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Music As Labor
I hear music as labor now— which struck me when I was standing in line at Whole Foods the air conditioning wasn’t working and staff were complaining while stocking shelves it’s hot up here and I noticed the blues playing on the sound system the guitar solo that couldn’t end the drums slap-shuffling the baseline dutifully… Continue reading
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Attention Over Time: Slow Noticing
“A ‘bit’ of information is definable as a difference which makes a difference. Such a difference, as it travels and undergoes successive transformations in a circuit, is an elementary idea.” -Gregory Bateson, Steps To An Ecology Of Mind (1972), p. 315 When I’m working on music I often wonder whether I could work faster, but… Continue reading
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Resonant Thoughts: Richard Sennett’s “The Craftsman” (2009)
“As a performer, at my fingertips I experience error—error that I will seek to correct. I have a standard for what should be, but my truthfulness resides in the simple recognition that I make mistakes…I have to be willing to commit error, to play wrong notes, in order eventually to get them right.” “If the… Continue reading
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Dear Spotify
You drive a hard bargain using algorithms to try to know what we like and who is like us sound is just a trace of other measures other metrics music a signifier of crowd thinking a playlist for every mood but you keep getting it wrong it being me me being my taste predictable yet… Continue reading
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Things Not In The Mix
“Pay attention. Focus on your surroundings, physical and psychological. Notice something that bothers you, that concerns you, that will not let you be, which you could fix, that you would fix. You can find such somethings by asking yourself (as if you genuinely want to know) three questions: ‘What is it that is bothering me?’… Continue reading
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Resonant Thoughts: Ólafur Arnalds On “The Player Pianos Part II”
“You get things that wouldn’t make sense if you were actually playing them. So you would never think of them. Because writing and improvising on a piano is very much based on muscle memory. But with this you get rid of all that. You get this pure, unrestricted creativity.” Continue reading
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