Curating The Week
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Curating The Week: How Musicians Talk About The Craft Of Other Musicians, Awe Walks, How To Ask A Question
• An interview that illustrates how musicians talk about the craft of other musicians. Guitarist Kirk Hammett discusses Eddie Van Halen’s techniques: “His right-hand technique, the way he hammered on strings, with super-wide intervals that a person could not humanly stretch. It was an incredible sound. And he was using it so effectively (…) “When Continue reading
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Curating The Week: Creativity, Loss, Long Chords
• An article about creativity in the digital era. “Today, seventy-seven percent of music industry revenue goes to the top one per cent of content producers.” • An essay on creativity and the normalization of loss. “It’s not just the loss of creation, but also the insidious way in which that loss has been normalized, Continue reading
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Curating The Week: Chairs, Pandit Jasraj, Systems Thinking
• An article on the ergonomics of chairs. “Chairs are generally not a response to the realities of the body, its natural evolution, or its needs over any extended period. Instead, the industrialised body has devolved in its needs and succumbed to chairs.” • Pandit Jasraj (1930-2020). “A very senior musician brought my relationship with Continue reading
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Curating The Week: Headphones, Steve Reich, Four Piano Music
• They don’t go on your ears, or over your ears. They sit next to your ears. My favorite headphones. • Steve Reich on composing “Runner”: • Four Piano Music: Continue reading
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Curating The Week: Genealogies Of Learning Percussion, The Import And Export Of Ideas, Lou Harrison
• An essay on genealogies of learning: reflections on learning percussion by my percussion teacher, Russell Hartenberger, who writes about his teacher, Alan Abel. “In my lessons, Mr. Abel played everything with me, providing the perfect template for learning. As I played, I would imitate the movement of his hands and try to duplicate the Continue reading
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Curating The Week: Soundscapes, Drone Instruments, A Newsletter
• Adjustable soundscapes at MyNoise.net. • An article about a composer and her long-stringed drone instrument. “Try to find resonances — textural miracles that are confusing as to structure but spinning and mesmerizing.” • Nadia Eghbal’s newsletter. “I’m enjoying learning how to interact using a new, proprioceptive set of senses. Yes, it’s tactile, but I’m Continue reading
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Curating The Week: Kevin Kelly, Vinyl Cutting, Brian Eno
• Kevin Kelly’s advice. “Art is in what you leave out.” • An article on vinyl album cutting. “The game is trying to do something that is anti-generic.” • Jon Pareles on the music of Brian Eno. “Amorphous, open-ended, unstructured time, with undercurrents of foreboding, pockets of boredom and fleeting interludes of peace or reassessment.” Continue reading
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Curating The Week: Swimming, Walking, And Limited Options
• An essay about swimming. “Cognitive scientists have shown that water sounds—the rhythmic hum of the ocean, the rush of a waterfall—are calming to the human brain. We experience a drop in heart rate and blood pressure and an increase in alpha-wave activity—those brain wavelengths associated with relaxation and boosted serotonin—as well as creative thinking.” Continue reading
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Curating The Week: Live Music, Programming As Magic, And Perception Of The Present
• An article about the stoppage of live music. “A concert also presents an increasingly rare opportunity to focus attention on a unique event as it unfolds in real time. There’s a chance to let an extended, unpredictable arc of sound, light and information envelop me, with no capability to pause or rewind, no temptation Continue reading
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Curating The Week: Essays, Artists, and Cultural Evolution
• A magnificent essay on writing essays. “Telling people something they didn’t know doesn’t always mean surprising them. Sometimes it means telling them something they knew unconsciously but had never put into words. In fact those may be the more valuable insights, because they tend to be more fundamental.” • An essay on artist Anselm Kiefer. Continue reading
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