Skip to content
    • about
    • ai in music resources
    • archives
    • art about music
    • atelier
    • books
    • brett’s sound picks
    • database (a cache of perceptions)
    • film
    • interview
    • keywords
    • music
    • thought tools
    • ventrilo-dialogues

brettworks

thinking through music


  • July 13, 2026

    7 June (85.5 bpm)

    Continue reading

    Uncategorized
  • July 10, 2026

    (Un)Stuck

    Paul Klee, Polyphony (1932) If you make things, you begin every day by being stuck and the way forward is to figure out how to get unstuck. Being stuck has as many forms as there are artists experiencing it. One form is apathy, or not feeling drawn in one direction or another with urgency. Another… Continue reading

    Uncategorized
    life
  • July 8, 2026

    Curating The Week: Making Early Digital Art, Mastering, AI and Ethics

    Roy Lichtenstein, Landscape in Fog (1996) • An essay about making early digital art. “It’s 1990, and I still don’t know where the darn tiger comes from. But I do know that there’s no program that will draw one from scratch, any size or pose or color or style, like I want it, without an… Continue reading

    Curating The Week
    AI, art
  • July 6, 2026

    Flere

    Continue reading

  • July 3, 2026

    Brett’s Sound Picks: Florent Ghys/Aphex Twin’s “Rhubarb (arr. Florent Ghys for Bass and Electronics” (2026)

    We probably don’t share the same taste in music… Continue reading

    Uncategorized
  • July 2, 2026

    Resonant Thoughts: Cory Doctorow’s “The Reverse Centaur’s Guide to Life After AI” (2026)

    “Art is what happens when an artist has a big, numinous, irreducibly complex feeling in their mind, which they infuse into some artistic medium—a book, a song, a dance, a painting, a photograph, and such—in the hopes of making a facsimile of that big, numinous, irreducibly complex feeling materialize in the minds of people who… Continue reading

    Resonant Thoughts
    AI, art, artificial-intelligence, technology, writing
  • July 1, 2026

    Arrows Of Attention: Musical Prompting

    You’re a soloist who specializes in 19th-century Romantic music. You have no sheet music in front of you and don’t consider yourself an improviser, yet at your instrument you’re able to remember fragments of themes, chord progressions, and melodies from dozens of different composers whose works you’ve practiced and performed. Use this partial knowledge to… Continue reading

    arrows of attention, musical prompts
    music, writing
  • June 29, 2026

    Jumbled Study

    Continue reading

    constraints, voice
  • June 26, 2026

    Pianola (May)

    Continue reading

    Uncategorized
  • June 24, 2026

    Tibi

    Continue reading

    practicing
Next Page»

Thomas Brett is a musician and writer who holds a PhD in ethnomusicology from New York University. He is the author of Principles of Electronic Music Production and The Creative Electronic Music Producer, a book described by Sound On Sound magazine as “a deep philosophical analysis of the various creative inspirations, ideas and processes involved in producing electronic music.” His essays have appeared in the journals Popular Music and Popular Music and Society, as well as edited collections by Routledge, Oxford, and Cambridge University presses. Thomas has played percussion on Broadway since 1997 and writes about music at brettworks.com.

Recent Posts

  • 7 June (85.5 bpm)
  • (Un)Stuck
  • Curating The Week: Making Early Digital Art, Mastering, AI and Ethics
  • Flere
  • Brett’s Sound Picks: Florent Ghys/Aphex Twin’s “Rhubarb (arr. Florent Ghys for Bass and Electronics” (2026)

Subscribe To Brettworks


©

brettworks

2022, All Rights Reserved.

Blog at WordPress.com.

  • Subscribe Subscribed
    • brettworks
    • Join 760 other subscribers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • brettworks
    • Subscribe Subscribed
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar