brettworks

thinking through music

  • On Resonation

    Musical instruments have resonators to amplify and project their sound out to the musicians and to us, the listeners. But we resonate too along with the music, in sympathy with its aims, in tune with its mood, oscillating to its rhythms. Our resonance gives depth to music’s meaning: picture this circuit where sound is the… Continue reading

  • Your Favorite Sounds Tell You Who You Are

    I’m listening to organ– soft attack, pulsating sustain, transparent like stained glass, letting the light through but only enough to paint a scene. She listens to Bachata– hard angles, syncopated starts, stop and turns, booming bass tickling the body, enough to choreograph an imagined party. They were listening to pop– sharing headphones, shoulders touching, synthetic… Continue reading

  • Curating The Week: Prince, Sub Bass, And The Roland TR-808

      1. An interview with the musical force known as Prince. “I don’t think people learn technique any more. There are no great jazz-fusion bands. I grew up seeing Weather Report, and I don’t see anything remotely like that now. There’s nothing to copy from, because you can’t go and see a band like Weather Report.… Continue reading

  • Music Is Free

    The concert was over and the musicians filed out swiftly, hurriedly, glad to be done with the sounds they were paid to provide. One musician stayed behind and decided to keep playing easily, and with all the time in the world, continuing to make sounds only this time for free. Music sings differently when dollars… Continue reading

  • On The Trickle-Down Of Electronic Dance Music Aesthetics VI: Coldplay’s “Adventure Of A Lifetime”

    “As new musical publics took shape and old ones were transformed, and as they entered into rivalry and dialogue, what we seem to discover is a musical language becoming denser and richer.” – Michael Chanan, From Handel To Hendrix (Verso, 1999, p. 135) From the first few seconds of the new Coldplay song “Adventure of… Continue reading

  • Music Is More Than Music

    The music began as music but then became something different. He had hoped to create a grand construction in considered sounds, but the moment steered itself towards other destinations. The screen in front of him held clues– a mountain range screensaver, colors of a kaleidoscope sunset, an imaginary landscape. Then the mountains began to speak:… Continue reading

  • On Watching Analogically: Gerhard Richter’s Process

    Sometimes the things artists are doing outside of music remind me of the things musicians are doing inside of music. In a video of Gerhard Richter at work we see how his painting is the result of many layers and a gradual process of adding and removing, adding and removing, adding and removing. Richter explains his… Continue reading

  • On Olivier Messiaen’s Astonishing Chords

    “It is…the denial of forward-moving time that is the generative and fundamental substance of Messiaen’s music: the matter of his verbal commentaries is no more than an explanation of the music…and conducted in terms other than those of the music.” – Paul Griffiths, Olivier Messiaen and the Music of Time (1985, p. 17)   Continue reading

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  • Curating The Week: Lullabies, Music And The Brain, And Young Versus Old People Listening

    1. An article about lullabies. “What, really, is a lullaby? We can define it functionally — a song used to lull a child to sleep. In this sense, the distinctive burden of a lullaby is to be interesting enough to capture a child’s attention, but not interesting enough to keep the child awake, which is… Continue reading

  • Synesthetic Vibrations

    It was as if the music knew of my buried memory. It was a picture torn thirty years past from a travel magazine, of, maybe, a schoolyard in France– autumn, games played, blurred figures in motion, reverberating laughter, a country scene. The music was a few notes torn from a longer piece of, maybe, music… Continue reading