Sound Works

The existential phenomena of nature and human character are originative and controlling forces.

The process of structuring dynamic combinations of sounds, tones, patterns and clusters designed, as are works of art, as reflective and representative of the influence of these universal and personal phenomena upon perception and temperament, is a continuing and challenging purpose.

As a composer, I consider auditory images as the peculiar elements through which meaning emerges and expands, in creating contemplative contexts through which meaning may evolve.

Rippling

Listen to the world and hear its music.

Observe the pervasive nature of sound, and its constant influence.

Whether carried by wind in rushes and reeds, human voices or machines in action, its course is through nerve and bone, dream and being.

Turn, Turn Again

Lose originality, and there is only repetition.

Lose innovation, and there remains only genre.

Exclude individuality and idiosyncrasy, and the artist is invisible.

But neither art, nor artist, will cease.

As Waves Intersect

In terms of sound imagery, a definition of music is unnecessary.  It is beside the point.

Vibrations set in motion produce others, and interactions continue as other effects are produced.

Sound, Being, and Becoming

Sonic imagery alters perception and broadens perspective.

Where reality and the imagination intersect in sound, in the performance of a musical composition, tone poem, or other form of aural art, the listener may observe a sense of a continuum of temporal events, as opposed to a perpetual movement of linear time.

For this effect to manifest itself, the composer must not work according to expectations, nor against them, but outside possibilities of anticipation altogether.

Part and Whole

Every sound perceived within an environment produces effects.

Some will communicate significant, profound, or extraordinary impressions; some will suggest the uncanny, or the presence of something ineffable; many will not be noticed at all.  Listeners discern, and, as poets and composers, they manipulate.

Listen, and all things rise and descend.  Hear, and all things emerge and pass away.

Shapes of Aural Events

Physical reality is immersed in sounds.

Heightened perceptions of listening and hearing sense ideas of distances, placements in space, external forms, and such concepts as the aural imagery of shadows and colors.

As painting and drawing may render objective and imaginative events visible, put forth such forms in sounds.

Periphery of Music II

Set an emotional and intellectual paradigm for the understanding of music as an experience.

Turn from that understanding of music, toward an idea of no music, in contrast to something that can be called non-music; then consider sounds outside those common models or frameworks of music, with environmental aural imagery, tones and patterns serving as the the fundamentals for such sonic designs as they may be heard in diverse contexts.

Sever the significance of time, then place all these perspectives into simultaneous flux.

Sonic Archetypes

Sound motifs represent, through tonal quality and pattern, symbolic realities.

Ethereal heights, storms and floods, places hidden and abandoned, mystic waters, deserts and hills all have their representative sounds, and with them suggestions of stasis and movement.

Atmospheres embrace listening and surround perception, opening the mind's eye and the inner ear.

Universal Patterns

Where rhythm is not apparent, it will be found through expansion of understanding.

The moon turns the tides and its force is perceptible.

There are vast rhythms pulsing in the cosmos.  Draw these into awareness through representative musical sounds.

Connection, Control

Atmosphere, environment, perception, thought.  These are interrelated.

Some things are within the scope of a composer's or listener's will. Others can be imagined.

What sound may express may then be understood, and thus more possibilities, real and concrete or imagined and abstract, may be brought to light.

Drama and Ease

To perceive and to reflect embrace intensity and intimacy.

Things happen and are apprehended; as understood, perhaps reconsidered, perspectives emerge. The composer brings aural imagery to such perspectives, manipulates, juxtaposes, stylizes.

Feeling yields designs, tones, dances and dreams.  What is otherwise is merely music.

Reach, Again

To explore memory in its depths is to find perceptual impressions, thoughts, and feelings.

Sudden cold October wind, waving shadows against lights of home; cheer, misunderstandings, disillusionment; exiting a film into blinding daylight; view through strange windows; long gaze at distant boats, stars, mountains;  photographs, then direct experience of art, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, say, or an exhibition of works by Modigliani, Seurat, Warhol-- or unknowns.  Hospital sheets, flickering fluorescent lights, sidewalk bright with dusty chalk drawings, restaurant in early morning rain.

Sounds, smells, all the sensory impressions of street, school, job site, field, highway.  There. Within, find the notes and tones and aural imagery, the sonic impressions that sing life to the inner ear.

Detach

Time, a measurement of convenience, is not fixed and universal in perception.

The listener may be fully or partially engaged in a musical work or sound design, and still be completely immersed in experience.

So it is with the temporal world:  a moment, now, in motion, within the vastness of reality.

Sensing the Real

Sound creates a panorama of perception.

Listen.  Hear.  Images form, delineating environment and atmosphere.

Here one may recognize objects, distances, relative locations, and connections to feeling as well. More will be experienced.   Move within sound, as sound moves within consciousness.  By such means compositions may be envisioned and designed.

Mere pretension can neither conceive nor express the ineffable.  Awareness must extend beyond the ego to sense what any medium can-- and cannot-- represent.

View, Mood, Meaning

Every composition designed to be contemplative in nature calls up extraordinary circumstances.

Each day and hour evolves; each moment suggests time past and time future.  Both clarity and imperfection in art and consciousness speak to the reality of existence filtered through limits of awareness and understanding.   Sound is resonant energy, coming into the range of listening perception and moving beyond it.

Every life is singular in its being and effects; every sight and sound experienced from the vantage point of the moment now is unique beyond measure.  Impossible to capture, it may nonetheless be reflected in the arts.

Ideal and Real

Concept comes alive once exposed to actual application.

When real forces come into contact with ideas, both are altered, and released, to determine outcomes.

Given any number of possibilities, thought that merges with reality through sound as its artistic medium now responds to its own nature, and the will of the composer must assent.

Variables

Expansion also indicates the choice of limits.

 It is possible to take into account the addition of any number of elements, large or small, in such compositions as these.   Rhythms, percussive components, vocals, natural sounds and melodious harmonies might be developed according to these paradigms and be equally atmospheric as well as heightening to the listener's consciousness.

Ideas and energies contain the essence of their opposites, with measured limits giving rise to equilibrium.

Settings, Atmospheres, Elements

The aesthetic sense is reflected in the ways we conduct our lives.

It's absence signifies a dearth of self-knowledge; if too rarefied, a lack of humanity.  Between these extremes of taste and perception, the arts exert influence on the senses, intellect and emotions.

The artist in sound is a painter of color through vibrations, and an explorer in search of the truly beautiful.

Outside, Within-- Pop and Other

Experience is pattern, vibration, vision, sound, and being.

Exposure to diverse musical styles and environments yields receptivity to perspectives beyond those of one's more familiar settings, offering contrasts to both popular and refined sounds with the exotic and obscure, while also inviting comparisons.

There is always more to hear, more to stir curiosity, and more to know.