Sensation, Experience. Aesthetics.

Art needs no explanation.

It exists without interpretation and nomenclature.

It is the artist who brings, by choice, every facet of idea and act to bear upon the work. 

Simultaneity

Environs I, as a musical composition, is designed to evoke impressions of multiple perspectives.

The listener may observe, for example, variations of the following: auditory imagery within a sequence of sounds; within such aural events, a series of complementary sound shadings; in context with these sound combinations, tones in linear or asymmetric patterns and peripheral clusters, and additionally, over time, shifting points of view in perceiving the work through direct and indirect attention, according to the circumstances of each listening experience.

Sound, Sense, and Psyche

The same songs, again and again. Saturation and predictability numb and stultify. Experience is dimmed in dull, thoughtless fogs.

The world around echoes with stunning potential and blinding beauty, nonetheless.  The way of the artist is to envision with clarity, to listen and hear the flux and stream of being, and to express the ineffable while the future follows.

Like Rain to Dusty Lands

A moment's pause, to engage perceptive feeling.

Envision the sounds of the sublime and assemble them according to their natures.  Follow their patterns, pursue them in their improbable symmetry and anomalous, yet ordered, forms, until it becomes impossible not to listen and hear their illumination of the senses, and the spirit.

To Walk Through Walls

Approach creativity dispassionately, without bias and self-interest.

This is constancy in motivation and outcomes, effortless application of power, and restraint yielding elegance and grace.  

Sounds of Place and Perspective

Musical designs evocative of auditory imagery as it is perceived to emerge and evolve in the natural course of everyday activities need not be any less interesting than those that bring to mind particular experiences in the imagination of the listener or composer.

Previous Black Mountain School recordings, inspired by particular times and places, suggest the end of summer (Phenomena), the atmospheric settings of urban and rural China (Night Traffic and The Celestial Way), and perspectives altered by technological and transcendental viewpoints (Delmarva and Elevation, respectively).

The next album, Environs I, is the first of a series composed in a manner complementary to the previous extended ambient pieces without reference to specific settings and events. Thus, as far as possible, these works may enhance the environment and imagination of the listener directly. 

Tone Poems, Ambient Atmospheres

In the course of history, when empires collapse and are lost to memory, their ruins are many times believed to have been the work of giants.  This photo, taken in the Central Bohemia region of the Czech Republic, suggests such a scenario in an abandoned construction left behind with the fall of the Soviet Union.

It also provides the inspiration for a work of atmospheric music currently being developed by the Black Mountain School project, in keeping with the sound and content of the previous albums.

The content of the classical tone poem is designed conceptually and musically to suggest such ideas and events, and to encourage the listener to imagine them.  Among numerous examples are Debussy's La Mer, Finlandia by Sibelius, and An American In Paris by Gershwin.

Clearly, electronic ambient music lends itself to similar, if modest and minimalistic, applications.

Territories of Sound

Varieties of experience are associated with sound-- musical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual come to mind first.

For many with open, perceptually engaged and contemplative natures, atmospheric aspects of sound heighten or intensify these experiences. Unlike predictable elements of rhythm and melody, however, they are not generally the fundamental components of musical compositions.

The composer and listener are linked in the same explorations, searching beyond the given and the obvious for the uncanny, the extraordinary and the elevated.

Sound Merging with Light and Image

All the arts intersect in countless ways.  While music is most often created according to traditional theories, it may also be based upon any number of artistic ideas and philosophies.

Today's image has been selected by Brian Eno and his team as one of the featured images on the LUX - Day Of Light website. It will appear on the large main photo display and within the live streamed video on http://lux.brian-eno.net .  It also lives within the 'View Submissions' tab, complete with a special red dot to signify that it was featured.

Please spread the word:  http://lux.brian-eno.net

Changing Recognition

The material and physical in nature are impermanent, undergoing constant transformation.

Recorded compositions that are designed to evolve gradually around the listener reflect this reality.   As in the case described by the aphorism that says it is impossible to cross the same river twice, because the river and person crossing it are different, the attention one gives such musical works varies and is modified with each listening.

In becoming acclimated to aural atmospheres of this type, the listener may gain diverse perspectives on music and sounds. Old biases may be set aside, altering approaches to listening and hearing.

