Power of Sound
For a long time, I have carried around a conviction that sound itself is the fundamental expressive medium. Obvious, yes, but true and often overlooked. It’s not just the obvious nature of it, it’s something much deeper than that. I’ve spent a large part of my life trying to comprehend exactly what I mean by that statement. Various occurrences highlight the journey, and only now am I coming to grasp that this reality has been understood, worked with, revered by humans for a very long time. And really, that’s what this blog is all about: exploring the fact that sound itself is a powerful influencer of our lives, minute-by-minute, and a part of almost everything we do.
The implications for the study of music are profound, and that has been the focus of much of my work over the past twenty years. It is time for me to speak about the depth of my conviction, the depth of the power of sound. The milestones on the path I have followed might resonate, as they contain the seeds of expanded fascinations that radiate back to sound.
The whole journey that I am on in relation to sound goes way back, but especially to my first experience playing in an orchestra. I grew up in the rural south, took piano lessons from a country piano teacher, never heard a word about new music. I got good on trumpet, and was able to attend the Governor’s School of North Carolina, where we played only modern music. With no preconceptions, I was amazed, loved it, couldn’t believe the sounds I was immersed in! We played a lot of sound mass music — Ligeti’s Atmosphères, Xenakis’s Pithoprakta, really wild stuff for a poor country boy. There is nothing like having no preconceptions for encountering something as it is, and learning its lessons with few filters. Only very recently did I come to know the term that describes this state: beginner’s mind.
And, if I am going to be completely honest about my path, this is when I first got high on cannabis. Another door swung wide open: I could see that the judgmental world my mother was teaching me was simply not the only way to see things. This world of altered consciousness was a significant part of why I am where I am today, with sound and everything else.
Years go by, lots of experimentation with sound and consciousness in college. Not very good grades, but I learned a bunch of lessons I would not trade for the world. I had the most profound connection to the whole of life on one occasion doing LSD, and it planted the seeds for my future contemplative life. I attended Grateful Dead concerts and experienced incredible group immersion in sound and joy. Of course I set myself up for barely getting into graduate school, but that turned out to be a blessing as well.
Another credit, this to my great composition teacher, John Anthony Lennon, who introduced me to composing by following the path of least resistance. Turns out that was exactly how I ended up studying with him, of course! Kind of like trusting the universe, but I didn’t know that’s what I was doing. It was during that time that I began to do yoga, to meditate, and to attempt to express what I sensed to be the power of sound.
On to another level of graduate school, and another pivotal experience. I’d fallen in love with electronic music some years back, and was working with very long, evolving sounds. I was composing a piece for orchestra for my dissertation, and was using those long sounds as a framework for orchestral music. When I applied for a fellowship to complete my dissertation, I had to account for what I was doing, and wrote about how I paid attention to all the aspects of sound in creating my music, not just pitches, and sent the essay to my teacher, George Wilson. He refused to back my proposal because I hadn’t gone far enough, so I took the step to invent the term that would carry me a long way on this path: I said I was using a method called the Sound-Energy Aggregate (SEA) to compose. I got the support of my teacher, got the fellowship, and when people heard me talk about the concept, they were always excited. But I didn’t realize that I should pursue it with vigor. Maybe that’s the path of least resistance, at least that’s the way it feels now. (I chose a highly resistant path instead, trying to be a star composer, and that didn’t go exactly where I had hoped!)
Teaching jobs came and went, my wife and I moved all over the place. Eventually I realized this approach could be a method of analysis, and wrote a few papers on the topic. Realizing a glimmer of the trajectory I was on, I attended a conference on the use of contemplative practices in higher education. That led to developing courses that use those methods, and I was regularly having students apply the SEA in analyzing modern music, and many many students who thought they didn’t like modern music, or computer music, realized it was fine after all and did great work.
And finally then, that realization, that people always left class feeling engaged, full of life, led to the beginning stage of bringing it all together. In fall 2017, I devised my Just Listening workshop, which focuses on experiencing in groups music that people have difficulty with, don’t like — or just don’t know — and discuss what they have heard, listen again, draw what is heard, listen again, talk. By the end of an hour or so doing this, the group inevitably has a valid analysis sketched, and a group of people have built a little community. In short, they have experienced just a glimpse of beginner’s mind: starting with a sense that they didn’t know enough to deal with this music, the group actually analyzes what they hear in their own terms, and come to realize that doing so does not depend on musical training or specific technical knowledge.
All these steps have embedded meanings and impact that I will unpack and explore over the years ahead. I have come to realize that I am not alone in my convictions about sound, but moreso, I have learned that there are many more ramifications surrounding the importance of sound than I could ever have imagined.