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Book Review: The Cambridge Companion to Percussion
percussion—from the Latin verb percutere, to strike forcibly As a family of instruments that make sound by being struck as well as a community of musicians who do this striking, percussion and percussionists encompass a vast terrain. Percussion of one type or another is found in virtually every musical culture in the world, and the… Continue reading
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On Tiny Increments and Necessary Imperfections: Dave Hickey on Musical Timing
“And you can thank the wanking eighties, if you wish, and digital sequencers, too, for proving to everyone that technologically ‘perfect’ rock—like ‘free’ jazz—sucks rockets. Because order sucks. I mean, look at the Stones. Keith Richards is always on top of the beat, and Bill Wyman, until he quit, was always behind it, because Richards… Continue reading
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Finger Cymbal Music
My new recording Finger Cymbal Music is now available. The music can be purchased at CD Baby, iTunes, or streamed on Spotify. Continue reading
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Loose Stuff: Listening To J Dilla’s “Jay Dee a.k.a. King Dilla”
Listening to J Dillas’s “Jay Dee a.k.a. King Dilla”, a collection of brief instrumental tracks recorded by Dilla early in his career using an E-mu Systems SP-1200 drum sampler, you can hear that the key to his grooves’ grooving is their looseness. I have read a fair bit online from people speculating on what it was… Continue reading
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Art About Music: Theodoor Rombouts’ “Lute Player” (c. 1620)
(According to the website for the Philadelphia Museum, depicting “a musical instrument being tuned was a veiled reference to striving for harmony in love. Stringed instruments could also symbolize temperance, especially when shown in the company of a tankard and a pipe, as here” [http://www.philamuseum.org/collections/permanent/102484.html].) Continue reading
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Personifying Musical Action
A melody does things in a look at me kind of way. It walks, it skips, it pirouettes like a sprightly dancer; it leaps from one pitch to another like a long-limbed ballerina. Melodies love attention and they have a diva quality, as if believing that their personal and exteriorized dramas are of intrinsic interest and… Continue reading
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On Passing Micro-Moments In Music
Sometimes in music there are brief moments that truly click, magnify your attention, and send you into a state of excitement. These moments can be anything—a chord progression, a melodic turn or leap, a sung phrase, a rhythm clash or synchrony, a combination of instruments, or even a single timbre. What makes them micro… Continue reading
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