john koenig

There is a book by Jonathan D. Kramer called The Time of Music where he explores how musical time (subjectively experienced) and “clock time” (objectively measured) interact in process of experiencing a musical composition. He develops a rather idiosyncratic vocabulary to discuss these concepts, but I’m mostly interested in his ideas of continuous versus discontinuous musical elements and linear progress of a composition versus non-linear progress.             For Kramer, continuous events...

There’s a well-known adage that you should “grow where you are planted” which is a common foil to the idea that “the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence.” These ideas illustrate the fundamental human issue that, unless we take control of our own desires and reactions to social pressures, it can be all too easy to slip into a cycle of chasing fleeting success after fleeting success only to find each achievement more hollow than the last, the dopamine hit even less potent,...

One of the trickiest roles of any musician involved in collaborative projects (which is pretty much…all musicians…hopefully) is learning to mediate relationships. This is true not only of musicians, but of just people being people in general. Obviously, the political and social times in which we live make this abundantly clear.             One of the greatest barriers to finding understanding is our current state of what I call “digital interactions.” I’m not talking about digital, i.e....