To Strive and to Revolt

Dare to do, and dare again and again.

No artist need apologize for the range and scope of individual vision and arduous work, nor tolerate ignorance in the act of bringing forth light.

Functioning

Design implies purpose.

The composer recognizes artistic work as having abstract and concrete value.  Such things as are evident in analysis and experience of sound productions- aesthetic pleasure and interest as well as suitability for the listening environment can serve here as examples- are of essential significance.

Yet beyond the beautiful and finely-rendered, from my perspective, the most desirable effects are those of illumination, equanimity, and elevation.

Narrative

Music is typically recognized in the form of arrangement of sounds over time.

Culturally, musical styles emerge and diminish in impact and influence upon the public imagination according to various aesthetic, historical, and social forces.

Setting aside this grasp of form and formula altogether, contemplate sounds as basic elements to be manipulated according to aspects of artistic composition such as balance, line, spatial relationships, tone color, patterns, juxtaposition of dynamic reference points, and so forth.  From this perspective, I work at variance with general musical methodology, developing aural atmospheres reflecting sounds as they occur and are perceived in natural surroundings as well as social environments.

Anomaly

Listening involves more than what is generously termed "appreciation of music".

Perceptual clarity in apprehension of tone color, texture, and grasp of meaningful aural gesture, while easily developed, are rarely challenged and elevated in the normal course of the listening experience.

Depth of listening awareness enlivens consciousness of these subtleties and develops the inner ear of imagination.  This is an inborn faculty, far too often dulled by constant exposure to the mediocre and mundane, through both trite performances and poor quality sound reproduction systems.

Everywhere

Every setting offers sequences of perceptions.

Every sequence is uniquely that of the percipient.

In terms of sound, music- including cinematic sound design- is typically arranged to attract and hold the attention while directing it through a series of auditory events.

The compositions under discussion here, as the listener may notice in sampling them, are arranged to reflect natural perceptual fields in which the percipient is afforded opportunities to direct personal attention at will within aesthetically pleasing aural environments.

Setting, Space, Movement, Being

Hear the world.

Thought moves through language, then beyond words, as sounds move beyond music.

Imaginings

Perceive directly.  Otherwise awareness will be distorted through the filters of media culture.

At minimum, consider the reasoning that informs the various narratives of cultural events.  Clearly, some perspectives are realistic, others predicated upon the emotional desire for particular outcomes.

But reality conforms to no one; change is constant and inevitable, so it is wise to act in accord with nature, and with integrity.  Set aside those frames of reference outside one's individual approaches and interpretations of ideas and events, and reflect upon the significance of personal experience.

Listen, and hear the original imagination.

Finding Time

Social and cultural conditions-- and conditioning of behavior-- place time in the context of limits.

Within such limits life is constricted and state of mind grows fatigued.  It is natural to rebel against such temporal and existential burdens.

A fitting response to these conditions is one that expands perspective beyond narrow, linear attitudes toward the dimension of time through contemplative thought and activity.

Arts that reinforce heightened states of awareness contribute to a fuller understanding of the human condition, and, from a composer's point of view, it is through the arts of sound that such illumination may arise.

Mood, Tone, Atmospherics

Consider mood in terms of sound as evoking an emotional response.

Tone, then, may be considered to reflect the composer's attitude towards the subject of the work.

Essential, from my viewpoint, is a balanced perspective lending itself to a response of equanimity, whether in the process of composition or that of the listening experience.

Cultural Perceptivity

Moved by social and cultural forces, one encounters sounds that reflect diverse experiences.

Gravitating toward the most pleasurable aural forms that offer the greatest intellectual and emotional satisfaction, some find the sense of listening itself becomes enhanced, and consequently listener and composer develop the spirit of inquiry that leads to new, even as yet unknown, forms of artistic music-
or, given the nature of aesthetic experimental work, non-music.

Simple Elements

Complexity has its origins in the plain and clear.

In the perception of sound, unadorned beauty directs the listener to depth of experience.

Sense, Substance

Art is a constant consideration for its creators.  It is a term that is not used lightly.

There are poets, painters, authors, dancers and composers who demand everything of themselves. They expect nothing in return beyond the essence of their work.

