brettworks

thinking through music

poetry

November 16, 2012

On Listening With Sympathy

Sitting at the kitchen table listening to a mix playing from the other room– excited sounds flying around corners and down the hallway, partly muffled, half exaggerated, out of proportion, out of breath, and weakened upon their diminished arrival at my ear –a thought appears: listening with sympathy makes the music doubly resonant by giving… Continue reading

listening, poetry, sound mixing
November 14, 2012

On Microthoughts

Autumn by airport, hearing sounds of flight and roar, far away pleasure. Continue reading

enchantment, microthoughts, poetry

aviation
May 3, 2011

Music In Wallace Stevens’ Poetry

Rationalists, wearing square hats, Think, in square rooms, Looking at the floor, Looking at the ceiling. They confine themselves To right-angled triangles. If they tried rhomboids, Cones, waving lines, ellipses — As, for example, the ellipse of the half-moon — Rationalists would wear sombreros. – Wallace Stevens, Six Significant Landscapes, VI (1916) The great modernist… Continue reading

aesthetics, poetry

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.

poetry

On Listening With Sympathy

On Microthoughts

Music In Wallace Stevens’ Poetry