Earth and Water, Fire and Air

Elements of sketch music include representations of sounds within environments, some completely natural and others reflecting social settings with their equally unique panoramic and intimate aspects.

Both environments, the one entirely natural and the other predominately human, are subject to common phenomena, such things that effect sounds as atmospheric conditions, geographic features, variations in light and darkness, echoes, reflections, concentrations and dispersals of sound waves, and, most particularly, change over time.

These are not content-specific sounds, and so do not necessarily dominate thought, awareness, and perception.  As sound collage, such music (or non-music, if you prefer) is designed to respect the consciousness and activities of listeners and to enhance the surroundings with clarity and subtlety.

Inviting the Moon

Consider reading only books or watching only movies that are constructed around variations of the same plot.

Much music merely drives, in general terms, from point A to point B, repeats, changes pattern, returns to point A and B, and ends by repeating point B. Classic songs and imaginative, complex musical pieces are created with standard patterns and typical forms in which verses, choruses, and so forth are combined to best effect, and much that is atypical and avant-garde can be rooted in such forms.

Give thought to a vision of music that emerges, radiates, flows, shades and illuminates, drifts and surges, fills and occupies spaces, revolves, expands, unfolds and transforms sounds into atmospheres.

The sun is one source of light, the moon, another.

Pop

The ubiquity of pop music means easy accessibility; listeners will tend to hear it more often than other styles.  Listeners become receptive to an emotional connectivity associated with content and patterns of sound common to pop music genres. 

Whether in ballad, rock, or dance, these common patterns are built around repetitive rhythms and refrains, and are made cohesive with instrumentation anchored to bass guitar and percussion.  Listeners come to enjoy this frame of reference in the music they prefer; it is imprinted, to whatever extent, as a subtext in the listener's consciousness. 

Music that does not fit this paradigm, with its rhythm, instrumentation, tempo, and "hooks", is not as accessible. We can observe also the cultural conditioning that effects some listeners in their choices as they identify with certain musical styles, often to the exclusion of others.  The same set of expectations for what defines "music" is in play; classical music and jazz, for example, along with country music and blues, share the aforementioned elements in varying degrees.

While these elements, those of instrumentation, repetition, and rhythmic pulsation may be utilized in the creation of ambient music, they are not essential to it.  Yet the nature of the ambient style, which complements moods and atmospheres and times of day given to activities unburdened by stress and frenetic pace, can be enjoyed by anyone who experiences it in such a context.  In form and function, it is not unlike a kind of audio impressionism, expressionism, or pop art.

Vision and Sound

A perception of the atmosphere of an environment is the result of the setting, its contents and surroundings.

Certainly atmospheres are imprinted with the human touch, contributing to emotional states of being associated with various settings.    The imprint of Frank Lloyd Wright reflects the architect of the Fallingwater house in ways subtle as well as extravagant.  The flow, rush, and fall of the stream there generates rich and nuanced sounds, a kind of natural music.

Our own surroundings reflect attitude and mood as well, and our own choices in music form a part of the setting that has greater importance than we might think.  The touch of the creative musical artist goes far to enhance those atmospheres in which we may feel exhilarated or at ease.

Sketch Music

All environments resonate with the sounds of activity.

Indoors and outdoors, sounds may be perceived to accumulate into a whole comprised of gradual but constant changes in pattern, dynamics, tone and movement.  To "sketch" such events and their transformative elements by selecting representative sounds and combining tones, repetitions and progress over time creates a form of ambience that parallels the sounds of active environments. 

A walk in the woods or down winding streets, across a park or through a public mall, up stairways, down corridors, into subway stations or out in the weather, whatever it may be, fog, noonday sun, wind on the beach-- such things form the framework of the sketch music, and the transformation of sounds reflects movement through time. 

Thank you to Mitchel Harbin for suggesting the descriptive term "sketch music" as applying to these types of transformation ambient pieces.

Sensing Sounds

Popular music, in one form or another, fills so many public environments one takes little notice of it.

In the environments over which we have control, we listen to what we choose.  Much of what we listen to, even then, may be a result of cultural conditioning.  It is always possible to become more perceptive with our sense of sound, and more creative as well.

Vibrations and Consciousness

Music is more than sound patterns, narratives in song, inducement to dance or even artistic expression.

There are those who deny music produces effects on temperament and attitude and so forth, but one obviously hears, sees, and experiences these effects.  Various kinds of music, from the subtle to the bombastic, create impressions within environments, and may give the surroundings a particular emotional and aesthetic appeal.  Just as the listener desires to hear certain music, the musician desires to create it, and sound is associated with sensibility.

Permutations of Sound and Listening

Waterfall, highway, morning in distant foothills, avenues in Krakow, Shanghai, San Diego; fishing pier, railroad crossing, theater lobby, campus, grocery store, low country farmer's fields.

Combine these sounds, tones, and their associated patterns into events, aural metaphors, and reflections; they generate a dynamic and series of movements that coalesce, unfold, disperse and return. 

These represent nuances of human movements and perceptions of environments, a kind of musical journey within a psychic field. 

I think of Futurist music as a kind of "transformation ambient" or  "sketch" sound art, designed with these general fundamentals in mind, with the intent of reaching the listener's unconscious and natural awareness.  This is why the typical elements of beat, rhythm, melody and so forth are not apparent, or left undeveloped, in these long-form musical pieces.

