@LandonPD Hi Landon, it is not as if I have never heard of composers using natural sounds or influences to compose music, and when I was young I was certainly much closer to that way of thinking - so it is rather myself destrying the old bridges rather than any need to build new ones.
A composer can certainly lack interest in every sound around him, as much as a writter has no interest in every single word written around him. My own work is about sound relations an structures rather than the sounds themselves, and that is not a new approach at all. There are composers and schools of music in which sound itself is the ultimate goal (Pierre Schaefer and his acousmatic music, or the spectral composers), but others approach music in a different way. One of the reasons I love so much randomness is that I can't bother to chose myself between certain details that I don't judge to be important.
That is not to say that I have never felt attraction to beautiful sounds around me: for instance, I have a fantastic metallic bowl which has a prettier sound than most bells have. But that said, I have very little interest in recording and using it in my main work. I distinguish these two things greatly: one can admire a landscape and yet not paint one nor be influenced by it at all when painting.
So as much as it is possible to compose music by listening to those sounds around us, it is also possible to do so by NOT listening to those sounds either, and the proof of that is every single work which has been constructed only by musical relationships.
@What I agree with you that it could be easier, but I don't find the current way of dealing with it that awkward myself. But anyway, I don't know this state saving object you mentioned, do you know where I could find it?
Take care you all,
Gilberto