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!
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
Hodad is meant to be played at a beach. The player watches ocean waves as the roll toward the shore, shaping the music to follow the natural rhythms of the sea on that day at that place.
The intonation extends my exploration of stellate hexanies tuned to the Schumann frequency 7.83 Hz.
2021 Press for Hodad
Sequenza 21:“Hodad is a metaphor for the relative spheres of influence – the violin in the concert hall and the surf outdoors. One is full of quiet introspection, the other has unlimited energy, but in this piece both can be examined by the listener in the same context.”
Neuston played by Mark Dresser’s UCSD Bass Quartet
Recorded at Conrad Prebys Music Center Split screen video is Myra Hinrichs playing Hodad at Trestles Beach
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.”
This is a Unity-based video piece, inspired by Reich’s Pendulum Music, but with a microtonal tuning based on a 1-3-5-7 combination-product set. The fundamental of this tuning is an upper 2/1 partial of the Schumann resonance 7.83 Hz. This Schumann resonance is basically the resonant frequency of the Earth’s electromagnetic field.
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.
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.
During performance, the video should be projected where it can be seen by the six musicians and the audienceDuring performance, the video should be projected where it can be seen by the six musicians and the audience
GENERAL INSTRUCTIONS
On the left side of the video, there are six black boxes in a vertical line, each with a number 1-6. The musicians should each be assigned a number 1-6, and every player should watch the corresponding box with his/her number in it.
Each of the six musicians should have 3 different sounds to play, represented in the video score by a red diamond, a green triangle, and a blue circle. The colored shapes will move horizontally across the screen from right to left. When a shape is centered in a player’s box, that musician should play the corresponding sound.During performance, the video should be projected where it can be seen by the six musicians and the audienceDuring performance, the video should be projected where it can be seen by the six musicians and the audience
SELECTING SOUNDS
The exact instrumentation is open, as long as all of the sounds corresponding to each of the three shapes can be identical or similar in some way.
Some examples of possible sounds: 1. Squares = arco ord; Triangles = pizz; Circles = col legno batutto 2. Squares = woodblocks; Triangles = crotales; Circles = samba whistles 3. Squares = E; Triangles = B; Circles = F#
If the sounds in each shape group are similar but not identical, then they should be arranged from low to high, with part #6 playing the lowest sound and part #1 playing the highest.
SPATIALIZATION
The musicians should be as spread out as space allows. Ideally, they would be arranged in a large circle, or a hexagram as it may be. If that is impossible, then they can be spread out in a line, with player #1 on stage right and player #6 on stage left.
