Consequently, perceive atmospheric qualities, sense tone, depth, illusions of distances, apparent patterns. Yet this is something that is not the same as "music", nor is it meant to be so.
One artist's business is to bring these understandings within reach, while another abandons them for social, cultural, and political agendas. Discern the reality.
Sound intellect is not conferred by academic degrees, but developed by painstaking application of moral reason.
The historic cycle dominated by the collectivist mentality of the past century is coming to a close with the worst of its elements collapsing in full view of the astute cultural observer. Following this state of affairs, the self-reliant will prosper, and mere propaganda will be transcended by the force of individual expression that will appear in entirely unexpected, visionary ways.
It is necessary to convey understanding of reality. This is essential in times when false judgments are taken for literal fact, history is re-scripted to suit political agendas, and culture is manipulated with the intent of silencing individual expression.
Nikola Tesla observed the essential nature of "energy, frequency, and vibration" in reality.
Additionally, Tesla encouraged inquiry into "non-physical phenomena". Examine such observations as they relate to "music" etc., but beyond this, in relation to auditory perception generally, and to non-musical constructions and their effects.
The issue is the application of music to social and cultural situations in which music, "as we know it", is not optimal. This is always the case when music demands the listener's full attention, and, though it is less intrusive when it simply invites attention, it may still become a distraction.
Reading, thinking, conversation, and things of this nature do not benefit from distractions, and sound developed and expressed for these scenarios must be conducive to being relaxed, yet alert.
Brian Eno's ambient music develops rarefied musical events to evoke this stage of consciousness; I have been developing, over the past decade, a means to a singular, and to the extent possible, an over-arching, non-musical, atmospheric and environment effect with disparate implications.
To paraphrase Poe, it is a total effect designed as a singular, overarching expression, suitable for the aforementioned occasions, and for the expansion of consciousness. Yet, as I have since verified in academic practice, it has additional, peculiar effects, such as allowing, thus increasing, individual focus of attention on other activities, and providing extended relief from such challenges as ADHD.
While not intentional, this is nonetheless a proven fact, verified by objective results, and a welcome artistic development, with possible applications to PTSD as well. This necessitates continuing experimentation, study, and review.
Invention and discovery demand trial, assessment, and verification.
Experimentation allows risk, while the introduction of something entirely new, for an entirely new purpose, requires caution.
Terms must be defined, understanding assured, before experience becomes clear, as it will in the course of the coming creative dynamic and presentation. To listen will be to hear with new ears.
We are all familiar with the common sounds of music, with the genres, and the "artists". Do not be fooled. There is always more to discover, but there is the unknown, and risk, to consider.
Envision nuance and pattern. These are auguries of direction, movement, and meaning.
Awareness becomes intensified, and more direct, encompassing a broader spectrum of perceptual reality. In terms of auditory sensitivity, listener, artist, and composer share aesthetic interest and purpose. But this is an abstract proposition, and only as good as it yields concrete experience in listening that is subjectively enjoyable for some, and objectively so for others.
Regardless, "music culture" and its adherents cannot dictate direction to that which is not music.
Nor are those whose sensibilities are essentially stupid and banal expected to grasp its virtues.
Situational awareness involves more than knowledge of the state of circumstances.
Of equal, if not greater, importance is the locus of perception. This center of awareness may expand to an elevated set of impressions of the surrounding environment, extending to the auditory as well as the visual and other senses. This is simply to say that the more that is known, the more that can be known in terms of consciousness and creativity, particularly as applied to problem-solving, whether concrete or abstract in nature.
The artist and composer will do well to actively see, and to listen, and to envision in such a manner.
Listen, and hear, becoming aware of the preponderance of musical artifacts.
This is the consequence of a long standing, selective process of exclusion of musical artists from the commercial cultural setting, specifically in the pursuit of extravagant political agendas.
Music culture must evolve naturally, because manipulation of musical culture destroys it.
I am, in fact, promoting an aesthetic concept and concrete idea of sound that is not music.
It is, of course, sound designed with an entirely different purpose than that of music, and one which frees, rather than dominates, the listener's consciousness, with none of the emotional manipulation that is expected of "musical entertainment".
It is the type of concept commonly viewed as "disruptive".
There is a difference between daybreak and twilight.
To generate representations of environments requires transformation and conversion.
The composer must, through myriad means, transform perceptual imagery into sound, and convert the impressions of the senses, particularly the visual and tactile, as well as the auditory, into authentic arrangements of imaginative sound. And what composer and listener hear must be complete in evocative experience.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
