Spirits of Place

All settings possess distinctive properties suggestive of their counterparts in sound.

Every atmosphere exhibits dynamic possibilities, whether they may be expressed with the intensity of thunderclaps or the subtlety of gradually fading voices.  Accordingly, through aesthetic choices involving selections of tones, forms, patterns, and manners of combining and manipulating diverse elements, the composer releases these lyric qualities of locality and perceptual narrative.

Waking Moments

Perception, memory, and knowledge inform experience.

Consciousness may be engaged subjectively, and may transcend subjectivity as well.  Thought and perception move between these states of awareness in apprehending reality.

The ear perceives specific sounds in the context of others that evoke ideas or emotions in the listener of which the composer cannot be aware.  Nonetheless, the tone, mood and atmosphere of ambient musical works are designed to enhance the conditions for such contemplative listening experiences.

Choice, Context, Sensibilities

Without reasoned and desirable limits, meaning is obscured, then extinguished by the absurd.

The space between one extreme and the next appears empty; close attention dissipates, drawn only to the excessive.  Depth of feeling is not called upon, and critical discernment declines.  If noise does not dominate experience there is apparent silence.  Yet the mind passively demands to be filled.

Art is not intended to serve as a replacement for moral reason and spiritual emptiness.  Still, art can, and often does, offer perspectives in sharp contrast to those that are culturally stagnant, banal and enervating.  And while such artistic works may be delineated within limits emphasizing subtlety and grace of expression, for example, they are by no means intellectually and existentially confining.

Mind, Symbol, Sound

Reason suggests; imagery portrays.

Depict perceptual experiences of settings and events through sound designs that evoke sensory impressions.

With elements of tone and pattern and color, explore the range of the real, as do the painter and poet.

Multiplicity and Unity

Absorb the sounds of the surroundings.

Taking care to listen, becoming engaged in hearing, and giving attention to the near and distant, the observer gains increasing awareness of the completeness of aural atmospheres.

Seek this completeness in listening; in composing, bring all the elements and variations to this fullness.

Painted Air

The composer sets vibrations in motion, to emerge and evolve as visions.

Sounds, patterns, and tones combine, bringing aural imagery into being in the physical environment and the inner world of the listener. 

Awareness and Obstruction

The ambient music listener often senses increasing acuteness of aural perception.

Prolonged exposure to noise and distraction dulls the senses, and it is easy to lose sight of the fact that such conditions, universal though they may seem, are, in fact, unnatural, even debilitating.

Consider the capacities of ancient peoples for distinguishing the qualities of environmental sounds and recognizing their implications.  Such refinement of perception and reasoning is not lost in the modern world, but certainly clarity of this nature declines, if neglected, in the general noise and rush of everyday events.

My own interests lie in the composition and production of ambient atmospheres that contribute to enhanced penetration of thought while appealing to the listener's depth of feeling and aesthetic sensibilities.  

Variation, Transformation

In the creation of the electronic tone poem and transformation ambient work, the goals are balance and aesthetic beauty; the means to the these ends are continuous processes of experimentation, improvisation and revision.

By these means structure gradually forms.  Thematic elements undergo permutations as they rise, fall, and return, juxtaposed with changing tones, patterns, clusters, and densities of sound.

While reference to the symphonic tone poem is a matter of convenience, it nonetheless reflects the roots of electronic and minimalistic music, in that these forms are evocative of atmospheres, ideas, moods, events, and other non-musical sources of inspiration.

These compositions bring into being the ways I perceive the simple, complex, and, at times, uncanny experience of the sounds of modern life. 

Connectivity II

Expression takes countless forms.  Each interacts with all.

In the arts, for example, dance inspired by music may influence poetry, painting, and other forms.

These, in turn, breathe life into artistic perspectives in continuous flux.

The art of sound can move in any direction. One may compose in ways that reflect abstract expressionism and impressionist landscape painting, and with equal vigor and beauty.

What moves the artist is what the artist brings into being.

Shadows and Virtues

Music's existence is intimately connected to the evolution of culture.

It will not remain static; it conveys meaning according to the way it is perceived.  It cannot remain bound to ideas and expressions that lose cultural vitality.

Even so, individual imagination and vision are essential to the directions and outcomes toward which the arts of sound are impelled.

Sensibility, Purpose, Integrity

The finely delineated and intricately wrought are revolutionary in aspect.

