Line, Curve, Motion, Time

Regard like types of imagery in visual, verbal, and auditory modes.

Each appeals to the senses, reflecting color, shape, sound, texture and representations of experience.  In juxtaposition, each suggests the others in complementary nature.

Who desires this understanding will apprehend it in its simplicity; who contemplates it as such will breathe deeply of its complexities.

The future makes its presence felt in the past as well as in the moment.

Minimal, Singular

Refer to Poe.  Every word contributes to desired total effect; those failing to do so must be excised.

Originality is more often a matter of removing, rather than adding content.  With sounds, one also manipulates imagery in the way of words, as connections to the imagination. 

Through ideas, juxtapositions, archetypes, emotions, tones, that is to say, all the systems and structures in the continuum of creative force, visions conveyed become visions inspired.

Shapes in Near Distance

In the moment, or now, if you prefer, and over the course of time, ideas and their expressions retain their force.

Certain perspectives have for centuries retained their visionary nature, while others, apparently revolutionary at first bloom, are ultimately revealed to be base, absurd, pointless, or worse.

Time past and time future, as revealed in the arts, are ever laden with possibilities.

Reason and Emotion

Impressions lend themselves to both sentiment and calculation.

Encountering the total effect of a work, the observer or listener will reference personal sensibilities as well.  This may involve emotional excitement or detatchment, intellectual interpretation, and varying degrees of perceptivity.

The composer-- or poet, musician, painter, sculptor, dancer, performer-- conveys thought and feeling to the medium of expression and brings into being a representation of experience, and by such means innumerable connections are made possible in the transmission of culture.

Sound and Word, Vision and Belief

Art moves inexorably in the direction of philosophy.

As reality is expressed, so it must be lived.

Heightened Awareness

Acutely developed senses detect subtle variations in the external world, including those reflecting nuance of mood.

As music for ceremony and ritual of various forms increases a sense of community, so music designed to enhance contemplative states may heighten perception and elevate consciousness.

Patterns, Movements, Changes

Sounds, perspectives, and perceptions change when moving through diverse environments.

One becomes more highly aware of the auditory landscape, more acutely focused upon subtle alterations in the atmosphere.  Organization and connectivity become apparent.  Sounds are differentiated according to various qualities of pitch, tone, meaning, and repetition. 

Among recurrences of the mundane and expected, the beautiful and the strange emerge with the clarity of lucid dreaming.   Such as these are the elements to capture and combine in composition.

Temporal Synthesis

Historical forces shape present and future perspectives, attitudes, and events.

In terms of recording technology, sound formats no longer limit the length of compositions in any significant way.  Works may be brought into being that expand and evolve over a substantial course of time, making changes in perspective as to the duration of musical pieces and the desirability of extended listening (and immersion in sound environments) inevitable.

Sound and time are aspects of the total effect of an aural composition, both contributing to meaning through experience and perception.  Black Mountain School compositions and recordings are designed to enhance atmospheres and produce conditions conducive to contemplative, aesthetically pleasing states of mind while being interesting in themselves in the way of ambient tone poems. 

The extended length of these works is a fundamental part of their nature, and of the listener's experience as well.

Music of the Twenty-First Century

Various forms of expression generate debate and sometimes confusion, not because of what they are, but because of the ways in which they are perceived.

The less one knows by way of reliable information or direct experience, the more narrow and limited one's perspective remains.  Definitions are inflexible.  Expression must be created to conform to specific tastes and genres.  All else is vague, alien, at best only tenuously real.

Equally untenable is the undiscriminating point of view.  An aesthetic sense, a sense of judgement and an appreciation of subtlety are characteristics of reason, self-knowledge, and regard for the arts and sciences as well.

The nature of reality is change, and the modern composer brings ideas and imagination to that reality.

Origins

Ideas retain vitality as individuals breathe life into them.

The effortless and shallow are always robust, while the deep and difficult are easily ignored, easily cast aside, and remain ever daunting.  Yet even as they lie still, distant, and dark, those laden with challenge are the beginnings of visions, and of things yet to be seen and heard.

Constructs

The received wisdom is that popular music is successful by virtue of public acceptance and approval, while "serious music" is appreciated by the highly (or moderately) cultivated intellectual as "art".

