Ceremony

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The words of the secret book are sacred symbols that only have their meanings activated when the mind of the practitioner awakens to their truths. Thus, when the words are understood and can be ably be put into practice then their reality can be brought into this world and turned into a transformative and magical experience. The secret book is opened, a verse chosen, and a candle stands lit, symbolizing the desire to receive or pass on illumination (knowledge), upon the altar to signal the start of something magical.

The call of a wild animal in the distance invokes the beginning of Ceremony and announces the start of the ritual that will unfold as the music continues. A low note drone is revealed and acts as a backdrop to the guitar strings playing a dirge to concentrate supernatural forces into the mind of the sorceress so as to electrify their tools which are placed before them on the altar. The wild animal calls out again as if aware of the power the magician is conjuring in their secret ritual chamber.

As the intensity of the practitioner’s attention focuses ever more greatly on the meanings of the words as sacred symbols revealing a deeper truth, the spell begins to work. Ceremony highlights this fact with a cue from an electric guitar with a single note, with string bent, to signify the altering of a natural event with forces capable of changing their course. With this, there’s a quickening of magical power infusing with the sorceress’s props giving them a usefulness beyond acting as an aid for focus and instead becoming tools with which to channel specialized forms of energy in whatever direction according to the owner’s will and whim.

Along with the right ingredients, combined and assembled by her own hands, collected as an offering, the sacred words and carefully selected tools in which to infuse power, the practitioner as a person must be worthy to receive and act as a vessel for doing the Will of the Great Work. Rather than only using the power with which they’ve been entrusted for their own purposes, they must also be willing to allow that Power to work through them, to act as Its agent in the world for good or evil. So that Its Will shall be done and not always his or her own will, for their own purposes.

The low note begins to rise, up a short melodic scale, as the influx of forces into the ritual chamber increase more strongly evoking an ominous tone. Then at last, the magical words are mimicked by being intoned with the guitar solo. Through the guitar melody the sorceress speaks the sacred utterances that only those who have ears can hear and those who have minds alert to the work of spiritual matters in our world can understand. The words, through these crafty tones, repeat the spell and repeat it again until the intensity of the Ceremony is increased and reaches its full fruition by becoming realized in the person of the sorceress. Through her the power which was waiting to be harnessed from the other side has passed into our world by means of this Ceremony. And with her props, by being shrouded in magical power can now act as a tool in the hands of the sorceress. Moreover, the Ceremony was a knock that opened a door to provide her with a gift which she came to receive, prepared in advance and showing how she was worthy.

Now in exhaustion, the sorceress collapses on the altar, faint from the influx of energy from another realm, and from communing with the energy of a higher power. Rest in very much necessary as a time for reflection and to meditate on the lessons learned. This is the time when the practitioner can integrate their experiences through the Ceremony into their very being, since the act of being chosen means also being transformed. For when it comes to power, there are no rights without responsibility. The exhaustion beckons a time for recovery through meditation and the state of meditation leads to sleep wherein dreams can assist the dreamer to explore the use of their newly acquired powers in the environment of the imagination. The dream provides the magician with a unique environment similar to but not the same as when awake, which is why through dreams the sorceress’s powers can come alive and through the imagination life is nothing more than a dream.

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Related Music:

Ceremony

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Marc

https://stereothesis.bandcamp.com/

Geoforms

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GET “SONIC WEAPONS: The Official Stereo Thesis Music Sampler” FOR FREE. To get your FREE full-length album…click here. ____________________________________________________________

An impulse to create outlined the space in which a universe was to be built and so it was. Defined and solidified. This was followed by an intent to form things and implant in them a persistence, an enduring state of existence. This universe was then filled with clouds of radioactive dust, a malleable form of energy with which to bring to shape the hallucination of a creative impulse from an image formed in the mind of an intelligent being. A dream was then projected from the mind of a Maker and many other cooperating minds so that by it began the process of creation. For by this dream alone, a desire for images to become mobile, the universe began to take shape.

