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The Bucket Drummer
The bucket drummer plays the same beat every night which I notice as I walk by the corner of 42nd and Broadway hearing his plastic rim shots and salad bowl pings ricochet off the billboards like rhythm shrapnel played at the same tempo too an optimal groove showing off his handiwork keeping our attention aloft… Continue reading
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On 12/8
Four circles, stutter steps, round corners, left-right-left, sliding fluid, advanced groove, nighttime rhythmics, swing defiance, human not machine, dance essence, remix resistant, pure meter, African timescape, multiple-clocked, now count it off: ah one (two) three (four) five six (seven) eight (nine) ten (eleven) twelve… Continue reading
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On 4/4
Foursquare, lockstep, sharp-cornered, left-right, marching rigid, beginner’s groove, daylight rhythmics, default-quantized, machined not human, pop essence, remix template, tempered meter, western timescape, Euro-clocked, now count it off: ah one two three four… Continue reading
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On Intensity And Focus: Applying Physical Training Principles To Creative Work
We often think about physical fitness and creative work as completely separate and unrelated domains, but training principles can be applied outside of exercise. Here are a few I have been applying from endurance sports: The 80/20 Rule The 80/20 rule suggests that 80 percent of your training should take place at a relaxed and easy… Continue reading
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On Conjuring And Capturing: The Jar Of Fireflies Concept
The cover for my most recent recording, Piano And Metals Music, is a composite of two images: a metallic surface, and fireflies. The metallic idea was mine–I was trying to represent the metal instruments in the music (gongs, kalimba, and finger cymbals, if you were wondering). The firefly idea was inspired by a comment made… Continue reading
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Music As Perception
(Birds over the parking lot at Ikea.) Music has many practical uses, among them: it organizes us into communities, soundtracks our rituals and every day routines, accompanies our films, sells our products, and so on. But perhaps music’s most fundamental purpose is perceptual: music exercises our attention this way and that, stretching our body-minds in… Continue reading
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A Creative Compass: Music Is Feeling, Not Sound
In the second stanza of his poem “Peter Quince at the Clavier”, Wallace Stevens makes a simple observation about the nature of music with an acuity that exceeds the findings of the most sophisticated music theorists: “Music is feeling, then, not sound.” Stevens brings our attention to one of music’s central curiosities: how it’s built from… Continue reading
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Listening Is Misunderstanding
When we listen to music we hear what’s happening in the sounds— the tempo, the beat, the timbres, the chord sequence, the singing, the words sung. But we also hear what we want to hear: how the music relates to musics we’ve already heard, and to the gaps in our attention— meaning that there are… Continue reading
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