Shift Perspectives, Devise Doorways

Simply postulate music as combined sounds that emphasize elements other than those of rhythm, percussion, melody, harmony and the standard arrangements of genre fare, and approach it in the manner of mixed media art.

In concept and execution, set aside the sour, narrow pretensions of the amateur, striving instead for the beautiful and elevated, focusing on aesthetic arrangement of tones, textures, colors and shading, form, space, depth and total effect.

Listen.  Hear.  Allow the atmosphere to become what it is; without interference, bring it into being.

Combinations, Effects, Outcomes

Experimentation is a matter of process.

In the arts, when experimentation leads to desired effects, progress is made in the development of methods; when these methods result in works that meet the criteria upon which they are conceived, and, when evaluated, they meet aesthetic standards of completeness, the works are no longer to be considered experimental.  They are then, in the sense of reaching successful conclusions, finished, and the ways and means of their design and construction may continue to be refined.

From concept to conclusion such processes involve risks and obstacles, and may take many years. But this is the way of the artist in the pursuit of bringing visions and expressions into being.

Inner Echoes

Sound is by nature intimate.

Sounds are internalized; their embrace is emotional, spiritual, cerebral and physical.  Their imprint is felt in character and attitude, and in the aesthetic and moral senses as well.  Combinations of sounds and their manner of presentation engender feelings and states of mind with lasting effects.

Such are the impressions the composer offers the listener.

Stir of Impressions

The artist perceives, and expresses.

All the senses interact with the reasoning, emotional and spiritual faculties to weave the threads of personal experience.  Drawn together and given form in sound, these threads convey the realities glimpsed by the composer through musical images and aural gestures.

To listen in accordance is to hear the impress of being and meaning.

Spirits of Place

All settings possess distinctive properties suggestive of their counterparts in sound.

Every atmosphere exhibits dynamic possibilities, whether they may be expressed with the intensity of thunderclaps or the subtlety of gradually fading voices.  Accordingly, through aesthetic choices involving selections of tones, forms, patterns, and manners of combining and manipulating diverse elements, the composer releases these lyric qualities of locality and perceptual narrative.

Waking Moments

Perception, memory, and knowledge inform experience.

Consciousness may be engaged subjectively, and may transcend subjectivity as well.  Thought and perception move between these states of awareness in apprehending reality.

The ear perceives specific sounds in the context of others that evoke ideas or emotions in the listener of which the composer cannot be aware.  Nonetheless, the tone, mood and atmosphere of ambient musical works are designed to enhance the conditions for such contemplative listening experiences.

Choice, Context, Sensibilities

Without reasoned and desirable limits, meaning is obscured, then extinguished by the absurd.

The space between one extreme and the next appears empty; close attention dissipates, drawn only to the excessive.  Depth of feeling is not called upon, and critical discernment declines.  If noise does not dominate experience there is apparent silence.  Yet the mind passively demands to be filled.

Art is not intended to serve as a replacement for moral reason and spiritual emptiness.  Still, art can, and often does, offer perspectives in sharp contrast to those that are culturally stagnant, banal and enervating.  And while such artistic works may be delineated within limits emphasizing subtlety and grace of expression, for example, they are by no means intellectually and existentially confining.

Mind, Symbol, Sound

Reason suggests; imagery portrays.

Depict perceptual experiences of settings and events through sound designs that evoke sensory impressions.

With elements of tone and pattern and color, explore the range of the real, as do the painter and poet.

Multiplicity and Unity

Absorb the sounds of the surroundings.

Taking care to listen, becoming engaged in hearing, and giving attention to the near and distant, the observer gains increasing awareness of the completeness of aural atmospheres.

Seek this completeness in listening; in composing, bring all the elements and variations to this fullness.

Painted Air

The composer sets vibrations in motion, to emerge and evolve as visions.

Sounds, patterns, and tones combine, bringing aural imagery into being in the physical environment and the inner world of the listener. 

Awareness and Obstruction

The ambient music listener often senses increasing acuteness of aural perception.

Prolonged exposure to noise and distraction dulls the senses, and it is easy to lose sight of the fact that such conditions, universal though they may seem, are, in fact, unnatural, even debilitating.

