Aural Feeling

Engaged perception develops intimate awareness of sound.

One senses subtleties of form, intensity, proximity, emotional meaning, and in some cases, degrees of intention that sound may represent.

A woodpecker at work on a hollow tree.  A window opening.  Traffic of all kinds.  Conversation and laughter. Sudden silences.  The growing recognition of sounds in quiet places gradually filling the atmosphere, as happens when one acclimates to the darkling stillness of dawn and twilight.

Imagine and create these tones and colors:  give them reality, bring them into being.

Wave, Reflection, Revision, and Exploration

Musical instruments create easily identifiable timbres, their "signature" sounds.

The sounds of piano, guitar, drum and flute are distinctive; the fretless bass, baritone saxophone, timbales and harpsichord are equally unique.  Individual instruments possess wide variations in sound quality from others of their type, as do human voices.  Any and all combinations of instrumental and vocal arrangements may produce the generally recognized expressive forms associated with music, from ballads to symphonies, given their adherence to respective stylistic configurations.

The electronic or digital synthesizer, on the other hand, generates sounds by the manipulation and production of electric signals or waveforms.  Though it may finely imitate the sounds of other musical instruments, the synth is, in fact, an instrument in its own right.  One may look back musically, and do the same things with a different capability, or forward, to sounds, combinations, and ways of composing as yet to be discovered.

To paraphrase synthesizer designer Dr. Robert Moog, it is no less difficult to make good music than it has ever been.  

Distance and Light

Artistic creativity requires a degree of freedom that goes beyond conformity of thought, particularly in terms of popular culture, academics, and politics-- these being exceptionally subject to rigid, narrow conventions.

To confuse the polar opposite of common opinion with this kind of freedom is error, one that does no more than burden the creative vision with chains no different than those perceived to bind the other.

The way of the artist is beyond the mundane, and closer, even so, to the unknown.

Wave to Mind

Sense impressions conducive to ordering or unifying states of consciousness, emotional outlook, and conditions of mind and being may be conveyed in tone language.

Through sound, the composer always directs the force of auditory imagery to make impressions upon the listener.  To create impressions of a direct yet transcendent nature intended to elevate consciousness, however, it is incumbent upon the designer to attend to the progress of the works as one would in ordering a landscape, garden or park.

The effects are meant to be reflective of  nature and the human perspective, and so experienced by the listener internally as well as in the surrounding ambient atmosphere.  

Into the Impossible

Innumerable sounds constantly moving in every direction simultaneously.

These are sounds in the wild, so to speak, and sound designs that are representative of such processes rely on the fabrication of aural images that suggest environments and atmospheres of this nature.

The total effect is one of neither order nor chaos, but of emergence and expansion.

Nothing Left Undone

The concept of effortless action is common to a number of philosophical perspectives.

This is not to say that the strenuous application of force is never necessary or desirable; rather, it is to make clear that volition and action must correspond to the nature of reality.  In the arts, such action determines the grace of composition and performance, elevates the self-assured above the self-conscious, and highlights the contrast between the way of the artist and that of the subjugation of art to any type of agenda.

Such action is a reflection of the lucidity of vision that recognizes and brings into being awareness only suggested by the appearances of things.  These are the workings of the inner ear and the eye of the imagination, given over to creative engagement and completeness of motion.

Potentiality

Speculation on ideas may lead to analysis, consideration, and contemplation of possibilities that are ultimately realized in concrete form.

Such forms of progress involve time and risk.  Theories may exist long before there are means to apply or prove them, and minor errors in reasoning can easily eradicate desired outcomes after prolonged efforts.

Consequently, it is advantageous to think in ways both artistic and scientific, balancing the rational and the imaginative, in order to make visions real.