"When I talk about music, it finally comes to people's minds that I'm talking about sound that doesn't mean anything. That is not inner, but is just outer, and they say – these people who understand that finally say – 'you mean it's just sounds?' meaning that for something to just be a sound is to be useless. Whereas I love sounds, just as they are, and I have no need for them to be anything more than they are. I don't want them to be psychological, I don't want a sound to pretend that it's a bucket, or that it's president, or that it's in love with another sound. I just want it to be a sound … [Emannuel Kant] said that there are two things that don't have to mean anything - one is music, the other is laughter. Don't have to mean anything, that is, in order to give us very deep pleasure."

- John Cage (Composer)

As consumers of music, people tend to impress their own feelings, emotions, thoughts and other extra-musical contexts upon any music they witness, which is perfectly fine, however this should not be the domain of the composer. A composer's role in music is to reveal a sound for what it is, or rather, to borrow and paraphrase from Musashi's Book of Five Rings, Part V: The Book of No-Thing: To reveal the spirit of the thing itself. Igor Stravinsky wrote strongly about this same idea, when in his autobiography stated that he "removes excess sound until the piece is realised" . This should be the composer's aim; to reveal in their materials that which the materials naturally "desire" to form, as a sculptor reveals from stone the form which the stone was meant to have, by removing the excess. It is in this sense that music becomes meaningless in the extra-musical sense, the meaning of music is the music itself, and extra-musical connotations are both inappropriate and irrelevant to the art. When composing music it is not appropriate to attempt to express something, or to imbue meaning into the sounds you're working with. The meaning should be self-evident, as the meaning is the material. To borrow from Marshall McLuhan; "the medium is the message" , meaning that the medium with which we work is the message and nothing else. It therefore carries that all music is inherently meaningless, except for any meaning forced upon it by the observer, and that it is not the role of the composer to attempt to imbue meaning upon their music, and certainly not to attempt to communicate that meaning to anyone else. The late Toru Takemitsu echoes these ideas, when he states that "I believe what we call "expression" in art is really discovery, by one's own mode, of something new in this world. There is something about this word "expression," however, that alienates me" ; in other words, expression is not the purpose but rather, discovery is the purpose. This is reinforced when he states "rather than on the ideology of self-expression, music should be based on a profound relationship to nature – sometimes gentle, sometimes harsh. When sounds are possessed by ideas instead of having their own identity, music suffers." This is a profound idea, which echoes the core message from Book of No-Thing as discussed earlier; that the artist needs to discover the spirit of the thing itself. The thing, in this case, being the piece of music, or the character of the instrument, or both, and working to reveal that for what it is rather than force control over materials

"I would like to cut away the excess to be able to grasp the essential sound."
- Toru Takemitsu, Confronting Silence

There is an idea in the martial arts that indicates that in order to truly understand one art, you must understand and practice other arts. For example, to understand the art of swordsmanship, you may also understand and practice calligraphy, or painting – both of which Miyamoto Musashi was competent in – in order to truly understand the chosen art. Similarly, one must never waver from their chosen Way, and must hold steadfastly to it in order to attain perfection. This attitude is true of musical practice; the best musicians are those with wide interests, and we see that throughout history. Many composers, such as Beethoven, Mozart, Bach, Stravinsky, et al. are pianists, composers, often conductors, and often have interests and hobbies outside of music. Understanding other arts allows greater context and sensitivity to the chosen art, and allows maturity in technique through the examination of other techniques. Holding steady with the study of the art will reveal that you never know everything about it, that there is always something new to learn, but you must be patient and disciplined and hold to your Way in order to achieve results. As a musician, when I was exploring the possibilities of my first instrument – the bass guitar – it came to me through the study of various influential (to me) musicians that in order to do something unique with the instrument, I must seek to play like other instruments. So I began to emulate the saxophone solos of people like Julian Wilson, whose group Logic? I was listening to a lot at the time, or I would attempt to imitate the drum sounds of Tony Williams, the style and sound of sympathetic strings in John McLaughlin's Shakti through manipulation of preamplifiers, tunings, strings and playing style. I also spent time studying how to write (literature), photography and the visual arts and even, recently, the aesthetics of bonsai cultivation. When I began composing music for other people to play, my approach echoed the above ideas of exploration, with the goal to reveal that which is unique to the sound with which I was working, or the spirit of the thing itself. This approach not only included musical materials, but performer materials, through the development of music for low-flutes for Peter Sheridan and the Monash Flute Ensemble, and the exploration into what the performers themselves are capable of with their instruments, and what they are willing to do with their instruments. The pieces Differing Dialogues, for Peter Sheridan (now released on MOVE records), Staatiline Maastik for flute quartet and Fantasie Australis for flute ensemble, all show this quality in my work, particularly Fantasie Australis as I needed to explore the Australian landscape and find the spirit of that, in order to do what I needed to do musically. The more recent compositions Four Suits of Thirteen and Duet, the latter of which explores the merger of sound between computers and acoustic instruments and the potential for using the computer, in this context, as a performance instrument and how to use those materials in a way that is true to the materials. This is the nature of the thing itself, and this practice goes back a number of years.

