Spaces and Sources

Self-expression is many times of secondary importance in the arts.

Fundamentally, it is the communication of reality that, for some, demands representation. There is no room for the personal, or the spirit of the times, or critical debate.

The ideas and emotional perspective of the artist must be subsumed into the totality of the work.

Spectrum of Echoes

Events leave impressions.

These images of imagination, experiences, and sounds form the composer's palette.

Total Effect

Experience time present in the sounds of the surroundings.

While the sounds of such atmospheric events are not typically considered musical, they may be given form in artistic and aesthetically pleasing ways that anyone may enjoy.

The goals of these compositions are to enhance contemplative thought, lucid mental images, concentration, and composed reflections upon feelings.

Axis, Whorl, Atmosphere

The listener is at the center.

The spectacle is staged:  lights and visuals of every kind intensify the sound performance.  Like video, it exists for the eyes, not the ears, yet it completes the circuit of attention, as do sound designs for films that augment action and emotional scenarios with fitting music and effects.

Outside the spectacle, the listener is free to do other things and to move about, engaging in both passive hearing as well as active listening: auditory perceptions are altered accordingly by these movements.  Musical ambience may be composed and recorded for such contexts, to be enjoyed and engaged in such a manner.

Fullness of experience is far greater than anything mere spectacle can provide.

Close, Distant, Indeterminate

Musical variety exists within a frame of reference generally defined by cultural and personal taste.

Move past those boundaries and beyond their time and place altogether.  Listen for the beautiful, determine what makes it so, and create ways to bring it into being.

Engagement, Structured and Non-linear

Consider the shapes and intensities of sound waves along with the position of the percipient within the sonic field.

The perceptions of the stationary listener differ from those of the mobile one, for whom the totality of the listening experience undergoes change with movement.

The majority of musical performances and recordings are designed in terms of arrangements of direct, focused listening, including the free-flowing area of the dance floor.

Consider, conversely, recordings designed for the mobile listener, and sound performances structured for the mobility of both listeners and sound sources.

Sounds, Presences

Day to day reality presents the listener and observer with a practically infinite number of sound events, yet most of them go unnoticed.

These are raw materials, from which beauty and meaning can be seized and expressed through stylized, artistic forms, reflecting the ways they occur and are perceived in natural and cultural environments.