Saturation

Listeners experience the perception of musical forms as they experience culture.

Certain impressions are individual and relate to personal experience; others suggest social environments and relationships as well as collective frames of reference.

Between composer and listener is a point of contact, a merging of tone, idea, and feeling.

Myth and Legend

Predictability yields excess as well as ennui.

As genre loses individually, it is re-framed in bombast, as no amount of subtlety can disguise the banal. Evidence of this failure of imagination is everywhere plentiful, and opposition to it, in terms of the art of sound, is the responsibility of both composer and listener.

Promoveo, promovi, promotum.

Increase

Expansion of experience enlarges the capacity for perceptual awareness.

As engagement with the art of sound grows, it becomes possible to move beyond personal bias into wider appreciation of diversity, discernment of fullness of expression in addition to proficiency of technique, and respect for the conceptual and philosophical as well as the affective and energetic.

The opening of the mind's eye and inner ear of imagination heralds the arrival of what is yet to be.

Sound and Reasoning

The art of listening recognizes beauty in a combination of elements, including thought and feeling as well as environmental acoustical processes and properties.

Moving through the public square the listener encounters myriad sonic atmospheres, some static and confined to particular areas, others relatively unfettered, and all perceived within the dynamic of the listener's activities. Within the personal environment, the listener may exercise greater influence over the listening experience, yet various aspects of the quality of sound, as well as movement within the more intimate setting, similarly engage the mind and emotions.

If the composer's aims are finely delineated and artistic sound works, it is absolutely essential to give consideration to the perceptivity, desirable state of mind, and consciousness of the potential listener with the same attention given to that of the fabrication of the creative auditory environment.

Continuance

Within the atmosphere, the listener moves and participates.

Giving attention to sound means fully experiencing its effects, which may evoke emotions, ideas, reflection, and reverie.  The challenge for the composer is to bring about and sustain these effects in ways that enhance, rather than dominate consciousness, providing listeners a mood of equanimity as well as heightened sensory awareness.

Movement, Inward and Outward

Sound events link perception to memory.

Every element of experience contributes to intellectual and emotional response, and every individual completes a unique perspective within the listening experience.

Like the musician, the composer may choose to project and interpret feeling and attitude; even so, it is possible, on the other hand, to encompass, through reason, art, and act, a worldview to engage and contemplate.

Shadings II

Perception ignites idea.

Idea and action converge.

The idea is to capture the atmosphere of an event, real or imaginary, and give it form through sound that represents the content of that aural setting, the diversity of its sonic elements, and the dynamic manner in which it enters the listener's awareness. In terms of action, aesthetic choices applied to design, structure, and manipulation of sound technology and production are brought to bear in the creation of the total effect of the work.