brettworks

thinking through music

February 26, 2015

Reflections On Melody: Listening To Shivkumar Sharma (Again)

The music of Shivkumar Sharma has an enduring appeal for me. Sharma is a master santoor player who combines the best of percussion playing and melody-making. Performing to the accompaniment of a tabla drummer, Sharma weaves line after line of dulcimer melodies within the rhythmic cycles outlined by the tabla. It’s groovy and endlessly tuneful.… Continue reading

melody

melody, Shivkumar Sharma
February 20, 2015

Curating The Week: Music-Related Stuff On The Internet

1. An article by Alex Ross on the music and career of Bjork, and the idea of musical genre. “Stream, delta, border, boundary: we keep reaching for geographical metaphors as we speak of genres and we sense that the real landscape of musical activity ultimately has little to do with our tidy delineations, or indeed… Continue reading

Curating The Week

Laura Cannell, musical genre, North Indian classical music
February 18, 2015

Reflections On Richard McGuire’s “Here”

“I had this motto that I was going to make the big things small and the small things big.” – Richard McGuire (quoted in The New Yorker, November 17, 2014). Richard McGuire’s Here is a graphic novel that presents a poetic mediation on place and time. The book focuses on a single room in a… Continue reading

book reviews, memes, music history, music memes, musings

graphic novel, Richard McGuire
February 13, 2015

Curating The Week: Music-Related Stuff On The Internet

1. An article by David Pogue about Neil Young’s PonoPlayer. “The results surprised even me. Whether wearing earbuds or expensive headphones, my test subjects usually thought that the iPhone playback sounded better than the Pono Player.” 2. An article about Mickey Guyton and black women in country music. “The song is lyrically substantive in an era of eye-roll-inducing “sweet little somethin’” trivialities.… Continue reading

Curating The Week

country music, David Pogue, Mickey Guyton, Neil Young
February 8, 2015

On Soloing A Part: Listening To Eddie Van Halen’s Electric Guitar

Thanks to a recent post by Open Culture, I recently listened to the electric guitar part to Van Halen’s 1984 hit, “Panama.” Just to be clear, it’s a recording not of the song with the full band of guitar, bass, drums, and vocals. Just Eddie Van Halen’s guitar in complete isolation, up close and personal. It’s… Continue reading

listening, soloing

Eddie Van Halen, Panama, the electric guitar
February 3, 2015

Notes On Aphex Twin’s “Computer Controlled Acoustic Instruments Pt 2”

Quick on the heels of last fall’s Syro, Aphex Twin, aka Richard James, recently released an EP of computer-controlled acoustic instruments, titled appropriately enough, Computer Controlled Acoustic Instruments pt2. I had heard about James’s collection of such instruments and even saw a photo somewhere of a snare drum attached to which were metal claws holding… Continue reading

music reviews

acoustic instruments, Aphex Twin, Computer Controlled Acoustic Instruments, Richard James
January 29, 2015

Curating The Week: Music-Related Stuff On The Internet

1. A video by Steven Feld of Nii Otoo Annan in Ghana playing bell patterns while listening to the late night rhythms of common toads. “Using the toad rhythms as a stimulus and calculator, he enumerates dozens of time patterns on the bells while creating an exciting array of sound colors.” 2. A video about… Continue reading

bells, Curating The Week, music and exercise, music technology

bell patterns, Nii Otoo Annan, Steven Feld
January 16, 2015

Curating The Week: Music-Related Stuff On The Internet

1. An interview with poetry critic Henlen Vendler. “I believe that poems are a score for performance by the reader, and that you become the speaking voice. You don’t read or overhear the voice in the poem, you are the voice in the poem. You stand behind the words and speak them as your own—so that… Continue reading

Curating The Week

Henlen Vendler.
January 14, 2015

Brett’s Sound Picks: Toumani And Sidiki Diabate’s “Rachid Ouiguini”

Spiraling interlock, joyful sadness, around and around four inevitable chords, imprinting hope through groove, the kora music of Toumani and Sidiki Diabaté makes the case for acoustic duets: Continue reading

Brett’s Sound Picks

joyful sadness, Sidiki Diabaté
January 9, 2015

On Music, Thinking, Dreaming, And Gender: Two Chords In A Lego Commercial

“Music’s ability to conceal its processes and to communicate nothing/everything ‘directly’ is largely responsible for its peculiar power and prestige in society.” – Susan McClary and Robert Walser, “Start Making Sense!: Musicology Wrestles with Rock.” Every once in a blue moon I watch a TV commercial that stops me, holds my attention, and generates the… Continue reading

advertising, piano music

Apple, chord progression, Lego

Thomas Brett is a musician and writer who holds a PhD in ethnomusicology from New York University. He is the author of Principles of Electronic Music Production and The Creative Electronic Music Producer, a book described by Sound On Sound magazine as “a deep philosophical analysis of the various creative inspirations, ideas and processes involved in producing electronic music.” His essays have appeared in the journals Popular Music and Popular Music and Society, as well as edited collections by Routledge, Oxford, and Cambridge University presses. Thomas has played percussion on Broadway since 1997 and writes about music at brettworks.com.