Impression, Media, Mind

Completeness of an artistic work is not finality, but part of an expanding continuum.

A work such as a sound design or tone poem, for example, may be heard as an articulation of a single aspect of a composer's broader vision, representing a unity of impression conveyed to the listener who engages the experience in a personal way.  It is the same with poetry, painting, film, dance, and all expressions of this nature.

Over time, and in the context of numerous works, the way of the imagination manifests itself in the manner of dreams, scattering shadows and light as it stirs, changes, and moves again.

Rise, Recede

The experience of sound, as a form of perceptual awareness, varies with the listener. 

It is more than a matter of taste or learned behaviors. Like poetry, it is often considered to be entirely emotional in effect. This is erroneous in both cases; subjective emotions are not the sole measures of aesthetic appeal any more than the sense of moral reason can be the entire basis of judgement in regard to artistic merit, whether in terms of musical composition or poetic expression.

Generic musical forms dominate the attention of the listener.  But the natural capacity of listening--and hearing-- is intrinsic to human awareness, and is capable and worthy of much more than that.

Paradox

Contemplation and insight may inspire the arts as much as external experience.

Give attention to those things considered to be exciting, and they are predictable, inconsequential.

Consider the commonplace, and it is filled with mystery.

Grasp, It Cannot Be Held

The past breathes deeply of the future.

Regardless, the observer considers the limits of conformity that are everywhere apparent, manifestations of emotion over reason and nostalgia for appearances that never existed. 

Look and listen beyond the horizon, perceive and think forward, and thereby create tomorrows.

Concept, Material

Sounds converge, are perceived by the listener, evoke moods, and enhance environments.

In the creation of these sounds and combinations, the composer must listen with fullness of mind and being, forming auditory imagery out of experience, perception, idea and emotion while coming to terms with process and potential.

From steam to ice, steel to gossamer, luminous to obscure, aspects of sound are awakened in elements of creative vision.

Silence and Foresight

Consider the aims and efforts of musicians and composers in the nineteenth, seventeenth, or thirteenth century; think beyond those times to the sounds of joy and lament at the dim edges of prehistory, before Homer and Herodotus seized upon their culture's vision, poetry, and memory.

Hear those sounds in the inner ear of imagination.

The sharpening of a bronze blade.  The voices of children chanting nonsense at a well or stream.  Hymn and harpsichord, lute and drumbeat; the bullroarer, reed flute, gong, and wind chime, violin, trumpet, and bell.

Such sounds, and the thoughts and actions of those who brought them to life, are at the heart of the sound of this day and this moment, now in the twenty-first century and into the far distance beyond.

Chronological Development, Total Effect

Unity and completeness are expressed through interdependence of elements.

The central effects of ambient musical works may be experienced as objective asethetic qualities made present in environments, and subjectively, as works designed especially for a combination of active listening and passive hearing conducive to thoughtful and reflective activities.  Each series and sequence of tones and patterns, each cluster of notes, every sound texture, dynamic subtlety, and shade of instrumental color contributes to the mood and tone of the composition.

Additionally, in terms of historical forces, the meanings and implications of any specific piece by an artist are found with reference to the works that come before and after it, and included in this process of understanding are the creations of other relevant artists, regardless of the media in which they express themselves.

Legacies

Impressionists and composers of tone poems merge sensory perceptions and atmospheric environments; cubists and jazz artists connect with perspectives on time and space.

After the wars, renewal, upheaval, and change.  Rethinking the popular arts, and the degrees to which they disconnect from the fine, or serious, arts.  Ideological conflicts.  Shifts in conscience, sensibility, and consciousness.  Expansion of media and technology.  The modern and the passing of the postmodern, with the questions asked from time immemorial remaining.

Scattered throughout, simplicity, virtue, clarity of reason, intellectual integrity, imagination, visions of individual freedom and artistic originality, combining with like historical forces to drive their realities into the moment. 

Labyrinth

Examine patterns of movement over hours and days, lifetimes and centuries.

Within those patterns are sounds in infinite forms, combined and dispersed, perceived according to physical motion as well as change over time and distance.  Consider the idea of musical works that are based upon observations such as these, rather than upon rhythm, melody, repetition, and other elements to which the listener is accustomed.

Initially, the listener may find the music to be apparently formless, yet as the sounds continue they may be established as having both orderly development and aesthetic beauty.  Myriad variations in textures and tones, densities and dynamics, clusters and patterns of notes, and combinations of instrumental color connect in ways that are uncommon in popular musical forms, but omnipresent in the human and natural environments.

How fitting that the internal structure of the ear is called the labyrinth.