Geoforms, begins with a syncopated overlaid set of drum tracks that form a brief intro. They will be the backbone for the entire duration of the song. It sets the stage for a sparse melodic drone of mid-range notes that playfully counterpoint with another short line of bass notes, in call and response format. The rhythm guitar holds a splashy chord with shimmering effect that sustains itself throughout the intro until it releases the tension by flowing into the next section of music that rises and pulls you up with it.

The compression of the gravitic pull of this piece represents the built up pressure with which planets started to form. Within one critical moment, an ignition takes place, and thus the core of a planet was lit. Geoforms too ignites with an explosion of energy into the second section of the song and shows how a process slowly forms by building up energy and unleashing it in a magnified release.

The great ball of energy upon which the Earth grew and its enormous pull gave it its eventual size. The pull of other large masses and their interaction with the laws of the forces which govern their motions placed them all, each in their own orbits and positions. The extensive magnetic field of the Sun and the numerous magnetic fields of what would become the other planets all interacting put everything in its place and thus the universe was set.

In Geoforms, this idea comes to life when just a few musical elements center around a simple idea and rhythmic structure that eventually expand and release the energy that was being concentrated in the intro. But like all forms of energy, whether creative or astrophysical, when it reaches a critical mass of compression, the energy must be released and dispersed into the environment, particles blown out of an explosion.

Over millions of years, all of the planets cooled and became rocky or gaseous balls circling the Sun at differing rates of orbit. A day on Earth was defined as a rotation of the Earth on its axis, with a year referring to a completion of the Earth in its orbit around the Sun. The illusion for us is of the Sun rising and falling, when in actuality all that occurs is that the Earth turns, while the Sun remains motionless.

Originally, as one mass of radioactive energy, the Earth formed a crust over a ball of molten rock, mostly composed of iron. Gigantic plates of rock, the continents, move about the surface of the planet and perform minute movements by grinding against each other to form mountains, shores, and rifts causing an endless arrangement in landscapes I call Geoforms. The movement of these tectonic plates are what make and re-make the look of our world over time. The slow and persistent motion of these plates build oceans, generate earthquakes, erode coasts, and sink entire continents.

Geoforms captures this element of slow and persistent tectonic motion with a smooth melody in the second section as it contrasts against the jaggedness of rock from the guitar strumming, which gives the illusion of a staggered mountainous region rising out of a plain. The low notes in the main theme speak as if they were a great command proclaiming the eternity of life and existence, back of everything we see, feel, and hear. Moreover, the tones of the melody have a courageous, almost triumphant quality that illustrate a motive power underlying the process of forming and remaking the Earth for eons.

On Earth, evolution would follow its own unique planetary blueprint in geology and biology, environment and life forms. Not only would the environment cool and harden, but it would also become the landscape we now know, inhabited by plants, animals, and more importantly, water. But whether here on Earth, or on other planets, Geoforms really tells the story of all planets and the way they develop according to the blueprint by which they were designed - in chance formations governed by universal laws coded into the fabric of the cosmos.

The third section of Geoforms reveals this fact about Earth and in sound shows us several scenes of oasis. One is a refreshing area of land irrigated by water diverted from a nearby river to help fertilize fields and their crops, another is a gorgeous waterfall filling a large pool at its base where the myriad life forms can gather to drink, frolic, or bathe, and lastly, a vast ocean spreading out into a seeming infinity where there is no end to the horizon. Fish, plant, and man all benefit from the bounty that is provided by the Earth as it evolved from a creative impulse to build a dream and to give it form.

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Related Music:

Geoforms

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Marc

https://stereothesis.bandcamp.com/

Ask Yourself

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GET “SONIC WEAPONS: The Official Stereo Thesis Music Sampler” FOR FREE. To get your FREE full-length album…click here. ____________________________________________________________

Ask Yourself begins with a choir of angels, a whirlwind of strumming and electronic breezes to evoke an ethereal vibe. It unravels and dissipates into the opening lyrics of the song with statements pointing back to the beginning of life in our universe, perhaps even the origin of all existence. While not an overtly religious piece of music it is spiritual and addresses a sincere curiosity about serious questions. It also expresses a viewpoint that hints at possible answers to these concerns.

