Saturday, March 24, 2012

Origins

Ideas retain vitality as individuals breathe life into them.


The effortless and shallow are always robust, while the deep and difficult are easily ignored, easily cast aside, and remain ever daunting.  Yet even as they lie still, distant, and dark, those laden with challenge are the beginnings of visions, and of things yet to be seen and heard.

Friday, March 23, 2012

Constructs

The received wisdom is that popular music is successful by virtue of public acceptance and approval, while "serious music" is appreciated by the highly (or moderately) cultivated intellectual as "art".


Like many conventional assumptions given to be fact, these represent vague notions and broad generalities that overlook the individuality of both listeners and artists.  Neither popularity nor academic credibility will overcome the judgements of history.

The artist is ever left to act upon possibilities-- nothing more, but nothing less.

Thursday, March 22, 2012

Patterns, Densities, Clusters and Textures

Postulate music that emerges in combinations of sound as they take place in the natural and human environment.  Sounds of activity, of living creatures, voices, the elements and machines.


Mere noise is not the object, but aesthetic combinations of such sounds as are made by human volition and insight.  Executed in the manner of auditory events as they take place naturally, these combinations are outside the frame of reference associated with standard concepts of musical arrangements. 

An atmosphere is thus created that reflects the apprehension of sound phenomena encountered in the physical world while sketching territories of the imagination.

Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Contemplation

Immersed in sound environments one may experience states both introspective and contemplative, uniting thought, feeling, and perceptivity.


This is not the same as "listening to music" for relaxation, excitement, entertainment or diversion; neither is it a focus solely for meditation, or merely "aural wallpaper", an element of decor, though it may rightly have aspects of any of these at any given time.

Yet it is an aesthetic, or one might say an artistic experience, to be enjoyed in distinctive ways according to the tastes and sensibilities of listeners in a variety of situations.

It is always the sound of a journey through imagination.

Monday, March 19, 2012

Surroundings

Impossible to enumerate all the elements of a single glance, all the sounds scattered about through an hour's wandering.  Attempts to represent these impressions can only be speculative, and imaginative.


One may as easily ask, "Do I make art and music?  Or do they make me?"

Sunday, March 18, 2012

Aural Gestures

Form comes into being through the formless.


The composer is human presence, the medium through which transformation takes place.  The composer facilitates and observes; conceives, but does not falsify, which is to say, does not assume outcome to be of greater moment than process, does not guide, does not interfere. 

Technology and technique, method and sensibility, tone and meaning move together in unison, in one motion, one way of change over time.