April 2012
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A Silent Palette Cleanser
Walking down Main Street without music in my headphones, I Iook up and see three balloons–one red, one yellow, one white–tethered to a string, hanging just above a store awning, moving. As I watch the balloons I wonder just who the string attaches to: Someone flying the balloons like they’re a kite? What celebration might… Continue reading
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On The Musicality Of M.C. Escher
“Order is repetition of units. Chaos is multiplicity without rhythm.” “My work is a game, a very serious game.” “Are you really sure that a floor can’t also be a ceiling?” – M.C. Escher I’ve long been curious about M.C. Escher’s (1898-1972) drawings and woodcuts because of their precision, their order and symmetry, their use… Continue reading
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On Teaching Music: Visiting A Friend’s College And Elementary School Classrooms
A few weeks ago I traveled to Boston to visit my friend Fred at his college and elementary school music classes. Fred is an ethnomusicologist, musician, and craftsman (primarily an instrument builder) who spends his mornings teaching college students and his afternoons teaching kids at a Montessori elementary and middle school. Teaching the two different… Continue reading
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On Vocal Frying
“It’s generally pretty well known that if you identify a sound change in progress, then young people will be leading old people, and women tend to be maybe half a generation ahead of males on average.” – Mark Liberman, linguist, University of Pennsylvania The image is impossible for me to prevent in my mind’s eye: spoken… Continue reading
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On The Rise Of Cultural Populism: We’re All Musical Experts Now
“Obscure knowledge was once a kind of currency.” – Alexandra Molotkow I recently came across a resonant NYTimes article by Alexandra Molotkow titled “Why the Old-School Music Snob Is the Least Cool Kid on Twitter.” The article describes how file-sharing, first introduced in the late 1990s with Napster, made Molotkow and her friends’ esoteric insider… Continue reading
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On Charles Duhigg’s “The Power Of Habit”: Exploring Music Listening Habit Loops
“Listening habits allow us to unconsciously separate important noises from those that can be ignored.” – Charles Duhigg In his best-selling self-help psychology book, The Power Of Habit: Why We Do What We Do In Life And Business, Charles Duhigg examines the structure of habits and the ways they shape everyday life for individuals, businesses… Continue reading
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In Praise Of Slowness: On Writing On Cellphones
It stuck me recently that I might say something about how the blog posts at bretttworks.com are written. So here goes: I write them on my phone. *** Most of the writing happens in those moments that could otherwise be wasted moments–while waiting for the subway, standing in line somewhere, sitting on the subway, sitting… Continue reading
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