piano music
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Brett’s Sound Picks: Rachel Grimes’ “Book Of Leaves”
If, as the composer Steve Reich once said in the liner notes for his Desert Music, the evolution of tonality can be imagined as a raft bearing a flickering flame floating slowly downriver towards unknown waters, then the modern composer’s use of harmony is always worth thinking through. Pay attention to the colors and shades… Continue reading
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On Music, Thinking, Dreaming, And Gender: Two Chords In A Lego Commercial
“Music’s ability to conceal its processes and to communicate nothing/everything ‘directly’ is largely responsible for its peculiar power and prestige in society.” – Susan McClary and Robert Walser, “Start Making Sense!: Musicology Wrestles with Rock.” Every once in a blue moon I watch a TV commercial that stops me, holds my attention, and generates the… Continue reading
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On The Music Making Of Jon Hopkins
“My general view is just to have absolutely no planning in place at all and just to let my instinct kind of run wild a bit.” – Jon Hopkins Lately I’ve been enjoying the music of English composer Jon Hopkins. His recording Immunity (2013), shortlisted for last year’s Mercury Prize, is a tour de force… Continue reading
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On Grid Music Antidotes: Harold Budd’s “Quadari”
Like a lot of people, I listen to a lot of “grid” music. Grid music is any music with a clear, consistent, and steady meter. By this definition, most music is grid music. Electronic music–especially the kind with steady beats, which is sometimes referred to as electronic dance music–is uber grid music. All of its… Continue reading
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Some Notes On The Usefulness Of Improvisation
“The problem with improvisation is, of course, that everyone just slips into their comfort zone and does sort of the easy thing to do, the most obvious thing to do with your instrument.” — Brian Eno My friend Lee is always asking me to write music for him to sing over–“we just need an A… Continue reading
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From Geoff Dyer’s Criticism To Keith Jarrett’s Pianism
In his recent collection of essays, Otherwise Known As The Human Condition, novelist and critic Geoff Dyer writes beautifully and incisively about photography in a way that I wish more writers would (or could) write about music. Here is Dyer writing on Idris Khan’s work (pictured below) that digitally blends hundreds of photographs into a single composite image: “Each art… Continue reading
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