Voices #27
◦ “voices” is the place where we ask, artists reply and you read.
here we got:
Paul Beaudoin
answering some questions. We have already observed his ambient / drone / noise work here.
[1. IDEA]
■ The A. O.: The track from “station” that we prefer is “they all agreed, it was harmonic evidence”. Can you tell us how it came to light?
► Paul Beaudoin: For the past year, I’ve traced how sound holds memory—personal, cultural, and inherited—and how those memories can be altered, overwritten, or erased. While I work across media—painting, text, and video—sound feels uniquely attuned to the workings of memory. Most of us experience sound in sequence, gathering what comes forward while continually referring. Retrospectively. It’s a remarkable human act.
My earliest sonic memory is the piano. My mother aspired to be a cocktail lounge pianist in the 1950s and 60s. After school, she’d gather us to sing while playing a familiar rotation of classical and popular music. That daily, participatory listening shaped how I understand music. The piano was the first instrument I “learned”—not through formal lessons but through experimentation. I still remember plucking a string too hard and snapping it in half. That accident stayed with me, not only because of the sound, but also because it sparked my impulse to explore the instrument physically, conceptually, and emotionally.
station is a collection centered on memory and trace. Each track is a “station”—a place or time where something sonically residual remains. they all agreed, it was harmonic evidence draws from childhood music and my earliest encounters with music theory around age 15. That’s when I began composing seriously, fully immersed in theory—an obsession that lasted through my PhD dissertation on a Beethoven cello sonata. (So yes, I suppose you could say I’m legally obligated to find harmony wherever I go.)
My music isn’t linear; it rejects the formal narratives many listeners expect. This shift toward non-narrative listening came from conversations with John Cage. He taught me to hear sound not as a path but as an environment—something we enter, inhabit, and exit without hierarchy. I was especially drawn to his idea that each sound is a living object, a notion he borrowed from painter Lyonel Feininger, who believed every line or form had an independent life. That idea stayed with me. It changed how I hear, compose, and remember.
The phrase harmonic evidence holds several meanings. It nods to early theory lessons—the desire to name, analyze, and prove—but also points to sound itself as a form of evidence: a rarely accepted proof, yet deeply tied to memory. The track layers these tensions—between analysis and emotion, structured harmony and personal trace. I think of it as a sonic self-portrait: part archive, part analysis.
[2. CREATION]
(more…)