Creativity

To build a structure that copies the function of a termite mound is very creative. How can we also act creatively without contributing to the loss of community, degradation of the environment, wasting of resources, support of tyrannies, lawlessness and prejudice? How can we give people real direction in their lives? How do we actually BUILD community and ENRICH the environment not just conserve the little resources we have left? These are very big questions indeed.

We need a liberated aesthetic beyond just creating the same mood of another culture’s music without knowing what we're doing or attempting to copy it in an authentic manner which is impossible for people who weren't brought up in it. Also, we can’t criticize other traditions for adopting western ways or changing their traditions. We cannot reserve innovation and the appropriation of other cultures music solely for ourselves. Their music hopefully was evolving long before they ever met westerners, the sign of a living tradition. Why should they stagnate now just because you want to maintain some kind of imagine!d purity in the music of the "noble savage" stuck in the time before “civilization” came along. Are you sure they’re so backwards and you’re so civilized?

Aesthetics

If we want to write beautiful music that inspires an individual or his/her society to live up to more of their productive community membership and their unique expression we need a definition of beauty.

Beauty:

What is beauty? Some have said that anguish captured in art and a vision of its resolution is beautiful and that anguish gives beauty its dignity and depth. I’m not sure I agree but maybe. How can we capture anguish in music? We’re not sure. Minor keys, honest lyrics which are a historical narrative? How could we show anguish gives beauty its dignity and depth? We really can only speculate and experiment.

Another definition of beauty says that anything which copies nature is beautiful. But we would amend that to say, anything which functions as nature functions is beautiful. Merely copying the outward form of a termite mound wont be beautiful. But the building in Zimbabwe that copies the cooling function of the mound is profoundly beautiful. Zimbabwe is particularly hot and there is a large high rise office building there modeled after the termite mound which does not require any air-conditioning even in the swealtering summers, just like a termite house and simultaneously conserving the earths’ precious natural resources. How can we copy nature in music? Ocean, river, wind, wave, thunder and animal sounds? I fear this may be copying too much of the outer form and not enough of the inner function. Why do oceans, rivers, wind, waves, thunder and animals sound as they do, when they do, the way they do? These questions are difficult to answer?

Purpose of Music

On the surface it appears that music is for entertainment or as a money-making opportunity for the gifted or the lucky. But if one looks a little deeper it can be seen that music can be used to bring people together to build community in group performances whether that community is in the audience, in the ensemble or both. Music can be used in psychology to help people express their emotions when they find it difficult or impossible to use words. Music therapists use music for healing the sick or the bereaved through its power to stir the emotions. Music can be used to help people unwind after an upsetting day, to enter into meditation, to express the religious sentiment or create drama in the movies. The powers of concentration involved in performing and composing music can give a person a greater chance of success in the world. It can help people see themselves as having an influence on the world and therefore feeling contented if they create something useful and beautiful. A person becomes a co-creator of the universe with the source of all life instead of merely theorizing about life in lofty spheres of abstraction which alone leads to depression and a lack of passion.

Many people are becoming unbalanced as a result of modern life due to its complexity and the difficulty of living sustainable with nature and each other. A call to greater complexity, disharmony and distortion for no other reason than because it is the way we seem to be going is like intentionally stepping on the gas while approaching a fatal fall from a cliff. There must be a balance between randomness and control.

I like aspects of modern education because it is sometimes saying that fields such as music are not separate boxes from other subjects. For example, music composition overlaps music theory, performance and aesthetics. These are obvious. What is not obvious is that music composition overlaps other fields such as religion, philosophy, mythology, architecture, mathematics, sociology and psychology. Music does not have hard boundaries that separate it from everything else and therefore cannot be thought of as a box. The same way that we cannot place ourselves outside nature. We are a part of nature, the trees are our external! lungs and there is no escaping the fact without them we would all die.

Aesthetics

Nature:

Some aestheticians say the reason we are all so concerned with beauty in art and music is because we don't live close enough to nature. We yearn for it and try to create it. I tentatively add that we may be trying to create it in our own image.

Math and Music:

Pi is a property often associated with beauty. The spiral in sea shells, like that of the chambered Nautilus, have the property of Pi in their construction and are considered beautiful. It seems that math is intrinsic to nature. Often sacred geometry around the world utilizes Pi and goes into the construction of temples and palaces. There are many other ratios that occur in nature and all are fair game for the composer.

e=2.7182818284590452353602874713526624877572470

9369995957

Pi=3.1415926535897932384626433832795028841971693

9937510582097494

Copeland/ Erdo=.023571113171923293137414347535961677173798

38997101103107109113127

Froda=6.5808599017920970851452403886486491573077

438348074005121512

Omega=0.567143290409783872999686622103555497538

15787186512508135131

Omega Inverse= 1.7632228343518967102252017769517070804360179866

674736345704569

Ramanujan’s#=262537412640768743.9999999999925007

25971981856888793538563373

Phi=1 1 2 2 4 2 6 4 6 4 10 12 6 8 8 16 6 18 8 12 10 22 8 20 12 16 12 28 8

Niven=1233456789 10 12 18 20 21 24 27 30 36 42

Golden String=1.6180339887498948482045863436563811772030

917980576

Tau=122334243426244526264428344628

Ugliness:

Protestantisms belief that the deity should not be represented and that art and music are not to be trusted since they take one away from God, created an architecture by modernists that is bereft of ornament. That’s why modern cities are so ugly. !

Finery:

Yes, we should avoid excessive finery but no ornaments? That’s going too far. Indian sitar music is often too heavily ornamented. For my taste, its use of ornaments should be more sober.

Aniconic Architecture of Persia and Music:

The aesthetic of Persian architecture is such that Allah is never to be represented using any kind of icon. But where the Protestants don’t use any ornaments, the Persians represented the deity in beautiful geometrical patterns, lattice-work and symmetry of which the Allhambra in Moorish Spain and the Taj Mahal in India and wonderful examples.

My Bio IV

I have written more music than I can count, as well as published articles on music composition, aesthetics and ethnomusicology (http://www.paradisemoon.com/thai_main/Huahin/thai_instruments_intro.htm). My music combines melodic motives from jazz, rhythmic motives from the Middle East, India, Africa, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Bali,

My Bio II

I have read many books on aesthetics, music composition, and ethnomusicology especially gamelan transcriptions and East Indian musical practices. I'm interested in world music theory, scales, chords, harmony, music composition, rhythms, drums and drumming.

I have jammed with Korean jazz marimba player and music professor Baek Jin Woo and Blues artist Son Yong Woo of the band Shincheon Blues.

I have a sitar, a Korean Kayageum (Koto), Korean Guengari (small gong), Korean Jing (medium gong), Korean Chango (double headed drum played with a stick and a hard ball mallet), American Chapman Stick, Steel drums from Trinidad, a didgeridoo from Australia and an equal tempered Indonesian Gamelan!