Thomas Brett
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Music’s Subtle Changes Over Time
Music is most magical when it creates perceptual sleights of ear and sounds more than the sum of its parts. Something is happening, but you can’t quite figure out how. Subtle changes over time, once noticed, are the meaningful details and clues to organizing principles: beats interlocking into polyrhythm,pitches coalescing into chords,melting timbre-textures,background moving to… Continue reading
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Resonant Thoughts: Philip Ball’s “Patterns in Nature: Why the Natural World Looks the Way It Does” (2016)
“Perhaps the most curious thing about natural patterns is that they come from a relatively limited palette, recurring at very different size scales and in systems that might seem to have nothing at all in common with one another” (12). “What is a pattern, anyway? We usually think of it as something that repeats again… Continue reading
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Composing and Scarcity
Does composing music happen at a precise moment? Is it when you have a concept for a piece? When a looping rhythm comes alive? When you alight on a chord progression that does something new? When a technology generates a beautiful error? When an improvisation opens up a world? Or when an orchestration of parts… Continue reading
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Database: Tim Oliver On Listening, Scaling To Intention, And Making Sure Something Is Always Leading Your Ear
“It’s listening. It’s a bit being able to zoom in and zoom out in perspective. That’s a good practice. I think if I were still alive ten years from now, or if I can still hear then, that if I listened back to a mix I’m doing now, I’d probably think the same negative things… Continue reading
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Resonant Thoughts: Nadia Asparouhova’s “Antimemetics: Why Some Ideas Resist Spreading” (2025)
“Creative self-expression is the only way we will continue to make our mark as humans in times of uncertainty, and it doesn’t come from doing what you think will sell to other people “(21). “Antimemetics are a shadow city built on thoughts, knowledge, and practices that do not spread easily, despite their importance to our… Continue reading
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