Week 41 10/15/17

Ambient music is, first and foremost, music.  It follows various musical paradigms.

"Ambience" is its strength, that being its atmospheric and environmental qualities. Its weakness is predictability: one anticipates its development in musical terms.  Most listeners may find this to be agreeable, yet those with little interest in the style will likely find the experience boring, or less than adequate to their attention.

My interest as a composer of these works lies in the ambience, not in the "music"

I am in opposition to predictability, thus one who utilizes musical elements for purposes "other than the musical".  The object is to create aural metaphor, which is to say, representations of non-musical, atmospheric events as they exist in non-manipulated environments, whether natural or artificially constructed.  An illustration of the former, "natural" sound is the composition The Celestial Way, reflecting Yángshuò, China; the latter, or "man-made" sonic atmosphere may be heard in Night Traffic in Open Secrets, reflecting the municipalities of Beijing and Shanghai.

See below:

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The Celestial Way (Excerpt)  by Black Mountain School

Night Traffic in Open Secrets (Excerpt)  by Black Mountain School

Ancestral Shadows  by Ghost Radio Orchestra

© Crucibulum Publishing (ASCAP). All Rights Reserved. 
Compatible with iPod®, iTunes, Windows Media Player and other MP3 players.

Note from Crucibulum Media: 

All Black Mountain School and Ghost Radio Orchestra Albums may now be ordered directly from the publisher.

© The Crucibulum Media Recording Label; Crucibulum Publishing (ASCAP) All Rights Reserved.

Comments?  Questions?  mediaworks@ambimusica.com 

Week 40 10/8/17

Sound is perpetual.

The perceiver tends to become acclimated to environmental sounds, take them for granted, ignore them, and lose perception of them.

While there are numerous paradigms and methods for developing sound compositions, my interest is in manipulating artificial sounds with the goal of reconnecting the perceiver to the continuum of the sonic environment, at all times, anywhere and everywhere.

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Week 39 10/1/17

Perceive sound beyond the senses, through the imagination.

By doing so, heighten the awareness for those sounds that may be perceived. This requires conscious effort, thus a degree of difficulty few will attempt or sustain.

The rewards, nonetheless, for the composer, are commensurate with the task.  Some might suggest these perceptions attain to the borders of the paranormal, and this may not necessarily be a false or misguided perspective.

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Week 38 9/24/17

Perceptions inform consciousness: awareness.

Consciousness informs perception: visionary perspective.

Subjectivity informs perceptual consciousness: falsity.

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Week 37 9/17/17

Utilizing concepts associated with the composition of visual art, manipulate sounds.

The object is a composition created with the elements of music that is not music.

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Week 36 9/10/17

It is never the burden of the artist to accept or address cultural failure.

The failure of a culture to thrive and progress is a collective failure, with collective causes, not the failure of the individual. When the consequences of ignorance are groupthink result in the inability to distinguish objective reality from subjective appearances, cultural perspectives are devalued and degraded.

One may as well expect a stone to applaud the subtleties and dynamics of authentic artistic expression.  And the artist will not waste time seeking such things.

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Week 35 9/3/17

To evoke atmospheres, the composer must minimize the subjective.

The result, in the final expression, is a sense of vibration and the engagement of perception with as little interference, or influence of personal dynamic, as possible.

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Week 34 8/27/17

Widen and expand that which is narrow.

It is possible to listen, and hear, beyond commonly-perceived limits.  The same is true for the art of thinking, as it is so for all the creative arts.

Yet few will make the effort, and to do the work is a challenge only a very few will accept.

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Week 33 8/20/17

Events may be viewed as natural or contrived.

Those who attempt to control culture will be overcome by it.

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Week 32 8/13/17

Artistic expression often serves as a portal to the future.

Where doors are closed, one is looking in the wrong direction.

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Week 31 8/6/17

Authentic perspective lies in the transcendent.

But the word "transcendent" is ruined by shallow usage. Better to say, simply, it is a perspective that is rarely understood.

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Week 30 7/30/17

Momentum is a wave gathered in Memory.

Time Future is potential brought into being by Thought.

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Week 29 7/23/17

Authentic expression worthy of interest implies response, rather than unthinking reaction.

As information alone is of no value without interpretation and evaluation, so is artistic expression of a superficial nature lacking meaning.

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Week 28 7/16/17

Dream Machine is a forward thinking musical group from Austin, Texas.

As a free thinking individual, it is my pleasure to recommend the music of DREAM MACHINE.

DREAM MACHINE

on FUZZCITY RECORDS

Week 27 7/9/17

Look, it cannot be seen; listen, it cannot be heard.

Only the artist understands.  And this is the penalty paid by those cultures who demand creativity they will not support because they cannot comprehend that which transcends the mundane.

