enchantment
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Error In Music Production
“…errors cause planes to crash, buildings to collapse, and knowledge to regress. The beneficial properties need to reside in the type of exposure, that is, the payoff function and not in the ‘luck’ part: there needs to be a significant asymmetry between the gains (as they need to be large) and the errors (small or Continue reading
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Musical Vantage Points
What is your vantage point on the music? From what position do you listen—from a point of doubt, sympathy, skepticism, good cheer, confidence, or anxiety? Does your vantage change as the music changes, moving from a positive glance to a negative sneer? Does your positioning allow you to hear the music as it is, as Continue reading
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The Sonic Spell: Six Components Of Musical Enchantment
enchantment—the state of being under a spell “Technical processes…are construed magically so that, by enchanting us, they make the products of these technical processes seem enchanted vessels of magical power.” – Alfred Gell, “The Technology of Enchantment and the Enchantment of Technology” in Anthropology, Art, and Aesthetics (1992), p. 46 For a while I’ve been Continue reading
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On Musical Perspective, Depth, And Enchantment In A Mix
While I’m not a visual listener (and definitely not a synesthetic one), I do think about mixes as a landscape that unfolds over time, as you, the listener, ride through it on your the vehicle (bicycle, scooter, car) that is your hearing, your perception, your taste. You notice so many things as the landscape wizzes Continue reading
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Finding Repetition’s Vertical Enchantments Hidden Within Linear Composing
Most of the time when I’m producing music I approach it in terms of a through-composed journey through time—a getting from one place to another. The clearest example of such a journey is a free improvisation, say at the piano, which I do a lot. When I improvise I tend to move outwards from a Continue reading
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One Way To Listen To Music: Notes On Mark Fell’s “Multistability 6-B”
One way to listen to music–and by to I mean up and over and through and around music–is to imagine it as proposing a set of ideas for our consideration. From this perspective we can think about any music as sonically embodying, modeling, and organizing itself through these ideas. As we listen the ideas become Continue reading
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On Musical Invention, Sound And Process: “Bladelores” From Autechre’s Exai
No one is quite sure how the UK duo Autechre make their electronic music. Sure, they use software and computers, they program, they use hardware synths and drum machines and samplers, they improvise, they code, they make beats, they tweak, but we really don’t know how they work. Not only is the group’s musical sum Continue reading
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On Microthoughts
Autumn by airport, hearing sounds of flight and roar, far away pleasure. Continue reading
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