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.

Mysticism, Science, and Art

Trace the arc of imagination forward, beginning in the remote, historic past and projecting into the distant future.

Sounds emerge out of thin air in delicate points of light; manipulated into juxtapositions that please the artist and listener, they expand, rise, contract and fall like soap bubbles from a child's toy, to collide, coalesce, disperse, and form again as new tones and patterns.

Imagination finds ways of expression through technology, and the latter inspires again the former.

Field, Impression, Expansion

While the eye is more attuned to such subtleties as shading and depth, the ear may become more acute with proficient, artful listening.

Yet the argument that there is no more time for such things follows.

Time must be made.

The alternative proposes casting aside heightened awareness and perceptivity, and with these, elevation of the mind and spirit.

Variables and Intensities

A wide range of experience exists between conscious listening and unconscious hearing.

Music, for the most part, is intended to dominate attention.  To the extent that this occurs, perceptual experience is reduced by varying degrees as listening awareness is concentrated on pulse and force.

Consider sound as an art form; rich auditory imagery is the primary element and focus of imaginative listening, and thus is given ascendancy over others.  The role of rhythm, percussion, melodic "hooks" and so forth is reduced or eliminated altogether, as it negates or contributes little to the total effect of atmospheric images in dynamic motion.

The result is not simply a different form of music, but becomes, in fact, a different way of listening.