The programming techniques and methods I use to create my visual images are based on an accidental discovery I made in 1999. As I developed my newly acquired skills, something unique made itself known to me. The limitations I encountered were related to my using traditional applications to create innovative composition.
In 2000, I also tried to create sonic phases. After a year of experiments the results were a time consuming process of changing sound dots to line, and modula.
In 2001 to 2003, I have been searching for variety of ways to morph sound and have started to encode the automatic pattern to run it.
I sample all kinds of objects within my system, in order to portray a picture or segment of sound. This personalized code is the main tool I use to compose my music. I am not quite concerned with forms or categories of music. Many descriptions exist that tell us how music is played and what kinds of hardware and software could be used. This is the same as setting rules on how to present sound and images.
I think, when a composer chooses his/her tools, the nature of the creation is complete. I have spent too much time seeking explanations of how sound is recreated. In my opinion, sound is a vibrating and mutative activity.
Sound is a locus which moves, where sounds are shaped. I believe it is a random process, with vibration.
The sensibilities of mathematical sequence are of interest to me. My wish is to sink the balance of sound, to morph it, animate it, and extract if from abstract feeling.
I don’t use tools much, such as blur or resize, to affect spacial enhancements or bits of digital sound. From zero to one second of sound there is silence; that is, there is a space. Regarding source or how to sample to my sound, I do not make a recording most of the time. The samples are created from a computer program. There are few tracks. I have used 10 seconds or so from an old tape that I recorded using a walkman. Through a program code, I then transform the original sounding to what is being heard now.
Usually I use 1 to 4 samples. Some situations have no pre-samples and unfold instantly from my computer. Time is a mere de/construction in a piece of work. A progression of sound in time. I do not usually start a segment of sound at a certain point. For a pre-set, say 4 minutes, I will view this 4 minutes as entire substance.
I usually program randomly at some point. I do not think construction of sound should start from the second zero until the end. I see this 4 minutes as a congregation of sound movement. Any part of it can be the beginning and also the end of this exercise. Sound does not float with any so-called rules. I do care how sound splits and dissolves the liner timing.
2/1.3/1….4/1….X/1. Also multiple dissections of edge restructed. Sound moves in time, is under no limitations. Many times, I kept the time returning back and forth. That is, I usually run many sounds in all that movement motion simultaneously.
In the original sample, I see it as a motherhood. After a period of time, newness is created. So that a sample is created and the sub-set of the sample are the main elements of my sound. This process does not enable me to guess its result unless I have used a programmed code to run it on.
A sense of landscape discouraged me from using plug-ins, in general. I had tried several to add effects to sound. However, I abandoned this. In space, I do not decay a sound, blur the sound, or use delay to create a sense of space. To me, if there is sound, even through its volume of inaudible, the implication is that it exists is space.
Each part of sound has completed degree of freedom. Neither comparison to transaction of contest. I care about the edge of sound and its intersection between the feminine or masculine. I have tried to distinguish both sexes in such uncertain situations in order to create balance and merger. This is how I judge how well of a piece of work is made.
My training in traditional painting and the visual arts has provided me with skills to enhance my auditory perception. I rediscovered my painting skills to lay down the boundaries of a piece: at first, the shaping and then the use of dry brush to render the nuances. The objective of my work is the expression of my feelings.

Before DEMO

In 2003, after I finished a demo for V/VM, it was published in V/VM Test Records. For quite a while after its completion, I put aside any thoughts of my own music. Instead, I became the audience, rather than the performer, and spent time listening to music of many different artists, an experience I enjoyed very much. I tried to remain neutral, which was not easy to do. Initially, it was difficult for me to quell my subjective opinions about the music and would find myself judging the value, techniques or style of each piece. But, in the end, I was able to develop the ears of a child.

Listening like a child is like flying through air perfumed with lotus blossoms. Paying close attention to songs of the artists I admired, I began to comprehend the meaning in their music intuitively, almost as if they were speaking to me in words. The multicolored beauty that filled my heart during these experiences is difficult to put into words.

