About
Samuel Shook is a composer and songwriter. He experiments with ways to express ideas, existence, emotion, and identity through music. While much is based on conventional sound, the music develops organically through the creative process of listening. Chance processes are used to capture sounds in their natural state and apply them to the recordings. The ecological forms create a path to travel within the expressions. He organizes these sounds by listening to the expressions and their effects on my ear and body. Instrumentation is added by chance of inspiration as a starting point. A fantastic food may invite a faucet dripping to represent its water droplet structure, and then the forest and guitar to convey the field and body. A chord may create a space from which roots, stems, leaves, and other such forms generate. As more inspirations occur, a narrative is extrapolated and formed into a cohesive whole. This place will be a catalogue of my work.
He was asked “In what way do you listen to music?” To answer that he wrote this poem…
Music is a Way
a way of expression
a way of living
a way of fun
a way of liberation
from the soul
for the soul
from grief
from anxiety
from stress
Music is
a way of speaking to that which cannot be put into words
a way of celebration
a way of being situated in solidarity within this existence
a way of amplification
a way of listening
a way of ascension
a way of understanding
a way of telling a story
a way of ecology
a way of peace
a way of life
Postlude
Once one begins to hear music one begins to listen.