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Week 26 7/2/17

American music may be compared to radiation, moving in every direction.

It is rooted in a source of American impulse, that of striving, and driving, toward freedom.

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Week 25 6/25/17

Step away from conditioning.

Look ahead, listen ahead.  Do not simply accede to the given narrative of culture.

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Week 24 6/18/17

The limits of the mind are unknown.

The limits of perception may be extended beyond the narrow confines of subjectivity.

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Week 23 6/11/17

Subjective emotion is not reality, as the wretched, apparently, would require others to believe.

Examples are so plentiful as to be ubiquitous, and are found in every contemporary arena. There is no greater evil in expression, artistic or otherwise, than that which uses the truth to bear false witness.

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Week 22 6/4/17

Ideological expression is no more than a political statement, and politics is the death of art.

Artistic expression related to politics is nothing unless it involves the world that is larger than mere politics.  What is called "political awareness" is facile abstraction in the greater context of human consciousness and experience.  It is a pathway, and a small part of a pathway, toward a higher view of reality.  And it is at a far, far distance from any summit.

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Week 21 May 28, 2017

The reader will have noted the cultural pretense that "the arts" are of essential importance.

This is nothing more than a sham perpetuated by academic, political, and cultural interests  The arts have been suppressed and manipulated in service to illiberal agendas for over a half-century, and this is the current state of affairs. For the artist there is only knowledge and the capacity to act, if freedom to do so becomes possible.

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Week 20 May 21, 2017

Give attention to the setting.

Consciousness expands, engaging reality and sensory awareness.  This is understanding separate and distinct from the social, cultural, and political abstractions that encompass daily pursuits.

This is experience revealed in elevated expression.

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Week 19 5/14/17

To the nihilist, there is no purpose or reason, thus there is no judgement.

The artist is explorer and discoverer.  The concerns of the artist are no different, and culturally, worthless opinions are nothing new, and indeed, nothing at all.

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Week 18 5/7/17

Many find "ambient music" desirable as a retreat from the stresses of contemporary life.

This is worthwhile as a beginning of understanding.  Plainly, we are conditioned to certain ideas that produce expectations of life and our place within it. We expect "intensity" and it is expected of us. We expect "extremes" and believe them to be "normal" within the scheme of things.  But this is a kind of programming that is deleterious to elevated states of being and consciousness.

It is necessary to discern what stresses in our experience lead us to clearly appreciate the cultural expressions that directly oppose them.  Gaining a fundamental sense of such things, rather than ignoring them in a specious "quest for authenticity", makes perceptual change permanent, rather than simply possible.

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Week 17 4/30/17

No individuality?  No art.  There can be no tolerance for any such scenario.

Art is impossible in any collectivist setting.  There, find no more than propaganda. This is the totalitarian groupthink that led to the destruction of both the music and motion picture industries.

And certainly this is an ideological perspective, one of personal and creative freedom.

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Week 16 4/23/17

Order, like chaos, develops according to contributing factors.

This is an incontrovertible fact.  For the artist, it is the origin of cultural and creative choice.

Week 15 4/16/17

Act without restraint.  Work outside the cultural and social norms.

Mediocrity will not be tolerated, and its artificially prolonged effects will be short lived.  What follows then is the decision of the artist, and no one else.

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Unreleased Track:  Shipping Forecast   (10:17)

Week 14 4/9/17

Culture directed only towards its lowest expressions can only decay.

                                                                                          Image 2000

And the restoration of culture will only occur outside the purview of the academic liberal arts.

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Obscure Terrain  by Black Mountain School

Delmarva (Excerpt)  by Black Mountain School

The Voice of Time in Gold  by Ghost Radio Orchestra

© Crucibulum Publishing (ASCAP). All Rights Reserved. 
Compatible with iPod®, iTunes, Windows Media Player and other MP3 players.

Note from Crucibulum Media: 

All Black Mountain School and Ghost Radio Orchestra Albums may now be ordered directly from the publisher.

© The Crucibulum Media Recording Label; Crucibulum Publishing (ASCAP) All Rights Reserved.

Comments?  Questions?  mediaworks@ambimusica.com 

Week 13 4/2/17

Culture unravels, then reforms.

Thus culture reflects a specious novelty, and appears to be something it is not, being expressive of ancient impulses that change very little, if at all.

Nonetheless, one may look ahead, with great difficulty, in the direction of expressions that do not yet exist.  Otherwise they will never come into being.

Ambimusica.com

Obscure Terrain  by Black Mountain School

Delmarva (Excerpt)  by Black Mountain School

The Voice of Time in Gold  by Ghost Radio Orchestra

© The Crucibulum Media Recording Label; Crucibulum Publishing (ASCAP) All Rights Reserved.