Expression and gesture are ways of knowing and being; the artistic journey is one of significance and meaning. These are things that cannot be neglected, and are not set aside or forgotten.

Sounds Out of TIme

Subjective projection of emotion is an absurd imposition on works of art.

Yet music evokes nostalgia, particularly that of time, place, and personal experience.

Sound compositions designed to enhance atmosphere and state of mind are not contrived to bring about sentimental effects.  It is not "the moment" that is created or captured through art, but rather the perceptivity it evokes or restores.  This is art formed by aural imagery in the quest for heightened awareness-- elevation of mind and spirit-- not self-expression, cultural criticism, or political activism.

One Hand Clapping

Contemplation and stillness are their own rewards, yet they elevate perceptual acuity in active life.

Sound patterns stimulate and reflect emotions and ideas; thus the constancy of the popular musical genres with their attendant social and cultural phenomena. Yet this is not the entirety of the reality of sound and the profundity of its total effect.

For the composer and listener, sound imagery can be an expression of the fullness of being, a deep apprehension of a design greater than human understanding, and ultimately, a sense of mystery and possibility.

Apatheia

Give attention to the aural events of everyday surroundings.

Communication dominates attention. News, weather, opinion, entertainment, sports.

I want to communicate sounds to free consciousness, to bring states of mind into being through auditory imagery evoking equipoise, elevation, and equanimity.

Quiet Flux

Set aside preconceived ideas regarding "music".

Imagine sounds ordered to reflect elements and atmospheres of changing environments.

Sonic Sensibilities

The sounds of cultural life reveal both the inner and outer worlds.

Society and the individual create and move according to rhythms and patterns, some common and predictable, others obscure. The wise observer and participant understands the qualities of stillness and equanimity as also essential, being moderating and balancing forces.

These are conditions the composer and listener may directly influence in the course of events, both being percipients.

Other Dimensions

Aesthetic sound art is as accessible as listening, and hearing.

The composer may experiment, theorize, and speculate, exploring the range of possible aural forms while developing individual perspectives and methods over the course of decades.  Regardless, if the purpose and effect is that of the creation of the good and the beautiful, there can simply be no greater meaning than the integrity of work itself.

Each listening experience is its own.

Environmental Processes and Patterns

All atmospheres yield unique elements.

Rambling farmhouse surrounded by fields of broomstraw, ship's flight deck, midnight forest and urban marketplace all host sonic events that may soothe, shock, amuse, puzzle, or generate any number of responses in the listener's consciousness.

Separate, combine, juxtapose, evolve: these strategies and tactics create auditory imagery in the crucible of the inner ear, to be brought into being through the instrument of the studio using both primitive and highly technological sound production sources.

Expression into Experiences

Art begins with a percipient, then evolves through myriad processes to engages others' awareness.

For the composer, the art of sound offers the peculiar qualities of precisely conveying sound imagery while, paradoxically, providing the listener with an aural field of experiences open to a broad range of associations, ideas, and emotions, with which the composer cannot possibly be aware.

As listener, the composer enters the same field of sounds and becomes equally engaged, at times in unexpected and revealing ways.

Expansion

There is always the impulse to narrow perception of objects and events to superficial, subjective definitions.

Recognize, be receptive, or reject outright. But this is not aesthetic discrimination, the discernment of expression and meaning. For the listener, and composer as well, it is a matter of thought as well as experience. Mere openness or close-mindedness is not enough to contend with the complexities of reality and appearances, and is self-defeating.

To extend one's reach toward immersion in the good and the beautiful is to elevate awareness of the unity of being.

Mind and World at Large

Aesthetic pleasure is a function of intellect, feeling, and outwardly-directed perception.

Likewise, experience, heart, and mind inform introspection and reflection. The composer would do well whose works offer enhancements to both the inner and outer worlds of understanding.

There is no debate that these are faculties of a higher order than those of impulse and egocentric motivation, yet fullness of participation in human events is often reduced to superficiality and gross simplicity, and just as often this is the outcome of personal choice.

It is not the purpose of art to make wider, deeper experience effortless, but to make it possible.