Like many conventional assumptions given to be fact, these represent vague notions and broad generalities that overlook the individuality of both listeners and artists.  Neither popularity nor academic credibility will overcome the judgements of history.

The artist is ever left to act upon possibilities-- nothing more, but nothing less.

Patterns, Densities, Clusters and Textures

Postulate music that emerges in combinations of sound as they take place in the natural and human environment.  Sounds of activity, of living creatures, voices, the elements and machines.

Mere noise is not the object, but aesthetic combinations of such sounds as are made by human volition and insight.  Executed in the manner of auditory events as they take place naturally, these combinations are outside the frame of reference associated with standard concepts of musical arrangements. 

An atmosphere is thus created that reflects the apprehension of sound phenomena encountered in the physical world while sketching territories of the imagination.

Converging Flux

It is music of a different shape, shade, and substance.

What is heard depends upon who is listening.

Contemplation

Immersed in sound environments one may experience states both introspective and contemplative, uniting thought, feeling, and perceptivity.

This is not the same as "listening to music" for relaxation, excitement, entertainment or diversion; neither is it a focus solely for meditation, or merely "aural wallpaper", an element of decor, though it may rightly have aspects of any of these at any given time.

Yet it is an aesthetic, or one might say an artistic experience, to be enjoyed in distinctive ways according to the tastes and sensibilities of listeners in a variety of situations.

It is always the sound of a journey through imagination.

Surroundings

Impossible to enumerate all the elements of a single glance, all the sounds scattered about through an hour's wandering.  Attempts to represent these impressions can only be speculative, and imaginative.

One may as easily ask, "Do I make art and music?  Or do they make me?"

Aural Gestures

Form comes into being through the formless.

The composer is human presence, the medium through which transformation takes place.  The composer facilitates and observes; conceives, but does not falsify, which is to say, does not assume outcome to be of greater moment than process, does not guide, does not interfere. 

Technology and technique, method and sensibility, tone and meaning move together in unison, in one motion, one way of change over time.

Direct Perception

While creativity is joy in prolonged effort, it may bring effortless pleasure in the finished work.

Composition and technique, strategy and craftsmanship demand time and labor; there is no escaping the necessities of discipline, patience, and clarity of intent.  But with this understanding, art will reveal itself, and be brought into being.

MP3:

The Celestial Way (Excerpt) 9:36

© Crucibulum Publishing (ASCAP). All Rights Reserved.

Beyond Boundaries

Aesthetic action defines art; culture and institutions absorb and expand its impact, yet ofttimes reduce its clarity and potency.

For the artist or composer, the exigencies of vision and creation call upon some resources found within the scope of social and academic order, but others-- elevation of reason, self-discipline, curiosity, erudition and experience, as examples-- must be sought within, and outside common ground.

Style may be imitated, and beautifully so-- but art cannot be.

Sound, Passion, Perception

Subjective emotion is of paramount importance in most musical pieces, from simple pop songs to elaborate symphonic works.  Listeners are to some extent conditioned to expect deeply personal, highly emotional expression in music across all genres.  But there are distinct differences between artistic works focused upon the vicissitudes of emotion and those manifesting clarity, perceptivity and constancy of vision.

As singular auditory impressions, or infinite combinations thereof, may evoke various sensory images and perceptions rather than subjective emotions in a listener, so may a composer create in accord with principles of emotional reserve and restraint to bring about these impressions. 

Simultaneously sensual and detached, such works offer aesthetically pleasing musical diversions for listeners of balanced and temperate sensibilities, and for those who enjoy a respite from music filled with overwrought passion and mundane melodrama as well.

Drawn From Life

A landscape, a walk through a town or drive through the mountains, an hour spent in an outdoor cafe, or groups of photographs like those presented here, with the memories they evoke and the sounds they recall or suggest, become the composer's art. 

Perceptions associated with such experiences as these are the source materials for the sketches and transformational ambient music of Black Mountain School, reflecting these electronic works' similarities with tone poems and other programmatic music forms that represent non-musical ideas, incidents, environments, and so forth. 

This is in keeping with the stylistic elements of the sound designs as well, as they are focused substantially on aspects of pattern and texture as opposed to rhythm, percussion, and melody.

