Changing Patterns

Music, with its rhythmic and melodic formulas, is a constant.

As a cultural and social force, it is held harmless, given no thought beyond entertainment and profit, and reflects the impulses and patterns at play in human affairs.

The sounds of life can be more than this.  A moment's pause, and fireflies in a dark grove beneath a sky burning with stars, rain striking the face while passing along a crowded avenue, or a hand filled with nothing greater than sand on a lake shore evokes mystery without end.

Find the sounds of these moments and embrace them.  They are formless forms, beyond the limits of time.

Sound Cycles

Emerge, rise, descend, return.

Observe the way of nature reflected in the course of human events; thus it is to hear and listen, and to recognize these sound designs with understanding and clarity.

Extended Perception

Foresight, when clarity of awareness evokes anticipation of potential events, actions, or outcomes, is a naturally occurring phenomenon.

Similarly, in sound design and musical experimentation, prior knowledge of the many ways through which combinations of sounds connect and interact lends itself to insights into the various aesthetic effects that may come about by manipulating tones, patterns, and other aspects of composition and recording.

Far from a being a process of controlling, it is rather one of freeing sounds to evolve in diverse ways and engaging listeners with unique experiences. 

Synesthesia

Contemplate image, environment, sensory impressions, setting, scene.

In stillness of consciousness and imagination, sounds come into being.

Sounds of Images

Point of view shapes and is shaped by imagination.

Consider the implications.  Do not simply seek vision, intent, purpose.

Realize them.

Illuminated Passages

A child's experiences and interests become the work of a lifetime.

The elements of life and work may be many and varied.

Isolation, deep distances and echoes, ghost stories, shadows, fires, Reformation, Reconstruction, myth, legend, baptism, poetry and mysticism, good and evil.  Debussy.  War.  Art school. Literature. Folk, bluegrass, rock, jazz, fusion, avant-garde.  Love and Reason.  Performance. Studio. Production, arrangement, experiment. The Academy.  Digital.  America, Europe, The South, Bohemia, the Western Lands.

Expansion and decline, form and the formless, ten thousand things.  Elevation.

Nothing is possible without everything.

Opposing Forces

Dynamic movement begins.

Tones, lines, and clusters, lights and darks, the warm and the cool merge, coalesce, fragment, disperse.  The sounds are reflective of such events as atmospheric developments, air and ocean currents, cyclical patterns and unpredictable combinations of conditions.

Remaining constant, they continually change.

Auditory Dreaming

The listener is well aware of the hierarchy of musical elements found in typical works of all types.  Rhythm, melody, harmony, and beat have the most appeal in popular music, and are generally considered essential in all other genres.

Setting aside these dominant forms opens the imagination, where possibilities are illuminated and sounds move in every direction, seemingly formless and elusive, waiting to be captured and brought to reality.

No Less Art

Decorative design is not a necessity.  It is no more needed on an article of clothing than on the hilt of a sword.  It exists for other reasons.

As sound, let it beautify the air; let it enhance the atmosphere if nothing more.  But there is more, certainly, and there are many more reasons for every form of sound art.

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One Year Ago

from Thursday's Crossword:  "Music Producer Brian _ _ _."

High Strangeness

In folklore, those who experienced otherworldly or haunting music describe it as mesmerizing and overwhelming, and unlike anything experienced in life.

Often described as the most beautiful sound the percipient had ever heard, the common thread in most cases is that it was impossible afterwards to remember the tune.

Art in the Present Day

The disconnect between art and music in the popular imagination is considerable, given the fact that popular singers and musicians are always referred to as artists.

In many cases elitist notions of art appear contrived to limit the public appreciation of works that diverge from the commonplace, and cultural conditions at times reflect the idea that the broad audience of people is incapable of understanding and enjoying a diversity of works. 

This is nonsense.  Such ideas are unworthy of the cultivated mind.

Sound, Consciousness, Expansion

Listen to everything in relation to all things.

Consider and experience a continuum of sound, rather than simply regard the idea of music as patterns of sound in time.