Comparative Sound Structures

Music per se is brought into being in varied contexts of relationship to forms and formulas.

Rather than work in terms of standard methodologies and genre stylings, I develop and arrange aural compositions proportioned to those sounds occurring over the course of events in diverse natural and cultural environments.  Within these limitations atmospheres arise as reflections of real-world auditory phenomena.

Primal

Know sounds, distances, origins, enigmas.

Feel, and convey as percipient, sensation's tone and potentiality as living atmosphere.

Point and Overview

Awash in the trivial, one seeks a more fortifying perspective.

Transcendence of the mundane is not effortless.  One does not simply withdraw from something, but one withdraws to something else.  Seek the sounds of permanence, the sounds of the essences of things. There find reflections of the nature of reality in its abundance.

Ease of Knowing

Approach the perception of sound as a mystery to be revealed.

Mysterious is the expression of being, and everything it communicates.

Tone and Spirit

Out of surroundings, impressions.

Out of impressions, meaning. The objective and subjective combine; sounds emerge, and are directed to total effect.  Within aesthetic beauty, find recognition, perception of atmospheres, and in moments, strangeness, the uncanny.

Listening Range

Elevation of consciousness and the sensory perceptions are intimately linked.

But heightened awareness is dependent upon the spiritual faculties, those of reason and free will. If it is desirable to fully engage reality and enhance life and living, the parameters of one's understanding must be challenged and extended.  One does not simply say, "I will be more perceptive", and attain anything without knowledge and intent.

Clarity in thought and action is a choice, requiring reading the difficult works, grappling with greater ideas, contending with opinion and theory, and daring to listen, with the inner ear, beyond the given.

Once, Now: Modernism

Art does not change; perspectives do.

Those who fail to understand the modern lose connectivity to the origins and impulses of art.

The artist extends the reach of culture, as opposed to attempting to annihilate its aspects of meaning and permanence, those abstract elements of historical imagination clearly present in contemporary reality.

Aural Illuminations

Sound and setting contribute to sensory experience, state of mind, and emotional attitude.

Though artist and composer may strive for detachment and objectivity, the individual and personal will inevitably be part of process and outcome.  Reflections of the self will be brought to light with the work, yet they need not be motivation or focus of the work's tone and total effect.

Culture and Communication

The composer must be committed to the art and to the listener.

The listener begins with commitment to the art, with its cultural as well as personal connections. This is the engagement the composer shares.  One does not measure dedication and responsibility such as this in terms of gain and loss.

Eye, Ear, Mind

The inner ear of mind, like the eye of imagination, exists beyond temporal limits and conceives the extraordinary.

Yet refinement of the former rarely takes place, as the latter is given ascendancy of the senses. To envision a work of art in sound, one must listen, hear, and devise means to bring its elements into being.

Detail, Aural Sensation, Sensibility

Listening implies discernment.

In composition, do not fail to distinguish between the coarse and refined, the prominent and indistinct, and the plain in contrast to the subtle.  But do not fail to contemplate their presence as representative of natural reality, and thus, essential.

Hyperreality and Perspective

Consider creation and juxtaposition of aural imagery as imaginative reflection.

Clearly, observation of social norms indicates scenarios in which "perception is reality", when, in fact, no such reality exists, but rather one or another personal or cultural constructs that substitute for the objectively real world of phenomena and appearances.

What I am looking for, as an artist and aural composer, are representations, through sounds, of the real that are indicative of aesthetic perspective given to the world of humanity and nature, meant to open the imagination in ways that enhance, rather than falsify, experience and events.

Surrounding the Temporal

Sounds move in directions of openness and may be manipulated accordingly.

Time and space are aspects of the fabric of reality, but they need not define every perception, nor every form of artistic representation. Sound imagery, in particular, may elevate the imagination and the senses beyond temporal attachments.  Composer and listener do not make this happen, but allow it to take place.

Occurrences

Every event is multifaceted, the outcome of convergences of innumerable phenomena.

Meaning takes place individually, and selectively, as when witnesses respond to their perceptions of singular incidents.  Thus the composer chooses tones and sounds as poetic representations of sonic experiences, to be conveyed to the listener, laden with uncanny implications and possibilities.

