music – arts & fetters

Notes on Composing

If I go to sleep thinking “what a load of shit, what a wasted evening,” I can usually count on waking up the next morning loving last night’s work. (The opposite is also true). If I’m doing it as a work-for-hire, and thereby giving up the copyright, there’s a good chance it’ll be my finestContinue reading “Notes on Composing”

Why music?

The last two evenings I’ve spent trying to come up with something, anything, that moved me on the piano. Nothing. I keep running into the same difficulties I’ve faced for years–everything sounds sterile and false. I don’t believe it myself. I wrote a bunch of tunes about girls back in 2007. It was a fourContinue reading “Why music?”

sing softly to me: why crooning is a revolution

And that is, in music, from what I can tell, the birth of a vocal personality, the movement from “song” to “singer.” No longer is it just the piece of sheet music you buy and play after dinner with your family, it’s now the sound of Rudy Vallee singing to you alone. The sound of someone’s voice intimately.

Kenny Loggins: “Heart to Heart” (1982)

“Halfway” is relative ’round here. If you broke in right now, you’d note, firstly, that I must have run out of the house halfway through doing my laundry. I did. And this and that are halfway from one place to another, but I don’t want to leave them in my car overnight, or just forgotContinue reading “Kenny Loggins: “Heart to Heart” (1982)”

Weezer; Henry Miller: Sexus (1950)

Chapter 1: Every day we slaughter our finest impulses. That is why we get a heartache when we read those lines written by the hand of a master and recognize them as our own, as the tender shoots which we stifled because we lacked the faith to believe in our own powers, our own criterionContinue reading “Weezer; Henry Miller: Sexus (1950)”

Ke$ha – Frenzy

If you weren’t aware, I’ve put myself on a strict no-reading diet for nearly half a year now, and you can imagine that such a thing is terribly painful to me as I derive so much pleasure from sitting around discussing Bataille in coffee shops and trying to be the coolest person in the room.Continue reading “Ke$ha – Frenzy”

George Michael vs. Beyonce

Let me preface this by saying that I’m a little bit in love with George Michael right now. I began voice lessons this week–what’s difficult about it all is the difference between ‘proper’ and what really works for me. For example, I’m learning to breathe through my nose. But I love the sound of inContinue reading “George Michael vs. Beyonce”

Lily Allen – It’s Not Me, It’s You

Some days are easier than others, this past week has been the easiest so far. Michael and I are in hell trying to to find something in the music world that we can really obsess over for more than a few weeks. I spent nearly three months all about the Strokes, replaced them with NerinaContinue reading “Lily Allen – It’s Not Me, It’s You”

Dijon pt 4: my theories concerning possessive contractions, marriage, feminism, racism, the relevance of hexameter, sex and music, and why jazz could have only come from America.

I think when I first began speaking French with C, I was trying to suppress how silly I felt by being a bit dramatic about it all, so that when I’d say oui (mostly they don’t say oui, but instead say what I think is spelled ouais) I’d shake one finger in the air andContinue reading “Dijon pt 4: my theories concerning possessive contractions, marriage, feminism, racism, the relevance of hexameter, sex and music, and why jazz could have only come from America.”

album: Bill Evans: Explorations (1961)

Bill Evans had terrible posture: this much is true. His early days, his limp cigarette and his suit; his late days, his plaid, his beard, his booze belly–Leonard Bernstein describes the modern jazz musician of the 1950s, the Ivy League sweater and the horn-rimmed glasses, and Bill Evans comes to mind: boring. How does jazzContinue reading “album: Bill Evans: Explorations (1961)”