Waking Moments

Perception, memory, and knowledge inform experience.

Consciousness may be engaged subjectively, and may transcend subjectivity as well.  Thought and perception move between these states of awareness in apprehending reality.

The ear perceives specific sounds in the context of others that evoke ideas or emotions in the listener of which the composer cannot be aware.  Nonetheless, the tone, mood and atmosphere of ambient musical works are designed to enhance the conditions for such contemplative listening experiences.

Choice, Context, Sensibilities

Without reasoned and desirable limits, meaning is obscured, then extinguished by the absurd.

The space between one extreme and the next appears empty; close attention dissipates, drawn only to the excessive.  Depth of feeling is not called upon, and critical discernment declines.  If noise does not dominate experience there is apparent silence.  Yet the mind passively demands to be filled.

Art is not intended to serve as a replacement for moral reason and spiritual emptiness.  Still, art can, and often does, offer perspectives in sharp contrast to those that are culturally stagnant, banal and enervating.  And while such artistic works may be delineated within limits emphasizing subtlety and grace of expression, for example, they are by no means intellectually and existentially confining.

Mind, Symbol, Sound

Reason suggests; imagery portrays.

Depict perceptual experiences of settings and events through sound designs that evoke sensory impressions.

With elements of tone and pattern and color, explore the range of the real, as do the painter and poet.

Multiplicity and Unity

Absorb the sounds of the surroundings.

Taking care to listen, becoming engaged in hearing, and giving attention to the near and distant, the observer gains increasing awareness of the completeness of aural atmospheres.

Seek this completeness in listening; in composing, bring all the elements and variations to this fullness.

Painted Air

The composer sets vibrations in motion, to emerge and evolve as visions.

Sounds, patterns, and tones combine, bringing aural imagery into being in the physical environment and the inner world of the listener. 

Awareness and Obstruction

The ambient music listener often senses increasing acuteness of aural perception.

Prolonged exposure to noise and distraction dulls the senses, and it is easy to lose sight of the fact that such conditions, universal though they may seem, are, in fact, unnatural, even debilitating.

Consider the capacities of ancient peoples for distinguishing the qualities of environmental sounds and recognizing their implications.  Such refinement of perception and reasoning is not lost in the modern world, but certainly clarity of this nature declines, if neglected, in the general noise and rush of everyday events.

My own interests lie in the composition and production of ambient atmospheres that contribute to enhanced penetration of thought while appealing to the listener's depth of feeling and aesthetic sensibilities.  

Variation, Transformation

In the creation of the electronic tone poem and transformation ambient work, the goals are balance and aesthetic beauty; the means to the these ends are continuous processes of experimentation, improvisation and revision.

By these means structure gradually forms.  Thematic elements undergo permutations as they rise, fall, and return, juxtaposed with changing tones, patterns, clusters, and densities of sound.

While reference to the symphonic tone poem is a matter of convenience, it nonetheless reflects the roots of electronic and minimalistic music, in that these forms are evocative of atmospheres, ideas, moods, events, and other non-musical sources of inspiration.

These compositions bring into being the ways I perceive the simple, complex, and, at times, uncanny experience of the sounds of modern life.