Discernment

The inner ear grasps meaning in emotional, intellectual, and spiritual terms.

Sound perception differs in various circumstances and environments, whether they be considered natural or artificial, contrived or unaltered, but the percipient's experience is personal, reflecting the individuality of the listener.

Envision, compose, record, produce to create this personal experience.

Sensory Apprehension, Nonlinear Grasp

The listener will recognize the experience of a gradual recognition of a piece of music.

Upon first becoming cognizant of the song, perhaps from a distance, the perception is one of an extremely vague and nebulous familiarity.  At times this sense of emerging recognition fragments and scatters rather than quickly coming into focus, yet the sounds themselves may gather clarity as mental processes intensify in connecting to memory.

From my perspective this is always a mesmerizing event, and invariably the musical piece itself seems diminished once it is identified.  Whereas it began with an impression of mystery and uncanny strangeness, it then ceases to draw the mind in the direction of the unknown and all the elements fall into place and pattern.  The actual music, finally grasped, is insignificant in comparison with the perceptual experience that preceded it.

Seize this awareness-- draw upon it to intentionally compose works that evoke such states of unique aesthetic engagement.

Ambient Confluence

Disparate musical elements merge in sequences of auditory effects and imagery, dreamlike in nature.

In the wild, so to speak, there is no pure and permanent order or chaos. Storms subside, seas become calm, light breezes become howling gales and grow quiet again.

This, too, is the way of the artist.

Variance, Divergence, Expansion

The observer will note the striking degree to which contemporary listeners are self-directed in their musical choices.

This is not to say that the conformity in listening of the self-styled hipster no longer exists, or that music has become less of an attitudinal or fashion statement.  What is apparent is that, given a wider range of choice and access to sounds and styles, listeners have no need of being directed by others, particularly those in the media, in developing personal aesthetic values.

Generic music of all styles permeates culture, as an evening of listening to television advertisements makes clear.  Imitation, not innovation, rules the day, and this is anathema to the astute listener.

Conditions such as these broaden the choices of the composer as well, and the challenge, especially when working outside the boundaries of popular taste, is to retain clarity of vision and directness of expression.

Emergence

The possibilities of sound confront the composer, and the composer must listen.

It is possible to direct, arrange, form, force, and shape sound to the desired end; it is possible to control every aspect and element of its reality to the most minute degree; it can be made to conform to style and genre and be used as a vehicle for any emotion and idea.

Or sound may direct the composer, and unknown possibilities be brought into being.

Familiar, Yet Strange

Arcane, untried, and out-of-the-ordinary ideas and processes combine with contemporary technological methods in ways that may appear startling or uncanny.

Perspectives on the appearances of things are altered; unexpected aspects of sensory impressions are revealed, and fundamental ways of ordering experience become tenuous.

The concept of sound as art remains for the most part undefined and is as often represented by absurd juxtapositions of noise as it is by aesthetically delineated works of aural imagery.  But this is to be expected, as a natural development in the course and evolution of art and cultural events.

Ways of listening, and thinking, are changing. 

Assemblage and Framing

Diverse elements, given context, offer multiple meanings when experienced as a whole.

Lucid yet oblique suggestiveness in poetry and sound design, for example, offers much for thoughtful consideration while refraining from direct statements.

The composer brings differing elements of sounds into a unity of expression.  Listeners may interpret in any number of ways, or not at all, in encountering such works, and thus the individual imagination, emotions, and perceptions are interconnected in varying degrees with the works themselves.

Sequences, Organization, Methods

With change as a constant, processes may lead in some scenarios, follow in others, toward any number of possible outcomes.

Sounds move in time in relation to other sounds as they are brought together, juxtaposed, removed, set in opposition to each other, fused, dispersed, repeated, and recombined.  The nature of the action is in some ways asymmetrical and in others a matter of aesthetic choice.

In their final recorded forms, works such as these have more connections in common with cubism, action painting, pop art, impressionism, and abstract expressionism than with generic musical styles.

The sound art and design under consideration here, like the aforementioned visual arts, suggests and rewards a change and renewal of perspective as well.