Together, the ideas behind these works and the ways and means of producing them lend themselves to a total effect intended to stimulate and liberate the thoughts and perceptions of the listener, rather than to merely convey the emotions of the composer.

Asymmetrical Rebellion in Music

Ordinary experience overlooks much that is marvelous, the perceptions obscured by habit and the expectations clouded by commonplace hyperbole.

It is and was ever thus that the clamorous and hysterical extinguish the understated and refined, but only insofar as one surrenders to the former and fails to give consideration to the latter. 

It is not enough to simply take a position in opposition to the musically trivial and mundane.  The composer must listen, envision, bring forth and make possible a dynamic presence in sound that moves transcendentally beyond the probable and expected, and makes perceptible the uncanny.

Intricate Simplicity

Artistic expression represents impressions of the imagination.

Direct and contemplative experience may be seen, in artistic terms, as the observation of perceptions-- subtleties of  shade and color, for example, or the patterns of particular sounds, with their qualities of tone and texture-- for their aesthetic interest. 

Such observations are by nature subjective, as reflected in the artist's works, yet the extent of that subjectivity will often depend upon what is most important to the creator, and whether it be art or ego.

Phantom Cities

There is an understandable tendency to ascribe ethereal, otherworldly atmospheric sounds and strangely serene conditions to exotic climes and distant pastoral or desert landscapes.

This predisposition, perhaps, makes the sudden silences that seem to descend within the urban environments, and the sensory adjustment as hearing acclimates to the aural subtleties of these surroundings, all the more eerie and striking.

In the role of composer I listen to all settings and regard them in rational, emotional, and imaginative ways.  I seek a direct and contemplative perception of reality, whether at home, at work, or traveling, and, when composing and recording, refine to the fullest extent possible methods and means to express experience as it presents itself to me.

Extramundane Intimations

Constructs of imagination may be brought into being through sound imagery.

Consider an approach to worlds outside waking or physical experience by way of music.  Give regard to the dreaming senses, disembodied, observing appearances of things unreal to material existence, and, all the while, listening.

Atmospheric Forms

Sound environments encountered most often characteristically merge natural and human elements.

Artistic creations reflecting the qualities of these environments share fundamental aspects in common with numerous and diverse means and methods of expression.

Fabrics are woven, dyed, cut, shaped and sewn together; colors are combined on the palette to form new shades and tints. Words are chosen for subtlety of meaning in organizing communications, prose, and poetry.  Movement with gesture conveys emotion and intensity in dance, while motion with focus and applied force embodies the discipline of the martial arts.  Musical stylings are combined in creative ways to bring the most appealing rhythms, melodies, and harmonies to life in the various music genres.

Atmospheric sound designs reflect selective combinations of aural tones and textures in compositions that lend a sense of beauty and interest to the human environment and make possible a contemplative mood within the listener.

Design, Ambiguity and Awareness

Music in memory is auditory imagery, a form or pattern of thought.

Consider being unable to access recorded music for an extended period of time-- or actually choosing not to do so-- and the possibility of a resulting change in perception of sound, auditory memory, and consciousness itself. 

Numerous implications come to mind in regard to such a situation, with respect to clarity of thought, accuracy of memory, capacity to listen with various degrees of attention, and changes in point of view or other conditions of the psyche.

Postulate, then, music composed to reflect the perceptions of sounds as they are encountered in journeys through myriad surroundings.  Such music is not meant to represent the environmental sounds themselves, but to allude to the ways in which they are apprehended as they occur naturally, through both active listening and passive, or less intense, hearing.

Transformation ambient music designed in this manner neither dominates consciousness nor leaves the listener to later experience the sensory illusion of involuntary audio imagery.  Rather, it enhances atmospheres, stimulates perception and the imagination, and elevates the listening experience itself.

Essence and Artifice

The real and substantial change and gain force over time, while false clamors forfeit their sting. 

Everywhere the same artistic elements, fashions, and habits are preserved without growth and development, that is, without any attempt at originality or critical and constructive interpretation, the forms they represent lose force and influence, whether through repetition or reversal. 

It is when the arts, grounded in potent tradition, expand beyond their boundaries and move in unforeseen directions that the future arrives in mere moments.

