels good, invigorating. If this were slowed down, an interesting melody would appear, but that is besides the point of what is really going on. An exhilarating motorcycle ride through a cavern of endless mirrors. A good change of pace for yours truly. “ 

      MetalJazz: “Corral’s new Orenda Records album, ‘Diamond Pulses,’ shines with surging dynamics and subliminal microtonalisms that make for a fresh and involving experience; live visuals, too.” 

      Artificialist: “It’s a nod to minimalism, I guess, but it has less affiliation with the east coast music movement than with the west coast art movement. Think of the Light and Space artists, with their hard edges and industrial materials and loud colors. All references aside, it’s a thing of beauty, a big and bright and fun object that, like all good pop, covers the tracks of its own making so you can’t think about it. You can only feel it.” 

      Living Out Loud LA: “When I first listened to Diamond Pulses, it took me on a musical journey that I’ve never experienced before. Corral’s unique combination of musical influences results in a calming sound that is truly a delight to listen to. Corral is a great composer, and his expression through music transcends into something so unique that no artist can match. By any means, you need to listen to his album because it’s phenomenal.” 

      New Classic LA: “Listen at home, with dedicated ears, to this strangely rigid dance meditation, a fervent solipsism with a disturbingly wild, encroaching reality. “ 

      Mouser: “‘Diamond Pulses’, in its impossible myriad of creation, is quietly drawing a key to unlock the secrets of the universe.” 

      David Segal: “RIYL Rod Poole’s The Death Adder and Seth Josel’s Go Guitars.” 

      Alaska Dispatch News: “Daniel Corral, formerly of Eagle River and now working in Los Angeles, will release his debut solo album, “Diamond Pulses” (Orenda Records) with shows at 8 and 10 p.m. on September 12 at Automata, an L.A. alternative arts venue.” 

      24700: “Diamond Pulses is a 32-minute soundscape that combines classical minimalist influences, Balinese rhythm undercurrents and modern production aesthetics. Corral counts Terry Riley, Dawn of Midi, Harry Partch and late faculty of the Herb Alpert School of Music at CalArts James Tenney as key influences on the album.”

    • Livestream Launchpad performance, 4/26/21

      A livestream performance of Comma, One Line, and Diamond Pulses

    • (antiquated) Augmented Reality (excerpt)

      Created by Christine Marie
      This clip features and excerpt from Diamond Pulses

    • Diamond Pulses (Live Performance)

      Album release show performance at Automata, 9/12/15
      You can see my hands in the lower left corner of the video

    • Diamond Pulses live on Ear Meal Webcast

    • Diamond Pulses live on Dublab

      Live performance of Diamond Pulses on Dublab’s Elevations Through Sound with Ale Cohen!

  • Meditation

    Meditation

    For any number of voices and optional electronics. Duration is variable, to be pre-determined by the performers.

    • 2015 press for Meditation

      LA Times: “Corral’s wordless, a cappella “Meditation” enters into Ligeti territory with four singers treated to electronic feedback and mimicking what might be mistaken for an airplane in perpetual lift off. The performers looked terrified yet sounded amazing.”

  • 2′ 42″

    2′ 42″

    • 2'42" on Bandcamp

    2’42” is an online series that reflects on the evolving nature of duration and form in this globalized new millenium. 

    A claim has been made that 2 minutes and 42 seconds is the perfect length for a pop song. This statement has been circling the internet, independently initiated by bloggers Joshua Allen and John Scalzi. It has been perpetuated by the likes of Boing Boing, Wired, NPR, and many more. 

    2’42” takes that statement to heart. Music written and/or recorded in cities around the world has been “corrected” to fit that “perfect pop song” length of 2:42. Each track is named after the city where its source material originated.

    • 2’42” YouTube Videos

  • Solo #2 for Accordion and Laptop

    Solo #2 for Accordion and Laptop

    • Solo #2 for Accordion and Laptop, live at Mimoda

  • Solo #1 for Accordion and Laptop

    Solo #1 for Accordion and Laptop

    • Solo #1 for Accordion and Laptop on Ear Meal

  • Cadential Variations

    Cadential Variations

    • Cadential Variations on Bandcamp

    Cadential Variations is a 17 minute collage comprised entirely of endings taken from all styles of music. From Modest Mussorgsky to Modest Mouse or from Iannis Xenakis to Xavier Cugat, these endings have come from all corners of the musical world to be re-contextualized as a part of a larger linear continuum.

    Cadential Variations is a collage comprised entirely of endings. The formal function of these endings is re-contextualized as they instead become a piece of a linear continuum. Consider what an ending can reveal about a musician’s relationship to death and mortality. 

    Some entirely subjective examples: 

    • In Le Sacre Du Printemps, Stravinsky tags one final stinger onto the end, as if telling death who will have the last word. 
    • Steve Reich’s Different Trains jolts itself into consciousness, all train engines and interlocking motion, until everything suddenly stops, leaving you mesmerized by its sudden absence. 
    • Post-song feedback/guitar-noodling is the rock star’s proclamation of his desire to defy death. 
    • The utter lack of endings in most techno music speaks volumes about the youth-obsessed mindset of rave culture, negating death by merely cross-fading to the next beat-matched record. 
    • The self-important high, long, ending note of a typical operatic aria elevates the singer’s final breath to a level of histrionic grandeur. 
    • The violent, tight, and heavy ending of a Sepultura song states that we may die, but we will do so fighting and strong to the end. 

    With this in mind, what could be said of a piece like Cadential Variations, which consists entirely of endings? Perhaps it might be considered morbid, dwelling obsessively on death and mortality. On the other hand, it might be uplifting; each death is not really an ending, but merely a transition to a new stage of existence.