
Ear to the Earth
The Sonic Artwork of John Coulter

Ear to the Earth - A Guide to Artmaking with Sound (280-page book) is an exploration of a bold assertion: that there is a powerful set of fundamental principles available to composers and sonic artists that may be used to effectively manage their creative ideas. Of course this does not mean that the quality of their initial ideas will become higher, but that the ideas they do have might be brought to full potential with precision and confidence. The approach is focussed on the awareness and management of several different categories of creative ideas based on known modes of listening and other multisensory attention-based relationships that are brought to bear during the ordinary listening experience. These include: expressive, abstract musical, meaningful, visual (or quasi-visual), performative, spatial, and structural ideas (with a view to achieving peak musical experiences). Relationships that support these ideas are examined with reference to expert sources to present a comprehensive and complete model specifying a variety of methods for applied artmaking within the domain of music and sonic art.
The Electroacoustic Music Resources site (EARS) lists ‘81 genres and categories of electroacoustic music’ (Emmerson and Landy 2016, 8). Although this book does not claim to be a one-size-fits all solution, the general method of managing creative ideas is widely applicable. The scope of the approach extends well beyond the boundaries of sound and music and is equally at home within various contexts of fine arts, film, dance, theatre, and architecture. As such, several of the examples used to illustrate the concepts put forward are drawn from these wider artforms. The text is presented as a guide under the assumption that the knowledge within it will be reconciled with readers’ own unique life experiences and creative pathways towards a richer understanding of the communicative potential of sound and music within the context of their own individual artmaking practices.
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Progress: The book is now nearing completion (it's been a massive project!). I am now in the editing phase and hope to publish in 2026.