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brettworks

thinking through music


  • October 8, 2020

    Chris Ofili’s “The Caged Bird’s Song” (2014-2017)

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    art about music
  • October 7, 2020

    Brett’s Sound Picks: William Basinski’s “Tear Vial” (2020)

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    Brett’s Sound Picks
  • October 6, 2020

    Notes On Production Clichés

    “Beware of clichés…There are clichés of response as well as expression.There are clichés of observation and of thought–even of conception.”–Geoff Dyer I struck out a bit yesterday when I tried making something. I liked the sound, but the melody was hackneyed. It was so bad, so uninteresting, that I recorded it as a reminder that this… Continue reading

    clichés, music production
  • October 5, 2020

    Accordion In Four Parts

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    accordion music
  • October 2, 2020

    Resonant Thoughts: Nassim Taleb On Tinkering

    “It is in complex systems, ones in which we have little visibility of the chains of cause-consequences, that tinkering, bricolage, or similar variations of trial and error have been shown to vastly outperform the teleological —it is nature’s modus operandi. (…) Take the most opaque of all, cooking, which relies entirely on the heuristics of… Continue reading

    Resonant Thoughts, tacit knowledge, understanding
  • October 1, 2020

    Fractal Studies 3: Flag Divided

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    fractal studies
  • September 30, 2020

    Brett’s Sound Picks: Igor Levit/Johannes Brahms/ Ferruccio Busoni: “6 Chorale Preludes, BV B 50: Herzlich tut mich verlangen, Op. 122/10” (1896/1902/2020)

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    Brett’s Sound Picks, Uncategorized
  • September 29, 2020

    Art About Music: Paul Gauguin’s “Musique Barbare” (1893)

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    Brett’s Sound Picks
  • September 28, 2020

    No. 97

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    sketch
  • September 25, 2020

    Getting Granular: Notes On Obsessive Listening

    I have a habit of obsessively listening to certain pieces of music, while ignoring vast swathes of new releases—intending to get to them sometime, but I won’t. What’s up with that? An answer is that such obsessive listening is an antidote to an excess of options as to what to listen to. Now that music… Continue reading

    getting granular, obsessive listening
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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

  • Brett’s Sound Picks: øjeRum’s “I (2026 remaster)”
  • In The Works: 28 April
  • Resonant Thoughts: John Berger’s “Permanent Red: Essays in Seeing” (1960/2025)
  • Stolen Moments Are Open-Ended
  • Opening (Remodel)

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