Music and Life
Articles and ideas that touch on the confluence of music and life.
Why Music Means More Than Words
One night during college, I was in the mood to create. I lit some candles and incense and turned off the lights. I sat at my old Kimball piano and…
Listening Is the Work: Why attention, not control, is the heart of real creativity.
Rick Rubin, the illustrious music producer, said something in an interview that’s been echoing in my head. He was talking with Rick Beato about drum sounds—what records have the best…
When Music Loses Its Maker: AI, Intent, and the Efficiency Illusion
I. What Do I Really Think About AI and Music? What do I have to say?What do I feel? This is not a technical breakdown of AI tools or a…
Not Yet, Not Gone: Suspensions in Music and Life
A suspension is a point of potential that is followed by a result that causes redefinition of what led up to the suspension and resolution. For example a series of…
The Quiet End: Piano, Pianissimo, and Listening
There is a sound that exists at the edge of silence. It is not absence but presence, a fragile vibration that seems to hover just beyond reach. To hear it,…
Where Nothing Ends: Legato and the Truth of Connection
First Section: The Sound of Vulnerability There is a note. It begins with the press of a key, the weight of a finger, the flow of eternal causality into sound.…
Finding Quiet Within Noise
Introduction This is the story of Haku, a middle-aged composer and performer who finds himself overwhelmed by the relentless soundscape of modern city life. Once inspired by the rhythms of…
Composer As Communicator & Explorer
“It should be noted here that proficiency in composition occasionally correlates with maladjustment to the culture and is often associated with religions activity.” Music in Primitive Culture by Bruno Nettl,…
What’s the point of music analysis? Grandiose Idea
What’s the point of doing music analysis? What does it matter that I can connect a thematic idea across the movements of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony? Or discuss the formal organization…
Music Has Lost: Movement, Participation, & the Universe
Music, right along with everything else, has changed. Not a revolutionary sentence but here are three major ways music has changed over the centuries (millennia). I’m not talking about the…