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brettworks

thinking through music


  • March 2, 2026

    Curating The Week: Blogging, Music and Truth-Telling, Memory

    • An interview with Cory Doctorrow. “When anything seems important to me, in any way, I write a blog post about it. There’s a lot of advantages to that. When I write for a public audience, I apply rigor necessarily that I wouldn’t apply to notes to myself. So that creates a kind of mnemonic… Continue reading

    Curating The Week
  • March 1, 2026

    Resonant Thoughts: Daniel Poppick’s “The Copywriter” (2026)

    “No art, no melody, no time that is not bound up in some dark labor” (24). “Everything has a schedule, if you can find out what it is” (28). “The time we have at our disposal every day is elastic, the passions we feel expand it, those that we inspire contract it, and habit fills… Continue reading

    Resonant Thoughts
  • February 28, 2026

    Brett’s Sound Picks: Shane Parish/Autechre’s “Maetl” (2026/1993)

    Continue reading

    Uncategorized
  • February 25, 2026

    Aftertouch

    Johannes Vermeer, A Young Woman seated at a Virginal (c. 1670-72) In MIDI parlance, aftertouch refers to MIDI data that’s transmitted when a key or pad on an electronic controller is held down after the initial attack to control parameters such as volume, vibrato depth, or filter brightness. One of the first synthesizers to incorporate… Continue reading

    keywords, Uncategorized
    art, music, piano
  • February 24, 2026

    Database: Jennifer Loveless On The Quality Of First Takes

    “Speed is really important to me in production, and I love taking the first take of things and making that work. There’s something in the first take that has a quality I can’t quite put my finger on, but it’s almost like you can hear the excitement of playing something for the first time. Maybe… Continue reading

    database
  • February 23, 2026

    Cerulean Call (Remodel)

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    Uncategorized
  • February 20, 2026

    Curating The Week: Light, Musical Variations, DJing, Joep Beving

    • An essay on light in the paintings of Caravaggio and Georges de La Tour. “When one looks at La Tour’s paintings, it is hard not to see signs of the devotional culture of his time: a Counter-Reformation Catholic world that valued stillness, interior reflection, and meditative attention, and that found spiritual meaning in restraint… Continue reading

    Curating The Week
    art, Creativity, painting
  • February 19, 2026

    Resonant Thoughts: C. Thi Nguyen, The Score (2026)

    “The pursuit of fish creates an attentional focal point. It structures the way I look at the river—it gives me a goal, tells me what to look for, what to see” (29). “The real point is something larger, stranger, more mystical. You spend time on a river trying to catch fish, and you start noticing… Continue reading

    Resonant Thoughts
  • February 17, 2026

    Curating One’s Work

    Every artist is their own curator. One curates at the level of sounds and sentences, parts and paragraphs, textures and timbres, arrangements and structures, finished tracks and essays. To curate is to be continually making decisions about what to keep and what to jettison, what to edit and re-arrange and what to leave just as… Continue reading

    curation
  • February 16, 2026

    Admirabilis (FourFours)

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    Uncategorized
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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

  • Curating The Week: Blogging, Music and Truth-Telling, Memory
  • Resonant Thoughts: Daniel Poppick’s “The Copywriter” (2026)
  • Brett’s Sound Picks: Shane Parish/Autechre’s “Maetl” (2026/1993)
  • Aftertouch
  • Database: Jennifer Loveless On The Quality Of First Takes

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