By extension of the spirit of the thing itself, the concept of silence, or ma, is one that guides my practice both as a performer and as a composer.

According to the Japanese-English dictionary, the word (sound) ma, in Japanese, translates "space; room; time; pause" , however the meaning of the term is much deeper, and according to Musashi, the term mu (a Zen-Buddhist term) means "no-thing" (the actual dictionary definition relevant here is "not, nothing, nought, etc" ). These are two very important concepts relating to the work of both Toru Takemitsu and John Cage, though their use and interpretation [may] varie[s] quite a lot. It is important to the understand the concept of ma particularly, in order to properly understand the music of both composers.

Ma can be demonstrated by the following text:
"For many Japanese, there is a great joy in this sense of "reading between the lines." For instance, Japanese haiku (poems with a pattern of 5-7-5 syllables) must be composed in very few words, but the deeper meaning of such verse is to be found in ma between the words. According to Ishikawa (1992, pp.63-68), ma is an empty space full of meaning, which is fundamental to the Japanese arts and is present in many fields, including painting, architecture, music and literature."
To use another example to illustrate the concept adequately, this diagram shows the placement of shaded areas, visually representing pine trees, however it is the space around the trees that gives them definition. It is the empty space that makes the trees what they are and provides them with meaning. This is ma.

These are just two examples out of many, the concept is observable in many Japanese (and Chinese) arts, from the placement of rocks and trees in Japanese garden, the sound of an artful shakuhachi or biwa player in their traditional setting of gagaku, or the architecture of traditional Japanese houses.

The other concept to understand is that of mu:
"The spirit of the universe is an emptiness which is no-thing … No-thing-ness is not to be understood as a "thing", because then it would be based on the conception of something, which would not be no-thing. The Zen term for "no-thing" which is the closest we can come to defining "no-thing" is called Mu. To understand Mu is to understand no-thing … you can come close to understanding no-thing by realizing that there is nothing outside of yourself that can ever enable you to get better, stronger, richer, quicker or smarter. Everything is within. Everything exists. Seek nothing outside of yourself."
This is an illustration of the concept from a martial artist's perspective, which is the most relevant to me as an artist and I feel that it represents the concept in an easy to understand manner without needing to delve into Zen-Buddhism in great detail.

Silence as a concept was introduced to me from a book called The Music Lesson, written by Victor Wooten – bass player for Bela Fleck and the Flecktones. In it, one of the 'elements of music' that is discussed is rest, or silence, which got me thinking about silence in all its available forms within music. The silence between sounds (ma) and the silence of rest (mu), profoundly influenced my playing in an improvisational context, particularly with my work with the group Fracture . This concept was also re-introduced to me with the work of John Cage and Toru Takemitsu, musically as well as philosophically, and has been a core practical aspect of my compositions, acoustic and electronic. It can be heard in everything from my first solo oboe piece Sketches, to Differing Dialogues to Journeys and Duet, and everything else. The usage changes, based on the context, but the concept is there throughout all my work.

Takemitsu sums up the concept as such:
The fear of silence is nothing new. Silence surrounds the dark world of death. Sometimes the silence of the vast universe hovers over us, enveloping us. There is the intense silence of birth, the quiet silence of one's return to the earth. Hasn't art been the human creature's rebellion against silence? Poetry and music were born when man first uttered a sound, resisting the silence. By scraping one object against another or by scouring a surface, pictorial art was born."

The final idea that I hold dear is that of new music, and the increasing popularity of recycling old, dead or dying music. The ongoing regurgitation of the so-called classical music "greats" in concert halls around the country, the ever present Beethoven or Mozart, the concerts dedicated to Bach. Occasionally one hears of one piece of Stravinsky's, or perhaps some Ravel, but the new; the fresh; that which has cultural value today, is relegated to the fringe, to the fringe music festivals or particular concerts arranged for the so-called "new" music. This is a culture that greatly concerns me as it should greatly concern all artists. The music of the past belongs in the past, to be studied as a historical entity or be brought out for special occasions – celebrations and the like. People's concern should be about new art, abandoning the recycled popular music that effectively cheapens so-called "art music" to the same level of popular consumer entertainment, and this puts the lie and hypocrisy to the lips and minds of the practitioners who support and champion the ongoing regurgitation of dead music, for they are not artists, no matter how skillful they may be. In an attempt to adhere to this value, I attempt to assist in the programming of concerts where possible, that are predominantly 20th or 21st century music. To the best of my ability I try to support contemporary art music and also improvised music whenever I can, in any way that I can, and of course, by getting my own music and that of my colleagues, friends and mentors performed whenever I can. I think that all musicians, actors, writers, painters, photographers and all other people engaged in the creative arts should primarily be concerned with the music, art and culture of now.

Listed here are the values that drive my creative practice.

Consider everything an experiment.
- John Cage