Flow, Circulation, Involvement

Observe with care.

Subtle variations in sound evince changes in the surrounding atmosphere.

Sense and Sensation

The art of the narrative may reveal mysteries, or conceal them.

For those who choose to experience the fullness of the world of experience, the language of understanding is difficult, and, some will say, unnecessarily complex.

Yet, its complexity must be in inverse proportion to the simplicity it makes clear.

Causation

Certainty regarding the nature of reality yields particular expectations of experience.

Such certainty defies the rapidity of change, and expectations are constantly unraveling.  Ideas set in motion in past centuries move toward resolutions not yet imagined.

The expressions of artist and composer do not always reflect and support the ideals and fashions of the present day; according to their individual perspectives, the past and future are unfolding together, and thus their peculiar expressions are constantly changing and emerging.

Auditory Observation

Pause and take note of irregular sounds.

Cognizant of the formations of sound outside the scope of mundane events, one one gains awareness of their multifarious aspects, increasingly becoming conscious of the fact that these aural phenomena are not as rare as they might initially seem.

What is rare is the ability to discern their presences within the common noises of the day.

Light and Tone

Sounds, and the effects they produce, vary in intensity and may be interpreted differently from one setting to another.  Though the effects are not as pronounced, the same is true for artistic visual representations.

Additionally, as variation in lighting of scenes and objects produces aesthetic and emotional reactions in the visual arts, so tone color, acoustic clarity, and the character of aural images may be designed to evoke impressions that contribute to the poetic meanings of sound productions.

Beat Time, Wind

Art's origins and endings are those of perception, imagination, and expression.

The young are assembled, then taught how to shake rattles, slap sticks and pound cans in unison, opening the doors of rhythm.  As rhythm excites and holds sway, to dominate and define emotional connections to sound, less attention is given to the myriad ways sounds become manifest through other processes of culture and nature.

But as perception and imagination will not be limited, so will expression bring forth reflections upon other forms of sound, and other ways of listening.

Anywhere

Settings dominated by noise hinder clarity of perspective, jarring the most even-tempered nature.

It is not necessary or desirable to shut out the world; what is prudent and essential is to restore and sustain a sense of balance and equanimity in one's life and surroundings.

This process, too, is an art.

Moments of Clarity

Instances of direct perception may take place in any setting, without the necessity of preparation.

It is as if, while engaged in the business of life, the world of external reality suddenly presents itself to the senses and demands acknowledgement, in full, of being, in and of itself.

Any art may serve as the medium through which such experiences become real.  The art of sound lends itself to evolving atmospheres that are conducive to evoking, and sustaining, such insight and awareness.

Recognition

Voices, machines, the auditory phenomena of nature and cultural activity are familiar to the listener.

The argument might be made that we are more intimately acquainted with the sonic properties of recorded music and speech than with the aural qualities of our own environments, the unintended consequence of advancements in sound reproduction over the past century.

For listener and composer, such a proposition implies the necessity for contemplative experience with regard to perceptual awareness, and the need for listening, and hearing, with the inner ear.

Depth, Distance, Shape

The vantage point is a hillside looking down upon a river some two hundred yards below, and above the treeline.

A steady and prolonged gust of wind blows between the riverbanks, from the water level to upwards of the treetops, a vast current of rushing air, approaching in the distance, following the flow, and fading down the distant waters like the passing of a ghost train, almost visible, vaguely palpable, then gone away, a thing alive, a living sound.

The composer would do well to bring the merest reflection of such an experience into being.

Impression to Expression

Sensory perceptions take place sequentially, within the limits of time and space.

But the mind is not so restricted, and the imagination may conceive extraordinary possibilities.

Consider a painting that represents a subject from numerous perspectives and according to differing qualities of light simultaneously.  It is nonetheless a representation of reality, and reflects the artist's aesthetic sense, as can sounds arranged in nuanced, unified compositions that represent elements of changing, evolving environments.

Such works in sound may strike the ear, in comparison with other musical compositions, in ways similar to those that cubist landscapes appear to the eye, that is to say, as somewhat uncanny in contrast with "realistic" paintings or photographs.

