brettworks

thinking through music

Thomas Brett

August 17, 2016

Exploding Musical Moments: Drake’s “One Dance”

“I had to bust up the silence.” – Drake, “One Dance” (2016) That Drake song is playing again—it’s always playing when I’m at the gym. Do I like it? I’m not sure. Does that matter? Nope. But I’m already humming it. The kick drum is so prominent, so artificial in its bass contours, in its… Continue reading

exploding musical moments
August 11, 2016

Curating The Week: On Digital Mediatisation, Sound Collecting, And Sampling

• An article about our experience of the world through digital mediatisation. “It’s a strange notion, this: digitisation has become so comprehensive and penetrating it is now able to express the fundamental categories within which we perceive reality itself–but of course this is merely an image, like any other.” • An article about sound collecting.… Continue reading

Curating The Week
August 8, 2016

On Resonant Thoughts: Sarah Bakewell’s “At The Existentialist Cafe”

“This experiential music is the one I can speak about with certainty.” – Sarah Bakewell, At The Existentialist Cafe, p. 41. “If I want to tell you about a heart-rending piece of music, phenomenology enables me to describe it as a moving piece of music, rather than as a set of string vibrations and mathematical… Continue reading

phenomenology, Resonant Thoughts
August 4, 2016

23 Chords, 18 Photos

Continue reading

multimedia meditations
August 1, 2016

Curating The Week: Noise And Learning, Minimalism, And A Composer’s Personal Contract

• An article on the effects of noise on learning. “A new study finds that toddlers have trouble learning words when there’s too much background noise…’It’s not that everything needs to be in quiet, but that at least some of the day the children should have an opportunity to hear language where there aren’t lots… Continue reading

Curating The Week
July 27, 2016

Timeline: A Bell Pattern Who Traveled Far

Imagine that you’re a bell pattern. Your name is Timeline. You were born somewhere in West Africa. And you sound like this: 3 + 3 + 2. That’s eight counts long but unevenly divided into two threes and one two. People like you because your unusual design makes you syncopated, endlessly interesting, and fun to… Continue reading

Uncategorized
July 22, 2016

Resonant Thoughts: On Julian Barnes’ “The Noise of Time”

“Music–good music, great music–had a hard, irreducible purity to it. It might be bitter and despairing and pessimistic, but it could never be cynical.” “What could be put up against the noise of time? Only that music which is inside ourselves–the music of our being–which is transformed by some into real music.” -Julian Barnes, The… Continue reading

Resonant Thoughts
July 20, 2016

Curating The Week: Teaching Electronic Music, Tinnitus, And A Chef Talks Base Patterns

• An article about teaching electronic music making in schools. “They’re definitely open to learning this way. They seem to show a bit more resilience rather than instantly getting fed up, feeling like they’re not musical or talented. It’s proving that you can teach creativity without requiring the skills of years of piano lessons and… Continue reading

Curating The Week
July 18, 2016

Resonant Thoughts: On Fredrik Sjöberg’s “The Art Of Flight”

“Although there is much in this world that is incomprehensible, you can nevertheless discover a meaning as long as you have managed to limit your field of search.” -Fredrik Sjöberg, The Art of Flight Continue reading

Resonant Thoughts
July 14, 2016

Curating The Week: Bach, Radiohead, Music And Violence

• An article about the lessons of Bach’s music. “What Bach teaches us is the primacy of the musical material, the value of each note and each combination of notes, of each melodic line and each combination of melodic lines. The beauty of Bach inheres as much in the parts as in the whole. Every… Continue reading

Curating The Week

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.