musical time
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On Musical Time And Running Speed
One night I was playing my part, listening to the part of another musician. All systems were running smoothly, and we were in sync. Then, suddenly, I had a sense that the other musician was pushing the time, just a hair. My ears perk up: Oh, this is interesting. I was sure of my sense that Continue reading
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Roger Linn On Drum Machine Groove And J Dilla’s Off-Beat Sound
Music is fortunate to have inventors like Roger Linn. Linn has designed or co-designed a number of drum machines–such as the LM-1, the LinnDrum, the Akai MPC series of sampling workstations, and Tempest, a recent venture with Dave Smith. Linn is skilled in making instruments that musicians can, and do, use with ease in musical Continue reading
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Strange Mechanisms II: On Exercise And Musical Tempo
Last week I found myself thinking about the effects of listening to music while exercising. I run a lot but have never listened to music while doing so. The reason I guess is that I want to listen to the cadence of my feet and hear ambient sounds around me for safety reasons. My attention Continue reading
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On Advice To A Repetition Hater
“Practice, repetition, and repetition of the repeated with ever increasing intensity are its distinctive features for long stretches of the way.” – Eugen Herrigal, Zen in the Art of Archery Reduced to its essentials, drumming is fundamentally about repetition. Imagine for a moment that you’re a drummer. You stand in front of a snare drum Continue reading
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Strange Mechanisms: On Entrainment And Running To Music
“…the music, the words of the mottoes, the steps of the dance, trigger the strange mechanism.” — Jean Rouch in Gilbert Rouget, Music and Trance (1985:181) Yesterday I ran the NYC Half Marathon (in a time that qualified me for the NYC Marathon–yes!). One of the things I noticed along the route was the presence Continue reading
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Letting Randoms In: On The Music Of Burial
“I don’t really go on the Internet, it’s like a Ouija board, it’s like letting someone into your head, behind your eyes. It lets randoms in.” – Burial Although I’m clearly a few years behind the curve with this particular bit of music news, I’ve been thinking about the music of acclaimed London-based producer Burial lately and what Continue reading
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On Boredom, Music and Time
One of the symmetries between the psychological state of boredom and the experience of listening to music is that they both shape how we feel time. In his book Boredom (Yale University Press, 2010), Peter Toohey quotes the poet Joseph Brodsky speaking of boredom as representing “pure, undiluted time in all its repetitive, redundant, monotonous splendor” (186). Elsewhere, Toohey also Continue reading
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