Form and Thought

Genre music typically conforms to preexisting stylistic expectations.

Aural designs and atmospheric sound art most often reflect the peculiar sensibilities of the composer in bringing into being a wide range of creative works limited only by individual concepts and intentions.

Like Water III

Sound emerges, moves in unobstructed directions, and fills spaces.

Because of these qualities, sound may be directed, manipulated, and shaped.  Whether this is done with a heavy hand or a light touch reflects the intentions and sensibilities of the composer.

Endeavor

Every artistic expression is a contribution to human knowledge and perspective.

See.  Listen, hear.  Move, act, create.  Reason, feel, and bring forth.  This is meaning, and being.

Expressions of Perception

Artistic presentations of sounds may express ideas and events in the same manner as visual compositions.

In listening and hearing beauty in evolving order and juxtapositions of tones and lines representative of aural environments, one may recognize perceptual qualities that are pleasing to the ear as being of a similar nature as those of expressive landscapes, still life works, and abstract compositions that are pleasing to the eye.

State of Nature, and Reality

Everyday sounds produce different patterns and effects than those arranged according to musical concepts and structures.

Identify sounds in an environment, noting those that are constant and others that are intermittent, as well as those that reach the ear only once, or only briefly.  Give regard to the effects of proximity and atmospheric conditions; distinguish between sounds of human reality and those originating in the processes of nature.

These sounds will develop continuously and increase in number and variation, emerging, for instance, then scattering, rising and falling, collecting and dispersing.  These are ways in which atmospheres form and evolve, implying innumerable manners and methods by which they may be expressed in creative aural forms.

Balance, Experience

As a composer, my attitude toward my own conceptual or artistic vision is that it can be both natural and somewhat objective as well as individualistic or personal.

When the way of nature and the way of art converge, there is a kind of equipoise between the real and the subjective; stark realism and romantic illusion yield to probity of perspective in both the aesthetic sense and in stylized expression.

Ear to the Wind

Beyond obvious needs related to bare survival, there are more important values than the merely material.

There must be art.  There must be dance.  There must be sounds to excite, and to engage the contemplative soul.

Zone Crossing

Atmospheric sound art in its various forms has existed for more than a century.

Consider the "symphonic poems" or tone poems of Liszt and others, the furnishing music of Satie, the works of John Cage, and ambient music itself, as defined by Brian Eno.

What becomes apparent is the movement from a "fine" art form to a "popular" art form, and what will ultimately be an elimination of the distinction between the two-- if that has not, in fact, already taken place.

Artifice and Execution

Technological advancements offer changing variables for the imaginative composer.

Patterns and structures tend to remain static in generic music, as long standing formulas yield expected results and popular culture tends to change only in superficial ways.

Yet the creative artist is not averse to risk or the failures associated with experimentation, and thus continually gravitates toward interesting ways of engaging and manipulating media.  It is possible to find oneself applying concepts and techniques never previously discussed in professional journals or utilized by other artists, and certain of these may be of an inspired and singular nature in development of original expression.

Aesthetic Character

Consider perception of sound as it reflects inner and outer experience.

Observe and reflect upon the sounds of diverse surroundings, and the meanings and insights they suggest.

Approach, Encounter

Perspective on visual and auditory events changes continuously.

These changes may be sudden and shocking or gradual, and so subtle as to almost escape notice altogether.

The significance accorded artistic efforts will depend to a great extent upon the perceptual acuity of the individual, whether observer or listener.  It is yet within the artist's power to communicate in ways that heighten awareness and attention, so as to increase the possibility of establishing a shared point of view.

This is particularly the case when such a perspective is uplifting in nature.

Aural Tesserae

In sound designs, tones and notes may function as do tiles in a mosaic or shards of colored glass in a kaleidoscope.

The dynamic fluidity of tones in these arrangements enhances impressions of kinetic art-- sculptures, or mobiles composed of environmental or atmospheric sounds.

By nature these are nonlinear productions of uniquely peculiar symmetry, yet they are conceived and executed with the purpose of bringing aesthetically beautiful sound events into concrete, if somewhat ethereal, forms.

