brettworks

thinking through music

January 7, 2015

On (Mis)Trusting Music: A Subtext To This Blog

I don’t trust music. Music shapes and directs my perception too much–telling me when and how to feel. How can it do that? Not just, what gives it the right to do that, but practically speaking, how does it pull off this trick? I can’t see or touch music, or ever seem to get to… Continue reading

musings
January 4, 2015

Curating The Week: Music-Related Stuff On The Internet

1. An article about the shortcomings of academic writing. “Most academic writing, in contrast, is a blend of two styles. The first is practical style, in which the writer’s goal is to satisfy a reader’s need for a particular kind of information, and the form of the communication falls into a fixed template, such as… Continue reading

Curating The Week

academic writing, polyphonic music
December 28, 2014

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

book reviews, classical music, popular music, writing

Paul Morley, Words and Music
December 17, 2014

Singing Bowl Music II

The music is available here. Continue reading

singing bowl music
December 16, 2014

Curating The Week: Music-Related Stuff On The Internet

1. An interview with composer Phil Kline on “Unsilent Night,” his open-ended 1992 piece for mobile boomboxes (and now, iPhones). “What was most pleasantly surprising, when we hit ‘play’, and I heard the sound, was that it combined with the fabric and the soundscape of the city. It was like an elemental DNA connection. They… Continue reading

Curating The Week

classical music, Paul Morley, Phil Kline, Unsilent Night
December 11, 2014

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

musings, ventrilo-reading, writing

ventrilo-reading
December 9, 2014

Alan Watts On Deep Listening

In this excerpt (from the book Still The Mind and as heard in the animated video “Life Has A Voice” below), the philosopher Alan Watts (1915-1973) makes connections between deep listening, attention, and lack of self-consciousness: “The first thing we have to understand is what I call deep listening. And very few people ever really listen.… Continue reading

listening, mindfulness

listening
November 26, 2014

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

book reviews

Bob Stanley
November 24, 2014

Curating The Week: Music-Related Stuff On The Internet

1. An article about Spotify. “We’re not in the music space, we’re in the moment space.” 2. An article about field recording. “The idea of objective recording in the field, thankfully now problematised and rejected, still lingers though like a spectre haunting the ways many listeners consider recordings.” 3. An article about how we read in the digital age.… Continue reading

Curating The Week
November 18, 2014

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

Linking Two Modalities

essay writing, Lewis Lapham, Roy Haynes

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.