Hearing, Listening, Openness

Sounds the listener can anticipate or "follow" are the norm for most musical arrangements.

The experience of sounds in the form of auditory imagery is expansive, deep, and, more often than not, asymmetrical in nature. Much of my work in composition and sound design intentionally moves away from establishing and directing expectations to reflect both the continuous aural activity and surprising sonic events of real, yet non-musical, environments.

Surrounding atmospheres rich with subtle beauty and intensely interesting sounds may go unnoticed when perception is dulled by the routine and mundane.  I want my compositions to be catalysts for elevating that awareness.

Other Than Music

Creating structure sets limits.  Thinking does not always require them.

Separate music from given ideas.  Set aside thoughts of "using" technology as a tool, regarding it instead as a means of gesture. Listen past emotion and intellect into the sound of the surrounding world, and there discern aesthetic beauty with the goal of bringing it into the listener's range of perception.

Culture, Sound, Tone

Attitude of mind and emotion as expressed in the arts may or may not reflect specific time periods.

Some works sustain interest, while others become cultural artifacts; still others may share both attributes. Considering time a continuum, think, hear, and bring into being auditory experiences of emergence and expansion.  Listen and create, indifferent to all but sound.

Sonic Textures

Combinations of tones and patterns move within physical settings and internal, perceptual terrains.

From the source, or sensibilities and vision of the composer, sound designs emerge through varied processes of selection, sound synthesis and juxtaposition of elements.

The subjective impressions of tone, mood, and atmosphere are considered aesthetically; additional evaluations of objective aural properties, including volume, intensity, equalization, compression, and such effects as contribute to dynamic spatial qualities of the composition are brought to bear upon the work.

The finished work resulting from these artistic and technological processes will suggest multiple sensory and emotional impressions, including color and shading, contrast, movement, and texture, as well as evoking memory and stimulating the imagination.

Expansion and Order

Perspective reveals or conceals a sense of symmetry and balance.

Accordingly, wind chimes, bird songs, wind through alleyways, and one's everyday encounters with voices and machines may appear random or part of a greater pattern of sounds.

Listen, and hear.

Transmission VI

Cultural context influences the listening experience, as does history and individual taste.

The extent to which the listener is enriched by the arts of sound can also be determined by choice, along with the effort necessary to expand one's range of knowledge and awareness, much as the curious and adventurous musician may decide to explore beyond subjective interests in technique and formula.

Atmosphere and the Mind's Eye

I compose to mirror the continuous rise and fall.

Apparent, even in stillness, is the dynamic totality of existence as it moves and changes.  Through sounds designed to reflect organic processes, aural events that might seem beneath notice may be brought into range of perception.

Such compositions, I would suggest, effectively contribute to heightened sensory discernment and clarity of thought, and further, stimulate the faculty of imagination.

Aural Themes

Sounds form, as vibrational forces, essential connection to the totality of phenomena.

Every aspect of experience reflects meaning, whether personal, cultural, or cosmological.

Forward Listening

Inner perception merges experience and the physical, that is to say, it is a union of consciousness, memory, and sensory awareness.

Engagement in such a state of contemplative reflection broadens understanding, deepens insight, and renders temporal concerns of little moment. It alters perspective by transcending external distractions inimical to the spiritual faculties of reason and free will, and thereby opens imaginative and meaningful corridors of thought.

My interests lie in developing musical compositions and sound designs that reflect and contribute to such attitudes of mind and emotional outlooks, as these will often provide for prescient impressions, the rise of speculative ideas, and productive courses of action.

Thought and Feel

Lucid perception stimulates clarity of thought and insight.

In giving thought to the content of the arts and experiences open to personal choice, it is plain and clear which ones elevate or degrade awareness and understanding.

The way of the artist is to perceive and create, and more, to sustain.

Impression, Design, Expression

A composer's aesthetic reflects sensibility and conceptual vision.

One who hears sounds as they reflect environments sees their visual counterparts: emergence, movement, lines, patterns, fluctuations, interaction, order, unpredictability, and every kind of phenomena, including color, nuance, light and shadow.

Listen Closely

Patterns emerge, then disperse.

Sounds collect together, suggesting activity; they move independently and circulate together. Tones stir beneath notice and become prominent, coalesce and gradually grow to be illusory.  Perceptions change; awareness expands with permutations of sound and nuance of mood.

The combinations set in motion in these events mimic the sounds of natural environments and human habitats, and, rather than converge as musical forms, they take shape as aural images in dynamic atmospheres.

Mind and Inner Ear

Generally, music is considered to be a  form of entertainment, though emotion, attitudes, and cultural ideas are expressed and conveyed through every musical form.

Now in contrast to its entertainment value, the wider cultural purposes of music are often given little attention or are perceived as being of lesser importance. Certainly not all listeners would agree with this, particularly those of wide-ranging and aesthetically informed tastes, but nonetheless music designed for personal reflection and the rituals and shared experiences of community is somewhat neglected as a result.

We all think, we all reflect and sometimes contemplate the world, events, and our surroundings.  It is neither necessary nor desirable to expend every free moment upon entertainment and diversion in a life open to myriad and meaningful pursuits.

There are other sounds, other musical works meant to complement a full life as well.

Waking, Dreaming

Imaginative vision and sound may lead, at times, to experiences far beyond the mundane.

Divergent states of awareness are at the edges of common shared experience; historically, these are visible in extraordinary artistic expressions, and suggestive of the idea that wider, deeper perceptions are possible through other than the normal channels of the senses.

Outside and Within

External atmospheres are perceived by the senses and generate internal feeling.

The creative arts, and the arts of sound in particular, may produce these emotional, aesthetic and imaginative or intellectual effects, and not only to convey information, mood and tone, but, beyond these and other concrete experiences, a sense of the ineffable.

Stillness II

Processes of organic growth unfold constantly, and for the most part unnoticed, in their unhurried subtlety.

The composer, like any other artist, may choose to develop works applying such processes through the medium of sound.  The effect is that of movement and change outside the urgency of the passage of time.

Elements of Subtlety

Sound follows every turn of events.

Attuned to sounds, listen for the nuances of life, follow them through to their conclusions and back to their origins.  Sense and realize their meanings, express their insights.

The formless leads to the formed, and then returns.

Imaginary Atmospheres

Fill spaces with sounds shaped by the character of objects to be suggested in desirable environments.

Consider these conditions aesthetically.  Sparse or crowded, in the wild or in well-appointed interiors, uniformly arranged or asymmetrically scattered, the limits of space and the compositions of objects imply meaning and mood, content both emotional and intellectual, and movement of both music and listeners.

What happens in the mind is as meaningful as what happens in the setting informed by sounds.

Vision, Action

The artist's priorities are the works and their content.

If experience, perception, contemplation, reflection and expression take precedence over transient social and cultural phenomena, various degrees of restraint and self-denial are called for from time to time.

The art must be brought to light; the artist is the means by which it is realized.

Promoveo, promovi, promotum.

Black Mountain School: "Observation"