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brettworks

thinking through music


  • December 12, 2019

    Notes On YouTube’s Low-fi Hip Hop Radio

    Have you seen chilledcow’s YouTube channel, “Low-fi hip hop radio – beats to relax/study to”? The channel is a looped anime-style animation of a young woman sitting at a desk in her apartment, taking notes and studying, occasionally looking out the window onto a nondescript (mediterranean?) cityscape. On the wall behind her is a bookcase,… Continue reading

    chillout music, Uncategorized
  • December 11, 2019

    Brett’s Sound Picks: ISAN’s “From A Hundred” (2019)

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    Brett’s Sound Picks, Uncategorized
  • December 10, 2019

    Annals Of Listening: Lackluster’s “Container” (2000)

    A few years after I moved to New York I was shopping for electronic music at Kim’s Music and Video in the East Village. Kim’s had these little listening stations set up where you could put on headphones and preview CDs of new music. I put on some phones and listened to an album by… Continue reading

    listening, Uncategorized
  • December 9, 2019

    On Micro-Adjustments And The Game Of Amounts

    Electronic music production, said the producer Mr. Bill in one of his YouTube tutorials, is a game of amounts. It’s true. Bill was referring to the thousands of micro-adjustments one makes in the course of designing sounds, recording parts, arranging, and mixing a track of music. The process is simple but involved and very drawn… Continue reading

    music production, Uncategorized
  • December 5, 2019

    Losing Objectivity

    I had worked on the track for a year, which was far longer than I had ever worked on a ten-minute piece of music. In my defense, things take time: it had taken time to decide on sounds, time to get going and wonder where I was going, time to record chord progressions, beats, and… Continue reading

    composing, listening, music production, Uncategorized
  • December 4, 2019

    Brett’s Sound Picks: Tipper’s “Oi Oi Spit” (2019)

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    Brett’s Sound Picks
  • December 3, 2019

    Art About Music: The Chimes of Zeng Hou Yi (c. 433 B.C)

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    art about music, Uncategorized
  • December 2, 2019

    Musical Endings

    I spend a lot of time working on the endings of my tracks. One reason for this is that I’m both glad the music is almost over, and also sad that I didn’t done more with the time I had allotted for it so now I’m trying to conjure more interesting sonic stuff just as… Continue reading

    musical endings, Uncategorized
  • November 27, 2019

    Brett’s Sound Picks: Lanark Artefax’s “Ferthenheap” (2019)

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    Brett’s Sound Picks, Uncategorized
  • November 26, 2019

    Art About Music: Arki’s “Ascetics Making Music, Depicting the Musical Mode Kedara Raga” (late 17th century)

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    art about music, Uncategorized
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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

  • Drumming Diaries: Energies of Performance
  • 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

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