Culture and Communication

The composer must be committed to the art and to the listener.

The listener begins with commitment to the art, with its cultural as well as personal connections. This is the engagement the composer shares.  One does not measure dedication and responsibility such as this in terms of gain and loss.

Eye, Ear, Mind

The inner ear of mind, like the eye of imagination, exists beyond temporal limits and conceives the extraordinary.

Yet refinement of the former rarely takes place, as the latter is given ascendancy of the senses. To envision a work of art in sound, one must listen, hear, and devise means to bring its elements into being.

Detail, Aural Sensation, Sensibility

Listening implies discernment.

In composition, do not fail to distinguish between the coarse and refined, the prominent and indistinct, and the plain in contrast to the subtle.  But do not fail to contemplate their presence as representative of natural reality, and thus, essential.

Hyperreality and Perspective

Consider creation and juxtaposition of aural imagery as imaginative reflection.

Clearly, observation of social norms indicates scenarios in which "perception is reality", when, in fact, no such reality exists, but rather one or another personal or cultural constructs that substitute for the objectively real world of phenomena and appearances.

What I am looking for, as an artist and aural composer, are representations, through sounds, of the real that are indicative of aesthetic perspective given to the world of humanity and nature, meant to open the imagination in ways that enhance, rather than falsify, experience and events.

Surrounding the Temporal

Sounds move in directions of openness and may be manipulated accordingly.

Time and space are aspects of the fabric of reality, but they need not define every perception, nor every form of artistic representation. Sound imagery, in particular, may elevate the imagination and the senses beyond temporal attachments.  Composer and listener do not make this happen, but allow it to take place.

Occurrences

Every event is multifaceted, the outcome of convergences of innumerable phenomena.

Meaning takes place individually, and selectively, as when witnesses respond to their perceptions of singular incidents.  Thus the composer chooses tones and sounds as poetic representations of sonic experiences, to be conveyed to the listener, laden with uncanny implications and possibilities.

Across Probablilties

Abstractions and known paradigms serve as starting points.

One speaks of such things as ambience, minimalism, indeterminacy, and so forth as matters of shared knowledge, yet realization of meaning comes through processes leading ultimately to total effect.

Speculation, for the composer, is action rising into being.

Opening

Certainly any listener gravitates toward the sounds that provide the most enjoyment, or, if you prefer, aesthetic pleasure.

Of particular interest are scenarios in which the sounds of the listener's surroundings generate that peculiar attraction that music, in the general sense, does not. These are the sounds of the human and natural world, sharing little more than qualities of tone and pattern with the elements of music, yet they possess a beauty, in totality of effect, that is uncanny in the sense of being simultaneously familiar, yet strange.

For the composer, this means coming to terms with the myriad aspects of such atmospheres, and, through aural experimentation, composition, and production, reflecting their virtues.

Aural Evocations

Simply put, life is a creative process, one that is immersed in sounds.

The universe of nature and humanity is equally one of imagination and spirit, and the atmospheres of living change combine every element, including those present nowhere else except in the inner ear.

Variability

Changes in the arts involve individual perception as well as aesthetic and theoretical developments.

One sees and hears, while another does not; gradually, shared perceptions gain clarity.  What was once apparently empty becomes filled, and culture gradually absorbs and expands with perceptivity.

Completeness, Timelessness

Every moment taken inwardly lifts the spirit.

Such is the way of permanence.  Listen, hear with fullness, and the source is joy.

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Settings

The sounds of all seasons compel attention to richness of experience, within and without.

It is not the sounds themselves, but the peculiar attitudes and atmospheres they convey, in subtle and sometimes incomprehensible forms, that lift the perceptions, emotions, and the spirit above the otherwise mundane and ordinary, even into places of idea and vision that can only be described as uncanny.

Filter and Field

Extending aural perception is a matter of focus and deliberation.

Where attention is turned away, search; when consciousness is open and aware, listen, and hear with the inner ear.  Discovery and realization drive both creative act and elevated understanding.

Stepping Stones

In conceptual experiments with sound, success and failure are of equal interest to the composer.

Consider, for example, a piece in which one part of the process in composition and performance is control, while other steps are left to chance, and the evolution of the artistic work in sound develops between the two.  Success emerges in the production of aesthetically beautiful sounds, yet failure brings the composition closer to realization.

Imagining Echoes

In listening and composing, broaden the range of the inner ear.

Survey possibilities and delineate sounds as a cartographer would in developing a three-dimensional map, noting not only expanses, landmarks and contours, but the movement of objects through time and space as well.

Absorption

Consider music as part of a time stream, and listening follows from point to point.

Consider, rather, an art of sound composed as an expanding moment of being, and be immersed within it.

Artificiality

Appearances increasingly lose reliability in the course of political and cultural conflicts.

The aesthetic sense, being evaluative in nature, in accord with moral reason, provides creative insight into chaotic scenarios generated by contending viewpoints.  From such a  perspective of equanimity, an unobstructed flow of perceptions and ideas is natural.

The composer would do well to bring sound imagery into being that reinforces consistent clarity of consciousness in approaching the phenomena of illusory and deceptive appearances.

Chance

Aleatoric art, the reader will note, integrates the idea of chance in the process of composition.

Ideas and elements of composition present themselves in unexpected ways in the art of aural imagery and may be transformed into the work in like manner.

Neither improvisation nor random activity in search of  a "happy accident", the aleatoric aspect of creative action provides for the aesthetic expression of perspectives on sound events as they evolve and are juxtaposed in the course of various works.  Whether in studio or in in the process of field recordings, this perspective is of high value in the creation of atmospheres that reflect "real world" perceptions of settings and vantage points in motion.

Material

Nature yields to impermanence.

To reflect upon the totality of available recorded music is to be aware of inevitable change.

Sound, System, Synthesis

Ultimately, the concept of music is undefined.

What is understood is the art of sound as it relates to individual and group sensibilities in subjective ways, while the objective outlines, analyses, and critical observations of technique, style, and expression carry equal weight in specialized cultural contexts.

I explore, ranging far afield.