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Same Walk, Different Music
Clark, “Pleen 1930s.” Clark (Chris Clark) is a prolific and inventive producer-composer who makes shape-shifting music in which no two moments—not to mention no two pieces—ever sound similar. He’s sort of a chameleon whose signature sound is that his tracks never sound like anyone else and they do unconventional things that are beautifully surprising. “Pleen… Continue reading
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Resonant Thoughts: Giorgio Parisi’s “In A Flight Of Starlings: The Wonders Of Complex Systems” (2023)
“I want to talk instead about what has been called ‘microcreativity,’ those small everyday ideas that are crucial to making any progress in a scientific context. For me an idea is an unexpected thought–one that is surprising and by no means banal” (98). “Formulating thoughts through words is extremely important; words are powerful–they link together… Continue reading
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Database: Loraine James On Ignoring The Metronome
“Sometimes I don’t like thinking, this part has to be exactly four bars, and so forth. Sometimes I’ll hit the record button and just go, ignoring the metronome and just doing whatever. I’ll improvise for five minutes and condense that into a song.” Loraine James database. Continue reading
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Keywords: Influence
(Photo: Elijah Macleod) Your musical influences are spirit architects whose works form an invisible blueprint for your own. Influence is both a gift given and its acceptance–a call and response. It’s your echoing, recalling, and imitation of what you love in your forebears and colleagues as you try to ventriloquize them, imagining what they would… Continue reading
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Resonant Thoughts: Michael Chanan’s “From Printing to Streaming” (2022)
“Cultural work holds great attraction by promising self-expression and a sense of self-worth and the industry is never short of aspirants, who ensure a reserve army of labor that suppresses wages. Distinction is elusive, however, and the market, which is not so much free as moulded by corporate interests, imposes its own standards and norms,… Continue reading
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Keywords: Taste and Style
(Photo: Jean-Philippe Delberghe) Taste and Style are entry points into musical aesthetics. Your taste is how you understand an aesthetic to work, while your style is how you practice this understanding. One wants to have a “good sense” of musical taste and musical style, but taste and style don’t need to be pursued: they’re a… Continue reading
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Same Walk, Different Music
Steve Reich, “Double Sextet: II. Slow”The composer Steve Reich is a formalist whose austere works show an artist confident that feeling in music comes from structure in music. From his earliest piece scored for tape loops, “Come Out”, to his percussion opus “Drumming”, to his many chamber pieces for mixed ensembles, Reich designs music that… Continue reading