Consider the capacities of ancient peoples for distinguishing the qualities of environmental sounds and recognizing their implications.  Such refinement of perception and reasoning is not lost in the modern world, but certainly clarity of this nature declines, if neglected, in the general noise and rush of everyday events.

My own interests lie in the composition and production of ambient atmospheres that contribute to enhanced penetration of thought while appealing to the listener's depth of feeling and aesthetic sensibilities.  

Variation, Transformation

In the creation of the electronic tone poem and transformation ambient work, the goals are balance and aesthetic beauty; the means to the these ends are continuous processes of experimentation, improvisation and revision.

By these means structure gradually forms.  Thematic elements undergo permutations as they rise, fall, and return, juxtaposed with changing tones, patterns, clusters, and densities of sound.

While reference to the symphonic tone poem is a matter of convenience, it nonetheless reflects the roots of electronic and minimalistic music, in that these forms are evocative of atmospheres, ideas, moods, events, and other non-musical sources of inspiration.

These compositions bring into being the ways I perceive the simple, complex, and, at times, uncanny experience of the sounds of modern life. 

Connectivity II

Expression takes countless forms.  Each interacts with all.

In the arts, for example, dance inspired by music may influence poetry, painting, and other forms.

These, in turn, breathe life into artistic perspectives in continuous flux.

The art of sound can move in any direction. One may compose in ways that reflect abstract expressionism and impressionist landscape painting, and with equal vigor and beauty.

What moves the artist is what the artist brings into being.

Shadows and Virtues

Music's existence is intimately connected to the evolution of culture.

It will not remain static; it conveys meaning according to the way it is perceived.  It cannot remain bound to ideas and expressions that lose cultural vitality.

Even so, individual imagination and vision are essential to the directions and outcomes toward which the arts of sound are impelled.

Sensibility, Purpose, Integrity

The finely delineated and intricately wrought are revolutionary in aspect.

Nuance and subtlety in sound, like considerate manners and moderate language in relationships, reflect radical indifference to a predominate coarseness in cultural affairs exemplified by reflexive crudity in discourse and melodramatic bombast in music.

Technology, while increasingly sophisticated in refinement and potential, yet conveys much that is backward and pointless, benighted, predictable, and intolerably boring.  Though intrinsic to the cultural landscape, these expressions are not the sole measurements of what is possible.

The creative artist need not be bound by such limits.

Sound and Time

Environmental sounds, whether in urban areas or in wilderness settings, appear random-- but this is not so.

The observer will note clear patterns in terms of cause and effect over extended periods of time.

Numerous developments occur as night takes the place of day and seasons come and go.  Most of these sounds will take cyclical forms, as in the cases of traffic movements and the ebb and flow of tides.  Some are easily predictable while others exist only briefly and are apparently disconnected from the general course of events.

To represent such sounds and their movements in musical form it is necessary to set aside temporal considerations to the greatest extent possible.  All things rise and fall as part of a greater reality in which beginnings and endings are of little consequence, and minutes, hours, days and years are simply measurements for the sake of human convenience.

Reflecting the Real

Music and sound design create stylized sonic impressions of emotions, ideas, narratives, and settings.

While many aesthetically pleasing works may be overly idealized or romanticized in concept, thus offering escapist fare, the discriminating listener easily loses interest in the superficial singularity of focus such works often demonstrate.  Creative activity as well as that of a more contemplative nature is better served by more than pleasant diversion in listening.

The way of the artist is to engage, to evoke, to illuminate and to inspire perception in terms of authentic experience, by connecting with the real life of the listener.

Observation and Approach

The symphonic tone poem and the transformational ambient design for electronics share certain similarities conceptually, particularly as representations of ideas, events, and settings.

Each form calls upon the imagination of the listener, encouraging impressions of times, places, and concepts conveyed by combinations of sounds and musical patterns.

Additionally, transformational ambient work in the extended arrangement, or as a "sketch" or shorter piece, may be organized with the intent of appealing to the imaginative faculties of the listener by enhancing mood and atmosphere generally, without reference to more than the listener's environment and receptive awareness.  Rather than establish a particular perspective, the sound design lends its influence to the environs of the listener more directly, to be experienced at more personal levels.

Transmission V

Shared ideas and individual perspectives bring to light things as yet unknown.

