Detachment

Approach to creative action, whether inspired or contrived, concerns expression and representation.

Decisions regarding means and methods can be considered in terms of  "creating a reality", and by doing so, exploring what reality is and what it means. 

Ears to Hear

In the popular imagination, entertainment and diversion laden with visuals increasingly obscures direct personal experience.

The "pop mind" is necessarily one that is formed and focused through collective ideas, imagery, and subjection to immediacy, an authoritarian mass conformity of attention. Clearly, such a burden upon consciousness degrades contemplative reflection and gives rise to a host of social issues caused by mental and emotional impediments to existential freedom.

Neither engagement nor disengagement is the way of the artist. It is the integrity of the creative work that is the essential element.

Transmission VIII

All communications take place in the context of environment.

Culture, society, circumstance, and time cannot be set aside in order to convey meaning, regardless of the extent of its significance.  This is a fact of life that is no less true in the arts.

Even so, there remain expressions that cannot be brought into being under the burden of intellectual compromise, if artistic principles are are to have any value at all.  

Immensity

The greatest of rhythms are, in their depth, range, and temporal scope, beyond sensory experience.

Reality on this scale is comprehensible only in the abstract, yet it may be suggested through expressive art.

Pursuit

To know with the senses is to participate in the human experience.

Commitment to vision is commitment to audience.

Emergence, Convergence, and Dispersal

Historically, music sounds nothing like auditory phenomena in the world at large.

Rather than seeking to express the personal, I compose and create by listening to the surroundings, considering the various aural impressions within, then finding and combining sounds that re-imagine, reflect, and represent the experience.

Plainness and Intricacy

Find nature, find being.  This is simplicity.

But this presupposes "nature" to be outside awareness. It is not. Such an idea is, like many, only a delusion of subjectivity. Birds and wildlife enter and cross the grounds; outside the pull of the Earth's gravity, one is weightless. The extent to which analysis has meaning is valuable, and beyond that, it is a pointless exercise, an obstacle to discernment.  To lose consciousness of one's true nature is a failure of rationality.

Eliminate the excessive; broaden the focus, extend the senses, and understanding follows.

The composer would do well to begin creative endeavors with this thought in mind: out of the simple evolves the complex, yet complexity expands into simplicity.  

Background, Being

Sounds, unceasing, go unheard.

Attention is fixed elsewhere in the scheme of the mundane, of work and play.

It is possible to know and hear the moment now in the surroundings, to sense with the inner ear the totality of experience, and to realize more aural beauty, in the imagination, than the sounds of music alone evoke.

Formless Change

What will be, is not now.

Putting aside the common ideas of music, think of sounds composed like a pool of water, clear and beautiful, but indistinct; still, yet contained in a flow impossible to fully grasp, measure, or capture.

Sonic Fields

Begin with the idea of creating something other than music using aesthetically complementary sounds.

Reproduce sounds as they occur spontaneously in human environments as well as in natural ones. Treat the studio as an instrument in developing and manipulating sound elements and aural effects.

Set aside musical ideas in favor of gesture, collage, layering, and striking placement of tones and lines. Consider any and all possibilities in growing the composition.  Contemplate and evaluate the total effect until, with alterations, additions, eliminations of fault and failure, and realization of integrity of expression, the work is finished.

Energies

All things are in constant motion.

Out of stillness comes action, and each produces effects on the other.  This is a fundamental dynamic of sound, however subtle or wide-ranging, whether spontaneous and natural or contrived.

Centering Surroundings

Sounds are perceived, identified, located, and separated in the perceptual process.

Listening actively makes these distinctions clear, yet they take place just the same in the course of passive hearing.  One will note the unusual, ignoring the rest, and still be conscious of the quality of the atmosphere.

In approaching ambient sound design, I am interested in composing with these perceptual processes in mind as well as in the juxtaposition of complementary tones, lines, and so forth, giving attention to the sensations produced by sounds as well as their musicality.  While atypical of the ambient style in general, such methods contribute to originality of total effect in Black Mountain School works, making them distinctively different in sound and nature from those of other stylists.

Immersion

Aesthetically appealing sounds are considered musical as distinguished from noise and other sounds that impact negatively upon the sensibilities.

Thus there is virtue in moderation and balance in developing sound works that emphasize sustained effects. When subtlety of sound and expression is abundant, perception is enhanced and the listener becomes more thoroughly involved in the experience.

Certainly these are desirable outcomes, and particularly so with works of an experimental or avant-garde nature that aim to communicate in ways that are out of the ordinary.

Widening

Huxley concluded that the brain is a filter, one that spares consciousness the shock of perceiving all things simultaneously.

Thus the creative object of the composer is to assemble the elements most attractive to the listener's receptive awareness in such a way as to extend both active listening and passive hearing. As this is the way one perceives sound outside the framework of music, so it may be a different way to bring a composition to fullness in the listener's inner ear.

Shifting

Sounds are perceived, in their continuous manifestations, according to the nature of the listener.

But sounds may alter perceptions, mood, and consciousness. Blazes become glowing coals, winds rise and die down, to stir again, and arrival moves gradually toward departure.

So it is with the composition of sounds and tones that are not shaped into music, but into forms that reflect perceptions of the surrounding world.

Aesthetic, Function, Meaning

Art acts upon the senses, emotions, and mind.

Inspired by music, the dancer moves, while mood and thought follow.  Yet as art inspires, so the composer and listener explore and discover.

Territories of Imagination

Memory, association, feeling and thought are stirred by musical tones and structures.

The composer produces the atmosphere; the listener envisions and moves through the landscape.

Impression and Force

The arts always stand firm in the face of banality.  The contrast between the two is clear and real.

Distraction does not elevate; diversion does not last.  Meaning and beauty always endure, regardless of time, place, and medium.

Circumference, Expanse

Awareness of limits contributes to the efficacy of processes, including those involved in musical composition.

To oppose, overcome, deconstruct, or disregard limits is not the same as conceptualizing different limits altogether, and acting accordingly.

Contexts and Contents

Convert impressions of environmental sound elements into elements of composition.

Every setting is different and produces unique effects.  The sonic events produced in diverse settings, and those produced in the same settings on different occasions, offer practically infinite impressions that may contribute to any number of atmospheric compositions.