Engagement, Structured and Non-linear

Consider the shapes and intensities of sound waves along with the position of the percipient within the sonic field.

The perceptions of the stationary listener differ from those of the mobile one, for whom the totality of the listening experience undergoes change with movement.

The majority of musical performances and recordings are designed in terms of arrangements of direct, focused listening, including the free-flowing area of the dance floor.

Consider, conversely, recordings designed for the mobile listener, and sound performances structured for the mobility of both listeners and sound sources.

Sounds, Presences

Day to day reality presents the listener and observer with a practically infinite number of sound events, yet most of them go unnoticed.

These are raw materials, from which beauty and meaning can be seized and expressed through stylized, artistic forms, reflecting the ways they occur and are perceived in natural and cultural environments.

Art Music

Definitions are indifferent things.

Experience of art is its meaning.

The Specious and the Authentic

Immured in the conventional, the sensational, the effortless and the obvious, one may fail to discern the bold as well as the sublime.

It is a grievous error to mistake ideology for education and wisdom.  Likewise, artistic representations may evoke perspectives of reality, but do not suspend facts.  One listens, one hears; yet perceptions are only as reliable as consciousness is unburdened by bias and cultural constraints.

As artist and observer, composer and listener engage, so do they imagine, reflecting the rise and fall of all things.

Permeation

A sealed system inevitably decays.

Narrow the idea of music to variation within stylistic boundaries and there is no growth or change.

Expand, then, all aesthetically pleasing sounds onto the sonic canvas, unburdened by expectations.

Media, Perception, Existence

Representations of experience and experiential reality engage listener and observer.

One may contemplate and interact, but even so, both ways of engagement suggest transcendence.

There is always the possibility of experiencing, and communicating, what is not yet seen, or heard, or known.

Thought, Action, Direction, Reality

Simply put, what lies beyond the horizon comes to light in the imagination.

Erase distinctions between intellectual, artistic, and social perspectives in ways that set the tone for individual creativity in the cultural times to come.

One may quickly comprehend possibilities for the good that are real, but as yet unseen, and act upon their inspiration with courage and confidence.

Listen Forward

Imagination foresees.

Within the territory of the mind's eye, listen as well, and hear with the inner ear.

Perspective, Mirror, Impression

Consider sounds as they occur naturally, without manipulation or interference.

What is perceived as aesthetic beauty in such conditions may be renewed and expressed in artistic contexts. As stylized reflections of sound unburdened by musical connotations, such works, by their presence and effects, possess unique and subtle charms, bidding the artist to disappear and to allow the listening experience to unfold.

A Walk at Twilight

Sounds may express the gamut of human emotions, but they can express more.

Tones, lines, and juxtapositions of sonic elements are capable of suggesting metaphoric experiences of events, objects, actions and ideas.  It is possible to evoke the spiritual and the uncanny, as well as the temporal and mundane.

Effects and Reflections

Social environments engage ideas and actions according to multiple dynamics of communication.

One who gains insights into the arts becomes aware of the impact of culture upon the individual and collective consciousness; this fortifies discernment of the value, meaning, and intent behind cultural phenomena, and contributes to conscious cultivation of the personal sensibilities.

For listener and composer, this means mutual engagement of sound and imagination, unburdened by false or contrived appearances of style and manners.

Underlying Reality

Patterns and elements associated with common musical forms vary over time, but change little.

Constant sounds of change, conversely, are found throughout human and natural environments.

Let this model be reflected in aural design and composition, and auditory perception changes accordingly.

Hearing the Distant

Change, never ceasing, is a mechanism of survival.

Sounds across cultures, in the moment now, move toward wider, deeper expressions.

This is the inevitable consequence of their dynamic nature, and cannot be held in check by human desire for certainty.

Objects and Expressions

Combine images so as to suggest juxtapositions of sounds.

Take any combination of sounds and extend the forms suggested into aesthetic aural events of sustained beauty.  This is an invitation to elevated, contemplative states of mind, colored with a sense of mystery.

Cultural Flux

Change is continuous, with ideas and their associated activities intersecting myriad others at all times and places.

Thus, in artistic efforts, it is wise to apprehend the realities of opportunity and potential in expression.

Works will be, to some extent, grounded in contemporary settings while also possessing timeless qualities. Their meanings will be accessible according to the cultural receptivity, or lack thereof, for artistic representations reflecting the values of the one or the other.

The only real choice, always, is that of integrity and authenticity of gesture; anything else is nothing more than a selection between false appearances.

Living, Listening

Sound surrounds you now.

There is no silence; only listen, and hear.  Out of perception, bring forth expression.