Distances

Time and place, viewed from historical perspective, yield artifacts that illuminate culture, and among these are arts, ideas, and sounds.

Common objects become brightened or burdened by meaning.  Some knowledge, clear and detailed, contrasts in other cases with a void of information about which there can only be speculation. 

Yet the arts speak, written words resonate, sounds make their presence fully known.  In contemplating these, their pneuma, that is to say, their breath or spirit, is revealed.

Within the spirit of such sounds and visions lie any number of possible futures, and all their implications for the living.

Environment and the Inner Life

Observe surroundings, circumstances, and settings; consider these external conditions of the psyche, environments of existential moment to range of perception, emotion, the intellect and consciousness.

Mind, meaning, awareness and knowledge evolve in subtle ways within parameters of perceived reality and perpetual change.  The composer contemplates these processes and the sounds that thereby suggest themselves, selectively combining them in textures and patterns complementary to the inner and outer worlds of experience.

Through atmospheric music of this nature, sensibility and sound converge with time and place.

Music for Dream States

In periods of altered consciousness prior to sleeping and waking, sensory perceptions offer up curious sights and sounds that sometimes resonate in memory and imagination.

The closest analogy I am able to make to these auditory sensations is one of hearing a piece of music at some distance and being unable to recognize it.  After failing to identify the work for a noticable length of time and listening intently and analytically, it suddenly-- instantaneously--becomes absurdly familiar, as fixed in the mind as the alphabet or the primary colors.

Before that recognition, detached from previous experience, emotion, and intuitive grasp, the sound might be described as otherworldly, strange, and fraught with mysterious beauty and potency.  It exists outside the common ground of rhythm and melody; it has no reality outside itself, and unfolds as if bathed in mystic effulgence until it is struck down by the shock of mundane awarenss.

Transformation ambient music-- its appellation indicating direct input of the composer-- is designed and produced in long forms and shorter sketches with the intent of capturing and sustaining that dreamy, detatched and transcendent presence of the imaginary.

Motion, Action, Conception

In combination and interpenetration of aural, verbal, and visual images, worlds are discovered.

Impulse, intuition, impression, idea, emotion, sensation, expression, representation, existence.

Through the workings of imagination, poets, painters, and composers who reveal these worlds differ only in the materials they choose to express their visions.

Art and Essence

Listen, and a multiplicity of subtle relations emerges. 

These aural images combine in ways that are not typically recognized as musical.  Cultural prejudices and predispositions are obstacles to such a realization.

Remove them.

Atmosphere, Sound, and Signature

Inescapably, art reflects the psyche of the artist and the times in which it is made.

The sounds of this day can be any number of things in any set or series of combinations, and the previous century's ideas regarding order and chaos must be viewed in terms of a striking increase in information technology, creative applications, and concomitant changes in ideas regarding both excellence and absurdity.  Nevertheless, it is a combination of personal vision and cultural forces at play in the realization of a work of artistic merit.

In an age of intellectual wealth, it is possible to associate and unite a wide range of diverse elements and develop unique approaches to issues of method and style in creative endeavors.  These are the possibilities that give the future immediacy and presence.

Illuminated Sensations

Consider the myriad impressions and connotations of tone in any form-- tone of voice, of literature, of a painting or in sounds-- and it is clear that these evoke ideas as well as emotions. 

Color and imagery, the picturesque and elevated, the musical and mystical and intimate, shaped through sensitivity to sounds and dynamic intensities, warm and cold, sharp and misty, deep, forbidding, cheerful, soft pastel and fiery bright, all in admixtures of the numinous and earthy, convey mood and suggest connections of thought in every imaginable nuance of expresssion.

Sound Poems

The concept of sound as art has few limits, yet it is so broad as to be essentially indefinable.

In musical terms, there are numerous variations between styles and genres and starkly evident differences between music and noise.   Fundamentally, however, most listeners will easily identify elements of rhythm and percussion, melody, harmony, lead instrument lines and repeated phrases as musical.

Compositions emphasizing various degrees of formlessness, unpredictable patterns, instrumental colors and shadings, diversity of textures, and collage effects in place of the aforementioned elements are also possessed of beauty and charm to listeners, particularly in ambient modes, while they do not conform to traditional ideas associated with the experience of music.

