Underlying Reality

Patterns and elements associated with common musical forms vary over time, but change little.

Constant sounds of change, conversely, are found throughout human and natural environments.

Let this model be reflected in aural design and composition, and auditory perception changes accordingly.

Hearing the Distant

Change, never ceasing, is a mechanism of survival.

Sounds across cultures, in the moment now, move toward wider, deeper expressions.

This is the inevitable consequence of their dynamic nature, and cannot be held in check by human desire for certainty.

Objects and Expressions

Combine images so as to suggest juxtapositions of sounds.

Take any combination of sounds and extend the forms suggested into aesthetic aural events of sustained beauty.  This is an invitation to elevated, contemplative states of mind, colored with a sense of mystery.

Cultural Flux

Change is continuous, with ideas and their associated activities intersecting myriad others at all times and places.

Thus, in artistic efforts, it is wise to apprehend the realities of opportunity and potential in expression.

Works will be, to some extent, grounded in contemporary settings while also possessing timeless qualities. Their meanings will be accessible according to the cultural receptivity, or lack thereof, for artistic representations reflecting the values of the one or the other.

The only real choice, always, is that of integrity and authenticity of gesture; anything else is nothing more than a selection between false appearances.

Living, Listening

Sound surrounds you now.

There is no silence; only listen, and hear.  Out of perception, bring forth expression.

Some, But Not All

From time to time the arts must endure a collectivist mentality.

But this is nothing more than a consequence of expanding horizons, a situation that lends itself to the consolidation of power among social, academic, and political groups bound by common interests and attitudes, but lacking, in their numbers, the virtues of individuality.

Predictably, such a way of thinking engenders a dull, insular advocacy of mediocrity with an utterly entrenched resistance to the distinctive and imaginative.

Some artists, musicians, theorists, and composers, enjoined to conformity, will succumb to cultural orientations of this nature.  For the rest, to do so is out of the realm of possibilities; it is the work that is of paramount importance.

Point Counterpoint

As this or that, I think thus and such.

Thoughts come and go, perspectives alter, notes serve their purposes as tools and reflections.

But meaning is found in the work.

Artificially Yours

Between the representation and the real lie perceptions and ideas.

Expression challenges and reflects the depth, or lack thereof, of individual experience.

Simply put, one should offer no barriers to the enjoyment of apprehension and understanding.

Sounds, Illuminated

As a medium of artistic expression, sound may be shaped in forms other than those generally recognized in terms of music, which depend, for the most part, upon elements such as rhythm, melody, and tempo.

Musicianship is expressed creatively through such things as disciplined virtuosity, instrumental eloquence, and conveyance of emotional feelings.  It is an entirely different artistic expression to manipulate media of any kind to peculiar effect.

The sound composer may choose to operate accordingly, engaging instead, as I do, concepts and gestures, regarding ideas, events, and settings in terms of transmuting perceptions into works of aural imagery.  It is a matter, simply enough, of asking and contemplating what sounds may be suggested by diverse experiences and bringing them into being.

Consciousness and self-knowledge governed by rational thought and intuitive perceptivity clearly, demonstrably, elevate the human condition far beyond that of mindless impulse and base instinct.

This is true in every aspect of life, and remains true in the arts.

Connectivity

Clarity elevates and obscurity provokes curiosity.

Each enables the contemplation of mystery, and inspiration to imagination and action.

Lucidity, Comprehension

What is commonly called "order" contributes to predictability and routine, but order has diverse forms, not all of them strictly concerned with organization.

Certain forms of order reflect juxtapositions of the simple and the complex.  Some involve greater, more expansive schemes of perception and understanding, such as the rise and fall of things, for instance, or awareness of processes in the way of, say, emergence, convergence, and dispersal. Others are discernible as guides to movement, or to the direction of attention to specific objects or ideas.

In such ways do the arts, and particularly those involving music and sound, realize concepts of order, in clear contrast to disorder and pointless chaos.

Attention to Sound and Mind

Just as there is a difference between looking and seeing, so it is with hearing and listening.