Their strange familiarity, and even their beauty, invite a change of viewpoint and attitude in regard to the art of listening.

Consciousness and Purpose

As the mind may be improved through effort and experience, so may the sensory perceptions be refined.

Challenging literature enhances reason; analytic thought is rewarded, over time, by intuitive grasp of ideas, insight into events, and clarity in understanding character as well as the human condition.

Vision and hearing are sharpened by attention to nuance and detail, as are all the senses. When due consideration is given to contemplative and aesthetic pursuits, self-discipline and equanimity in active life are preserved and strengthened.

When the arts elevate and support the activities of everyday life, the individual thrives, and the culture may do so as well.  In times when the situation is otherwise, personal responsibility sustains, even as the world at large is diminished.

The Turning Wheel

Boethius (480- 524 A.D.), author of the Consolation of Philosophy, viewed music as art.

These compositions reflect the idea that we hear with the mind as well as with auditory perception, and that within this inner ear we listen in much the same way as we view art, in a contemplative state of mind and being.  Being capable of hearing much more than merely those things that assault the senses and dominate the attention, I’m interested in creating on the other end of the spectrum, and these works attest to that fact.

Pressure, Clarity, Flux

Extravagant cultural structures exist for purposes of defining and influencing collective understanding.

Diverse subjects, and especially those connected to the arts, politics, religion, media, and social relationships, are continuously under the critical scrutiny of various specialists in related fields and disciplines.  These observers wield extensive and powerful influence, certainly, but their authority dissipates over time in the face of change.

When creative perspectives change over time, essential artistic representations of reality reflect the ideas and theories of forward-thinking, risk-taking individuals. Their impact is far reaching, and should not be underestimated.

Along the Course of Ideas

A thousand observations trace a stream of thought.

Developed throughout are propositions concerning sound as an art medium, sound forms contra music, consciousness informed by the auditory sense, the contrasting natures of hearing and listening, the aesthetics of sound manipulation, peculiar perspectives on ambient music and pop culture, and among other thoughts, the concepts of moral reason, the permanent things, and the good.

Interestingly, from the point of view of composer and listener, any of these notes may be accessed at random and combined to further suggest ever-expanding concepts as well as larger, perhaps more valuable, questions.

Intent, Opposing Conditioning

Simply put, the experience of sound involves varying degrees of subjective attention.

Hearing demands little conscious effort; listening may be refined into a powerful skill, a true art.

Shapes and Gestures

Sound fills physical and temporal spaces.

The listener responds according to temperament and individual aesthetic sense, and, as is generally the case with musical compositions, in rapport with widely ranging sensibilities.

But there are contrasts between music for stylistic expression and atmospheric sound compositions, namely the purposes and sonic effects of each.  One dominates attention (and this is the case with a number of ambient forms), while the other enhances state of mind and being.

Connect and Disconnect

Observe those so dependent upon technology for communication they cut themselves off from the outside world.

This is clearly an effect of continuous, selective absorption of information through various electronic media, a diminishing of consciousness reflecting subjection to immediacy, the instantaneous direct involvement and vicarious participation in representations of culture interconnected media systems afford. The individual accustomed to such constant, passive stimuli is rendered insensible, to some extent, to direct perception and communication.

Rather than contribute to the stultifying effects of scenarios like these, I am interested in developing artistic compositions in sound that direct the percipient toward full and heightened awareness and experience.

Form, Reason, Insight, Expression

Consider the sine qua non of moral reason to existential matters. Still, its limits are clear.

The essential nature of intellect and the capacity to grasp the nature of reality through thought and evaluative judgement can hardly be overstated, but there is no doubt that conscience, intuition, and direct perception advance awareness and understanding beyond linguistic apprehension.

Well-balanced aesthetic sensibility reflects as well as appreciates this contrariety in both means of knowing and ways of articulating artistic perspectives.   For the artist as composer, this balance is the nexus of meaning within the work.

Art and Action

One muses, one gives due consideration to ideas, thinks creatively, and communicates.

