music
The job of art is to chase ugliness away
I would want to be in that darkness
A haunting, syncopated music
Silence
A Book by John CageOur Comrade The Electron
A Talk by Maciej CegłowskiSonic architecture
An Article by Daisy AliotoBrian Eno is well-represented in iOS. His other apps like Bloom, Trope and Air invite listeners to touch the screen to make their own composition. Reflection ($30.99) is different, there is no interaction for the listener. The interface has three buttons: a pause button, a sleep timer, and AirPlay. Reflection produces endless permutations of Eno’s 2017 album, an hour and five minute long title track.
“Just calling it an app is akin to saying Falling Water is just a building,” writes one app store reviewer. “I would not call this an app,” agrees another, “Between the music and visuals it’s more like sonic architecture.” The visuals consist of slowly morphing rectangles that only seem to change in the split second you look away from the screen.
Don’t Play It Like the Flute
An Article by Matthias OttDon’t play it like the flute. Play it as if it was the wind whistling through the desert dunes.
No matter what you love to create, there is something to be learned from the way Hans Zimmer approached the Dune score. We are all striving to create work that is novel, innovative, memorable, and inspiring. To get there, however, we tend to focus on getting things right, on avoiding mistakes, on “being professional”. Yes, it is important to have the commitment, dedication, and attention to detail of a professional. But being right? That will only take you so far. What is much more important is to approach the problem in front of you with curiosity and an open mind. With an urge to explore what can be found beyond the ordinary, beyond the right way of doing things. If you want to create something that nobody has come up with yet, it is important that you try out all the crazy ideas others are afraid to try, that you build prototypes, improvise, and freely play with the materials and the technologies you have at hand.
Music and Imagination
A Book by Aaron CoplandThe Gifted Listener: Composer Aaron Copland on Honing Your Talent for Listening to Music
An Article by Maria PopovaThe poetry of music, Copland intimates, is composed both by the musician, in the creation of music and its interpretation in performance, and by the listener, in the act of listening that is itself the work of reflective interpretation. This makes listening as much a creative act as composition and performance — not a passive receptivity to the object that is music, but an active practice that confers upon the object its meaning: an art to be mastered, a talent to be honed.
Enjoying the garden together
A Quote by Brian EnoAnd essentially the idea there is that one is making a kind of music in the way that one might make a garden. One is carefully constructing seeds, or finding seeds, carefully planting them and then letting them have their life.
What this means, really, is a rethinking of one’s own position as a creator. You stop thinking of yourself as me, the controller, you the audience, and you start thinking of all of us as the audience, all of us as people enjoying the garden together. Gardener included.
tree.fm
A WebsiteTune Into Forests From Around The World. Escape, Relax & Preserve.
An audio professional's take on vinyl
An ArticleThe analog-digital debate in audio is a longstanding one, and while it is unlikely to be resolved anytime soon, I thought I might be able to offer some background as a longtime audio professional and musician. Recordings are a beautiful mix of technical and aesthetic concerns, and this post will attempt to tease out how to navigate these two framings of music recording, especially with regard to the often-oversimplified distinction between analog and digital recordings.
In Conversation With...
A Dialogue by Trent ReznorThe Microsoft Sound
A Quote by Brian EnoThe thing from the agency said, "We want a piece of music that is inspiring, universal, blah- blah, da-da-da, optimistic, futuristic, sentimental, emotional," this whole list of adjectives, and then at the bottom it said "and it must be 3 1/4 seconds long."
I thought this was so funny and an amazing thought to actually try to make a little piece of music. It's like making a tiny little jewel.
In fact, I made 84 pieces. I got completely into this world of tiny, tiny little pieces of music. I was so sensitive to microseconds at the end of this that it really broke a logjam in my own work. Then when I'd finished that and I went back to working with pieces that were like three minutes long, it seemed like oceans of time.
last.fm
A Profile by Nick TrombleyI've been tracking my listening habits with last.fm since I was in high school. As I'm about to turn 30, it's nice to be able to look back on almost my entire adult life – to see how I've changed and how my tastes have changed with me.
Upstream Color
The same material as the sun
I have to apologize. I was born with a disfigurement where my head is made of the same material as the sun. It makes it impossible for you to look directly at me. It has always been this way.
When it goes wrong
Kris: It's not my fault when it goes wrong.
Jeff: Yes it is.
Upstream Color Original Soundtrack
- Leaves Expanded May Be Prevailing Blue Mixed With Yellow Of The Sand
- I Used To Wonder At The Halo Of Light Around My Shadow And Would Fancy Myself One Of The Elect
- Fearing That They Would Be Light-headed For Want Of Food And Also Sleep
- Stirring Them Up As The Keeper Of A Menagerie His Wild Beasts
- The Finest Qualities Of Our Nature Like The Bloom On Fruits Can Be Preserved
- Perhaps The Wildest Sound That Is Ever Heard Here Making The Woods Ring Far And Wide
- I Love To Be Alone
- A Young Forest Growing Up Under Your Meadows
- Their Roots Reaching Quite Under The House
- The Rays Which Stream Through The Shutter Will Be No Longer Remembered When The Shutter Is Wholly Removed
- After Soaking Two Years And Then Lying High Six Months It Was Perfectly Sound Though Waterlogged Past Drying
- The Sun Is But A Morning Star
- A Low And Distant Sound Gradually Swelling And Increasing
- As If It Would Have A Universal And Memorable Ending
- A Sullen Rush And Roar