Look, Listen, Hear

Directness of perception is neither difficult nor mystical in nature, but it is, in fact, quite often obscured by distractions, attachments, discomfiture, emotional excitability, and difficulties in reasoning.

Environments burdened by stressful, frenetic activity contribute to these notable types of malaise, and various media, including music, may be contributing  factors as well.

Rather than through the means of utilizing the traditional elements of music, it is possible to enhance environments and acuity of perception by developing sound designs composed primarily of tones and juxtapositions of aural textures.

Bringing such compositions into being engages a total effect of clarity the listener may share, one that elevates reason and a sense of well-being.

Aesthetic Form

Unite sound with state of mind and being.

Bring awareness to clarity with lucidity of expression.

Sanctuary and Power

Climates for contemplative thought fortify consciousness.

Thus, a purpose of these compositions is to evoke a liberating solitude, bringing atmospheres conducive to elevated awareness-- which are not always easily accessible-- within the listener's reach, as well as enhancing the aural environment.

That such states of mind and associated perspectives stand in contrast to social norms in common currency cannot be an issue of contention.  They are historically representative of individual virtue and thoughtful understanding of the human condition.

Observe, Consider, Act

Art does not occur spontaneously.

In any form it is vision made manifest.  It is delineation of life and being.

Echo, Illusion, Presence

All atmospheres contain elements of time past and time future.

Among the artifacts of what has been and what can be, the act of the artist in time present is choice.

Rise and Fall

Common to narratives great and small, literary and musical, are the arrangements with their beginnings, developmental processes, and conclusions.

Yet life goes on, as do the sounds of life, outside such limits-- ungovernable, surprising, cyclical, dynamic, subtle, and strange, all moving in constantly shifting atmospheres.

This is something different than music, and to give it expression the composer must reflect the musical, the formless, and the sensual.

Sound Virus

Author William Burroughs' prescient works refer to word and image virus and the idea that behavior may be modified by unconscious receptivity to repeated and intentionally replicated verbal and visual imagery.

Predictive analysis easily indicates the spread of contemporary ideas, attitudes, and ultimately states of mind in this manner.  Observe conversations follow headlines and popular memes, obscuring and dulling while reinforcing the mere semblance of original thought.

Spend hours viewing Renaissance paintings themselves until their being radiates through the brush strokes; afterwards, Botticelli's eye imposes its vision on the facial features of the girl across the room; Caravaggio's mystic light falls meaningfully on the mendicant at the street corner.

In terms of sound, such viral forms are the styles, rhythms and melodies, percussive qualities and instrumental timbres that shape emotional tension and perspective, individually and over widespread cultural contexts, most often outside the listener's knowledge and control.  These are external forces that become replicated internally, through memory, as auditory illusions of music, also known as ohrwurms.

The individual may define the extent to which these "earworms" reflect or define mood and attitude; informed self-consciousness of this kind does not occur collectively.

Sound designs may be composed that literally stop the ohrwurm and sound virus dynamics, releasing their burden upon consciousness while enhancing perceptive listening.  Interestingly, this is, in fact, a secondary effect of atmospheric compositions designed to parallel sound events that spontaneously occur in nature and in various contexts of human environments.

Simply put, my compositions are fabricated as sound events that are neither random nor the result of a synthesis of traditional musical elements.  Rather, they are fundamentally based upon the spatial relationships of tones, asymmetrical arrangements, and cyclical movements.

Listening to the recordings of Black Mountain School will certainly stimulate the imagination as well as brighten aesthetic sensibilities.  Additionally, they do not merely mask, but will disperse "songs stuck in the head" while enhancing atmospheres and pleasurable perception of sound.

Expression, Technique, Art

Composition and manipulation of sound as an art form need not conform to the generally-accepted parameters of musical creation.

It nonetheless depends upon the artist and composer intent upon creating a body of work of appealing aesthetic qualities to develop, usually through experimentation, concepts and methods through which sound designs may achieve total effects of considerable beauty.

Art is a means of discovery, and it is ever thus.