Wednesday, April 04, 2012

Passages

Auditory perception functions on primary and secondary levels of awareness.


Consider the nature of listening as active, and primary, and hearing may be regarded as passive, or secondary in character.  The former implies focus on specifics, the latter suggests generalized sensory involvement with the whole of the environment.  Both are natural experiences of varying intensities.

From a composer's perspective it is clear that music and musical perceptions are centered on the act of listening, in ways that dominate the attention, while the function of hearing is of no particular moment in the course of a performance or recording.

Transformation ambient music, in contrast, like ambient music in its original sense, is designed to accommodate both levels of engagement with sound, with the composer taking an active, if reserved, role in the arrangement and production of the works.