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Resonant Thoughts: Nicholas Cook’s “Music: Why It Matters” (2023)
“But what makes music perhaps uniquely effective as ideology is what might be called its double nature. On the one hand it is, obviously, a human artefact, something that people make and that calls on a range of culture specific social practices and technologies. But at the same time we experience music as if it… Continue reading
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Music’s Lacunae
In our understandings and explanations of musical practice it’s the missing things that are most important. Too often when I write I don’t write about but around these things—busily explaining that which is extrinsic, not intrinsic, to the mysteries that underlie making music. We ask: What are your influences? What’s your favorite gear? How do… Continue reading
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Like A Sourdough Starter
Serious bakers keep a jar of sourdough starter in their fridge at all times, feeding the live fermented culture (made of flour and water) daily so it’s ready to use in the next bread. The idea with a starter is to use a small portion of it to infuse the new dough to make it… Continue reading
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Database: Sam Gellaitry On Mastering Backwards
“This is how I master everything: I have this [FL limiter] Maximus on the reverb..But there’s this preset I’ve made over the years that just compresses the low, mid, and the high–I’ve got that up really high. To mixers and engineers: they’ll probably look at that and get disgusted. Because this is like rural behavior:… Continue reading
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Keywords: A Longer Time Horizon
A Longer Time Horizon is a mindset, an approach to expanding music’s frame from short repeating bits to long non-repeating lines, where four-bar loops becomes forty-bar sequences, chords stretch beyond obvious counting, melodies evade easy whistling. A Longer Time Horizon keeps the producer’s ear on production’s vast vistas, sounds free of clichés and conventions, tracks… Continue reading
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Keywords: Ambience
Ambience is bonus resonance, a reverb that softens sound’s blow. To add ambience is to place a sound in a space whose dimensions and materials color how we hear. Tones now dissolve at their edges, like candle wax around the flame. Quick sounds get hang time, long sounds linger, beginnings and ends become one. Ambience… Continue reading