Some, But Not All

From time to time the arts must endure a collectivist mentality.

But this is nothing more than a consequence of expanding horizons, a situation that lends itself to the consolidation of power among social, academic, and political groups bound by common interests and attitudes, but lacking, in their numbers, the virtues of individuality.

Predictably, such a way of thinking engenders a dull, insular advocacy of mediocrity with an utterly entrenched resistance to the distinctive and imaginative.

Some artists, musicians, theorists, and composers, enjoined to conformity, will succumb to cultural orientations of this nature.  For the rest, to do so is out of the realm of possibilities; it is the work that is of paramount importance.

Point Counterpoint

As this or that, I think thus and such.

Thoughts come and go, perspectives alter, notes serve their purposes as tools and reflections.

But meaning is found in the work.

Artificially Yours

Between the representation and the real lie perceptions and ideas.

Expression challenges and reflects the depth, or lack thereof, of individual experience.

Simply put, one should offer no barriers to the enjoyment of apprehension and understanding.

Sounds, Illuminated

As a medium of artistic expression, sound may be shaped in forms other than those generally recognized in terms of music, which depend, for the most part, upon elements such as rhythm, melody, and tempo.

Musicianship is expressed creatively through such things as disciplined virtuosity, instrumental eloquence, and conveyance of emotional feelings.  It is an entirely different artistic expression to manipulate media of any kind to peculiar effect.

The sound composer may choose to operate accordingly, engaging instead, as I do, concepts and gestures, regarding ideas, events, and settings in terms of transmuting perceptions into works of aural imagery.  It is a matter, simply enough, of asking and contemplating what sounds may be suggested by diverse experiences and bringing them into being.

Consciousness and self-knowledge governed by rational thought and intuitive perceptivity clearly, demonstrably, elevate the human condition far beyond that of mindless impulse and base instinct.

This is true in every aspect of life, and remains true in the arts.

Connectivity

Clarity elevates and obscurity provokes curiosity.

Each enables the contemplation of mystery, and inspiration to imagination and action.

Lucidity, Comprehension

What is commonly called "order" contributes to predictability and routine, but order has diverse forms, not all of them strictly concerned with organization.

Certain forms of order reflect juxtapositions of the simple and the complex.  Some involve greater, more expansive schemes of perception and understanding, such as the rise and fall of things, for instance, or awareness of processes in the way of, say, emergence, convergence, and dispersal. Others are discernible as guides to movement, or to the direction of attention to specific objects or ideas.

In such ways do the arts, and particularly those involving music and sound, realize concepts of order, in clear contrast to disorder and pointless chaos.

Attention to Sound and Mind

Just as there is a difference between looking and seeing, so it is with hearing and listening.

These are matters of interest and engagement, both passive and active, direct and indirect. 

In the normal context of continual activity and distraction there is little time for deep thought, clear articulation, and lucidity of perception.  But one must make time; these are essential to being and becoming, and thus to dynamic consciousness and living.  

My compositions are designed to enhance an hour and more for contemplative listening, reflecting this fundamental attitude.

Prescience, Magical Thinking, and The Uncanny (Excerpt)

Sonic Sensibility

Wide-ranging experience lends itself to diversity in taste and the capacity for dynamic action.

Such is the nature of curiosity itself and the impulse to go beyond the "given" often established in the artistic temperament.  There is no denying this perspective has its origins in romantic subjectivity and the idea that it might be possible to order one's work according to a vision of an ideal world or life of adventure, to allow for typical examples.

But the way of the artist can often demand equipoise in gesture, a balance of forces without which expression is incomplete. For the composer, this requires leavening the passions with the clarity of reason and bringing sounds into accord with one another, particularly in the evolution of efforts to transcend customary aesthetic and musical models.

Art and Atmosphere, Sound and View

Place perception in context.

Now the composer and listener, artist and observer, given diversity of experience, may discern unique perspective as percipients.  If engaged, intellect, emotion, or the spiritual may dominate, or they may balance together.

Each point of view, initially defined by natural differences, gains a degree of unity and a sense of meaning, established by setting and circumstances.

Artifice, Vérité, Being

All representations of reality are artificial in nature, whether they express concrete objects or abstractions.

What the art reveals may be fact or fancy; one may be artfully disguised as the other.

To be deceived by a false perception of idea or event is utterly different from being briefly fooled by a recorded sound or the effect of a trompe l'oeil illusion. The latter are simply auditory and visual; the former may prove to contain the genesis of fatal errors in judgement.