Comments?  Questions?  mediaworks@ambimusica.com 

Week 12 3/26/17

Finished work demonstrates mastery of knowledge, judgement, and skill of execution.

Conceptual sound composition demands process and production equal to the artist's vision.

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Week 11 3/19/17

Creative freedom cannot be conferred, or earned.  It must be seized.

Like every choice, the creative act implies risk, reward, and consequences. This demands grace, if the end result is to possess meaning.  

Ambimusica.com

Obscure Terrain  by Black Mountain School

Delmarva (Excerpt)  by Black Mountain School

The Voice of Time in Gold  by Ghost Radio Orchestra

© Crucibulum Publishing (ASCAP). All Rights Reserved. 
Compatible with iPod®, iTunes, Windows Media Player and other MP3 players.

Note from Crucibulum Media: 

All Black Mountain School and Ghost Radio Orchestra Albums may now be ordered directly from the publisher.

© The Crucibulum Media Recording Label; Crucibulum Publishing (ASCAP) All Rights Reserved.

Comments?  Questions?  mediaworks@ambimusica.com 

Week 10 3/12/17

Progress is an awakening to possibilities.

Situational awareness is the discernment of the right moment to actively create.

Ambimusica.com

Obscure Terrain  by Black Mountain School

Delmarva (Excerpt)  by Black Mountain School

The Voice of Time in Gold  by Ghost Radio Orchestra

© Crucibulum Publishing (ASCAP). All Rights Reserved. 
Compatible with iPod®, iTunes, Windows Media Player and other MP3 players.

Note from Crucibulum Media: 

All Black Mountain School and Ghost Radio Orchestra Albums may now be ordered directly from the publisher.

© The Crucibulum Media Recording Label; Crucibulum Publishing (ASCAP) All Rights Reserved.

Comments?  Questions?  mediaworks@ambimusica.com 

Week 9 3/5/17

Some actions are within the power and will of the artist, while others are not.

The power of well-reasoned human perception cannot be overestimated.  Clarity of awareness is light in darkness.

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Week 8 2/26/17

All that is free requires the strength to dream.

That which will be elevated begins with foundations, these being concrete and abstract, ancient and immediate.  Prepared for anything, one acts upon what is possible.

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Week 7 2/19/17

The artist must open the perceptions of the audience.

Any restoration of cultural expression demands individual freedom of thought.  Opposition to collective oppression and the lockstep regimentation of ideological conformity is essential.

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Week 6 2/11/17

The "cosmopolitan" fails to grasp the freedom others cannot take for granted.

If freedom of expression is to exist, even that which is offensive must be tolerated.

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Week 5 2/4/17

Look ahead.

Imagine the possibility of free expression, and realize the artist is a minority of one.

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Week 4 1/28/17

Objectivity demands effort.  False narratives are effortless.

Refine the essential insight that distinguishes between appearances and the real and thus know what is possible, what may be realized, and what is nothing more than gibberish.

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Week 3 1/21/17

Now listen, and hear.

What first appears to be the poison may, in reality, be the cure.

The continuing dearth in cultural expression and innovation is no fault of the artist.

The artist has not failed culture.  Culture has failed the artist.  In music, film, mixed media of all kinds, literature, and the arts as a whole, political ideologies have usurped the means by which individual artists convey their works, corrupting this "delivery system" by eliminating all voices except those that conform to collectivist perspectives and repressing their work in the cultural milieu. Of course this is unacceptable.  It is an affront to humanity.

Ultimately supplanting the advancement of cultural vision altogether, this insidious, infantile, "utopian totalitarianism", everywhere visible, is enforced by a false narrative of "public acclaim" maintained by academia, multinational corporations, and a sycophantic mass media.

Government funding of the arts is one tool by which this odious scenario has been perpetuated for decades. Should the opportunity to end this practice become possible, think twice before reflexively condemning it, as you may have been unwittingly conditioned to do. Ending government subsidies for the arts may not take the boot off the neck of the artist, but, as a beginning, it will lessen the weight.

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Week 2 1/14/17

It is not enough to think against the grain.

One must think, and act, beyond the horizon.

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Week 1 1/7/17

The composer must do more than listen, and must hear potential.

In critical terms creative and perceptual, to listen, and to hear must equate to vision.

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Post Two Thousand

The first Ambimusica post was made June 29, 2011.

"Experimental" musical methods that can not be replicated are, by nature, failures.  Successful methods, on the other hand, are meant to be applied and developed in finished works.

And so the work continues.

For the time being, the Ambimusica blog will be updated weekly, rather than daily.

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Preconceptions

One must distinguish between appearance and reality.  This cannot be overstated.

It is possible to listen without understanding, and to understand without listening.

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