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brettworks

thinking through music


  • August 12, 2019

    Good Notes Are Everywhere At Hand

    “Any theory’s relevance depended on its possible bearing for my practice.” – David Sudnow, Ways Of The Hand (2001), p. 19. “Good notes were everywhere at hand, right beneath the fingers” wrote David Sudnow in his 2001 book, Ways Of The Hand. Originally published in 1979 as a deep (and fairly reader-unfriendly) phenomenological dive into the… Continue reading

    music production, Uncategorized, ways of the hand
  • August 9, 2019

    Reading Analogically: Two Ideas From Christopher Alexander’s “A Pattern Language” (1977)

    “Don’t attend to larger issues in the [music] unless you can do something about them, concretely, in your own project.”  “Compress as many patterns as you can into the smallest possible [musical] space.”  – Christopher Alexander, A Pattern Language (1977) Continue reading

    Reading Analogically, Uncategorized
  • August 8, 2019

    Less And More Music Production Heuristics

    Less predictable. More unusual. Less smooth. More textured. Less even. More jagged. Less new. More weathered.* Less obvious. More nuanced. Less automated. More considered. Less quantized. More error. Less looped. More change over time. Less rushed. More taking its time. Less prefab. More customized. Less trying to impress. More trying to explore. Less boring. More… Continue reading

    less is more, poetry, Uncategorized
  • August 7, 2019

    Art About Music: Thomas Brett’s “Music Video Shoot” (2019)

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    art about music, Uncategorized
  • August 6, 2019

    Art About Music: Roland’s “TR-808 Main Board” (1981)

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    art about music, Uncategorized
  • August 5, 2019

    Notes On Less Is More 

    “…Who strive—you don’t know how the others strive To paint a little thing like that you smeared Carelessly passing with your robes afloat,— Yet do much less, so much less, Someone says, (I know his name, no matter) – so much less! Well, less is more, Lucrezia. I am judged…” – Robert Browning, “Andrea del… Continue reading

    less is more, Uncategorized
  • August 2, 2019

    On Going All In: Ten Reasons To Blog

    It’s out of date now—most people prefer reading weekly or monthly newsletters, or trance out scrolling through a billion Instagram photos of others performing their lives and framing the world filtered just so—but blogging old-fashioned text still works, still has a place, especially for longer form content. I like blogs. One of my favorites is… Continue reading

    blogging, going all in, Uncategorized
  • August 1, 2019

    Resonant Thoughts: Trevor Horn In “Pop Music-Creativity And Technology” (2003)

    “What’s really interesting these days for me is people’s idea of sound. We’ve got a whole new generation of musicians—people who, for instance, program a beat box without any experience of a real drummer. When we first got beat boxes, we tried to program them to do what a drummer would do. Nowadays people haven’t… Continue reading

    Resonant Thoughts, Uncategorized
  • July 31, 2019

    Brett’s Sound Picks: Olafur Arnald’s “they sink (TOKiMONSTA remix)

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    Brett’s Sound Picks, Uncategorized
  • July 30, 2019

    Art About Music: Thomas Brett’s “Marimbafied” (2019)

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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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