Nuance and subtlety in sound, like considerate manners and moderate language in relationships, reflect radical indifference to a predominate coarseness in cultural affairs exemplified by reflexive crudity in discourse and melodramatic bombast in music.

Technology, while increasingly sophisticated in refinement and potential, yet conveys much that is backward and pointless, benighted, predictable, and intolerably boring.  Though intrinsic to the cultural landscape, these expressions are not the sole measurements of what is possible.

The creative artist need not be bound by such limits.

Sound and Time

Environmental sounds, whether in urban areas or in wilderness settings, appear random-- but this is not so.

The observer will note clear patterns in terms of cause and effect over extended periods of time.

Numerous developments occur as night takes the place of day and seasons come and go.  Most of these sounds will take cyclical forms, as in the cases of traffic movements and the ebb and flow of tides.  Some are easily predictable while others exist only briefly and are apparently disconnected from the general course of events.

To represent such sounds and their movements in musical form it is necessary to set aside temporal considerations to the greatest extent possible.  All things rise and fall as part of a greater reality in which beginnings and endings are of little consequence, and minutes, hours, days and years are simply measurements for the sake of human convenience.

Reflecting the Real

Music and sound design create stylized sonic impressions of emotions, ideas, narratives, and settings.

While many aesthetically pleasing works may be overly idealized or romanticized in concept, thus offering escapist fare, the discriminating listener easily loses interest in the superficial singularity of focus such works often demonstrate.  Creative activity as well as that of a more contemplative nature is better served by more than pleasant diversion in listening.

The way of the artist is to engage, to evoke, to illuminate and to inspire perception in terms of authentic experience, by connecting with the real life of the listener.

Observation and Approach

The symphonic tone poem and the transformational ambient design for electronics share certain similarities conceptually, particularly as representations of ideas, events, and settings.

Each form calls upon the imagination of the listener, encouraging impressions of times, places, and concepts conveyed by combinations of sounds and musical patterns.

Additionally, transformational ambient work in the extended arrangement, or as a "sketch" or shorter piece, may be organized with the intent of appealing to the imaginative faculties of the listener by enhancing mood and atmosphere generally, without reference to more than the listener's environment and receptive awareness.  Rather than establish a particular perspective, the sound design lends its influence to the environs of the listener more directly, to be experienced at more personal levels.

Transmission V

Shared ideas and individual perspectives bring to light things as yet unknown.

While it is entirely possible to rely upon the given, accede to expectations, and work according to conventions or oppose them, the way of the artist is constantly moving beyond these considerations.

It is the unseen and unheard, and those things unexpected and uncanny, that impel vision and action.

Explorations

Trace the arc of elevated thought, idea and vision.

Beginning naturally with the commonplace, it rises above the mundane, the uninteresting and the stasis of  complacency to transcend expectations of understanding.  It seizes the moment creatively, if at all possible, and renders a concrete link to the experience through visual art media, the written word, or musical sounds, to suggest only a few examples.

Then, as is natural, that heightened awareness becomes conversant with the everyday in ways that popular diversions and entertainment can not, speaking, as it does, to the larger themes of spiritual life and the human condition.

Range of Meaning

Interpretation need not be constricting or absurd.

Perception and experience may be directed internally and externally.  In the case of sound design and non-linear musical fabrication, the composer can appeal to both the appreciation of the external environment as a whole, and to the inner world of the listener as well.

The total effect contributes to enhancement of both atmosphere and mood through sonic imagery, and respects the experience and imagination of the listener.

Resonance

Sound is the language of imagination.

The listener who perceives the vision of a musical work as well as its compositional and instrumental elements absorbs its existential and spiritual meanings.

Spirit

Often, expression sums up experience in terms of content.

Art and experience exist in the context of history, tradition, and culture; expression belongs to the artist.

Feel

Cultural arts given over to excessive, subjective emotion are always on display.  Those who deny they exert an influence have reasons for deception.

Emotional reserve is at odds with such perspectives; classical restraint appears distant, cold, and suspect, because the nature of these attitudes is clearly motivated by something other than outward appearances and ideas in common currency.  This appears truly radical in a climate of reactive and immoderate emotionality.

Yet one need only consider the ease with which affective consciousness may be manipulated beyond an individual or group's awareness or control for dubious ends in order to appreciate art that appeals to the spiritual faculties of reason and free will.