For the composer, it is the difference between glamorizing the base, absurd, or benighted, and imparting the essence of the real.

Edge and Area

To realize the essence of a thing may require gradual and incremental observation and investigation; the expression of that essence demands a perspective that reveals its reality and meaning.

Often what is called the avant-garde in art is brought into being as a demonstration of possibilities, its purpose being to convey a sense of conceptual potentials that may be inarticulate and undeveloped fully, yet nonetheless indicate areas of interest that may be explored, analyzed, and refined.

Such initial expressions, on the surface, may have the appearance of mere absurdity.  Certainly there are many examples of  "sound art" that fit this description, especially in areas devoted to academic experimentation.

Aesthetic sound art, similarly, exists in opposition to "mainstream" forms, yet has, in contrast, aims centered upon elevated expression of the imaginative and meaningful through aural media.

Sonic Shadow and Light

Perceive, remember, experience, evaluate, and conceive beyond superficial sensation to distinguish appearance from reality.

Thus the artist and composer, observer, participant, and listener may engage any representation so conceived and produced as one that reveals, not only itself as an artistic form, but aesthetic truth in terms of the reality represented.

Peculiarity

When media frames perception in terms of a collective "we", the implication is that perspective is shared, when, in fact, it is given.

Such perspectives are anathema to the arts, cloaked as they are in affected intimacy while advancing the complacent attitudes of shallow authority.

In clear contrast, the way of the artist is the arduous one of singularity in outlook and expression, a viewpoint shaped by nature, temperament, intensity of experience, and dedication to imaginative beauty and meaning.

Art and Indifferent Things

Reality does not conform to the narrowly subjective point of view.

Yet to be removed from the simple order of things, from the course of natural events, and thus to lose awareness of the cyclical growth and decline of cultural conditions is a common state of affairs, one continuously reinforced by distraction and diversion of various kinds.  One need look no further than music and media encountered in the course of the day to confirm this fact.

Art fills needs for intellectual, emotional, and spiritual elevation, self-knowledge in the context of the human condition, clarity of perception and lucidity of expression.  With this in mind, the composer may do well to create with the purpose of fulfilling such needs through works that appeal to moral reason and the aesthetic sensibilities.

Prefigurations

Art inspires art, as experience and perception shape expression.

The nature of the art of sound is that it must expand, conceptually and in scope and gesture, with the vision of the listener and composer, outside the context of the so-called musical forms.

Each and All

Time Future is heard in Time Past; it echoes in Time Present.

Life continues, and expression of that beauty and that continuity may be heard with the inner ear.

Surface, Shadow, Symbol, and The Real

Art is human reality; thus within it, human error.

Observe digital media in various forms; consider these in the context of Plato's allegory of the cave.

Enliven

Exert the force of intellect; persist in intuitive thought, and sustain it; engage the moment now.

Discipline the faculties to observe and become cognizant of finer detail in a wider range of perception and experience is intensified, that is to say, heightened.  Open up the mind's eye and the inner ear, bringing imagination into being, in life and in art.

Undercurrents

Confine or limit cultural expression and it will appear in other forms.

Reason yields to instinct in the popular imagination until it reasserts itself out of necessity in opposition to confusion and error, just as primal emotion is brought to bear against rigidity of intellectual authority and control.

But these are simplistic reactions.  The way of the artist may be one of balance, and lucidity of intuitive expression.

Reign of Spirits

In the quiet landscape, near and distant sounds evoke uncanny presences in the imagination.

Listening, hearing, and contemplating the unseen, it is possible to perceive in the way of ancient or "primitive" people, alert to change of atmosphere and movement both subtle and extensive.  These are, in fact, highly refined faculties worthy of development for their perceptual and aesthetic virtues.

The composer may do well to create to this order of understanding.

Uncertainty of Beauty

Observe the course of the history of Western music, consider its developments, and give regard to the effects of widespread global influences over the past century.

The convergence of diverse forms leads the composer and listener to myriad choices, and ultimately to realizations, whether intentional or not, of broader perceptions and more refined artistic goals.

Impression, Perspective, Monad

The art of sound is manifest in the experience of listener and composer alike.

And these are the important things, in and of themselves: individual experience and the art.

Drawing Breath

One does not seek only the fulfillment of expectations in the arts and attain experience of their virtues.

The sound arts, nonetheless, offer the opportunity to comply with the expectations of a wide range of audiences that are culturally conditioned to desire the predictable.

It is also possible to compose to enhance the total experience of the listener, and to awaken this through the inner ear.

Break Through in Grey Room

Subjection to immediacy obstructs equanimity, restricts perception, and hinders communication of meaning and value.

