.pdf file from NewMus MusicNet (requires a free Adobe Acrobat Reader)
a journal of new and experimental composition
number 1, April 1995

This essay is intended to elucidate the strategies used in my compositions to direct the attention of the performers. Included is a score for "Deep Listening Chorus," a list of topics and questions for exploration, and a list of relevant scores from my catalog.

My way of composing is seen either as a substantial contribution to the field or it is dismissed as not real music because it is not written in the conventional way and cannot be judged conventionally. It is dismissed because of a lack of written notes, or because participants are asked to invent pitches and rhythms according to recipes or to respond to meta-phors. Musicians accustomed to reading notes and rhythms often are shocked by the bareness of the notation compared to familiar conventional scores which direct their attention to specific pitches and rhythms which to them seem predictable and repeat-able. What I value is the more unpredictable and unknowable possibilities that can be activated by not specifying pitches and rhythms. I prefer organic rhythms rather than exclusively metrical rhythms. I prefer full spectrum sound rather than a limited scalar system. I sometimes use meter and scales within this fuller context of sound oriented composition.

My music is interactive music. It is interactive in the sense that participants take a share in creating the work rather than being limited to expressively inter-preting pitches and rhythms. I have composed the outside forms, the guidelines for ways of listening and ways of responding. These forms and guidelines with appropriate application give the participants a creative opportunity to compose and perform simultaneously in collaboration with me and to expand their musicianship.

The range of notational practices employed to present my work as a composer includes conventional staff notation, graphic notation, metaphors, prose, oral instruction and recorded media. Sonic Meditations for example are notated through prose instructions or recipes. The notations for Sonic Meditations were presented in written form only after many trials with oral instructions given to many different people. Even though Sonic Meditations are in print, I often vary or revise the wording I use to transmit the instructions in new situations.

My instructions are intended to start an attentional process within a participant and among a group which can deepen gradually with repeated experi-ence. Here is an example of a piece for voices or instruments: Three Strategic Options - Listen together. When you are ready to begin choose an option. Return to listening before choosing an-other option. Options are to be freely chosen throughout the duration of the piece. The piece ends when all return to listening together. 1) Sound before another performer 2) Sound after another performer 3) Sound with another per-former. If performing as a soloist substitute sound from the environment for another performer.

In order to perform Three Strategic Options all players have to listen to one another. Attention shifts with each option. Sounding before another could have a competitive edge. One has to listen for a silence which is the opportunity. Sounding after another implies patience. One has to listen for the end of a sound. Sounding with another takes intuition - direct knowing of when to start and to end. A definitive performance is not expected as each performance can vary considerably even though the integrity of the guidelines will not be disturbed and the piece could be recognizable each time it is performed by the same group. Style would change according to the performers, instrumentation and environment.

The central concern in all my prose or oral instructions is to provide attentional strategies for the participants. Attentional strategies are nothing more than ways of listening and responding in consideration of oneself, others and the environment. The result of using these strategies is listening. If performers are listening then the audience is also likely to listen.

Even though judgment of the musical outcome in advance of performance seems impossible relative to conventional scores, composing guidelines and outside forms are crafts which take as much careful consideration as any score. It is important that everyone understand the directions they are sharing. Making these directions clear to every one is a challenging task for the composer. One wrong word can bring up resistance or confusion. In this body of work called interactive music, I have rede-fined the responsibilities of the composer, the performer and listeners by asking that everyone share creatively in the listening process which is the gateway to creativity.

After trying one of my scores, many performers and audiences find that it stretches their ears in new ways and that they can contribute imaginatively to the music. Furthermore, it may help musicians in their performance of more conventional music.

The way one chooses to listen to music or daily living is a factor in the quality of one's experience. Listen-ing is a process. It can be like a bolt of lightning all at once in the moment, or it consists of good intuitive guesses and thoughtful references to past experience. Raw listening has no past or future. It has the potential of instantaneously changing the listener forever. It is the roots of the moment.

None of us who compose and improvise music can claim credit for inventing music. Music is a gift from the universe. Those of us who can tune to this gift are fortunate indeed. We are interacting with a powerful resource and sharing with billions of musicians who have preceded us, who are simultaneous with us and who will succeed us. We can help others to learn to listen and participate by listening as a lifetime practice. As musicians we listen to make finer and finer distinctions in tone, sound and rhythm. It is the slightest nuances that accumulate and refine one's aesthetics. If we also listen to include more and more of what might seem to be background noise we perceive relationship to place. All sound, including so called background sound, brings information and connection. This is true for our daily lives as well.

