Music and the Uncanny

Sounds may be designed to evoke the simultaneously familiar and the unknown.

These atypical arrangements of sounds, with their elements of emergence, clustering, dispersal and re-forming, may challenge reason, and so provoke uncertainty, or a sense of strangeness, even given their simple, everyday nature as tones and musical patterns.

They may, at first, be easily rejected, rather than given intellectual consideration and analysis with the aim of aesthetic appreciation, but the curious listener will follow the threads of the familiar until absorbed by a new-- or different-- perception of music.

Absorption

Impressions of events over time are made upon every element of reality.

This is true of sounds.  This is true of ideas.

Resonance

Communications convey imagery and tone through every medium.

Such communications take both gross and subtle forms, as do the ways in which they are perceived.

Again, in the context of  "music" and its variations as "sound design", the composer imparts meaning by direct self-expression through numerous controlled actions, or by producing works via methods that are more or less detached yet retain a degree of aesthetic involvement.

Both present aspects of artistic vision, given their separate methods, and each is accessible to a wide variety of  listeners.

Aural Flux

In nature there are rhythmic movements and myriad beautiful sounds, yet they are not driven by rhythm and percussion, nor are they enhanced by melody and harmony.

Sound designs may be composed to reflect the perceptual effect of such environments and atmospheres, with their diversity of tones and dynamics. 

Moving Sounds

Consider the sonic journey that begins and ends in conjunction with the perception of time.

A linear awareness of time is manifest in musical forms of all types.

Postulate music or sound designs composed and expressed according to the idea of time as a continuum.

Percipient as Observer

Neither listening nor hearing is effortless.

Much depends upon the creative imagination of the listener.  Some seek nothing more than to fill a sense of emptiness, while others strive to expand awareness.

The artist's duty is not to make shared visions easy, but to make them possible.

Sound Poetics

Staccato bird calls, distant rains, creaking of tall oaks in the summer sun, voices over the hills.

Pursue these sounds, convert them from words into impressions, combine them in kaleidoscopic movements.

Bring forth the perception of atmospheres.