Artist as Composer

Listening involves innumerable frames of reference.

Beginning with personal experience, the listener interprets sound according to cultural and sub-cultural attitudes, biases, and individual preferences.  Musicians and performers are naturally particular in their tastes, especially in creative songwriting, arranging, and things of like nature that appeal to them and their audiences. These are scenarios related to the concepts and values associated with music of all types, yet there are other ways and means of working creatively with sounds that also yield aesthetic meaning and purpose for composer and listener.

My experience leads me to acting outside the organizational patterns associated with most music, and working from a perspective similar to that of a painter or sculptor in designing and executing recorded works.

Rain, Heard at a Distance

Imagination and perception shape point of view.

The reality of sound is such that it heightens alertness and evokes emotional responses, suggests imagery and stimulates memory, yet retains its objective existence.

The art of sound, like the language of poetry, emerges in consciousness with the suggestion of infinite possibilities.

Form and Mind in Sound

The effects of sound encompass atmospheres and states of mind.

Atmosphere and setting establish external appearances while engaging the emotions and intellect, thus the elements and tones of specific pieces of music, or of the sound environment in general, contribute to both mood and perceptual awareness.

The composer chooses to create accordingly, and the listener to experience.  From my peculiar perspective, I am interested in developing compositions that convey equanimity, elevation, and balance.

Landscape, Still Life, Atmosphere

In accord with the principle ideas of the visual arts, the artist as composer works to attain the ends of artistic expression through sound productions and recordings.

The first principle is that of work.

Such productions are not the result of innate gifts of inspiration bestowed, as "celebrity culture" might lead some to believe, at birth. The artistic outcomes under examination here are those that come into being through prolonged labor, study, and effort, and they are manifold.

As the traditional painter is often engaged in the imitation of nature, as the impressionist is focused upon sensory perceptions such as fluctuations of light and color in changing conditions, and as the abstract expressionist is concerned with gesture and energy, so is the composer of sound art and aural atmospheres intent upon animating sonic forms through applications of these-- among many other-- essential aesthetic concepts.

These concepts are learned, practiced, developed through action, experimentation, and risk-taking, and only then may they appear, indeed, effortless.

Form and the Formless

Generic musical styles are neither wholly individual nor idealized representations of type.

These are not works emerging into form, being structures in the manner of existing compositions and productions. Enjoined by common expectations to specific stylistic configurations, they are nonetheless depleted of the marked and determined character that made their various inceptions startling.

Expectation leads merely to its fulfillment; for artist as composer, the unknown becomes what it will in the crucible of aesthetic vision and principle.  Risk and failure are nothing when the reward is beauty and elevation, and neither gold nor spurious immortality match them in value.

Wave to Mind II

Social and cultural narratives feed expectations for living.

When these narratives are in opposition to the evidence of the senses and the virtues of reason, there is only one choice for the artist, that of integrity or capitulation.

Resistance

There is a totalitarian perspective regarding art that consigns it to representations of approved beliefs, extending even to methodologies that can and cannot be implemented in the creative process.

When such an oppressive view is pervasive within social and cultural contexts, the artist is no less bound to think and act according to principle, and to create in spite of any of the manifestations of ignorance, apathy and enmity that would obstruct clarity and fullness of expression.

Intuitive Expression

Consider art as a foundation for understanding meaning.

The artist perceives, expresses, and thus gives a sense of experience.  By nature an imperfect voicing of consciousness, the work is nonetheless a contribution to awareness of the human condition.

Sound Spaces

Sound and environment contribute in equal measure to the listening experience.

This balance is as important to the composer in the process of creation as it is to the listener in creating conditions conducive to the enjoyment of music.

It is essential to the aesthetic of sound composition as a form of artistic expression.

Reach Forward

The ability to communicate over vast distances is a mark of advanced technology.

The value of the information that is conveyed is a mark of culture.

If it is the only the abstract things that are permanent, this means nothing to one who cannot conceive them, but who functions almost solely on a concrete, materialistic level of understanding the world.

Art is what it will be, whether a shallow reflection of decline or a force of virtue and reason.

Future Echoes

Begin with that which is not possible.

Walls are breached, and doors opened, through imagination and action, reason and free will.  It is not up to the artist to say what will be, but to work to bring that idea, concept, vision or sound into being-- impossible or not.

Shading and Divergence

Vibrations strike the ear and unfold within consciousness.

 Nuance of sound is as varied as that of color, revealing the flux of reality.

Clearing II

State of environment reveals state of mind.

Setting reflects more than wealth or poverty, luxury or simplicity.  Even the casual observer detects harmony and discord, virtue and vice, purpose and principle in the surroundings, whether intimate or public, emotionally charged or sedate.  The visual and auditory evidence is always apparent, and always mutable, whether by choice or changing circumstances.

My perspective of artist as composer leads me to create artificial atmospheres that are nonetheless based upon the sonic events of the real world, as opposed to musical methodologies.  My purpose in developing and evolving these sound compositions is to enrich environments, lift spirits, and fortify strength of mind, character, and state of being.

Appearances and The Real

The value of ideas must be proven.

This requires that sounds brought forth from imagination be evaluated as aesthetically expressive and in accord with the composer's principles and theories.

Only the artist can be responsible for the integrity of the works, individually and as a whole.

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.