How do you want people to use your music? Is it for sitting-still listening? Is it for dancing while listening? Is it to soundtrack a film? Is it to help you study? Is it to set a mood on a date? Is it to accompany a text? Is it a working through of a theory? Continue reading

Focus on me music says, to bridge memory and anticipation, to order the scatterbrain– improve your functioning, learn to be better through style. Pay attention to my tones in succession or vertical stacking, follow them along their travels, soaring over landscapes, skimming across water. Register my rhythms in unison- or clashing-ness, vibrate with their architectures, Continue reading

Only the simplest music I get analytically, unpacking without trying, dividing without counting, hearing without thought transcription. When complexity sings I take a step back to view its note shapes from afar, observing without judging, counting without unpacking, suspicious of their busy work. It was a piece by Takemitsu– I noticed one tone, the first, Continue reading

The sound men swept in on their once-a-year visit to listen to the show, to hear the orchestra’s sounds with outsider ears. Could I hear that percussion part again? one of them asked through a microphone, wanting to inspect an African drum in isolation. The drum played solo, self-conscious of its double sound of bass Continue reading

Musical instruments have resonators to amplify and project their sound out to the musicians and to us, the listeners. But we resonate too along with the music, in sympathy with its aims, in tune with its mood, oscillating to its rhythms. Our resonance gives depth to music’s meaning: picture this circuit where sound is the Continue reading

I’m listening to organ– soft attack, pulsating sustain, transparent like stained glass, letting the light through but only enough to paint a scene. She listens to Bachata– hard angles, syncopated starts, stop and turns, booming bass tickling the body, enough to choreograph an imagined party. They were listening to pop– sharing headphones, shoulders touching, synthetic Continue reading

The concert was over and the musicians filed out swiftly, hurriedly, glad to be done with the sounds they were paid to provide. One musician stayed behind and decided to keep playing easily, and with all the time in the world, continuing to make sounds only this time for free. Music sings differently when dollars Continue reading

The music began as music but then became something different. He had hoped to create a grand construction in considered sounds, but the moment steered itself towards other destinations. The screen in front of him held clues– a mountain range screensaver, colors of a kaleidoscope sunset, an imaginary landscape. Then the mountains began to speak: Continue reading

It was as if the music knew of my buried memory. It was a picture torn thirty years past from a travel magazine, of, maybe, a schoolyard in France– autumn, games played, blurred figures in motion, reverberating laughter, a country scene. The music was a few notes torn from a longer piece of, maybe, music Continue reading