the australian composer, stephen leek, experiments with musical textures that reflect the natural environmentsic] (leek) as a composer, texture is integral to my work. it's often more important than things like melody or rhythm or pitch, for instance. i find that i'm often motivated or inspired to write by things that i see or feel or touch or smell or places that i go to; people i meet. when i travel, i see lots of different textures which excite me. and from them, i draw particular sorts of textures which i try and translate into sound. [dramatic choral music] cloud formations, sand formations, rock formations, dirt, in fact, many of my scores we use on the covers-- on the recordings some of the photographs of these images that i draw inspiration from. [dramatic choral music] when i am working on a texture, i try and find something common between the different sounds. it might be for instance that they're short sounds which are joined together. an example of a vocal sound might be: buh-buhl-bhul-buh, or: lu-lu-la-lu-la, or: [whirring, motor-like sound). short ideas which are linked together