The imposition of instantaneous direct involvement with media upon consciousness narrows and distorts perspective, yet it is most often a matter of choice and habit perpetuated by technological culture and its proponents.  As such it is within the power of one's will to determine the extent of its necessity and desirability, given cognizance of the reality and the self-aware capacity to call it into question analytically.  Certainly this suggests the virtue of direct perception, as well as that of art in opposition to illusion.

Consider the effect of the sounds of cicadas at night on the people of the late prehistoric ages.

Startle, Settle

Become alert to the stir of sounds.

Perceive the apparently random character of disconnected sounds, widely separated and unrelated.

But this is narrow perception compounded by ignorance of the nature of things.  Attend to the rise and fall, the mingling and coalescing, the unity, dispersal, and dissolution that, seen and heard and sensed as change, is reality's essence.   Time means nothing in such unity as this, and nothing is arbitrary on this scale.

 As the listener may bring to realization, the composer may imagine and bring into being.

Sound Settings

In natural conditions the listener perceives the whole of the sonic environs and distinguishes its separate elements.

Accordingly, elements of sound composition may include producing representations of various sources, directions, and distances, equal in effect to the work's essential auditory structural components.

Even as recordings, such pieces as these do not lend themselves to superficial, immediate grasp and interpretation; they contribute, rather, to establishing long-term processes of active listening, passive hearing, and expansion of meaning.

Remote Sounds in Landscapes and Interiors

Causes in time past unfold now in events yet to be.

Sense the aural character of the moment in motion, trace its origins, hear its approaching outcomes.

This may not be music, but something uncanny; familiar, yet unknown.

Proximity and Correlation

Whether subjected to sounds or immersed in them by choice, the effects are tangible.

If the superficial and sensational are believed desirable, the mind will gravitate toward such things, find them in abundance, and access them easily.  But this is the province of narrow perspective.

A forward-thinking frame of mind demands much more of experience, and will vigorously exert all the efforts necessary to realize the fullness of life on a larger scale.

In the arts, it is imperative to create that experience.

Speculative Music Structures

The composer who proposes artistic works of a different order than those in common currency must, like Blake, be prepared to create a system suitable for these productions.

Speculation must be engaged in concrete terms and proved, often over prolonged periods, with patience and painstaking diligence.

As to my perspective, the composer determines conditions, defines limits, engages possibility and opportunity, then manipulates, shapes, and releases sounds into what become the environments that tones and gestures themselves create.

Gesture, Art, Sound

As speech imparts attitude, so clarity, volume, and texture of sound conveys it through the total effect of tone, with its combinations and juxtapositions serving to attract and direct the listener's attention.

A state of being at once contemplative and perceptually lucid will not be brought into being by the coarse artistic gesture, nor will it yield to such without reason.   Elevation of consciousness is a demanding goal, and the cultivation of mind and equanimity an arduous task, but these are worthy and virtuous aims for artist, listener, and composer alike.

Waves of Sound and Thought

Every listener is different; every sound is uniquely experienced.

Mood and attitude impact listening, as listening engages idea and emotional state of mind.

Thank You.

Prescience charts as Top 100 Ambient MP3 Best Seller at Amazon.com the 1st day of its release.

Being in Reality

Sound compositions constructed by placement of auditory imagery neither coerce attention nor yield to expectations.

In such conditions the listener is released from subjection to immediacy and the trifling ideas and events in common currency associated, consciously or not, with generic musical forms and their cultural settings.

These are essentially modern sound arrangements that welcome deeper thought, composure, and presence of mind.

Sweep

The sophisticated listener is generally aware of the elements of Western music and the history of its development, along with the evolution through creative synthesis of numerous genre forms.  There may also be, perhaps, some knowledge of archaic styles, non-Western sound compositions, and diverse cultural contexts related to musical ceremony and ritual.  This information can be acquired by experience and academic studies as well.

But all this is "given" in terms of the appreciation of music.  It is the standard norm in understanding, and the accepted received wisdom.

Far less often encountered in regard to the sound arts is an attitude of questioning and curiosity, and speculation regarding other possible interpretations and applications of auditory phenomena that may suggest other purposes and aesthetically pleasing experiences is rare.  These are simple questions:

Why is this the state and order of things?  What else might there be of equal or greater moment and value?

Yet, absent this spirit of inquiry, there is only stasis.

Sound Composition as Unfolding

Sounds as they occur in everyday environments are shaped by continually changing forces.

Perception of these sounds most often takes the forms of passive hearing and active listening in the course of movement through various activities, and is of an essential, primal nature.