In literature, the characteristic distinctions between prose and poetry are clear; with music, perhaps a similar differentiation will be made, in time, to contrast traditional musical forms with those designed to be appreciated and enjoyed according to other paradigms.

MInd, the Senses, and Antiquity

The deeper the historical perspective, the fuller the understanding of originality.

Observe, and it becomes possible to hear; listen, and it becomes impossible not to see.

Pythian Impulse

A vision emerges in the imagination.  Perhaps it is directly inspired by perception and experience, or vaguely, out of a dreamlike scattering of sounds and other images in the unconscious mind.

At the center of this oracle is meaning.  It communicates and is conveyed through analogy, contrast, comparison, and inference; it is made manifest and realized through instinct and intellect, idea, emotion, and will.

To grasp the intangible, however briefly, is to see and hear and feel the motion of the soul.

Fire and Force

Give free play to the imagination and enlarge the range of consciousness.

To seize an artist's meaning may pose difficulties; to contemplate an expression as it exists is to come near to its power, and from this vantage point sense its virtue.

Sound and Shape

An image forms in the mind.  It may be visual or auditory.

Find the tools, develop the methods, utilize the medium, bring forth the message, the perception, the impression. 

Elements of direct experience pass through the prism of imagination, emotion, intellect and the senses.

This is transformation, bearing the mark of the artist's hand and sensibility, by which the common and ordinary become profound and uncanny.

Nature, Meaning, Revelation

A work of art reveals a perception, an experience, communicated in concrete terms.

Among essential qualities of energy, character, and significance, a work of art in sound is expressive of meaning; it may fail to conform to conventional expectations in terms of generic musical forms, but its tones, patterns, and combinations thereof have peculiar emotional and perceptual value of their own.

Thus it is that, beyond enjoying the simple pleasure to be taken in an atmosphere brightened by ambient music, the listener's interest may be drawn to a sound design's archetypal and symbolic expressiveness in ways that further enhance the listening experience.

Imaginative Power

Not fact, but sense of fact; not the knowledge contained in the reproduction of a perception itself, but that of the singular impression it presents the artist. In this way certain qualities of music, or the presentation of sounds in aesthetic context, shadow elements of other arts rather than imitate prevalent musical forms.

Consider the invitation to listen to the composer's perceptions, to think and feel, if possible, in the imaginative spirit of the artist. This need not be an imposition on a mind attuned to popular culture, and asks only that the listener be in a receptive frame of mind or mood to listen without the need to "catch" the tune or respond to a beat or rhythm.

Presently, if the listener is so inclined, it may be possible to detect a "poetic" quality to the design in sound, a feeling or impression of a different, but not unfamiliar, sense of reference. Something along the lines of a walk in a park or open field may come to mind, as opposed to following an arrangement of a song or standard instumental work. 

Within this emerging atmosphere there are patterns, colors, tints of sound, textures and spaces, shapes and lines and distances, along with an awareness of movement; all of these elements are most often associated with the visual arts. Temporal movement itself may be perceived as more easily borne than is usual with the general passage of time, as is often the case with aesthetically pleasing experience.

Combinations of sounds in this manner are transformational by design and intent; bearing the impress of the artist, they sketch the panoramas of imagination.

Vision, Manipulation, Effect, and Regard

Neither camera nor audio recorder is a perceiver.

The scientifically-inclined understand perception as a function of sensory organs and brain; another perspective, that of the philosophical thinker, will just as likely consider this function as one of awareness and mind.  All animals perceive through the senses, of course, but they do not make the conscious fine distinctions mentioned.

The making of such contrasts is a human trait, as is the function of reason.  This is an evaluative function, and through reason, attendant emotion, cultural circumstances and available materials artistic expression is realized.

Conception, Elaboration

Fundamentally, creation is both intuitive and analytical, being at times spontaneous and inspired while at other times developed with care, patience and exceptional effort. 

The difference between the two is in the process, not the nature, of the creative act.  In the interval between concept and expression, work takes diverse forms according to an artist's methods.  Trial and error, chance, and unforeseen events or accidents have their place in production scenarios as well, whether the artist is of a meticulous and logical disposition or is one who relies more on instinctive and unconscious faculties.

