Saturday, March 23, 2013

Periphery of Music II

Set an emotional and intellectual paradigm for the understanding of music as an experience.


Turn from that understanding of music, toward an idea of no music, in contrast to something that can be called non-music; then consider sounds outside those common models or frameworks of music, with environmental aural imagery, tones and patterns serving as the the fundamentals for such sonic designs as they may be heard in diverse contexts.

Sever the significance of time, then place all these perspectives into simultaneous flux.

Friday, March 22, 2013

Sonic Archetypes

Sound motifs represent, through tonal quality and pattern, symbolic realities.


Ethereal heights, storms and floods, places hidden and abandoned, mystic waters, deserts and hills all have their representative sounds, and with them suggestions of stasis and movement.

Atmospheres embrace listening and surround perception, opening the mind's eye and the inner ear.

Thursday, March 21, 2013

Universal Patterns

Where rhythm is not apparent, it will be found through expansion of understanding.


The moon turns the tides and its force is perceptible.

There are vast rhythms pulsing in the cosmos.  Draw these into awareness through representative musical sounds.

Wednesday, March 20, 2013

Connection, Control

Atmosphere, environment, perception, thought.  These are interrelated.


Some things are within the scope of a composer's or listener's will. Others can be imagined.

What sound may express may then be understood, and thus more possibilities, real and concrete or imagined and abstract, may be brought to light.

Tuesday, March 19, 2013

Drama and Ease

To perceive and to reflect embrace intensity and intimacy.


Things happen and are apprehended; as understood, perhaps reconsidered, perspectives emerge. The composer brings aural imagery to such perspectives, manipulates, juxtaposes, stylizes.

Feeling yields designs, tones, dances and dreams.  What is otherwise is merely music.

Monday, March 18, 2013

Reach, Again

To explore memory in its depths is to find perceptual impressions, thoughts, and feelings.


Sudden cold October wind, waving shadows against lights of home; cheer, misunderstandings, disillusionment; exiting a film into blinding daylight; view through strange windows; long gaze at distant boats, stars, mountains;  photographs, then direct experience of art, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, say, or an exhibition of works by Modigliani, Seurat, Warhol-- or unknowns.  Hospital sheets, flickering fluorescent lights, sidewalk bright with dusty chalk drawings, restaurant in early morning rain.

Sounds, smells, all the sensory impressions of street, school, job site, field, highway.  There. Within, find the notes and tones and aural imagery, the sonic impressions that sing life to the inner ear.

Sunday, March 17, 2013

Detach

Time, a measurement of convenience, is not fixed and universal in perception.


The listener may be fully or partially engaged in a musical work or sound design, and still be completely immersed in experience.

So it is with the temporal world:  a moment, now, in motion, within the vastness of reality.