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Art About Music: John Cage’s “Sonatas and Interludes” (1946-1948)
(Preparations chart for prepared piano.) Continue reading
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Practicing
Consider yourself and everyone around you as consummate practicers refining ways of being, honing their speaking tones and counterpoint gestures, assuming the sound and the movement of who and what they want to be we’re practicing all the time, practicing the patterns of what we can’t yet play. Continue reading
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Resonant Thoughts: On Simon Critchley’s “What We Think About When We Think About Soccer” (2017)
On phenomenology: Phenomenology is the attempt “to get close, as close as possible, to the grain, texture, and existential matrix of experience as it is given, and to allow words to echo that experience in a way that might allow us to see it in a new light, under a changed aspect” (17). On rhythm:… Continue reading
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A Forest Xylophone Plays Bach
This is a charming video, but it also illustrates some deeper ideas: • Composition. It shows how a piece of music can be rendered on an unusual instrument and remain recognizable. • Instrument. It shows how a musical instrument can be fashioned out of descending wooden steps and a falling ball. • Agency. It shows… Continue reading
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Searches That Brought You Here
• What is the frequency spectrum of a hip hop kick. This search brought you to my 2012 post on bass frequency-heavy Beats By Dre headphones. What I wrote still seems to apply to why people wear them: “How to explain the popularity of the Beats? One explanation is that our bass-heavy musics–hip hop and… Continue reading
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Digs Disguised As Compliments: An Overheard Musician Joke
(The show is over and the musicians are packing up. One turns to another to “compliment” him.) “That was really something else!” Continue reading
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Freestyle: Sampling A Thought
Put an idea into the Grid sampler to hear what happens: Happens….Happens…Happens…Happens… It’s a two-part sound, a high tone followed by a lower one: ha—ppens. The ha sustains a pitch, while the ppens falls off after the plosive with a slight downward pitch bend. Isolate the ha and assign it to a pad. Drum it:… Continue reading
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Details At The End
Starting a piece of music is easy enough: you count it off (one, two, three, four!), or the conductor gives the cue, or you simply dive head first into the sound waters. It’s exciting because here you are—again (!)—and also, you’re not entirely sure how it’s going to go, which is what makes performing always… Continue reading
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Quietudes
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music, and CD Baby. Continue reading
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