Clarity and Consciousness

Sounds permeate reality.

In the manner of wild creatures, humans perceive and interpret the sounds of the surrounding world and communicate through significant tones and articulations.  Yet in terms of human understanding, the symbolic nature of sound is far beyond the scope of animal reasoning.

Contemplate the beautiful and the good, pause and consider the subtlety and nuance of art, listen for the sense of the elevated and the spiritual and communicate with depth and clarity.  These are virtues that contribute to the art of listening, and to that of composition as well.

Concealed, Revealed

Let music seize attention and imagination; let it drown out thought and conversation.

This is not the purpose of music, but the extent to which listening may lose its perceptual virtue.  Even so, one may conclude that the art is reduced to that of conveyance, to the transfer and articulation of content, which can be emotional, social, political, and, at best, of the culturally good.

Set aside the idea of music, and consider only the nature of sound as the environment presents it, ordered and represented as art may, through tones, lines, spatial relationships, and movement, as elements of atmospheres.  Listen, and hear.

Imagination and the Real

One may conceive what is not immediately perceptible and bring it into various forms of being, from the physical and concrete to the idealized and abstract.

The story-teller places a princess behind a castle wall and listeners envision her there; her features, expressions and character evolve according to both the wordsmith's artistry and the imagery evoked within each listener.  Turn the tale into a song and the same processes take place.

The composition of a sound environment places the listener within the atmosphere, as percipient and participant.  Anything can happen.

From Opaque to Transparent

Reflections scatter within echoes.

Some subtleties of perception, thought, and emotion can not be captured or reproduced, but only experienced. Yet art removes obstacles, and in doing so, opens eyes and ears, releases sensory awareness from dull habit, and approaches the realities of phenomena beyond their appearances.

Wind to the Southeast

In hearing, one may pay regard by degrees of attention or fail to take interest altogether.

Listening, on the other hand, implies intent as well as attention.  One focuses, increasing perceptual acuity, associating experience, knowledge, emotion and memory with the auditory event; perhaps one considers its orientation in space, its component parts, and its potential meanings.

The composition of what is generally called music is almost solely concerned with this latter context, and with intensifying listening in the percipient. The composition of  atmospheres, however, is focused on both aspects of aural perception, that is to say, with the passive engagement of hearing as well as with active listening awareness, neglecting neither.

From an artistic perspective, each may contribute to an aesthetically balanced sound work in much the same manner as each is engaged in everyday consciousness.

Noisemakers

Observe the vicissitudes of culture in the arts.

Throughout the natural rise and decline of human affairs the derogation of artistic individualism is often the herald of stagnant and untenable attitudes, shallow or corrupt social mores and spurious celebrity.

In such conditions the dearth of interesting, viable perspectives is commonly obscured by a reversion to clamor, as if a need existed to "shock the system" or épater la bourgeois.  Yet is is the arts that would benefit most from the eradication of failed ideas, particularly those expressed in conventional "nonconformity" --and not in terms of irrelevant, self-aggrandizing affectations, but in terms of purpose and creative vision.

The way of the artist is often selfless, and thus undiminished by the banality of evil.

Approach, Engage

Behind the appearances of phenomena lie their meanings.

Following sounds to their origins yields the essences of their effects and causes; in the natural human world these reflect the character and tone of events.

Composition of music, with its standing history of methods and purposes, diverges at this point with the composition of sounds as aural artforms, these latter being determined by detached perspectives upon atmospheric sonic environments. As a result, social and cultural implications are set aside in pursuit of enhanced surroundings and elevated perceptions anyone may experience.

Curiosity's Presence

Interest and intent are creative energies.

With measured effort, distraction is brought into focus.  Apparent disorder reveals its meanings to the mind through sensory perceptions, and the vision, sound, or, if you prefer, music may be brought into being-- again, with measured effort.  This is the peculiar exertion of the individual, thoughtful response, as opposed to reflexive reaction, the former possessing aesthetic objectivity in varying degrees while the latter is commonly informed by social or cultural bias, subjectivity-- and predictability.