“Where do we come from?

Where are we going?

So many questions and nobody knowing.”

These lines represent the basis of the lyrical motif underlying all of the thoughts and poetic phrases expressed in Ask Yourself. Everything else revolves around and refers to these fundamental frustrations with standard or even traditional responses to these philosophical questions. Along with so many questions we all face too many answers. For any serious minded individual, truth is unified and not a multiplicity of fragments forced together from different sources to create a cohesive picture of what may or may not be truth.

So how do we resolve the conflict between our questions and the answers we’re given or find through our own searching? Experience is the teacher and it is crucial we develop the sensitivity to be open to the way experience can help us learn. The results of our actions provide clues by giving us feedback. Life is a laboratory where we are conducting the experiment of our lives. Answers are revealed when the right questions are asked.

“It’s all about you and that’s all there is.”

Who else can teach us to see what is before us? Who else is there when we’re confronted with the reality of our lives and the themes that occur repeatedly? No one else but ourselves. Alone, we witness the evolution of circumstances that develop out of a combination of our decisions and actions. The impact of our choices and deeds produces the experience that we consider our lives. Everything responds to the quality of our character, which is formed from the kind of people we are really.

We broadcast who we are with the energy of our being and the most sensitive of people can detect who we are easily, but for others they are deceived by our false fronts and many masks of personality. The soul, if such a things exists, is a mirror into which we can practice viewing our reflection in private. Our experience of life is a reflection of who we are really. To learn and eventually know the truth, we must also be truthful with ourselves. The universe is a mirror and we reflect in it what’s in our soul. Just Ask Yourself.

“You are what it is. The light is within,

Underneath your skin. You are a star.”

As souls, we maintain eternality. A star is the only symbol of near eternality in our universe and yet a brief study of the life of stars in this universe reveals that even they can die. Eternality as an idea is different from immortality in that it refers to the fact of being eternal or unending, instead of immortality which is merely the condition of not experiencing death or without death. There are only three things in our universe which we conceive of as possessing eternality and they are the universe itself, souls, and God. Everything else that is alive or that exists in this universe can be imagined to somehow or in some way be able to achieve the state of immortality, but this is folly.

“Just ask yourself.”

Anything affected by change in time must of necessity age and therefore experiences decay and dissolution. Even the universe itself may one day come to an end, thus souls and God remain as the only things we can think of that might have eternality as one of their fundamental characteristics. We are what constitutes life, by animating, directing, and initiating our purposes through living, but while we are involved in this experience, we are also free, unaffected and far removed from the consequences of aging and death. We go on and some of us even come back.

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Related Music:

Ask Yourself

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Marc

https://stereothesis.bandcamp.com/

Big Cloud

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GET “SONIC WEAPONS: The Official Stereo Thesis Music Sampler” FOR FREE. To get your FREE full-length album…click here. ____________________________________________________________

The vibrato and minimalist riff at the start of Big Cloud represents the forces of wind, cold, heat, and light that interact above us all day, every day of our lives. This is the backdrop and environmental factors that provide us with a field in which to act and build the structure of our lives. Everything from an individual’s life, a society, a culture, flight, navigation, and all types of construction that make human life bearable occur because we’ve learned to cope with the forces of nature with the creativity of our adaptations and inventions.

The opposing forces of heat and cold interact in the sky generating a motion of air. Frost and moisture fall and rise within the dome of the earth to form clouds, rain, wind, and storm. Above us, these elements and processes operate to add beauty and randomity to the conditions in which we experience the action of our lives. The mix of earth and sky are the environment, the arena under which we live and breath the miracle of elements that make life possible for one and all.

A smooth transition indicates a harmony between man and his environment, an understanding of the laws of nature, and of how to use these laws to anticipate changes in our surroundings, thus making it possible to plot a course of action and to make long-term plans across many generations, for many years in advance. A melodic statement says it all and what it says is man is worthy of living and capable of solving the problems of survival and of being able to face existence on this planet without fear, so that he may triumph with the weapon of his mind. The theme and melody repeat until an ominous note signals a change in the weather and a confrontation between humanity and their environment.

