Reading: Round 1

I read through two books this week:

"Sound Design: The Expressive Power of Music, Voice, and Sound Effects in Cinema" by David Sonnenschein

"A Pattern Language" by Christopher Alexander

Thoughts on these ==============================================================

The Sonnenschein text presents a good balance of technical and aesthetic considerations. Unfortunately, neither of these facets go far enough to really help my research at this point. However, he does raise some interesting topics that point to new directions. These include:

• "Music for Movies" (a documentary)
• Discussion of mantras, toning, mandalas, and yantras
• Reference to Beethoven's somewhat non-linear approach to composition (this will take some real digging...)
• Ideas surrounding entrainment and Gestalt principles
• Study of cymantics and Chladni forms, as well as vocables
• R. Muray Schafer's discussions of soundscape

"A Pattern Language" is a tougher nut to crack. Conceptually, yes, this is fantastic. The idea of a pattern that is simultaneously self-contained, a parent of, and a child to other patterns is very familiar to me. It reminds me of the connection I made when I first learned about Chaos and Complexity theories.

I'm not sure what to do with this right now, however. It's useful, but how, exactly? Thom Gillespie said that he remembers a book about musical pattern language...perhaps that would be a good next step.