Silence and Sound

Some listeners do not distinguish between individual instruments, respond physically to rhythms, and internalize the emotional impression of a musical work. Some listen with a technical ear, for qualities of cohesiveness and musical technique.

Then there are those who listen with the inner ear, perceiving with the imagination, for whom frost and flame, shadow and light, color and movement and uncanny possibilities emerge into being with every vibration.  Some are children, but most certainly not all.

Timelessness

The cultural significance of the arts and letters varies in intensity from time to time. Literature and poetry, music and the visual arts will, on various occasions, take precedence over such things as business and politics in the public square.

The way of the artist, regardless, is alight with the lamp of vision.

Realism

Artistic efforts may be marred by the necessity of empathy with the artist.  It can be difficult to sustain interest in works burdened by such subjectivity.

Conversely, the painter or composer rarely serves the role of a mere recording device.

The balance is found in both vision and the manner of representation through which idea, feeling, and corresponding imagery are conveyed.

To deny the value of moderation suggests insufficient capacity to appreciate it; to denigrate the virtues of restraint is commonplace absurdity.

Auditory Topography

Every movement and change in perspective alters the listener's perception of the surroundings.

Accordingly, compositions and recordings, given various effects and juxtapositions of sounds, may suggest a walk through a landscape.  

Emanation

Unperceived, yet it exists.

Unheard, it coalesces in the unconscious.

Beyond and beneath notice, it assumes form and its vibrations move toward expression.

Echoes of the Future

Consider auditory art beyond current forms.

Music is a medium that communicates with the unconscious; the sounds of myriad historic eras reveal their various cultures in the light of emotions, ideas and attitudes.  The solemn, the frenzied, the simple and the sophisticated reflect in sound the human condition of the times.

Take A Moment

Listen, hear, think, and imagine the sound of the immediate surroundings to be the sound of unfamiliar music.

Yet, more likely than not, there is already music in the surrounding environment.

If this is the case, consider the mood, tone, and theme of that music in comparison to what the atmosphere suggests without their presence.  

Inspiration

The reality of the sudden creative impulse is undeniable.

It leaps from the cool darkness of the unconscious with diamond brilliance, draws together scattered yet critical glimpses of ideas into conceptual clarity, and unites vision and act in the expression of art.

Yet it strikes according to preparedness, and in the unique form of the individual artist, and so it is incumbent upon the artist to know, analytically and viscerally, the ways and means by which such personal visions come to bear upon the creative spirit and are realized through application of idea and method, if it is to be a continuous influx and constant force.

The prolific creativity of an elevated imagination and a steady hand is undeniable as well.

Cycles, Ephemeral and Infinite

Surrounded by sounds at all times, one loses consciousness of them.

Recordings, broadcasts, and the sounds of mixed media are omnipresent.  There is a tendency to accept this state of affairs as natural, when it is not so, and of little lasting significance in the scheme of things.

The rhythms of reality are vast and broad, reaching great distances and depths and moving through cosmological time.   To compose or design sound to suggest such impressions, it is only necessary to hear more than the momentary and trifling, and to listen with the inner ear.

Vision, Sound, Expression

Sensory experience suggests countless possibilities.

Clear the fog of subjective emotion if this is not so.

The Receptive

To project, rather than perceive, is a common source of error in apprehending experience.

This speaks to motivation, habit, attitude, the reasons for creating as well as choosing to encounter art, and whether the composer, painter, photographer, film maker, sculptor, architect or dancer connects or separates from the audience.

Within each individual and each encounter is a degree of choice.

Transience

The casual observer of culture will note everywhere the saturation of trivial content.

The result is a loss of historical tradition, intellectual and emotional clarity, and individuality in favor of the shallow and sensational.

Such are the conditions in which the artistic vision reasserts its commitment to the real.

Elements and Transformations

Cast sounds into the environment, observe their forms, reactions and interactions

Auditory imagery alters as tones cluster and disperse to spread across and throughout distances; the flora and fauna of the imagination come closer to experience.  These are distinctive sonic qualities, contrasting with the predictability of generic music, beautiful for the total effect they produce.

It is not even necessary to think of this as music at all.  It will be what it becomes.

Process Dynamics

In a tone composition, continuous flux may be manipulated, but the object is not control, which would defeat the purpose of creating a state of fluidity.