Across Probablilties

Abstractions and known paradigms serve as starting points.

One speaks of such things as ambience, minimalism, indeterminacy, and so forth as matters of shared knowledge, yet realization of meaning comes through processes leading ultimately to total effect.

Speculation, for the composer, is action rising into being.

Opening

Certainly any listener gravitates toward the sounds that provide the most enjoyment, or, if you prefer, aesthetic pleasure.

Of particular interest are scenarios in which the sounds of the listener's surroundings generate that peculiar attraction that music, in the general sense, does not. These are the sounds of the human and natural world, sharing little more than qualities of tone and pattern with the elements of music, yet they possess a beauty, in totality of effect, that is uncanny in the sense of being simultaneously familiar, yet strange.

For the composer, this means coming to terms with the myriad aspects of such atmospheres, and, through aural experimentation, composition, and production, reflecting their virtues.

Aural Evocations

Simply put, life is a creative process, one that is immersed in sounds.

The universe of nature and humanity is equally one of imagination and spirit, and the atmospheres of living change combine every element, including those present nowhere else except in the inner ear.

Variability

Changes in the arts involve individual perception as well as aesthetic and theoretical developments.

One sees and hears, while another does not; gradually, shared perceptions gain clarity.  What was once apparently empty becomes filled, and culture gradually absorbs and expands with perceptivity.

Completeness, Timelessness

Every moment taken inwardly lifts the spirit.

Such is the way of permanence.  Listen, hear with fullness, and the source is joy.

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Settings

The sounds of all seasons compel attention to richness of experience, within and without.

It is not the sounds themselves, but the peculiar attitudes and atmospheres they convey, in subtle and sometimes incomprehensible forms, that lift the perceptions, emotions, and the spirit above the otherwise mundane and ordinary, even into places of idea and vision that can only be described as uncanny.

Filter and Field

Extending aural perception is a matter of focus and deliberation.

Where attention is turned away, search; when consciousness is open and aware, listen, and hear with the inner ear.  Discovery and realization drive both creative act and elevated understanding.

Stepping Stones

In conceptual experiments with sound, success and failure are of equal interest to the composer.

Consider, for example, a piece in which one part of the process in composition and performance is control, while other steps are left to chance, and the evolution of the artistic work in sound develops between the two.  Success emerges in the production of aesthetically beautiful sounds, yet failure brings the composition closer to realization.

Imagining Echoes

In listening and composing, broaden the range of the inner ear.

Survey possibilities and delineate sounds as a cartographer would in developing a three-dimensional map, noting not only expanses, landmarks and contours, but the movement of objects through time and space as well.

Absorption

Consider music as part of a time stream, and listening follows from point to point.

Consider, rather, an art of sound composed as an expanding moment of being, and be immersed within it.

Artificiality

Appearances increasingly lose reliability in the course of political and cultural conflicts.

The aesthetic sense, being evaluative in nature, in accord with moral reason, provides creative insight into chaotic scenarios generated by contending viewpoints.  From such a  perspective of equanimity, an unobstructed flow of perceptions and ideas is natural.

The composer would do well to bring sound imagery into being that reinforces consistent clarity of consciousness in approaching the phenomena of illusory and deceptive appearances.

Chance

Aleatoric art, the reader will note, integrates the idea of chance in the process of composition.

Ideas and elements of composition present themselves in unexpected ways in the art of aural imagery and may be transformed into the work in like manner.

Neither improvisation nor random activity in search of  a "happy accident", the aleatoric aspect of creative action provides for the aesthetic expression of perspectives on sound events as they evolve and are juxtaposed in the course of various works.  Whether in studio or in in the process of field recordings, this perspective is of high value in the creation of atmospheres that reflect "real world" perceptions of settings and vantage points in motion.

Material

Nature yields to impermanence.

To reflect upon the totality of available recorded music is to be aware of inevitable change.

Sound, System, Synthesis

Ultimately, the concept of music is undefined.

What is understood is the art of sound as it relates to individual and group sensibilities in subjective ways, while the objective outlines, analyses, and critical observations of technique, style, and expression carry equal weight in specialized cultural contexts.

I explore, ranging far afield.