The manner of listening the Sound-Energy Aggregate (SEA) requires is very much a contemplative practice, and listening is essential to the SEA approach to musical understanding. The SEA asks that one simply listen openly and then recall sounds and energies heard. This framework for listening is subtly different from how we are typically encouraged to… Continue reading Listening and the SEA
Tag: sound
Composing Again!
I’ve taken an extended break from composing in the last few years, only creating two pieces since composing Groundhog Night. That piece marked a turning point in many ways, and my world has shifted significantly since. Audience engagement, bringing realizations about music to participants, building community, creating an enjoyable experience, teaching through doing… all erode… Continue reading Composing Again!
Energy and storytelling in music
I’ve been focused on energy in music for a long time. It all began with composing, and that’s my focus in this post, on pieces I’ve constructed with great attention to energy profile. I’ll potentially do more of these over time. My position about music is that it is basically the action of sound energy… Continue reading Energy and storytelling in music
Uncertainty
In my writing here, and in my teaching of composition and theory, I have learned to embrace and celebrate not knowing. Having a desire to understand more deeply this phenomenon, knowing it as I do mostly from an experiential perspective, and arriving at it from several angles, I have been reading Physics and Philosophy by… Continue reading Uncertainty
The starting point is energy.
All of music reaches us initially through our ears, which modify complex physical vibrations into analogous streams of electrochemical energy that pass into the brain. The transformation of vibration into energy is first a physical, mechanical phenomenon, and the further into the brain it gets, the more it becomes a psychological phenomenon. Thus there is… Continue reading The starting point is energy.
More on Contemplative Music Theory
In a previous post, I discussed Contemplative Music Theory in the context of beginner’s mind, and asked what that might offer to improve our thinking about music, and music theory. That essay barely scratched the surface of what contemplation brings to the endeavor, so I’ll add a bit more now. One primary benefit of allowing… Continue reading More on Contemplative Music Theory
Contemplative Music Theory
This blog is called Contemplating Music for very specific reasons, the primary one being that it urges the adoption of an approach to knowing that differs from the paradigm of learning and knowing that pervades our culture. It’s hard to pin down in just a few words what that paradigm is, but I’ll make an… Continue reading Contemplative Music Theory
Sound!
The foundation of my work is that sound itself is the primary expressive phenomenon. I come to that state of thinking by the influence of a couple of sources: one, experience performing and then composing modern classical music, and another, the realization that what I love about rock and roll music is the combined sound… Continue reading Sound!
Energy of sound, energy of mind
Clearly there’s a distinction between the energy of the sound we hear, the sound that travels through the air as compressions and rarefactions, and the energy it creates in our minds. The SEA theory is interested in both, and the relation between them. The relation between them is particularly of interest because it is obvious… Continue reading Energy of sound, energy of mind
Drawing musical energy
In my teaching, I have a habit of getting people to draw their account of a piece. Since I call virtually everything into question, a natural thought arises: what’s that drawing all about? Drawing asks for an embodiment of a visual sort, which helps a person put the thoughts they may have about a piece… Continue reading Drawing musical energy