Just as rolling wheels leave their tracks behind, my listening experience suffused me with such delight that I no longer felt the need to continue listening. I chose to empty my heart and meditate on the void left behind. To really examine myself carefully, I recalled bygone times, times which had made me completely happy. For instance, my wonderful childhood, which was replete with nature, sincere friendships and endless joys. These blissful memories set the tone for my future in the way a vibrant wash unifies a watercolor painting. How can I explain this kind of emotion? If pure emotion pours out like drops of water from a bottle, then let’s break the bottle if it’s empty!

In the process of self-contemplation, I searched deeply for anything related to my childhood in I-Lan, the town where I grew up. Today, everything in I-Lan has changed, including my family members and friends. Still, after visiting places where I used to play as a child, listening to ambient sounds and talking to people who live there, memories and affections gradually began to return to me. One day, I happened upon a musical performance being put on by the local natives in Chung San Liang. I had seen similar performances many times, full of singing, dancing and music, when I was very young. I spent several months listening to them and reacquainting myself with that style of music. After each performance, I would always speak to the director, a man nearly 80 years of age. I came to understand how their affections wove their way into their performances. I spent the rest of 2004 studying their music.

In 2005, I started this demo. During the production, the ability to distinguish the various kinds of instruments, equipment or computer hardware, and the art of explaining different music types, had become lost to me. Affections tend to supersede logic at some point in time.
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About DEMO

Track 01-Sleeping Giant
Track 02- Giant Kingdom
Track 03-Words by Wind
Track 04-Village
Track 05-The Doom of Giant Kingdom

I create a virtual story in this demo, which describes a giant kingdom in a bottle. In this kingdom, someone wildly searches for something that he cannot identify, something he calls his "best friend".

In his journey to the giant kingdom, he gradually visualizes a portrait of this best friend in his mind:

Wind blew the sea and brought many circles with drops…....
Moon married the sea and reflected in the surface…...
He asked the reflection: where is my best friend?
Wind played his flute, and the sound brought him to the brightening woods of the giants to see the God of Mountain.
The God of Mountain told him loudly through all animals’ voices in the woods:
It’s wind!
Like a child, he poured wind from his pocket like pouring water,
Wind whispered to him gently in whistling,
You shall find me in the woods.
Wind blew the strings of the instruments made by the tree.
The sound of strings told him: go to the highest mountain of the giant and look for me.
After endless roads and countless villages of the giant,
He reached the highest mountain of the giant,
The wind kept its silence. He understood what his best friend is.
Wind kept its silence. He understood what his best friend is.

He wrote down his best friend’s name in every stone in the mountains day and night until he died.
He had a dream before he died.
He dreamed that wind dreamed about him.
The sound of flute brought everything and took away everything from nihility.

At last, I want to say that producing this demo has made me dizzy. My have to keep going forward or I else I’d have to stop right here. I try my best to elucidate all emotion in precise detail. In the end, however, all that was formed in the beginning is destroyed.

How can I explain this kind of emotion? If pure emotion pours out like drops of water from a bottle, then let’s break the bottle if it’s empty!

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About MU and something behind

I never like to use words to describe my music. I never see myself as a musician or an electronica musician or even an experimental electronica musician. Like many others, I live an ordinary life and frequently have trouble expressing my deepest feelings. Music offers me the space in which to express these emotions. So far, my life has not been as stable as I have wished it to be. The balance between the ideal of a musical life and reality of a practical life eludes me, still. Though difficulties always hound one in real life, I always try to sustain the true element of myself in my work, in a way that language alone cannot describe.

For this demo, I used an old-fashioned IBOOK and some old software. I don’t care too much about the kind of tools I use. At times, I completely forget what tools I have on hand because I am focused on the abstract feelings in my heart.

I have used some instruments from traditional Taiwanese opera in this demo, which make sounds that are familiar to me and bring back memories of my childhood. This music, however, is very different from folk music. Many people tend to judge a music type by its tone, composition or the instruments involved. But I do not like to think in "types," whether it is folk music or electronica! Last year, when I listened to some senior musicians playing Taiwanese opera, I realized that they used only their ears and memory. Though untrained in musical pitch or theory, the music they produce is touching and honest. To classify them as folk musicians would be wrong. They play music for their own reasons and will play music from youth till old age.

Finally, I would like to say thanks to my beautiful Danish friend Goodiepal for helping me finish the mastering of this demo, and to my vocal contributor, Ms. Yeh, and her daughter.

The purest innocence in my ear comes from: nihility – the beginning of everything.