repetition
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Notes On Practice As Repetition Without Repetition
In the 1920s, Nikolai Bernstein, a mostly self-taught neurophysiologist and pioneer in the field of motor control, studied the movements of blacksmiths at Moscow’s Central Institute of Labor. Bernstein used cyclographic photography techniques to track the motions used to cut metal with a chisel and hammer. (See photo above.) His research showed how repeating movements Continue reading
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Resonant Thoughts: Jean-Michel Jarre On “Oxygène”
“When I started to do electronic music I was obsessed — I more or less forgot that obsession along the way — about not having anything being repeated in exactly the same way. For me it was exactly the opposite attitude to that of Kraftwerk, Tangerine Dream and all those electronic bands who were doing 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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Resonant Thoughts: On Repetition And Baking Analogies In Shunryu Suzuki’s “Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind”
“We may find it not so interesting to cook the same thing over and over again every day. It is rather tedious, you may say. If you lose the spirit of repetition it will become quite difficult…Anyway, we cannot keep still: we have to do something. So if you do something, you should be very Continue reading
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Notes On Elizabeth Margulis’s “On Repeat: How Music Plays The Mind”
I began reading this book like a runner hitting a downhill, rushing forward with exhilaration and abandon, carried along by the gravitational pull of my interest in its subject. My initial read-through was quick, and I’ll certainly be returning to its pages, walking back up the uphills to take in the details. To say the Continue reading
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On A Note That Just Won’t Quit: A Great Big World’s “Say Something”
Every so often I peruse Spotify’s various listening lists to see what musics folks around the world are streaming onto their devices. This time around I clicked on Spotify’s “Global Hits.” Along with some usual suspects–Pharrell Williams’ “Happy” (which will undoubtedly become as enduring as “Happy Birthday”), songs by Katy Perry, Coldplay and Shakira, and Continue reading
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Walker Percy On Repetition
“What is a repetition? A repetition is the re-enactment of past experience toward the end of isolating the time segment which has lapsed in order that it, the lapsed time, can be savored of itself without the usual adulteration of events that clog time like peanuts in brittle.” – Walker Percy, The Moviegoer, New York: Continue reading
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