-
Brett’s Best: 2017
Favorite readings: Jace Clayton. Uproot: Travels in 21st-Century Music and Digital Culture. A well-traveled experimental dance music DJ’s perspective on the intersections of global music, technology, and creativity. Clayton has endless thoughtful perspectives on how today’s music is made and circulated and writes compellingly about what it all means. I may review this book when… Continue reading
-
On Web Searches That Brought You Here: A.R. Ammons, Rihanna, Quadraphonic Sound
• a poem is a walk summary. This search query found my post on A.R. Ammons’ magnificent essay on the phenomenology of poetry. Ammons’ observations on poetry apply equally to music: “What we want to see a poem do is to become itself, to reach as nearly perfect a state of self-direction and self-responsibility as can… Continue reading
-
Freestyle: On Sounding Real And Sounding Fake
A keyboardist-composer friend at work, BJ, was talking to me about some sampled string libraries she had recently been auditioning. “They sound incredible” she said, in reference to Vienna Strings. “But the thing is, if you don’t understand the idiom of the instrument you’re writing for, it’s not going to be believable.” I nodded and… Continue reading
-
Better
How to get better? is a question I think about when I’m playing music and something doesn’t go as I had planned or assumed it would. An errant note, a momentary lapse of concentration, a dropped stick, a shaker that goes flying out of my hand (yes, it happened once), noticing my timekeeping dragging, or… Continue reading
-
Resonant Thoughts: Jaron Lanier’s “Dawn of the New Everything” (2017)
“When we think technology can surpass our bodies in a comprehensive way, we are forgetting what we know about our bodies and physical reality. The universe doesn’t have infinitely fine grains, and the body is already tuned in as finely as anything can ever be, when it needs to be” (49). “The unceasing flow of… Continue reading
-
Resonant Thoughts: Arnold Berleant’s “Notes For A Phenomenology Of Musical Performance” (1999)
“The performer necessarily comes at the music from within…Most often the performance situation catapults a musician into a rare and unusual condition, one that reveals the basic features of experience with eloquent directness, free, at least to some extent, from the usual overlay of cultural and philosophical presuppositions that nearly always obstruct our awareness. What is… Continue reading
-
How Drummers And Percussionists Use Rhythm To Engage Time
Drummers and percussionists use rhythm to engage musical time in a variety of ways. Here are some of the techniques we use: Marking time through articulating meter. (One-two-three-four-five-One-two-three-four-five…) Dividing time through subdivision of the meter’s main beats. (One-and-two-and-three-and-four-and-five-and…) Decorating or accentuating time through accents and emphases. (One-two-three, Two-Two-Three…). Driving forward time (or somewhat worse: pushing).… Continue reading
-
On Editing Music For Articulation
Over the past month as I was editing some new music for a piano-like instrument it struck me that what I was trying to do is make the music “breathe” more. One component of musical breathing has to with how its sounds are articulated. As my laptop’s dictionary reminds me, in music “articulation” refers to… Continue reading
brettworks 
You must be logged in to post a comment.