The individual artist's temperament and perspective bring unique effects to his or her creations, as do imagination and vision.  The value of work ethic impacts every aspect of the effort as well, and should never be underestimated, as it is essential to art in every form.

Elemental Expression

Mist rises and flows over and through the surroundings.

This is freedom of form, fineness of response, delicacy of movement, a force that effortlessly overwhelms.

Brittany, August 1978.  For an evening hour of strange beauty, the sound of a Breton bagpipe, the binioù kozh, drifting among the gardens of Carnac, embraced in just such an atmosphere. 

To apprehend and convey the indefinable is to dare perception with purpose.

Singular Force

That which is driven by ideas exists by virtue of principles, and by its own merits.

Independent thinkers, that is to say, people of individual imagination and autonomous will, are so constituted as to resist being subsumed into the easy comfort of cultural conformity; it is tedious and predictable to one of such a disposition. 

This is the artist for whom commercial success is an indifferent thing, for whom the myriad objects of status are of no consequence.  What matters is intensity of being and fullness of expression, depth of thought, strength of vision and the quest for possibilities and their realization.

Conceptual Improvisations

Impression, aesthetic synthesis, imaginative vision, expression in form. 

Stimulus, brought to a fund of knowledge and experience, is resolved as a vision to be brought into being through sound, dance, painting, drama, poetry, or any media.

Drama in sound, music in architecture, dance in sculpture, poetry in film, any and every combination and connection of idea and intuition, perspective and process, brings to light the creative and critical act of the imagination. 

Impression and Process

Art captures form and color, shape and line, and implies movement. In a painting, for example, or a photograph, these elements convey such things as feelings, ideas and thematic content. 

Sounds present similar impressions while undergoing diverse processes as they move through time. These temporal developments exert forces on the psyche, and they impact mood, sensory awareness, and state of mind, in varying degrees of intensity.

Splashes of color, scatterings of tones over the course of an hour or evening, or clever juxtapositions of elements are, in themselves, mere atmospheric ornamentation.  The art which illuminates them is revealed in the total aesthetic effect of the finished work on one who experiences it.

Nebulous Clarity

A dreamlike uncertainty of sound.

 
Neither confusing nor chaotic, such are the sounds that fill spaces approached and entered but not yet fully grasped. 

Step through gates or doors and find a world in motion.  As yet unacclimated to the atmosphere, listening to color, brightness, the echos of deep shadows, voices of glass and silver, the ear and the mind devise order, seize mood and symbol, appraise circumstances as agreeable; the journey is illuminated, surrounded by song in universal language.

Travel anywhere the imagination wanders, as lightly as rain.

Correspondences, Aural and Visual

For some, perhaps most, imagination will furnish sound imagery in association with visual stimuli, as it does with words.

And the converse is true also.  Auditory imagery will stimulate perceptual impressions in context with the surrounding environment and in the mind as well.

While musical performance and presentation combine sound and imagery to striking results for an audience, it should not be forgotten that sound alone connects intimately with the listener, whether in a personal or social setting.  Composers who respect listeners' taste, intelligence, and emotional discernment may communicate through sound in ways that are understated in approach, to equally far-reaching effects.

Imaginative listening is the foundation of unique and imaginative sound works, whether these are of a fundamentally generic musical nature or they owe their origins to more asymmetrical perspectives.

Aural Imagery, Sonic Symbols

Art in sound moves with affinity for perception and thought, as well as emotion.

An atmospheric synthesis of sound elements forms a language that depicts, through suggestive combinations and connections of tone and pattern and vibration, sensory effects and imaginative visions.  Places, people, and events may pass before the mind's eye in sympathy with thoughts and impressions arising out of the listening experience as a result. 

Emotion or feeling is by no means eliminated-- this is neither possible nor desirable-- but it is not the sole focus of the sketch or transformation ambient piece.  Enhancement of environments conducive to a contemplative state of mind is foremost, not the creation of vicarious emotional states.

These, then, are elemental sensations, originating in aesthetic expression through sound, and illuminating, perhaps altering in a subtle manner, the consciousness of the listener.