Impose limits, add and remove elements, alter juxtapositions, colors, and meanings, as a painter does with brush strokes or as a poet modifies diction, breath or phrasing.

Span, Measure, Reach

Time is consumed; energy and emotion expended.

Observe, and consider the aspects of culture to which these things are devoted.

Think, before proceeding, of lasting impressions, and the extent to which effort may uplift perception and understanding beyond the frenetic and ordinary.

Within, Without

Immersion in sound is continuous and often unnoticed.

Listen.

Observe, hear what previously held no meaning.

This involvement is creativity's core, that of knowing and acting upon what must be done through receptivity, deliberation, and engagement. 

Atmosphere, Awareness, Heart and Mind

Generic musical forms are most often associated with their particular emotional appeals and the attention their intensity of expression demands.

Moving away from familiar forms such as these toward concepts of sound as art, the connections made by listeners may be more associated with the cerebral and perceptual, uniting qualities of sound and tone with those of thought and contemplative experience.

The Possible and the Unknown

When ideas and practices are fixed and without variation, decline is inevitable and often permanent. Entire industrial and technological cultures rise quickly with innovation, become monolithic, and collapse under the burden of conformity and stagnation.

The way of the artist is one of vision when there are no possibilities, and of action when the hand becomes capable of what the spirit foresees.

Impermanence, Creativity, Impression

Consider the sounds of the wilderness, and those of civilization.

The river, the plains, the highway, the supermarket: each has associated expectations of sounds and their combinations, just as there are associated expectations with "music".

Set aside expectations.  Create and sustain sound environments reflecting heightened awareness, gleaned from any and all sources of aesthetically pleasing auditory imagery.

Textures

Initial experience is perceptual impression.

Sounds associated with sensation evoke feeling first, then emotional and intellectual connections. Some connections are entirely personal; others may be more objective or abstract, as the directly sensual yields to symbol.

The composer of atmospheric works finds opportunities for juxtapositions of auditory images that can link the delicate and bold, the dense with the ethereal, the urgent with the serene, or any combination that enlivens experience.

I count myself among those whose interests in the art of sound are focused upon expressions of the reflective, the contemplative, and the imaginative.

Opposing Forces

The medium is sound.  Vibrations generated in every possible way create panoramas, of the mind as well as of the environment.  Composer and listener move within these atmospheres, together and separately.

Timeless and universal themes and motifs carry the seeds of future expressions, and these often arrive in contrast to expectations, unfettered by either tradition or rebellion.  The extraordinary takes its own course of possibilities, clashing with the commonplace, beyond the view of entertainment media, the microscope of the cultural status quo.

Aural Radiance

Postulate a musical form in which equilibrium of composition emerges in a gradual unfolding of tones. 

The combination of sounds evolves like a kind of luminosity that expands throughout the atmosphere, altering colors and hues, brightening hidden places and casting ever-changing shadows.

Imagery and Symbol

The observer of art apprehends meaning in visible expression and movement; the listener senses significance conveyed by tone, pattern, and auditory imagery.

In each case meaning is a part of larger connections, both cultural and personal, that arise from the past and are carried forward into the future, enlivened by human perception.

Long Moment

Lose track of beginning and ending.

Compose works that create a palpable sense of timelessness, utilizing sonic structures that contribute to sustaining that feeling.

Facility

Indiscriminate impressions reveal nothing and lead to no conclusive ideas.

Yet any impression may prove revelatory to creative imagination and judgement.  

The Real

Free the perceptions and attention to experience follows.

Consider distinctions between arts that distract and arts that enhance experience.  Musical compositions that turn the attention toward clarity of awareness will do the latter.

The Long View II

A composer may begin anywhere and go anywhere, particularly if guided by vision and principle and willing to put forth the effort required to develop and progress over the long run.

In the world of the arts it makes no difference if inspiration strikes suddenly, as it sometimes does, or if, as in my experience, the work evolves over the course of many decades to become what it is.

There is no alternative to devotion, and no substitute for following the way of the artist.

Intention and Impression

Art may be a barrier as well as a bridge.  As propaganda, it manipulates; as academic pretension, it obfuscates, often as a gambit to deny the self-evident for less than honorable purposes.

Intelligent listeners and observers owe no allegiance to such things, confident in their perceptual acuity and personal knowledge of cultural history.  Human nature will be as it is, while art, music, literature and other works of merit communicate directly, with integrity, to all who are capable of setting aside prejudice to give rational consideration to aesthetic experience.