Here is one of my practices:

Listen to everything until it all belongs together and you are part of it.

For many years I have led groups in interactive sound oriented music making. One of the simplest and most effective forms is Deep Listening Chorus. People everywhere seem to need to make nonverbal sounds. It is done mostly unconsciously every day, yet hardly ever consciously and in a group. Nonverbal sound making is a way to express emotions and to explore the unknown. Most everyone participating feels a sense of release which carries over to other activities and helps to activate the imagination or simply refresh the mind. Unrestricted vocal sound making is pleasurable. No musical training is necessary - yet a musical experience can and does happen.

The compositions listed below contain other of my strategies for listening and responding at a more or less advanced level of musicianship:

Angles and Demons
for unspecified voices
Earth Ears
for unspecified instruments
El Relicario de los Animales
8 paired instruments, 4 percussion and voice
The Grand Buddha Marching Band
for unspecified voices or instruments
The Klickitat Ride
for unspecified voices or instruments
The New Sound Meditation
for unspecified voices or instruments
The Tuning Meditation
for unspecified voices or instruments
Traveling Companions
for 3 percussion and 3 dancers
Rose Moon
for chorus, male and female soloists and runner
Sonic Meditations
unspecified voices or instruments
Tashi Gomang
for orchestra
The Wheel of Time
for string quartet
To Valerie Solanis and Marilyn Monroe in recognition of their desperation
for small ensemble or chamber orchestra

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@ 1995 by Pauline Oliveros.
From Roots of the Moment: Writings, Hšrspiels and Poems 1981-1995.
Published by Drogue Press.
Used by permission.

Deep Listening Chorus
A form to activate community creative sound making

Commentary:

This piece is not intended as concert music. It is for a group of people to perform together as combined composers/performers/listeners in an agreed upon group activity. It is appropriate for a retreat, work-shop, class or a get together. This does not mean that an audience couldn't also enjoy the performance or hear it as art music. The present concert paradigm, though, restricts how such a piece could be presented and appreciated.

The score:
1) Lying on the floor, heads or feet toward center and touching, listen/sound. Listen while sounding - listen while silent.

2) Listen to the whole field of sound. Let any sound heard whether inwardly or outwardly be a cue for relaxing or energizing as needed. This implies a global form of listening which includes everything from the softest, loudest, nearest most distant sounds possible to hear. Keep expanding to include more sound without assigning importance to any particular sound, except to cue relaxation or energizing. This form of auto suggestion can also be used to accomplish goals. It can be done as a separate daily practice.

3) As a group, practice relaxation by scanning the body and releasing whatever tension is not needed. Send sound either mentally or vocally to the parts of the body that need releasing. Then bring conscious-ness to a pre-selected metaphor such as ice breaking up in the Spring, the fullness of summer, the flow of electricity, etc. Each person helps to state the metaphor together simultaneously in an overlapping sound web using words, phrases and sentences at first, and then leading to a primarily nonverbal sounding. Words may weave in and out of the sounding, or not.

4) Anything goes if and only if you are listening.

A period of silence after the sounding is beneficial to help absorb the sensations, feelings and to assimilate the musical experience. After that, some people like to share their experiences, or not.

Deep Listening Chorus often lasts for over an hour and a half.

There are many interesting questions and topics concerning the listening process to be explored by a Deep Listening Chorus. Following is a list:

Super listening.
Normal listening.
Subliminal listening.
What is interactive music?
The composer/performer. One who makes and performs music.
With self - with other(s) with context/environment.
Who is composing?
Who is performing?
What happens in the music?
The ripening of technique.
Open and closed languages.
Limits, boundaries and borders.
Games and gamuts.
Scales and scales.
The concert hall as an instrument.
Sublime situations.
Cautions and excesses.
Leaving training/reprogramming for creativity.
The Politics of Excellence.
Demilitarization.
High level strategy: Ways of listening/ways of performing.
Strategy driven technique.
Low level responses.
Levels of awareness.
Breath rhythm: Song.
Heart rhythm: Dance.
Gaia consciousness.
Individual focus.
Floating sounds.
Musical territory.
Poems of Freedom.
Finding the still point: Silence, motion, interaction, relative, absolute.
Developing language - reorganizing syntax.
Sound Quest: sounding space - spacing sound.
World of the part - part of the world.
Role - function - part - whole.
Letting go of old patterns - letting go of new patterns.
Re-patterning.

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@ 1995 by Pauline Oliveros.
From Roots of the Moment: Writings, Hšrspiels and Poems 1981-1995.
Published by Drogue Press.
Used by permission. .