Range

Where the burden of limits does not apply, the extent of perception is unknown.  Such places are those of the imagination, and of dreams.

To listen inwardly and outwardly, to hear the connectivity of sense and reason, to formulate and execute concrete vibrations in terms of abstract images conceived in the mind, expresses meaning in a language of tone, conveyed through the art of sound.

Tone and Hue

Give color to atmospheres, emotions, and states of mind.

Concepts designed to convey such impressions may vary from the complex and highly stylized to the minimalistic and unadorned. The classical Indian raga brightens and shades the mood of hours and seasons according to principles combining improvisation and form, while Gregorian chant resonates with dense tones and textures centered on vocal phrases and melodies.  Each represents a unique perspective.

Ambient music is designed to tint and illuminate atmospheres as well, in ways as individual in nature as its composers.

Simplicity, Variation, Complexity

Minor combinations of elements transform the whole of a sound design in significant ways.

Every alteration, in tone, texture, or dynamics, for example, has the effect of creating currents of sound and movement that expand throughout the work, like ripples in still water. 

Consequently, while the composer facilitates, balances, enhances, and experiments, there must be no interference, or as little intervention as possible, in the process of the design's movement toward completeness.

Impermanence

Acclimate to sounds not meant to be grasped, to music not subject to being internalized?

All things are different today than they were yesterday, and they will be different tomorrow.  As all things return to their source and find different forms, ultimately to grow and change, decline and rise once more, so the sounds of life come and go in all ways, and perspectives change.

Painting became nonrepresentational, film and literature, nonlinear, before once again flowing, as do all the arts, in diverse directions. Music changes, as does culture, with listeners, and listening as well.

Transference

Aware of culture and history, the observer senses source and origin in music beyond style and genre.

The contemporary traces an arc to the ancient; the imaginative, to the nature of perception and idea.

Beyond ordinary limits, the listener perceives directly, clearly discerning the authentic, the true, and the meaningful.

Merging

What may be sensed, seen and heard, felt emotionally or physically, whether incisively clear or through a glass, darkly, may be imagined, expanded, brought into being and contemplated in terms of meaning.

Transforming and manipulating sound, tone, and dynamic movement suggests impressions that may recall experience-- shoreline in Maine, street in Boston, summer evening in Palatka or Santa Monica--and evoke prescient anticipation of awareness yet to approach consciousness, illuminating, in the moment, possibilities of the future.

Structure and Essence

Vibrations along a spider's web might be measured, quantified, and reproduced.

Or, such phenomena, among others in boundless variety, might be imagined, and given form in musical compositions.   

Retention of Image

Listen within memory.

Seized in the moment, sensory impressions remain over time and distance.

Summon the total effect through idea, emotion, state of mind, and artistic medium.

Heightened Clarity

Acute observation is critical to to the manipulation of ideas as well as artistic media.  Perceptions combine, patterns emerge, and possibilities suggest themselves to those who extend the reach of their understanding and awareness.

While the sciences require accuracy and precision, the arts call for honesty and reflection.  Both order and arrange information and concepts by methods that challenge and transform their meanings with the intent of illuminating connections and realizing possibilities. 

Given their differences, the rigor of science and the imaginative intensity of the arts also include processes involving uncertainty and risk.  Yet every outcome, whether it reaches a desirable conclusion or not, is a refinement of vision.

Passages

Auditory perception functions on primary and secondary levels of awareness.

Consider the nature of listening as active, and primary, and hearing may be regarded as passive, or secondary in character.  The former implies focus on specifics, the latter suggests generalized sensory involvement with the whole of the environment.  Both are natural experiences of varying intensities.

From a composer's perspective it is clear that music and musical perceptions are centered on the act of listening, in ways that dominate the attention, while the function of hearing is of no particular moment in the course of a performance or recording.

Transformation ambient music, in contrast, like ambient music in its original sense, is designed to accommodate both levels of engagement with sound, with the composer taking an active, if reserved, role in the arrangement and production of the works. 

Atmospherics. Permutations.

Change is a constant throughout diverse environments, whether sudden and bold in nature or subtle, unobtrusive, or mysterious.

Transformation ambient music, that is, ambient music manipulated by the composer's intent, may capture the essential aural qualities of these nuanced changes and contrasts in the context of musical atmospheres, and, in doing so, conjure both attractive sound environments and settings conducive to reflective thought.

These concepts and processes may appear to be somewhat abstract, but the resulting works are anything but cold and cerebral, reflecting sound phenomena as they are experienced in the course of everyday life, yet given musical and artistic forms.

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.