Saturday, January 18, 2014

Sonic Sensibilities

The sounds of cultural life reveal both the inner and outer worlds.


Society and the individual create and move according to rhythms and patterns, some common and predictable, others obscure. The wise observer and participant understands the qualities of stillness and equanimity as also essential, being moderating and balancing forces.

These are conditions the composer and listener may directly influence in the course of events, both being percipients.

Friday, January 17, 2014

Other Dimensions

Aesthetic sound art is as accessible as listening, and hearing.


The composer may experiment, theorize, and speculate, exploring the range of possible aural forms while developing individual perspectives and methods over the course of decades.  Regardless, if the purpose and effect is that of the creation of the good and the beautiful, there can simply be no greater meaning than the integrity of work itself.

Each listening experience is its own.

Thursday, January 16, 2014

Environmental Processes and Patterns

All atmospheres yield unique elements.


Rambling farmhouse surrounded by fields of broomstraw, ship's flight deck, midnight forest and urban marketplace all host sonic events that may soothe, shock, amuse, puzzle, or generate any number of responses in the listener's consciousness.

Separate, combine, juxtapose, evolve: these strategies and tactics create auditory imagery in the crucible of the inner ear, to be brought into being through the instrument of the studio using both primitive and highly technological sound production sources.

Wednesday, January 15, 2014

Expression into Experiences

Art begins with a percipient, then evolves through myriad processes to engages others' awareness.


For the composer, the art of sound offers the peculiar qualities of precisely conveying sound imagery while, paradoxically, providing the listener with an aural field of experiences open to a broad range of associations, ideas, and emotions, with which the composer cannot possibly be aware.

As listener, the composer enters the same field of sounds and becomes equally engaged, at times in unexpected and revealing ways.

Tuesday, January 14, 2014

Expansion

There is always the impulse to narrow perception of objects and events to superficial, subjective definitions.


Recognize, be receptive, or reject outright. But this is not aesthetic discrimination, the discernment of expression and meaning. For the listener, and composer as well, it is a matter of thought as well as experience. Mere openness or close-mindedness is not enough to contend with the complexities of reality and appearances, and is self-defeating.

To extend one's reach toward immersion in the good and the beautiful is to elevate awareness of the unity of being.

Monday, January 13, 2014

Mind and World at Large

Aesthetic pleasure is a function of intellect, feeling, and outwardly-directed perception.


Likewise, experience, heart, and mind inform introspection and reflection. The composer would do well whose works offer enhancements to both the inner and outer worlds of understanding.

There is no debate that these are faculties of a higher order than those of impulse and egocentric motivation, yet fullness of participation in human events is often reduced to superficiality and gross simplicity, and just as often this is the outcome of personal choice.

It is not the purpose of art to make wider, deeper experience effortless, but to make it possible.

Sunday, January 12, 2014

Comparative Sound Structures

Music per se is brought into being in varied contexts of relationship to forms and formulas.


Rather than work in terms of standard methodologies and genre stylings, I develop and arrange aural compositions proportioned to those sounds occurring over the course of events in diverse natural and cultural environments.  Within these limitations atmospheres arise as reflections of real-world auditory phenomena.