Kodomo

Kodomo is the moniker for electronic musician Chris Child, an Emmy award-winning full-time composer who lives and works in Portland, Maine. As Kodomo, he is best known for his work on the Harmonix video games Amplitude, and Frequency as well as the iPod game Phase, which features Kodomo's "Spira Mirabilis." "Kodomo" (子供) is the Japanese word for "child"—both a reference to his surname and the fact that he grew up in Japan.Kodomo's first full-length album Still Life is a highly conceptual piece in which the music was all inspired by a set of photographs taken during Kodomo's travels in the US and abroad. The tracks are all titled using the photographic images rather than words. For example, Concept 13 started with a photograph that reflects the Fibonacci proportions that are repeatedly found in nature. These proportions were used to govern the musical composition in the melodic theme, the sonic texture, and even the pace of development of the piece. In this case, .618 is the governing number, and themes are introduced at these intervals, which give the whole composition a balanced and natural-feeling proportion.