Week 36 9/8/19

Trace time in the historical movement of sound.

Think of sound as separate from the idea of "genres" and it becomes an exploration without boundaries and impositions of perspective.

Week 1 1/7/18

Nikola Tesla observed the essential nature of "energy, frequency, and vibration" in reality.

Additionally, Tesla encouraged inquiry into "non-physical phenomena".  Examine such observations as they relate to "music" etc., but beyond this, in relation to auditory perception generally, and to non-musical constructions and their effects.

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Week 42 10/22/17

There is a difference between daybreak and twilight.

To generate representations of environments requires transformation and conversion.

The composer must, through myriad means, transform perceptual imagery into sound, and convert the impressions of the senses, particularly the visual and tactile, as well as the auditory, into authentic arrangements of imaginative sound. And what composer and listener hear must be complete in evocative experience.

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Week 20 May 21, 2017

Give attention to the setting.

Consciousness expands, engaging reality and sensory awareness.  This is understanding separate and distinct from the social, cultural, and political abstractions that encompass daily pursuits.

This is experience revealed in elevated expression.

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Week 18 5/7/17

Many find "ambient music" desirable as a retreat from the stresses of contemporary life.

This is worthwhile as a beginning of understanding.  Plainly, we are conditioned to certain ideas that produce expectations of life and our place within it. We expect "intensity" and it is expected of us. We expect "extremes" and believe them to be "normal" within the scheme of things.  But this is a kind of programming that is deleterious to elevated states of being and consciousness.

It is necessary to discern what stresses in our experience lead us to clearly appreciate the cultural expressions that directly oppose them.  Gaining a fundamental sense of such things, rather than ignoring them in a specious "quest for authenticity", makes perceptual change permanent, rather than simply possible.

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Illuminate

As the eye is opened, so the ear is filled, expanding awareness.

To drive perceptual acuity down to narrow limits is absurd.  One sees the world, listens, and hears, beyond the contexts of art and music.

This is elevation, of aesthetic insight and individual consciousness.

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Abstract

No single perspective expresses reality.  It cannot be done.

Perceive sounds in spatial environments and give concrete expression to their forms in ways that may be reproduced as aesthetic atmospheres.  This is the artist as composer's point of view and stated goal, informed by personal aesthetic sense, cultural history, science, and the inner ear, rather than by music.

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Contemplative Depth

To hear, to see, perception must be freed of distraction in the guise of the marvelous.

Where specious excitement and frenetic sight and sound imagery cloud the day, the inner ear is stopped and the eye of imagination is blinded to the real.  Discard this clutter, choose awareness.

The nature of elevated consciousness and expression welcomes immersion and clarity of being.

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Simplicity, Expansion

Sounds coalesce.

Sensory experience suggests order, through a spectrum of degrees and myriad perspectives.

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Authenticity

Insight reveals reality beyond appearances, in life and in the visual arts.

That same insight reveals false appearances as well.  So it is for the composer in creating and sustaining atmospheric effects through sound.  Falsified experience sounds forced, frenetic, or artificial in emotional content, tone, and mood, while genuinely immersive atmospheres evoke contemplative settings conducive to the expansion of consciousness.

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Istigkeit II

Clarity of expression entails risk.

Do not confuse "vision" with dissembling.  Listen, and hear.

Fitting Imperfection

To understand the experience of reality is to walk through walls.

The small, apparently insignificant gesture elevates expression, revealing what is beneath notice.

Wind Blowing Past the Grand Palace

It is possible to eliminate many of the abstract and "man-made" elements of music.

The result is sound composed to represent the reality of perceptual environments.

Listening and Knowing

I compose for expression through sound of a universal sense of being.

That is the "statement", and there are no others to diminish the art of experience.

Ghost Stories

Consider the reality of things left unexpressed that are beyond living memory.

The artist as antiquarian may reconstruct impressions to evoke settings, moments, characters, and something of the mood and tone of obscure imagery otherwise utterly lost.  These are perceptions outside the parameters of what is effortlessly known, and their value is immeasurable.

Exercise XIV

Focus the attention on an abstract idea.

Take account of imagery evoked and events, both visual and auditory, suggested by the abstraction and its meanings. Develop these as aesthetically informed compositions within any desirable limits.

Gesture and Resonance

Cultural environments may or may not impose conditions upon perspective.

Artistic perspective is concerned with vision, concept, finished work, total effect. and little else.

Against the Enervating

The artist today is well-advised to seek perspectives outside the cultural mainstream.

This is not to say it is necessary to focus the attention away from tradition or the self-evident good in society and culture, but to risk the observation that these may, in fact, be far removed from the norms in common currency and worthy of interest and perusal.  Very little is as it appears to be.

Music for Polymorphic Listening

Sounds in combinations form constructions, and these, in juxtaposition with other sounds, evolve.

This evolution develops an extended structure, or design, based upon simple tones or other chosen sound events. These may then be increased or decreased in scope by adding or removing elements, and continued to any duration desirable according to the aesthetic judgement of the composer.

The total effect of such compositions varies with the perceptual awareness of the listener, who is not directed to the specific experience of "the movement of sound through time".

Exercise XIII

In any setting, consider the various ways in which limits apply to the conditions.

This is not to determine what is possible or what is not possible, but rather to observe the ways in which unforeseen outcomes might be set in motion within the confines of control and restriction.

Restrain what is predictable, directing action toward intention or purpose if, and only if, the desired effect is clearly realizable.  The result is a decisive gesture, whether concrete or abstract in nature.

This is true of artistic gesture, communicative expression, games, or other activities with set "rules", yet it cannot be otherwise that it involves risk.