brettworks

March 19, 2021

Notes On Musical Tensions and Canon Counterpoints

Notation for Le Ray Au Soleyl by Johannes Ciconia (c. 1390s) What is it that keeps your attention when you encounter a music? Is it its instrumentation and timbre world? Its performers (human or machine)? Its melodies? Its chords and harmonies? Its feel and vibe? Its sheer volume? (That bass!) Its rhythms that make you… Continue reading

counterpoint, musical tension, musical time stretching
March 18, 2021

Resonant Thoughts

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Resonant Thoughts
March 17, 2021

25 August (piano)

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piano music, play
March 16, 2021

Art About Music: Laurent de La Hyre’s “Allegory of Music” (1649)

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art about music
March 15, 2021

Long Tone Music

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new music
March 12, 2021

Curating The Week: The Disappearance Of Musical Genre, Musicality In EDM, Wind

• An article about the disappearance of musical genre. “Genre is a reductive, old-fashioned, and inherently problematic idea, and we should all be eager to see it rendered moot, but I remain curious about the contours of a post-genre world—what that might open up for the future, and what might be sacrificed.” • An essay… Continue reading

Curating The Week
March 11, 2021

Arrows Of Attention: The Musical Minimalist’s Manual

Identify your idea’s smallest musical unit. What part, aspect, or quality of what you’re playing or composing is its essence? Is it a rhythm, a series of chords, a melody, a stasis, an unusual orchestration, a timbre combination? Identify the essence and pursue it, amplify it. One sound, one part at a time. Refine and… Continue reading

arrows of attention, mindware, minimalism, minimalism and maximalism, minimum force, minor epiphanies
March 10, 2021

Brett’s Sound Picks: The Black Dog’s “Ringinglow Oscillation” (2021)

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Brett’s Sound Picks
March 9, 2021

Art About Music: John George Brown’s “The Music Lesson” (1870)

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art about music
March 8, 2021

On Thin Ice

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motion, movement, sampling, sketch

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.