Afterimage is a stylistic companion to Due Meditazioni sulla Dharmachakra, forming a duo of the most progressive rock-like of all my works.  Additionally, both are responses to mandala meditations, the focus of Afterimage is the Sri Yantra mandala.
 
Afterimage was written in response to a request from Gonzaga University's music department in October of 2021.  As the designs behind many of my pieces are inspired by meditation tools of one type or another, until this piece was given a name, the working title was "Mandala #9", it being the 9th piece I'd written with mandala-based meditation in mind, the Sri Yantra in particular.  Listen for the subtle shifting of angular patterns (triangles!), nested inside of one another, as melodies emerge from their centers. For each new section of music, the same melodic shape takes on a fresh size and color.
 
~ Bill Whitley, October 8 2021.
 
Behind the Scenes
For me, chords and chord progressions have always felt like traps. I quit composing a hundred times, until I finally allowed myself to be immersed into non-western and medieval European music (why did I fight it?), that I started to find a path to a musical language that felt like mine. My music is modal and cyclical, as opposed to tonal and metrical.  I generally begin with a rhythmic cycle, and a collection of specific tones (usually 5 or less), treat them like a non-transposing mode, create patterns, and draw out a melody.  If writing the music in sections, as I did with Afterimage, I go to the unused notes to create other modes. I begin this process by analyzing the Interval Class Vector of the mode, so I can try to create a mode that makes use of new intervals!
 
Note: I did not use a rhythmic cycle in this piece, though I did use plenty of asymmetrical beat divisions, which sound similarly to tala performances.
 
The mode for the first section of Afterimage was created from the name ALOYSIUS with a cipher where the letter A=C, B=C#, C=D, D=D#, etc. The resulting mode uses the pitch classes B,C,D,F#, and G# (ICV: 121212).
 
The form of the Work is ABC(A)D, where the return to A is very brief.  The B Section uses the same notes as the A section, but with a different central tone. The C section uses C#,D#,E, and A (ICV: 111111), and the D section uses F, Bb, and A (ICV: 100110). I reused the A from the second mode because it was beautiful.