A struggle ensues. The push and pull of factors of man’s survival against the brutal forces of nature uncaringly proceeding with their unfeeling motions of death and new life born of the old. Storm, fast moving winds, wildfires, earthquakes, flood, avalanches and much more all contradict what the human mind can conceive and what he builds with his hands. But nature, in truth, is not against Man. The correct view is that Man must learn the ways of nature of mitigate the damage those processes will inflict on his desire for permanence and immunity from the laws of nature. While these are noble goals to strive for, they will never be realized as the keynote of this universe is time and for time, change. Things change and Man must learn to accept change or nature through the environment will force him to change whether He likes it or not.

When the forces of nature seem to attack and Man’s emotions bid him to protect his creations, he experiences fear and grief from loss. Loss of possessions and the lives of those he loved, prolong these emotional states, but these too are experiences from which he learns to cope with nature of her vicious changes. Apathy is that state where all he can do is watch all of what he built get washed away and flattened by a more powerful force that his ability to design and build what he imagines.

Man is a force of nature in himself and can live despite the liabilities that living exposes him to from birth. The bridge is a sad statement underscoring a comprehension of loss and the element of change that all people must come to terms with as a result of being alive. This section ends with a courageous note and a strong phrase leads into it to point to the hope of rebuilding everything that was lost, but by persistence can be regained yet in a different form. Destruction and rebirth form a cycle of life that becomes new growth by sweeping away the old.

What will survive in the aftermath and live to thrive another day? No one knows for sure, but those who do have a responsibility to prepare for those who will come one day soon in the future to make their own contributions to the survival of our species on this and other planets. Normalcy returns, those who have gone into hiding come out, we gather to examine the damage, and from there we begin to rebuild. The danger has passed and life must go on. We bury the dead, clean up the remains, and settle in for a new beginning. Up in the sky a Big Cloud hovers as a sign of what has just occurred, but it soon becomes distant and dissipates with the heat of the sun and eventually disappears.

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Related Music:

Big Cloud

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Marc

https://stereothesis.bandcamp.com/

The Atmosphere of Music

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GET “SONIC WEAPONS: The Official Stereo Thesis Music Sampler” FOR FREE. To get your FREE full-length album…click here. ____________________________________________________________

Sound disturbs the air molecules in a space and causes vibrations to agitate against every part of the body. When sound is organized into music, it fills a space with sonic vibrations of a particular pattern and that pattern is what  affects the mind, activating the emotions, restructures the atmosphere within an environment to create a mood.

Well-designed music causes mass hallucination during a music experience. When people gather in groups to listen to music, the patterns that emerge from the speakers perform their magic and the music experience takes hold of every person present on two levels.

Firstly, the music experience is interpreted by the individual according to their own emotional development and personal history, which allows them to relate to the music and mold it in a way where it seems it was made just for them.

Secondly, the music experience produces an atmosphere which blankets a group of people and collectively they share a common experience that shapes their perceptions in the moment. Whatever they see, feel, and hear during the music experience in this context is a mass hallucination, since it can only be seen, heard, and felt by them and no one else outside of the space being filled with the atmosphere of music.

When it is wisely used and carefully selected, music can reinforce or shape a mood by creating an atmosphere that surrounds, envelopes, and fills everyone within a space with a pattern of thought transmitted from the composer.

A vinyl record, cassette, CD, and mP3 file interpret information on a sound system, but they are not the music. Music is what is projected out into an area through the speakers. The music is what happens when all of the parts of a sound system operate properly to allow something be heard and felt.

Music is a powerful force and through the patterns that project out of the speakers, we are held in its sway and can experience things we would not be able to otherwise. The music experience consists of two levels of understanding and feeling, the individual and the collective, but all of it comes back to the way music works on the mind and our emotions. By hitting us on two sides, music touches us deeply and makes its impression on our psyche on a nonverbal, almost precognitive basis.

