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Notes On Paul Morley’s “Words and Music”
“Music is merely a form of guesswork about consciousness.” “Music is careful attention paid to ongoing experience.” – Paul Morley, Words and Music (16, 134). It was with much delight that a few weeks after finishing Bob Stanley’s Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! I read Paul Morley’s exhaustive, masterfully strange, and revelatory history of popular music, Words… Continue reading
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On Ventrilo-Reading: How We Read Our Own Writing To See What We’re Trying To Say
Something I have been thinking about off and on for a while now (a few years?) is the question of how we read our own writing, especially during the editing stages. What sensibility kicks in when we evaluate and revise the pieces we’ve been working on in search of ways to make them better? In… Continue reading
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Notes On Bob Stanley’s “Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!”
Imagine you’re a bird flying high above a vast landscape. Now imagine that the landscape–forest, mountains, rivers, roaming animals, small towns–is the history of popular music stretched out below you. You’re not flying alone. Next to you is another bird named Bob. Bob knows this territory well, pointing out the important sights below and explaining… Continue reading
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Linking Two Modalities: Lewis Lapham On The Essay And A Roy Haynes Drum Solo
In his introduction to a piece about artists and scientists in their 80s (including drummer Roy Hayes, age 89) in The New York Times, “Old Masters at the Top of Their Game,” former Harper’s editor Lewis Lapham explains how essay writing is a way of knowing: “The essay proceeds from the question ‘What do I… Continue reading
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Brett’s Sound Picks: Glenn Kotche’s “Anomaly: Mvt. II”
There’s a wonderful rhythmic insistence to this music–a rolling 6-beat feel with shifting accents that blends the sounds of string quartet (Kronos) with a multi-percussion drumset part. In its positive energy it evokes the homespun of Charles Schultz’s Peanuts mixed with the shimmer of Indonesian gamelan… Continue reading
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On Web Searches That Brought You Here
What is the relationship between music and discipline? A great question! While it’s a cliché that in music, practice makes perfect, and that steady, mindful practice requires discipline, perhaps less remarked upon is how the act of playing music is itself a form of discipline. Making music disciplines one’s mind to focus on the sounds… Continue reading
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