Thursday, May 18, 2006

The pure pleasure of ambient soundscapes...

Have you ever really listened to sound?

Have you ever just let the sound enter you and fill you and let it take you into a state of complete and extraordinary wonder?

I have of late been taking a LOT more interest in sound as an art-form.

It's not difficult to notice from this blog that music plays an incredibly important role in my life. Even though I can barely play a note of music myself, I love and appreciate the fantastic and wonderful places music can take my heart, soul and mind.

But it's more than music too. It's sound. Effortless, pure, clean sound. For example, the other day I listened - really listened - to the thrum of a truck on the busy highway, or just now, the sweet early morning twittering of waking birds. Both sounds, very different and each having their own quality. I'm trying not to place these sounds into a rigid context or put a personal judgement on the "rightness" of them, but I just want to let them percolate inside me to become their own musical notes for the soundtrack of my life.

Clicks, pops, whistles, clangs; muted whispers, darkly expressed low notes, sweet centered notes, high-pitched jarring noises, it's all as much music as that which is arranged in synchronised harmonies.

We take this discordant 'music' of ordinary life around us so much for granted. The sound we absorb everyday is actually quite extraordinary.

Silence is a beautiful thing too. But silence is something most of us can only handle in smallish doses. Silence can become oppressive and disconcerting if enforced for too long. Silence becomes its own noise and one will strain to hear anything new that will break it's spirit. And if one can't hear, then sound will insist on being felt - it cannot do otherwise.

Music, soundscape, vibration, resonance; these are that which enrich us and create synergy for us.

May you experience the pure sound of your life today. :)

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