Thomas Brett
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Database: Jonny Greenwood On Acoustic Instruments And Hearing The Physicality Of What’s Happening
“I always found acoustic instruments, certainly orchestral instruments, to be capable of much more variety and strangeness and complexity than nearly all of the software I’ve used in the past.” “I also love a recording where you can hear the physicality of what’s happening, whether it’s the breathing of the player or just the effort Continue reading
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Resonant Thoughts: Toby Manning’s “Mixing Pop and Politics: A Marxist History of Popular Music” (2024)
“What’s audible in millennial-angst music isn’t piety but a profound sense of loss: not of something remembered but, in this retro, YouTube, internet meme era, something re-remembered” (518). “The centrality of sampling and quotation in contemporary music, alongside the perennial accessibility and audibility of music’s entire back catalogue, means the past is always alive in Continue reading
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Keywords: Musical Idea Curating
If you compose music with a computer, eventually you’ll face the accumulation of what you’ve been doing over the years. Digital files, while invisible, add up, with only their names and dates as clues to how they might sound; you can’t be sure until you double-click, load, and play. Musical idea curating is periodically listening Continue reading
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Database: r beny On Uncanny Valley Acoustic-Like Sounds
“Currently, one of my favorite synthesizers is the Korg Z1. 80% of the sound sources on this album are the Z1, whether heavily processed or not.” “I love the uncanny valley acoustic sounds that physical modeling synths produce and the [Korg] Z1 is just an absolute gem in that regard. For myself, physical modeling is Continue reading
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Keywords: Musical Spells, Musical Clichés
Along the spectrum of possible musics the musician-composer-producer can make, two types are most important: that which casts a spell, and that which sounds cliché. Music that casts a spell has power: it creates a state of enchantment through its sounds and what they do. Enchanting music enchants by many means: through orchestration and timbre-textures, Continue reading
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Resonant Thoughts: Benjamin Swett’s “The Picture Not Taken: On Life and Photography” (2024)
“I keep coming back to Cartier-Bresson and his paradoxical ethos of a technical prowess that cares not for technique. ‘People think far too much about technique,’ he says in one of his famous aphorisms, “and not enough about seeing.’” “Consider what happens when you take a picture—I mean, what is going on inside you, the Continue reading
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