Environments conducive to contemplative thought allow free reign of imagination and conscious focus of attention, so atmosphere can make a vital contribution to such things as problem solving, analysis and evaluative work, conversation, and reading. The aforementioned activities, being essential to any information-based culture, require the vitality of sound compositions that specifically enhance state of mind and critical thinking.

The composition and production of music serve innumerable purposes, yet most are directly related to entertainment and diversion.  Increasingly, the evolution of culture will demand changes in the arts of sound to accommodate that progress, and the art of listening will change accordingly.

Reflections and Shadows

There are schools of thought that consider disorder and distracted states of mind to be cultural norms that an unspecified "we" must acclimate ourselves to in order to cope with contemporary reality.

Supercilious posturing and rationalizations concerning failures of self-possession and restraint aside, it remains for the artist to counter untenable views and simplistic visions by example.

Works representing clarity of consciousness and moral reason afford far greater understanding than argumentation and debate allow.  One capable of original thought will exercise that ability.

Waiting

Abandoned military vehicle parked at the edge of the woods, seen across an open field.

Suddenly, perspective changes; senses are heightened, and sounds of whippoorwill and insect appear very clear and close.  Yet nothing extraordinary is taking place, beyond a quickening of consciousness.  A zone is crossed and a transition from one state of being to another occurs.

Men appear in service uniforms, place surveyor's tools in the back of the vehicle. The engine engages; sound of approach.  They wave.  Friendly.  They drive away; the sound of the motor recedes down the road.  Now crickets, tree frogs, perhaps.  Rustle of leaves.  Distant drone of air traffic.

Conversation turns to other things, and sounds go unattended.

Such is one example of the manner in which sounds may be perceived with altered awareness; when listening attention turns to sound settings that contrast with the paradigms of music and expectations are set aside, the peculiar force of auditory perception is enhanced in striking ways.

Imagery in Consciousness

Sound is ephemeral, but leaves lingering impressions.

In its familiar forms, sound is structured to seize and hold attention, and is thus focused on patterns played out in time as a vehicle for expression of idea and emotion, whether simple or sophisticated, utilizing the same elements of music.

Lay aside these common elements, and observe how formlessness in sound liberates thought and feeling, releasing awareness within atmospheres conducive to contemplative activities.

Regard and Response

Experience of art entails engagement with its scope, content, detail, and meaning.

Perception encompasses wide ranges of attention, from general awareness to intense focus. For the artist as composer, this occasions a broad range of colors from the palette of sounds, transformative manipulation of diverse sonic elements, and designs to beguile the discriminating listener, one who has grown increasingly bored with bombast and orhwurm.

Presences

Sounds communicate the essences of reality.

Consciousness, perspective, sensory impressions, ideas, and emotions informed by sounds convey, in turn, experiences to the individual and the culture at large.  Always in flux, the myriad attributes of these experiences, both personal and social, reflect states of being and of civilization as well. For the artist as composer, every contribution is one of practically unlimited meaning,

Artificiality and Detachment

Pop culture, like any other, has periods of vitality and decline. Historically, prolonged decline foreshadows extensive change.

Conversely, at a distance from the vicissitudes of popular attention, music composed to enhance clarity of perception engages emotional balance and intellectual vigor.

Terra Incognita

Think in linear terms and move accordingly.

Predictability has its virtues, depending on outcomes and goals.  Methodologies and techniques, for example, are crafted to assure specific outcomes that can be reproduced.

If, on the other hand, it is necessary to set aside the given in order to reveal unknown possibilities, there will be no advancement without acceptance of risk, and linear thought is an obstacle to be overcome.  This is a choice among many the artist must make in pursuit of aesthetic integrity.

Projection of Imagining

Somewhere in time past, something is happening that directly impacts the moment now.

Even in the moment now, it can be heard in time future, with the will to listen to the inner ear.

Visual Sounds, Sonic Symbols

Imagery shares like qualities in visual and aural forms.

Subtlety, color, brightness, shading, and tone quality are important to both visual and auditory perception, enhancing clarity of understanding and experience of life as well as art.

Such appreciation cannot be overemphasized; to recognize and absorb aesthetic beauty is essentially human, and to lose sense of it tends toward individual and cultural decline.

