My phD research is coming along well at the moment, and I thought it might be nice to share some ideas here that are arising from it. I suppose generally speaking at the moment I’m looking at how I define the ideas that underpin what I do…composing music.

So,what is…

Sound?

Vibration

Hearing?

The apprehension of vibration and its effects by the body. The traditional assumption is that this occurs only through the ears, but this could/should be extended to include any other organs sensitive to vibration or to its effects; the skin, proprioceptive apparatus, the eyes.

Listening?

Attentiveness to vibration and its effects.

An interpretive act relating vibration based stimuli to memory and knowledge of physical phenomena, methods and means of communication, context, sense of time, etc.

Music?

The cognitive result of listening.

Composition?

The act of shaping or contextualising sounds.

Pre-emptive listening, based on a knowledge of vibration based stimuli, their effects and associations for the listener.

The Location of Music?

The body of the listener.

The specifics of how I describe each of these ideas to myself varies every day, however the general theme stays the same, that notions of hearing/listening are traditionally over-focussed on the ear and exclude much of what goes on in situations where people engage with music. My aim, for the moment at least, is to address the question of how to explore composing for this “expanded listening”.

I’m aware that these definitions are very broad, but I have a hunch they need to be in the present world. For instance language could easily come under my definition of music, which I don’t think is such a bad thing, there have been lots of attempts to wrestle music into linguistic theoretical frameworks and it doesn’t fit, it’s too vague. Whereas I think there’s a good chance language could be a music, or at least it can’t hurt to think of it in that way.

Stay tuned…