A Moment's Pause

Stillness contrasts with action as does light with darkness; each contains the promise of the other.

Sounds emerge unbound by rhythm, move freely, combine, disperse, and are lost to the ear; patterns unfold, rise and fall in continuing tones and movements throughout time and space, and ultimately it becomes clear that rhythms of a grand scale propel such aural images, defining those of the human environment and the composer's imagination.

Singular Auditory Events

From time to time, leaves rustle, ice cracks, footsteps echo.

Yet these sounds are never exactly the same, and are never heard in the exact same circumstances, as one never crosses the same river twice.

The observer changes phenomena by the act of observation itself.

For the artist as composer of sound, this is inspiration.

Perception in Motion

Music begins and ends.

Sound is always present, in constantly changing vibrational waves.

Dada Reverberations

Media is neutral, but the bar for excellence is set low, and immersion is constant.

Sensory perceptions take place sequentially, within the limits of time and space. But the mind is not so restricted, and the imagination may conceive extraordinary possibilities if unburdened by the ever- present mediocre and mundane.

The eye is not capable of seeing more than a small part of the electromagnetic spectrum, yet means have been devised to enable representations of it that give a more thorough understanding of reality beyond the visible.

Sound art, beyond generic music, serves to create environments in which the inner ear of imagination opens to reveal things that go unheard, toward ideas not yet postulated.

Animate Listening Environments

Atmospheric sound compositions recreate the variable structures of diverse settings.

These structures may reflect the aural dynamics of forest lake or billiard parlor, wildlife preserve or city square, but they are designed to aesthetically enliven scenarios in which active listening and passive hearing take place.

Light, Tone, Shade, Shape

Set aside all conceptions and subjective ideas regarding music.

Sound environments may be developed in much the same ways as colors and shapes are advanced upon a canvas.

Illusionary Sounds

The term "music", in a general sense, is indefinite, yet boundless.

For the most part, the casual listener defines music, if at all, in vague, subjective ways, based upon personal preferences and experiences.

More often, musical tastes are simply shared collectively, with little regard given to artistic expression of music beyond lavish production values and sensational presentations.  Essentially, such attitudes toward music are representative of the cultural values of the day-- and they are misleading.

As artistic forms and representations, sound compositions are as expressive and powerful as any others, and they will not be confined, by their very nature, to narrow limits of imagination-- as both composer and discriminating individual listener well know.

For the Present

Conception, application, and expression of ideas yield outcomes.

The artist as composer of sounds hears, listens, contemplates, and creates in a continuum-- and as part of a cyclical process, the outcomes themselves, as products of original processes and individual articulations, again bring forth ideas.

It is one thing to seize upon ideas, yet another to subject them to the rigorous verification, through trial and hazard of failure, that is necessary for their development. But this is the way-- and the risk-- of the artist.

Sonic Memory and Aural Flux

Re-imagine the beauty of events in auditory impressions.

Envision the sounds of numerous such events in combinations and permutations designed to reveal their essential meanings.

This is aesthetic revolt against the constraints of cultural certainty.

Classicism and Contemplation

Listening to sound as an art form composed of aural imagery can intensify the feeling that the listener is simultaneously immersed in the objective world of everyday events while in proximity with another transcendent, detached perspective on reality to which one might aspire.

Cognizance of connectivity between the moment now and deep antiquity-- characteristic of universal "timelessness" of experience-- is fundamentally perceptual in an uncanny or spiritual sense, rather than being intellectual or emotional in nature.  It is more akin to awareness while dreaming than to physical sensory apprehension, and the fluidity inherent in sound lends itself to compositions that accentuate such states of consciousness.

At a Distance, Now

Sounds in memory remain, ghostly resonances.

Pass through countrysides, cities, the villages by the seashore, hallways, tree lined boulevards, plazas and marketplaces, homes and schools and sand hills where the roads end.

The composer's work of a lifetime is to convey these sounds to the listener's mind and spirit.