Observer and Observed

So much forgotten in the next moment's breath.

Hold on to scraps of phrases, mental photographs, moving pictures of the imagination.  What do they say about you, about me?

Half-formed thoughts, held or let go in the passing of green fields, power lines, graveyards, accidents, laughter and radio talk.

What we have and know, and what we deny ourselves, rests with us alone.

Creation

What is magic?

Whatever begins in solitude.

The babble of the street and the rambling of mixed media recedes to silence and the doors of a wider world seem to be ajar. 

What did Plato know of shadows on cave walls in comparison to "virtual reality"?

Archetypes

The pace of life is often subjective.  The absence of what is called "excitement" need not mean "boredom".

Consciousness rooted deep in history is different from consciousness rooted in "the now". 

It is the difference between living in the universe and living only in a narrowly limited environment.

Patterns

Think of dreams, and the attendant sensory perceptions so far removed from reality.

Time and space, both distorted in such ways as to be meaningless, are inconsequential to the dreamer.

And what of music, of the sound of dreams? 

Absence of Light

With a decline in reason and free will, the spiritual faculties become hopelessly dull.  Conscience, and with it the soul, or the center of our being, becomes lost to our experience of life.

One cannot say it has died, this conscience or moral sense, or if, in some people, it ever exists at all.  Empirically, one might dispute its very reality, but, ineffable though it may be, one knows one's own.  It is a quality of character that can be recognized in others, as can its absence.

Still, when the senses are continually overstimulated by impressions both real and artificial, directly and indirectly, the end result is a kind of suspension of connectedness, a diminution of awareness.

Night Side of Nature

Ask if it is possible to believe in the existence of ghosts, even now, in the twenty-first century.

Ask, on the other hand, if the quality of our lives renders our awareness of such problematic things as wandering spirits possible.

If the natural world escapes our notice, the phases of the moon, the turning of the tides, the subtle dynamics of the progress of the seasons, such that most of our perceptions are attuned to artificial environments and representations of "reality", how likely is it that anything other than the mundane to which we are acclimated can even capture our attention?

Noise, blinding brightness and frenetic activity being the norm, who can see into the quiet, still shadows?

Shape-Shifting

There is always a distance between art and audience.

It is sometimes necessary to extend one's perspective beyond the limits of ones experience altogether and perceive from such an unexpected point of view.

In the deck of the Tarot, the card of The Hanged Man.

Choice

Life filled with mysteries.

No easy answers.

Many questions, many based on wrong ideas, beliefs or information.

Bad premises.

Many situations provide few opportunities for freedom to act with integrity and dignity.  One's only recourse is to extricate oneself in the due course of things.  If we cannot be free, we can at least act wisely and rightly.

Walk Through Walls

Unformed ideas flash momentarily and leave a long after-image.  A school room, a schoolhouse hall.  But there are unspoken ideas, fully formed yet buried beneath emotion and confusion.

Five years, ten years-- these are not lifetimes.  Live with intensity but the facts do not change.  Anything and nothing happens, as days are measured out.  Some live for attachments that will not be, grasp at pleasure, pain, joy, anger, resentments, truths, lies-- real or imagined-- as if these phantoms exist perpetually.

There are times when the only reasonable and appropriate act is condemnation of ignorance, apathy, imitation and self-indulgence.  People who have nothing, as well (and as likely) as those of material wealth, will choose to remain in darkness, as is their right.  The former will do everything possible to appear to be the latter, but it is an intolerable spectacle.

Lao Tsu, it is said, disappeared into mountain mists.

And Thus We Sleep

Fragmentary nature of perceptions.

Consciousness of heat, cold, scent, sound, emotion, idea, impulse, color, light, texture, mortal limits of time and space.  Sounds of wind in the trees: yours, mine, ours, belonging to none.  Passing thought, offered prayer, creative act. 

The idea, the fact, that some never transcend the narrow limits of self, or complete subjectivity, astonishes, and yet is prevalent.

Reuters News Service:  ...both survivors report the assailant said he meant to kill them because they appeared to be happy people, and there was "no room for happiness in his world".

Phantoms of the Living

In the world of ghosts, we never understand our true motivations, act only on the impulse of passion and selfish desire, and, ultimately, behave as though we are alone, not knowing we are dead.

We interact with others as though they are who we want them to be, never knowing who they really are, because we cannot know ourselves.  We exist in a netherworld of images and ideas that our failures of perception and understanding create for us.

Such a shift in individual and cultural consciousness, while readily apparent, appears to go unnoticed.  We do not speak of such things.

Invest meaning in words that are not understood.  Create, and haunt, an empty prison. 

Cast a Cold Eye

If everyone is an artist, only the exceptional and the very strange leave an impression.

Culturally, an intellectual fascination with the idea of chaos prevailed for many decades.  Naturally it became prevalent in popular culture and remains so, to the degree it is commercially viable.  And it remains an issue of academic or quasi-intellectual importance, particularly in the arts, in which the "transgressive" is viewed as having value for its own sake, or conferring value to the artist.  Such value is so rare as to be almost nonexistent, as the so-called transgressive has become no more than redundant repetition of the clichéd act of shocking the bourgeoisie.  It has committed the cardinal sin of becoming boring.

The idea of order evolves accordingly.