Musicality

In cultural terms, music encompasses various preferred sounds and styles of social groups, but no definition of music is all-embracing.

Thus the term "ambimusica", suggesting ambiguity as well as ambience.

I am interested in sound compositions that evoke aesthetic beauty in ways that, more often than not, tend to defy categorization as music, and that are intended to bring into being effects in opposition to those the standard elements of music-- rhythm, melody, etc.-- produce in the listener.

These pieces create atmospheric surroundings, offer immersion rather than distraction, and create conditions for clarity of thought as opposed to dominating the attention.

Perhaps this may be called music, but the full experience in repeated listening may be somewhat different than expected.

Essence

Reality and life unfold through processes of change.

In the course of everyday experience, one may observe causes and effects, predictable patterns, and linear forms.  Yet it is also clear that events and cycles of a larger, more profoundly powerful and less comprehensible order are in continuous flux.

As a composer I seek ways to express those latter, mysterious forces, with their uncanny beauty and grace.

Idyllic Atmospheres

These compositions are designed first for their aesthetic beauty, and thus, listening pleasure.

Additionally these works are conceived, fabricated, organized and produced in ways that are intended to alter attitudes towards generic music, evoke different perceptions of listening and hearing, heighten the listener's acuity of aural perceptivity, and create conditions for lucidity of thought while enhancing the physical environments in which they are played.

Sound and Thought Forms

Clarity of mind in agreement with a tranquil environment promotes reason, intuitive thinking, and perceptive states of being.

In composing to create ambient atmospheres, the desired effect is to set aural conditions for ideas, feelings and sounds to coalesce into contemplative experience.

Prescience, Magical Thinking, and The Uncanny

Prescience can be considered to be a form of predictive analysis, or a kind of forward thinking or insight into the future, just as it is generally viewed as prophetic intuition of a supernatural origin.

On the other hand magical thinking presupposes interference with cause and effect, being associated with concepts of sympathetic magic and superstition, and is clearly opposed to rational explanation.

Finally, the uncanny, as applied to what Freud called "the aesthetic qualities of feeling", describes an effect which is simultaneously intimately familiar and excessively strange.

The full title of the new 74 minute ambient track is intended to reflect the mingling of each of these qualities of human perception, illusion, and artistic perspective.

Black Mountain School: Prescience

Prescience will be released on CD August 12th.  This is the "Producer's Edition" studio audio format.  It is available for pre-order at Amazon.com as listed at the link below.

The MP3 version is tentatively scheduled within the next ten days and will retail as a single 74 minute track for 99 cents.

Aural Apprehension

Hearing is continuous; listening implies intensified focus.

As both phenomena reflect natural perception of sounds, the listener and composer who approach atmospheric compositions and artistic sound designs accordingly will engage a broad spectrum of auditory impressions outside the range of genre music.