While it is entirely possible to rely upon the given, accede to expectations, and work according to conventions or oppose them, the way of the artist is constantly moving beyond these considerations.

It is the unseen and unheard, and those things unexpected and uncanny, that impel vision and action.

Explorations

Trace the arc of elevated thought, idea and vision.

Beginning naturally with the commonplace, it rises above the mundane, the uninteresting and the stasis of  complacency to transcend expectations of understanding.  It seizes the moment creatively, if at all possible, and renders a concrete link to the experience through visual art media, the written word, or musical sounds, to suggest only a few examples.

Then, as is natural, that heightened awareness becomes conversant with the everyday in ways that popular diversions and entertainment can not, speaking, as it does, to the larger themes of spiritual life and the human condition.

Range of Meaning

Interpretation need not be constricting or absurd.

Perception and experience may be directed internally and externally.  In the case of sound design and non-linear musical fabrication, the composer can appeal to both the appreciation of the external environment as a whole, and to the inner world of the listener as well.

The total effect contributes to enhancement of both atmosphere and mood through sonic imagery, and respects the experience and imagination of the listener.

Resonance

Sound is the language of imagination.

The listener who perceives the vision of a musical work as well as its compositional and instrumental elements absorbs its existential and spiritual meanings.

Spirit

Often, expression sums up experience in terms of content.

Art and experience exist in the context of history, tradition, and culture; expression belongs to the artist.

Feel

Cultural arts given over to excessive, subjective emotion are always on display.  Those who deny they exert an influence have reasons for deception.

Emotional reserve is at odds with such perspectives; classical restraint appears distant, cold, and suspect, because the nature of these attitudes is clearly motivated by something other than outward appearances and ideas in common currency.  This appears truly radical in a climate of reactive and immoderate emotionality.

Yet one need only consider the ease with which affective consciousness may be manipulated beyond an individual or group's awareness or control for dubious ends in order to appreciate art that appeals to the spiritual faculties of reason and free will.

Word, Visual, Sound

Speak and listen, see and hear.

What one may not express, another may reveal.

Processes and Expressions

Experience, contemplate and consider, assemble materials.  See where they lead.

Allowing these assembled materials to determine the direction and scope of a work, particularly a sound composition, speaks to the issue of control, and to the extent to which perception on the one hand and ego on the other determine outcomes.

The former manipulates subtly, and moves with the work to bring it into being of its own; the latter exerts force and pressure towards a predetermined end.

Very few follow the first path, the way of the artist.

Still Point

Intuitively and thoughtfully, analytically and with rational feeling, the observer and artist considers the distance between cultural norms and individual experience.

Along the axis between the two there are numerous perspectives.  There are variables that determine points of balance, as one discovers in a composition in which elements are chosen and arranged to satisfy this equilibrium.

The observer and artist recognizes these variables in terms of honesty of expression and personal motivation in the context of cultural and social expectations, and acts accordingly in bringing creative concepts into being.  Certainly this is a deliberative effort, informed by imagination as well as the reality of cultural conditions, and predicated upon a degree of objectivity.

It is also a matter of integrity of character and expression, for those who practice it.

Sway of the Modern

The extent to which the modernist perspective began as rebellion and rejection is debatable; that it grew to a means to rebuild, redefine, and clarify the broader cultural and historical outlook in the moment now is certain.

Visions contrived outside this paradigm yet remain frivolous; forces of history and shared global traditions reflecting the highest order of genius persist in power and influence.  Dynamics, means, and methods of expression change, but the permanent things do not, through continuous processes of being and becoming.  These abstract ideas and ideals-- among them love, integrity of character, honesty, beauty, and faith-- are brought to meaning through art and made new in the experience of living every day.

Over the course of a century the modern retains its force and virtue.  It yet unfolds, no less illuminates.

Illusions Forming Barriers

Much of the cultural conditioning of the last century is gradually fading away.

While there still exist the critics, trendsetters, and celebrities, the cachet and sense of cultural influence associated with them is slowly vanishing, and with that, the limitations their perspectives promulgate.

One drawn to the arts need not be pressured to court their favor or, more importantly, to think or create within the boundaries they and their predecessors have established.

This brings fair weather to creative atmospheres and to those who thrive within them.

