Thomas Brett
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Keywords: Vibe
(Photo: Khashayar Kouchpeydeh) Short for vibration, vibe poetically describes music’s most intangible yet palpable quality: its feeling. Vibe is how music feels over time, how its vibrations sustain a mood, conjure an aura, and keep an affect aloft like smoke billowing on a windless day. Describing a music’s vibe is difficult and requires assigning a… Continue reading
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Database: Max Cooper On Parameter Spaces
“The Prophet-6 is my most used synth. It’s just got a nice balance of not trying to do too much, but doing enough to be flexible. The parameter space it covers is high proportion beautiful. Any synth, you’ve got a bunch of parameters with continuous values. If you’ve got 50 parameters, you’ve got a 50… Continue reading
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Resonant Thoughts: Robert M. Persig’s “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” (1974)
“The test of the machine is the satisfaction it gives you. There isn’t any other test. If the machine produces tranquillity it’s right. If it disturbs you it’s wrong until either the machine or your mind is changed. The test of the machine’s always your own mind. There isn’t any other test.” “The craftsman isn’t… Continue reading
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Keywords: Trust The Hands
If you’re a musician of some experience you know things about music not from the outside, as a listener, but from your body, as a practitioner. Trust the hands is the heuristic of letting your understanding unfold through your playing. Whether at a keyboard, fretboard, or computer, your hands come to know a musical-instrumental terrain… Continue reading
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Resonant Thoughts: Ben Murphy’s “Ears To The Ground” (2024)
“There seems to be a trend of placing field recordings into electronic music, presumably to portray some sort of connection between organic and electronic worlds […] For me, this sort of approach has become a bit of a trope, and I think there are much more interesting ways of including field recordings. The thing I… Continue reading
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Notes On Virtual Instruments
If you played a musical instrument when you were growing up you spent years getting to know how the instrument worked and how to work with it. It took time—concentrated lesson time with teachers and diffuse time alone, practicing for thousands of hours. You learned good tone, technique, repertoire, and how to play this repertoire… Continue reading
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Database: Ólafur Arnalds On Using EQ
“My usual way of approaching it is like: don’t be afraid of the EQ. Because essentially it doesn’t matter if the orchestra sounds natural or not when it’s in a full electronic mix. What matters is that there’s no frequencies or notes resonating in an unnatural way next to the electronics. So you just surgically… Continue reading
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