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brettworks

thinking through music


  • June 13, 2025

    Brett’s Sound Picks: Repetition Repetition’s “Over & Over, Pt. 1” (1984/2025)

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    Brett’s Sound Picks, repetition
  • June 12, 2025

    Curating The Week: The Essay Field, AI and Cooking, Measuring Training

    “The impact of an essay is how much it changes readers’ thinking multiplied by the importance of the topic. But it’s hard to do well at both. It’s hard to have big new ideas about important topics. So in practice there’s a tradeoff: you can change readers’ thinking a lot about moderately important things, or Continue reading

    Curating The Week
  • June 11, 2025

    Resonant Thoughts: Philip Ball’s “Patterns in Nature: Why the Natural World Looks the Way It Does” (2016)

    “Perhaps the most curious thing about natural patterns is that they come from a relatively limited palette, recurring at very different size scales and in systems that might seem to have nothing at all in common with one another” (12). “What is a pattern, anyway? We usually think of it as something that repeats again Continue reading

    Resonant Thoughts
    art, philosophy, physics, science
  • June 9, 2025

    Composing and Scarcity

    Does composing music happen at a precise moment? Is it when you have a concept for a piece? When a looping rhythm comes alive? When you alight on a chord progression that does something new? When a technology generates a beautiful error? When an improvisation opens up a world? Or when an orchestration of parts Continue reading

    composing
  • June 5, 2025

    Database: Tim Oliver On Listening, Scaling To Intention, And Making Sure Something Is Always Leading Your Ear

    “It’s listening. It’s a bit being able to zoom in and zoom out in perspective. That’s a good practice. I think if I were still alive ten years from now, or if I can still hear then, that if I listened back to a mix I’m doing now, I’d probably think the same negative things Continue reading

    database
  • June 4, 2025

    Marimbascape

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    abundance, drone, Uncategorized
  • June 2, 2025

    Resonant Thoughts: Nadia Asparouhova’s “Antimemetics: Why Some Ideas Resist Spreading” (2025)

    “Creative self-expression is the only way we will continue to make our mark as humans in times of uncertainty, and it doesn’t come from doing what you think will sell to other people “(21). “Antimemetics are a shadow city built on thoughts, knowledge, and practices that do not spread easily, despite their importance to our Continue reading

    Resonant Thoughts, Uncategorized
    consciousness, philosophy, science, spirituality, writing
  • May 30, 2025

    Resonant Thoughts: Paul Graham On The Rhythm Of Writing

    “When writing sounds good, it’s mostly because it has good rhythm. But the rhythm of good writing is not the rhythm of music, or the meter of verse. It’s not so regular. If it were, it wouldn’t be good, because the rhythm of good writing has to match the ideas in it, and ideas have Continue reading

    Resonant Thoughts, rhythm modalities
  • May 28, 2025

    Adore (Cycles Version)

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    abundance, cycles version
  • May 26, 2025

    Brett’s Sound Picks: Beatrice Dillon’s “Basho” (2025)

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    Brett’s Sound Picks, musical pacing
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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

  • When Less Leads To More
  • Omni 98 bpm
  • Drumming Diaries: Grip
  • Resonant Thoughts: Molly Bang’s “Picture This” (1991/2016)
  • Omni 96 bpm

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