Like Water II

Every moment emerges constantly, receding into time past and carrying forward into time future.

The basic concept of music as "movement of sound through time" need not be strictly limited to linear time, with its beginnings and endings and "captured moments" as commonly delineated.

Objectively, recordings do not change, but the listener's perception of them can and does.

Compositions in sound can be so designed as to place minimal emphasis on movement between points in time, to stress greater fullness of experience in the movement or flow of the moment itself.

Time need not be the dominant factor around which art revolves, nor is there any need for an art so conceived to be confrontational, affectedly ugly or disagreeable pour épater les bourgeois.  This is a lack, if not a failure, of vision in the modern world; there is beauty to be found here and given voice as the way of the flow of life.

Atmosphere, Effect, Development

Within settings, variations in sonic dynamics are brought about by any number of environmental factors, including such elements as barometric pressure, wind direction, and changes in topography.

In transformational compositions, the composer chooses the extent to which direct influence upon sound and structure is desirable.  In directing the evolution of a work that reflects awareness of auditory imagery within a changing atmosphere, I seek the suggestion of impressions rather than predictable patterns while aiming towards a balance between the orderly and the apparently random.

The aim is to reveal, or bring to light, the authentic and effortlessly grasped aesthetic listening pleasure that may be found within a nonlinear aural dynamic or sound and tone collage.

Cultural Continuity

Any number of things taken for granted are unnecessary.

Art is not among them.  Discover the past, know the present, illuminate the future.

Image and Essence

Music is generally understood in terms of common knowledge, in the way that recognition of imagery signals its meaning.

The listener's expectations are centered upon style and instrumentation, while the musician discerns method and technique, and all these are conveyed in performances and representative recordings.

Yet sound and beauty converge in countless other ways, producing myriad shades of meaning.

Environs

Musical selections programmed for public places presume, with some accuracy, various attitudes and emotional perspectives, and adhere generally to the rhythm and pace of social activity.

In short, such music reflects and promotes movement, manipulates and entertains.

Consider, in contrast, musical environments conducive to reflection and contemplative, creative activity, designed in such a way as to illuminate consciousness while contributing to clarity of thought.  

Changes in the Nature of Listening

Conceptual compositions designed to reflect the manner in which the observer encounters sounds in the real world also draw the receptive listener into altered perspectives and perceptions of sounds and surroundings.

As a result of becoming oriented to ways of listening and hearing beyond one's accustomed norms, sensitivity to aesthetically beautiful aural impressions-- what might be called the fair sounds of the everyday-- grows to be constant and immersive.

Intimacy and Transcendence

Moving freely to diverse perspectives, the authentic and the artificial become less well-defined and the imaginative, suggestive, and perceptually striking seize the attention.

The tedium of constant familiarity loses its grip, giving way to the impulse toward fuller cognition and deeper awareness of setting and scene, implication and intention, the visionary and the uncanny.

Listen, hear, experience; move beyond general expectation and the excessive and the absurd as well, on toward clarity, balance, and, one may dare say, the beautiful.

Open Air

The casual observer will see clearly that perception of music is the result of cultural conditioning,

Yet the contemporary stage is set for the listener to explore far beyond narrowly defined cultural expectations for musical realities, and there no longer exist viable sub-cultural social contexts defined primarily by music styles (and adherence to associated fashions) for good reasons.

The common and the outré, being easily accessible, are on equal footing, and as a result the insular mentality engendered by sub-cultural identification has grown untenable and ridiculous, particularly over the last decade.

 The listener is free to follow any sounds in any direction, and so is the composer and creative artist.

Possibilities

Lack of meaning is merely that.  Nothing more.

Art is endless connection and implication.

Diffusion

Styles spread throughout culture, gradually losing impact as saturation takes place, then languish and dissipate, as the history of music and the arts demonstrates.

The individual artist must act according to personal vision and fundamental facts.  Medium, method, and message stagnate without the will to investigate the unexplored and the discipline to risk failure.

Neither failure nor success are ends in themselves.  

Movement, Distance, Direction

Culture provides, exploration reveals, and art offers perspectives.

In the world of auditory arts there is the given, everywhere in evidence, and the unusual, being out of the ordinary.  But there exists also the unexpected or uncanny, and with it a change in perception.