Reflection and Reflex

In any media, the superficial is initially of paramount importance.  It is the instantaneous impression, the sudden sense of an image and the expression of reality it offers that communicates with force.

At this first critical moment, the percipient does more than observe, and projects emotional interests or needs and a fund of personal information upon the art form as an object of interest.  This may be seen as something of a poetic, or romantic, moment of interaction.

Then, given the receptive viewer or listener,  it is the content of the artistic work that sustains such involvement.  Thus much depends upon whether it is the audience, the personal ego, or the art to which the artist is devoted.

Aesthetic Expression

That which is good is self-evidently so, in need of apologies and explanations only in the course of shedding light upon its virtues.

In music, as in most arts, the simple, direct, and timeless find many forms, and ultimately these serve as auguries of near and distant visions.

Sound Composition

I contemplate settings until I hear their meaning.

I combine elements using the fund of sounds available to me until that meaning is brought into being.

Surface and Depth, Glamour and Clarity

Unconscious memory reproduces music imprinted in the brain with extremely fine accuracy.

But this is a form of involuntary musical imagery, akin to hallucination; it is obviously not the same as remembering a tune or listening to real music, and it has likely become more prevalent in the course of the century or so since the advent of recorded sound.  The condition of constantly perceiving musical events that do not depend upon actual sound vibrations would have been highly unusual as little as two hundred years ago, and certainly it would not have been as widespread in human consciousness as it it now.

It is possible that it may be more debilitating to the individual intellect than it appears, and may require an effort of will on the part of the percipient to end the phenomenon and to clear the mind; otherwise perception is diminished, rational thought is obscured, and attention is distracted.

It is also apparent that sound designs may be conceived and recorded that have the peculiar secondary effect of eliminating the narrowing of awareness produced by these "earworms" and renewing clarity of consciousness.

The interested observer may conclude, as I have, that certain musical compositions in the ambient style (though by no means the majority of these) that create both atmospheres and conditions in which active listening and passive hearing may take place-- the type of recordings Brian Eno famously described as being "as interesting as they are ignorable" --offer insights into the methods and technologies by which musical forms can be created that lend themselves to different auditory perceptions, particularly those conducive to elevated, as opposed to distracted, mental and emotional states.

Tone Language II

Musical communication is generally conveyed through rhythm, percussion, melody and harmony, tempo and instrumentation.  For the most part, the intent of the composer or musician is to communicate emotion.

If the essential emphasis in a composition, recording, or performance is placed upon tone and its atmospheric qualities, however, the focus of the work is on the sense of perception itself, and beyond that, to create a setting in which the listener's imaginative faculties may be engaged and stimulated.

In terms of sound, these are two separate and distinct paradigms.

Position, Movement, Perception

Movement through a setting alters the perception of sound.

In the environment of perceptive consciousness, while listening and hearing with the inner ear, movement takes place within the imagination, altering states of mind and creative vision.

Function

Value and meaning are given sounds for their beauty and for their effects as well.

The listener will appreciate the emotional connotations of natural sounds, human speech, and favorite musical works, as well as the clarity of a well-crafted recording, the aesthetic integrity of a finely rendered performance, and other such things of a more objective nature.

As broadly understood, the influences of sound and music upon temperament, attitude, and the spiritual or contemplative aspects of the psyche are of equal importance to their emotional and artistic qualities.

Clearly, beyond art and entertainment, music and sound designs may be created and experienced as enhancements to consciousness, and to a life well-lived.

Change. Transition.

Forms in time do not remain static.

They emerge, develop, disperse, and return to emerge again.  This, too, is the reality of sounds.

Music and the Uncanny

Sounds may be designed to evoke the simultaneously familiar and the unknown.

These atypical arrangements of sounds, with their elements of emergence, clustering, dispersal and re-forming, may challenge reason, and so provoke uncertainty, or a sense of strangeness, even given their simple, everyday nature as tones and musical patterns.

They may, at first, be easily rejected, rather than given intellectual consideration and analysis with the aim of aesthetic appreciation, but the curious listener will follow the threads of the familiar until absorbed by a new-- or different-- perception of music.

Absorption

Impressions of events over time are made upon every element of reality.

This is true of sounds.  This is true of ideas.

Resonance

Communications convey imagery and tone through every medium.

