Thomas Brett
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Database: Claire M Singer on Writing By Improvising
“Improvising is hugely important in my writing process. All of my pieces, whether on organ or cello, come from me sitting and improvising on the instrument and through this process I capture the parts l like (whether writing it down or recording it) and over time it becomes a set scored piece.” Claire M Singer Continue reading
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Resonant Thoughts: Matthew H. Birkhold’s “Metronome” (2025)
“…psychologists like Carl Seashore and Edward Wheeler Scripture considered performers’ discrepancies from the metronomic beat an ‘artistic deviation’ and held the ‘successful player’ to be the musician with the fewest rhythmical variations from the precise metronomic tempo. They wrote books and authored studies advocating for this new type of musician” (45). “The internal pulse upon Continue reading
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Holding Out For Better
“Suddenly an experience of disinterested observation opens in its center and gives birth to a happiness which is instantly recognizable as your own.The field that you are standing before appears to have the same proportions as your own life.” John Berger, About Looking (1980), 204-205. There’s a type of being stuck that I quite like Continue reading
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Database: Lia Kohls On Recording As Layering Time
“I’m responding to the recordings that I took and layering things on top, but I always started with the field recording. The recording is a collaborator. The world is a collaborator. I find it really difficult to sit down and make something out of the blue. I’m not someone who hears melodies in their head, Continue reading
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Notes On Music and Humor: Flight of the Conchords
When I used to teach at a school on the Lower East Side, from 2007-2010, one day on my long walk on Houston Street from Avenue D to the 2nd Avenue subway stop I passed several actor trailers for the HBO show, Flight of the Conchords. The show, which ran for only two seasons, follows Continue reading
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Resonant Thoughts: W. David Marx’s “Blank Space: A Cultural History of the Twenty-First Century” (2025)
“The term paradigm, despite rampant overuse in marketing copy and mocked as meaningless jargon by The Simpsons, describes a specific phenomenon in social science: the macro-values that set the logic of our choices and aesthetics. When a new paradigm emerges, the previous established styles lose all their value” (123). “The logic of ultrapoptimism ultimately blessed Continue reading
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