Futurity: Evolving Perspectives

Music does not exhaust its essential qualities, but these may become superfluous to the discriminating listener.

But beyond the essential components-- instrumentation, tempo, rhythm, melody, harmony, percussion-- the listener no longer hears what can be called music, but undefined sounds in indeterminate forms.

As nothing more than inarticulate outbursts, such sounds are of no consequence.

Wrought with aesthetic purpose, however, they are of far-reaching impact and will ultimately have profound significance, rendering what is now the common fare obsolete.

The Art of Working

Artistic composition reflects method and technique, elevated by imagination.

Consequently, the spectator, percipient, and audience experience representations of reality according to myriad perspectives, from the plain and simple to the sophisticated and critical.

Regardless, labor focused upon clarity and integrity of expression conveys universal meanings.

Grasp and Release

The appeal of generic musical forms lies in their reflections of particular states of mind and emotion.

Forms in opposition rely on the same elements, particularly rhythms, and have the same appeal.

Then let us move away, outside, and beyond both scenarios, and direct the attention to different states of consciousness altogether.

Clearly,  these will be, in their diversity, more directly perceptual, contemplative, and reasoning in nature; they will be reached through different constructs of aesthetically purposeful sounds.

Shallows

The arts directly impact culture, just as they reflect it.

Among the impressions of the day are those that signal subjectivity and narrow predisposition, that is to say, intentionally incomplete perspective, on a variety of subjects.  For many this is acceptable-- it is the given, or the "received wisdom" in regard to cultural phenomena.

But the way of the artist is to broaden viewpoints, hazard the depths, propose possibilities, establish limits for their defining principles in expression (or exceed them for aesthetic purposes), and in doing so continually advance human awareness, clarifying the mysteries of life and consciousness.

To do less is to do very little indeed.

Outage

The power goes out, and most of the technology goes with it.

The ear adjusts to what we call silence as the eye adjusts to apparent darkness, and the sounds of the real surround consciousness.  This too is music, continuous music of unexpected beauty, always present yet rarely perceived.

Disconnection, Immersion

Technology may serve a variety of purposes, or be no more than a diversion.

In the former case, technology may yield increase in capability, expanding potential; yet it is clearly the latter that occupies the attention with little in the way of reward. Here, in fact, is an example of a situation in which power of choice rests with the individual will, and the artist acts accordingly.

Expression as Reflection

I want the listener to hear reality as I hear it.

By this I do not mean literally, as a recording of a particular environment would capture the sounds of nature or a cultural event.  Instead, listen through means of the stylized forms of aural imagery these compositions represent, as perceptual impressions, and hear the reality that is often obscured in the course of commonplace events.

Transit

Absent reason and virtue, there is clamor.

In the rise and fall of things, storms subside and reality returns to its natural state. Upon reflection, listener and composer discern between conditions that are auspicious and those that foreshadow weakness, collapse, and loss.

Every creative work is a contribution to culture. Within the culture the work is embraced or rejected, yet the artist must be indifferent to this.  Advancement or decline will proceed in either case.  What is of moment is expression and perspective, from which the future will spring.

Tradition and the Modern

Creative impulse intersects with past expression in terms of universality and the permanent things.

These permanent things retain their vigor and value beyond temporal boundaries. They are the ideas and values reflecting self-evident good in all cultures, and while time may alter their expression over generations, it does not erase them.

Every work of every composer and artist reveals a raw measurement of what they know against the vastness of what they do not know.  In the fullness of time, things that cannot now be perceived will become manifest, yielding more to be imagined.

Placing Noise at a Distance

Choose to listen.

This apparently simple suggestion is fraught with absurd complexity and indecision, neither of which is worthy of comment.  Suffice it to say that one should refuse to allow oneself to be subjected to the meaningless and contemptible, making time instead for those things of aesthetic value that reflect the virtues of beauty and moral reason.

Revolt

Unequivocally, the arts propel culture.

Media and its delivery systems are mere conveyances.  It is content that imparts the richness of human experience, or paucity thereof.

The artist must strive for the heights of consciousness and refinement of vision, indifferent to success or failure, else, even in the prime of age, suffocate in a miasma of subjection to immediacy, the ever-present puerility of mediocrity.