What is heard and felt is what’s called the music experience. The music experience is not an act or performance, but rather is what the composer wants you to hear and feel while their music is creating the atmosphere you’re sitting in.

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Related Music:

Who's Eating You?

Rear View Mirror

Bodies in Rapture

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Marc

http://stereothesis.com/

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Emotion as Forms of Color and Texture

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GET “SONIC WEAPONS: The Official Stereo Thesis Music Sampler” FOR FREE. 

To get your FREE full-length album…click here. ____________________________________________________________

There are two methods of creativity: combining or rearranging existing elements into new structures or inventing elements with which to create forms and structures. One method is related to discovery and extraction whereas the other method is pure creation - bringing into being something from nothing, or thought alone.

So in the first case, the artist is taking existing elements and shaping them into something interesting or unique relative to what others have done with the same set of ingredients or elements.

In the second case, the artist is forming new materials, out of thin air, and putting them together into a unique combination that is specific to their artistic vision. This is the method which was used to form our universe as is believed in the theory of Creationism.

Of the two methods of creativity only the first method or locating materials, extracting them, and arranging them into unique and pleasant forms is what artists on Earth are capable of using in music and sketch.

Color is a quality shared by the sketch and music.

With the sketch the issue of color is primarily with the harmony of color, blending of hues, and shading (relative brightness and darkness).

Similarly, music possesses the quality of color, except in music color can be expressed in timbre, dynamic elements, volume, composition and dramatic performance.

With timbre each instrument or sound in a piece of music possesses a certain quality that helps to identify and define one sound from another. In other words, each instrument has its own voice and can  be identified and not mistaken for another.

Closely related to timbre is texture, which is the harmonious (or disharmonious) blending of different types of timbre. Combining a variety of timbres within a composition is what develops a textural soundscape in each piece of music. When musicians layer several instruments or voices with different timbres, what they are in effect doing is constructing texture.

Texture in music comes across either as a visual or tactile sensation. Where we can describe a sound as sharp, piercing, smooth, jagged, rough, dirty, deep, or shiny, then in a crude way we were describing timbre in the form of texture or other tactile qualities.

The harmony or disharmony of the timbre into a pattern of texture is what forms the basis for emotion in a sketch or a piece of music.

With the sketch, texture only becomes apparent when you mix or layer media or when you use a media like acrylic paint or oil paints which are thick relative to other media such as pastels. Texture in the sketch has the effect of literally coming off the page because it can stand up or be thickly applied to paper or canvas. This style is mostly used in fine art painting where the brushstrokes are clearly visible. But in general it’s a physical thing where the artist is turning the two-dimensional image into a three-dimensional object.

Music makes an impression on the ear, while sketch does so in the eye. The thought and care that the artist has poured into their work will finally manifest its clarity and message from the end product across space and time by leaping into the mind of the audience by creating an impression.

If the impression has meaning for the seer or hearer of a sketch or a piece of music, then the impression will rise in status within the mind and evolve into an emotional experience that connects the artwork with a person's outlook on life, their aspirations for the future, and even their emotional history.

Art has the power to inspire others by adding fuel to the desires for the future. Art has the gift of shaping a person's sense of life by becoming an essential accessory to their way of living. Art also carries with it the emotional impact the artist imbues it with and how this interacts with the past of the audience member.

When a sketch or music impresses itself deeply into the mind of the audience member, the impression evolves into emotional impact, which is what the artist is seeking when they decide to share their work publicly.

As the work of the artist approaches completion, where the shape, texture, colors, and objects are balanced or imbalanced within a sketch or in music, the piece undergoes one final test to determine its value and function. If the artwork has the ability to the serve the purpose of the artist by making a deep psychological impression that becomes a meaningful emotional impact which fuses itself into the mind of the individual audience member, then the piece has value and serves its function.

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Related Music:

Aquatania

Disco Orchestra

Take Me Higher

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Marc

http://stereothesis.com/

Remember to join our mailing list.

To support Stereo Thesis with a financial donation securely through PayPal, click here.