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Notes On Shifting Attentions: From Practicing To Performing
“A categorization is a natural way of identifying a kind of object or experience by highlighting certain properties, downplaying others, and hiding still others…To highlight certain properties is necessarily to downplay or hide others, which is what happens whenever we categorize something. Focusing on one set of properties shifts our attention away from others. When… Continue reading
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Notes On Musical Tensions and Canon Counterpoints
Notation for Le Ray Au Soleyl by Johannes Ciconia (c. 1390s) What is it that keeps your attention when you encounter a music? Is it its instrumentation and timbre world? Its performers (human or machine)? Its melodies? Its chords and harmonies? Its feel and vibe? Its sheer volume? (That bass!) Its rhythms that make you… Continue reading
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Arrows Of Attention: The Musical Minimalist’s Manual
Identify your idea’s smallest musical unit. What part, aspect, or quality of what you’re playing or composing is its essence? Is it a rhythm, a series of chords, a melody, a stasis, an unusual orchestration, a timbre combination? Identify the essence and pursue it, amplify it. One sound, one part at a time. Refine and… Continue reading
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Brett’s Sound Picks: The Black Dog’s “Ringinglow Oscillation” (2021)
(Follow Brett’s Sound Picks 2021 playlist.) Continue reading
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