Reflexive Music: Walking InBetween Sound and Silence

A step forward

A pause

Another step

Breath

Go

​

Reflexive Music is an original musical structure that provokes relationships between elements of different mediums. While the elements maintain an independence, they are perfectly synced in cohesion while engaging in direct passionate dialogue with the oppositional and complementary forces of other mediums. Developing this unique perspective to musical creation grew out of Rosenbaum’s pre-condition called synesthesia—an experience of perceiving sound through multiple senses, where each note holds a shape, a texture, a weight. To move through Reflexive Music is to navigate this sensory terrain, stepping through layers of perception, where sound is tasted, seen, and felt as much as it is heard. This is not merely a phenomenon; it is the underlying current of composition itself. a mix of senses—in her specific case, the auditory being interpreted with taste, sound, and texture.

​

Step forward 

Step back 

​

(The music does not exist in one place—it walks inbetween)

​

Starting the Motion: The Reflexive Soundscape

Reflexive Music is more than an innovative genre—it is a movement. It does not reside solely in the composer’s intent, nor in the musician’s execution, nor even in the listener’s interpretation. It is in the space between all of them, in the moment where each intersects and alters the other.

Traditional composition often assigns a dominant structure, a guiding voice that directs the interplay of sound and form. Reflexive Music resists this hierarchy. Instead, each medium—sound, movement, texture—exists in relation to itself and in constant dialogue with its counter-medium.

The result is a 'Democracy of Dictators", much like a utopian orchestra, where each player is a wholeness of mind-body, with the ability to express both full ego and zero ego. Every element is both autonomous and inseparable. The role of the conductor in this democracy is to be its leader—not as a ruler imposing control, but as an attuned guide, shaping the balance between collective expression and individual presence. Walking, stopping, aligning, breaking apart—each sound, each silence, each shift carries its own weight and necessity.

​

Stop

Listen

Move

​

The understanding that no sound is ever the same, even when repeated, is fundamental. Four quarter notes in succession—four identical C-sharps—can never truly be identical. Played by the same musician in the same moment, they shift subtly in breath, in resonance, in the imperceptible tension of a hand adjusting its weight. The score is not a plan; it is a plan of planning, an open invitation for movement that exists only in real time.

Even Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, so precisely notated, remains a field of possibilities, not a predetermined outcome. Reflexive Music takes this concept further—it creates structures that demand both precision and improvisation, exact timing and absolute flexibility.

A score may include “triggers”—a sound, a gesture, a breath—that prompt synchronization, yet no two performances can ever be the same. The performers must navigate the terrain as if walking in an unfamiliar landscape, sensing the invisible flow, stepping forward only when the music breathes in, pausing when it breathes out.

​

Balancing Structure and Play: The Reflexive Score

In Reflexive Music, there is a balance between structure (the partitura, the plan) and the unfolding of the performance (the moment, the playing). Earlier compositions employed the Earphone Clicktrack technique to achieve this balance and create an awareness flow. The clicktracks served as an invisible guide, allowing precise synchronization while maintaining improvisatory freedom.

The synesthetic conversation was both the language used to perform the music and the compositional technique used to notate the score. This interplay between sensation and form shaped Reflexive Music into a multidimensional experience, where sound was never isolated but always in relation to movement, texture, and presence.

​

Falling into the Unexpected

It has been said that Reflexive Music creates "traps"—hidden pitfalls where musicians might lose themselves, only to rediscover a new pathway forward. This is intentional. Reflexive scores are filled with moments designed for surprise, places where the expected fractures into the unknown.

To walk is to be simultaneously aware of where you are coming from and where you are going, while fully holding both sides by being in the moment, in the Inbetween. It is about everything and at the same time not anything is part of it—a continuous negotiation between presence and transition. It is an aware flow, not just movement—it is the ability to listen to the past, anticipate the future, and yet stay present in the unfolding now. Reflexive Music embodies this awareness, shaping a continuous conversation between structure and spontaneity, presence and anticipation.

Like a dancer adjusting to a shifting rhythm, the performer must remain alert, adaptable. Reflexive Music does not allow passive playing. It requires presence, engagement, risk.

​

The Role of the Active Listener: A Counter-Medium

And then—silence. A held breath. The audience waits. Or does the audience move?

In Reflexive Music, the listener is not a bystander. The listener is a participant, an inseparable counter-medium, affecting the performance in real time.

In conventional music, the audience is often positioned as an external observer. But here, the act of listening alters the space, the dynamic, the unfolding composition. A shift in attention, a collective inhale, the rustle of a sleeve—each becomes part of the score, whether acknowledged or not.

​

"Everything is part of it, and at the same time, not anything is part of it"

 

Between Walking and Stopping: Reflexive Music as a State of Play

At its heart, Reflexive Music is an act of infinite playfulness.

​

It walks a fine line between control and release, structure and improvisation, self and other. It breathes in moments of perfect alignment, then exhales into unpredictability.

There is no point zero. No fixed beginning, no absolute conclusion.

Only motion.

Only the unfolding of sound, of presence, of the next step—one that might land where expected, or might disappear entirely.

​

WALK

DON’T WALK

​

Listen...

really really listen...