Painting with Sound

The setting begins in a silent way.

But the canvas is never completely blank.  Experience and reason suggest mood; tone color forms, brightens and shades the atmosphere; patterns move within limits, as do sound perceptions altered by movement.  Aural events emerge, evolve, and disperse over the course of the work, one of aural imagery, emotion, and imagination, enhanced by the individuality of the composer's palette and the listener's state of mind.

Without Expectations

Bring perception of the uncanny into being.

Combine sounds and the settings each suggests-- beach arcade, distant desert, and the breeze down an antique hallway, for example.  Separately they are heard and known; yet together they mingle to evoke a sense of simultaneous strangeness and familiarity.

While the mundane, that is to say, the generic, is instantly recognized, that which is not easily grasped awakens a sense of awe, and with it, curiosity and questions.

The way of the artist is to move in such directions.

The Moment and the Contemplative

The inner ear captures meaning and aural perception, absorbing these as knowledge and memory.

Reflection yields creativity, in both art and life; it enlivens and elevates the sensibilities of listener and composer alike.

Works in Development

The processes of perception, sound, and art are a constant with the composer.

Every engagement with the work calls for refinement, and every moment of understanding requires patience, moral reason, intuition, and clarity of consciousness.  There is neither gain nor loss, only the expansion and persistence of change.

Elements and Principles

Random sounds or contrived, unstructured sounds are merely those things and nothing more.

Aesthetic sound composition need not be subject to the structures and generic forms of music, yet it becomes elevated by virtues found in the visual arts, which include balance, contrast, unity, and such subtle aural features as those of tone, color, line, movement, texture and direction.

Brought into being accordingly, the relationships established between diverse sounds, tones, and juxtapositions of aural imagery create atmospheric effects of great beauty and interest that neither standard musical stylings nor indiscriminate auditory gestures capture.

Air of the Day

Seize awareness of the surroundings, that is to say, take conscious notice of transition in movement and atmosphere in place.

Sidewalk, recreation hall, vacant lot, country road, dunes, riverside trail, apartment balcony, school campus, boat dock, high plains, old growth forest, shopping center, wildlife sanctuary- brimming with sounds.

Given musical form, representations of natural, spontaneous sound events may engage the ear in the manner that listening takes place in non-musical environments.

Motion Perspective

Movement through sonic space produces a wide range of perceptual effects.

Innumerable sounds collide and mix in combinations of distorted flux and bright clarity, whether the percipient, the auditory imagery, or both are in motion.

Compositions may be designed in such a way as to reflect these peculiar events, and production may enhance them, yet they are most pronounced in environments that are suited to activity. Whether set within astutely crafted art installations or well laid out living environments, open, fluid areas provide the most desirable situations for music made for heightened and immersive listening.

Gain, Not Loss

Release sounds from common structures.

Let them flow without consideration of tempo, beginning, middle, end.  At first the effect is strange, and understood, through cultural conditioning, within the narrow confines of disorder, or falling apart.

Yet with subtle framing and a minimum of interference on the part of the composer, these sound elements may evolve into forms and patterns of aesthetic beauty, and this points in the direction of the greater order of things.

Eccentricities

Look deeply in the places where others briefly glance.

Listen carefully for the sounds that go unnoticed in the course of things.

What is strange is the fascination with spectacle, absurdity, and the specious distractions that ensnare the imagination; what is real is direct experience, insight, and the flux of the timeless moment.

Mood, Idea, Emotion

Sounds direct the mood of the listener, sometimes directly and at other times unconsciously.

This direction of impression and reaction is clearly a primary role of sound in film and in other media. Such is the manipulation of sentiment.  Excitement, sadness, fear, rage, suspense, and so on may be generated by auditory and visual imagery, even when the result is existentially absurd.

To encourage emotional reaction rather than thoughtful response obviously devalues reason.  To do so through musical bombast and other means of over-saturation of the senses is common. These are the tools of propaganda and other forms of cultural influence and control.

I compose works in opposition to those that produce such effects, designed to balance and liberate feeling, being, and state of mind.