These are matters of interest and engagement, both passive and active, direct and indirect. 

In the normal context of continual activity and distraction there is little time for deep thought, clear articulation, and lucidity of perception.  But one must make time; these are essential to being and becoming, and thus to dynamic consciousness and living.  

My compositions are designed to enhance an hour and more for contemplative listening, reflecting this fundamental attitude.

Prescience, Magical Thinking, and The Uncanny (Excerpt)

Sonic Sensibility

Wide-ranging experience lends itself to diversity in taste and the capacity for dynamic action.

Such is the nature of curiosity itself and the impulse to go beyond the "given" often established in the artistic temperament.  There is no denying this perspective has its origins in romantic subjectivity and the idea that it might be possible to order one's work according to a vision of an ideal world or life of adventure, to allow for typical examples.

But the way of the artist can often demand equipoise in gesture, a balance of forces without which expression is incomplete. For the composer, this requires leavening the passions with the clarity of reason and bringing sounds into accord with one another, particularly in the evolution of efforts to transcend customary aesthetic and musical models.

Art and Atmosphere, Sound and View

Place perception in context.

Now the composer and listener, artist and observer, given diversity of experience, may discern unique perspective as percipients.  If engaged, intellect, emotion, or the spiritual may dominate, or they may balance together.

Each point of view, initially defined by natural differences, gains a degree of unity and a sense of meaning, established by setting and circumstances.

Artifice, Vérité, Being

All representations of reality are artificial in nature, whether they express concrete objects or abstractions.

What the art reveals may be fact or fancy; one may be artfully disguised as the other.

To be deceived by a false perception of idea or event is utterly different from being briefly fooled by a recorded sound or the effect of a trompe l'oeil illusion. The latter are simply auditory and visual; the former may prove to contain the genesis of fatal errors in judgement.

For the composer, it is the difference between glamorizing the base, absurd, or benighted, and imparting the essence of the real.

Edge and Area

To realize the essence of a thing may require gradual and incremental observation and investigation; the expression of that essence demands a perspective that reveals its reality and meaning.

Often what is called the avant-garde in art is brought into being as a demonstration of possibilities, its purpose being to convey a sense of conceptual potentials that may be inarticulate and undeveloped fully, yet nonetheless indicate areas of interest that may be explored, analyzed, and refined.

Such initial expressions, on the surface, may have the appearance of mere absurdity.  Certainly there are many examples of  "sound art" that fit this description, especially in areas devoted to academic experimentation.

Aesthetic sound art, similarly, exists in opposition to "mainstream" forms, yet has, in contrast, aims centered upon elevated expression of the imaginative and meaningful through aural media.

Sonic Shadow and Light

Perceive, remember, experience, evaluate, and conceive beyond superficial sensation to distinguish appearance from reality.

Thus the artist and composer, observer, participant, and listener may engage any representation so conceived and produced as one that reveals, not only itself as an artistic form, but aesthetic truth in terms of the reality represented.

Peculiarity

When media frames perception in terms of a collective "we", the implication is that perspective is shared, when, in fact, it is given.

Such perspectives are anathema to the arts, cloaked as they are in affected intimacy while advancing the complacent attitudes of shallow authority.

In clear contrast, the way of the artist is the arduous one of singularity in outlook and expression, a viewpoint shaped by nature, temperament, intensity of experience, and dedication to imaginative beauty and meaning.

Art and Indifferent Things

Reality does not conform to the narrowly subjective point of view.

Yet to be removed from the simple order of things, from the course of natural events, and thus to lose awareness of the cyclical growth and decline of cultural conditions is a common state of affairs, one continuously reinforced by distraction and diversion of various kinds.  One need look no further than music and media encountered in the course of the day to confirm this fact.

Art fills needs for intellectual, emotional, and spiritual elevation, self-knowledge in the context of the human condition, clarity of perception and lucidity of expression.  With this in mind, the composer may do well to create with the purpose of fulfilling such needs through works that appeal to moral reason and the aesthetic sensibilities.