Light, Tone, Shade, Shape

Set aside all conceptions and subjective ideas regarding music.

Sound environments may be developed in much the same ways as colors and shapes are advanced upon a canvas.

Illusionary Sounds

The term "music", in a general sense, is indefinite, yet boundless.

For the most part, the casual listener defines music, if at all, in vague, subjective ways, based upon personal preferences and experiences.

More often, musical tastes are simply shared collectively, with little regard given to artistic expression of music beyond lavish production values and sensational presentations.  Essentially, such attitudes toward music are representative of the cultural values of the day-- and they are misleading.

As artistic forms and representations, sound compositions are as expressive and powerful as any others, and they will not be confined, by their very nature, to narrow limits of imagination-- as both composer and discriminating individual listener well know.

For the Present

Conception, application, and expression of ideas yield outcomes.

The artist as composer of sounds hears, listens, contemplates, and creates in a continuum-- and as part of a cyclical process, the outcomes themselves, as products of original processes and individual articulations, again bring forth ideas.

It is one thing to seize upon ideas, yet another to subject them to the rigorous verification, through trial and hazard of failure, that is necessary for their development. But this is the way-- and the risk-- of the artist.

Sonic Memory and Aural Flux

Re-imagine the beauty of events in auditory impressions.

Envision the sounds of numerous such events in combinations and permutations designed to reveal their essential meanings.

This is aesthetic revolt against the constraints of cultural certainty.

Classicism and Contemplation

Listening to sound as an art form composed of aural imagery can intensify the feeling that the listener is simultaneously immersed in the objective world of everyday events while in proximity with another transcendent, detached perspective on reality to which one might aspire.

Cognizance of connectivity between the moment now and deep antiquity-- characteristic of universal "timelessness" of experience-- is fundamentally perceptual in an uncanny or spiritual sense, rather than being intellectual or emotional in nature.  It is more akin to awareness while dreaming than to physical sensory apprehension, and the fluidity inherent in sound lends itself to compositions that accentuate such states of consciousness.

At a Distance, Now

Sounds in memory remain, ghostly resonances.

Pass through countrysides, cities, the villages by the seashore, hallways, tree lined boulevards, plazas and marketplaces, homes and schools and sand hills where the roads end.

The composer's work of a lifetime is to convey these sounds to the listener's mind and spirit.

Framing, Listening

Observe settings indoors and out.

Note the aesthetically pleasing elements of the environments, and the functional ones as well.  Give attention to the ways in which sounds emerge and are carried to the inner ear.  View-- and hear-- the atmospheres in their totality.

Such is the orientation of the creative listener, and, accordingly, the composer's perspective.