Such communications take both gross and subtle forms, as do the ways in which they are perceived.

Again, in the context of  "music" and its variations as "sound design", the composer imparts meaning by direct self-expression through numerous controlled actions, or by producing works via methods that are more or less detached yet retain a degree of aesthetic involvement.

Both present aspects of artistic vision, given their separate methods, and each is accessible to a wide variety of  listeners.

Aural Flux

In nature there are rhythmic movements and myriad beautiful sounds, yet they are not driven by rhythm and percussion, nor are they enhanced by melody and harmony.

Sound designs may be composed to reflect the perceptual effect of such environments and atmospheres, with their diversity of tones and dynamics. 

Moving Sounds

Consider the sonic journey that begins and ends in conjunction with the perception of time.

A linear awareness of time is manifest in musical forms of all types.

Postulate music or sound designs composed and expressed according to the idea of time as a continuum.

Percipient as Observer

Neither listening nor hearing is effortless.

Much depends upon the creative imagination of the listener.  Some seek nothing more than to fill a sense of emptiness, while others strive to expand awareness.

The artist's duty is not to make shared visions easy, but to make them possible.

Sound Poetics

Staccato bird calls, distant rains, creaking of tall oaks in the summer sun, voices over the hills.

Pursue these sounds, convert them from words into impressions, combine them in kaleidoscopic movements.

Bring forth the perception of atmospheres.

View, Focus, Redefine

The creative nature of the artist lends itself to a view of reality through the lens of aesthetic perception.

The creative act draws upon resources and experience in representing a perspective of the real, regardless of the medium employed or the context of the activity.  It is communication that informs concepts, which in turn evoke perception, or vision, if you will.

Painting, literature, sounds and music, teaching, learning, politics, athletics, sculpture and invention-- these may indeed be arts, given imagination, and all the better if tempered by moral reason and clarified by the force of virtue, these being timeless and universal.

Therein lies meaning, and most particularly that of what it means to be human. 

Scope, Outlook, Foresight

Development of artistic vision tethered to narrow forms may produce predictability of outcomes, as standard formulas particular to the musical genres demonstrate.

Instead, cultivate beauty as the inner ear of the perceptive, forward thinking listener anticipates it, in the wild.

Reason and Expression

Observe how excessive diversion and distraction blunts the edge of perception.

Consider the extent to which dullness of the intellect and of individual awareness renders emotion unreliable, even treacherous.

The artist must reach beyond the failures of moral reasoning engendered by cultural conditioning, or surrender to them.

Pop and the Fine

Similarities between the music of popular culture and that associated with refined or cultivated tastes are many, as illustrated throughout these various notes on creative perspectives and the arts.

Even so, these similarities are rarely acknowledged, as if the latter, even given its sophistication and rarefied intellectual attributes, is diminished by the understanding that the nature of both forms reflects the same focus on rhythm, melody, harmony, and other traditional aspects of music, particularly Western music.

Both have similar origins, both order sounds to similar effect, and each generates expectations in its listeners as to what constitutes music in terms of the elements mentioned. Yet neither prepares the listener for forms that are brought into being by artists who compose outside the strictures of the common and traditional.

Nevertheless, it is through the act of  listening itself that it becomes possible to hear with the contemplative or inner ear, and thereby interact with sounds designed beyond the "given", to ultimately expand the personal and cultural aesthetic in musical experience.

Pause, Perceive

Extend the immediate.

Take in the awareness of those things that go unnoticed.

Imaginative Variables

Environments contain unexpected elements that contribute to the atmosphere in unexpected ways.

In composition and experimentation, there are innumerable choices.  Each alters the total effect of the finished work irrevocably.  The extent to which the artist's sensibilities are manifest is also a choice, and my personal perspective is that the least interference results in the most compelling aesthetic result.

Each transformation ambient piece should be, more than a personal expression, an evocation for the listener's most desirable states of consciousness.

Mimesis, Abstraction

The art of transformation ambient composition echoes awareness.

As field recordings reproduce auditory events, sound designs may be composed in ways that reproduce diverse aspects of auditory perception.  The ultimate end of this process is a fullness of experience involving both active listening and passive hearing in the course of interacting with the musical expression.

The nature of such compositions, being suggestive rather than specific, lends an impression of being somewhat detached from linear time, and, with repeated listening, an impression of never sounding exactly the same.