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brettworks

thinking through music


  • January 23, 2026

    Brett’s Book Picks: Stewart Brand’s “Maintenance of Everything” (2026) and C. Thi Nguyen’s “The Score” (2026)

    Stewart Brand, Maintenance of Everything C. Thi Nguyen, The Score Continue reading

    Brett’s Book Picks
  • January 22, 2026

    Change One Thing

    Paul Klee, Ancient Sound (1925) “The key about a process is that it has time in it.” – Nassim Taleb, Fooled By Randomness When I’m writing new music I sometimes preserve one thing from a previous project, but change it slightly. Let’s say I’ve just finished a work for solo keyboard. Usually what happens is… Continue reading

    musical mottos
    music, technology, writing
  • January 21, 2026

    Art About Music: Georges de la Tour’s “The Hurdy-Gurdy Player” (c. 1620-1625)

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    art about music
  • January 20, 2026

    (14 January)

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    atelier
  • January 19, 2026

    Curating The Week: The Act Of Making, A Music Production Manifesto, Attention

    A portrait of Karl Ove Knausgård. “The act of making something is so good, so good.” • A manifesto on electronic music production. “Technology answers to technique. Every device and piece of gear has secrets that can be unveiled with the right technique.” “After more than thirty years of making music with computers, we still… Continue reading

    Curating The Week
    books, mindfulness, writing
  • January 16, 2026

    Database: Dave Stewart On Stereo Picture, Frequency Differences, And Demos

    “A lot of [“Sweet Dreams Are Made Of This”] was trying to create as much space as possible so that Annie’s voice sounded crystal clear, pure, and not drowned out. But making sure the backing track still sounded incredibly powerful. A lot of that has to do with literally not having anything in the stereo… Continue reading

    database
  • January 15, 2026

    Brett’s Sound Picks: Musicentrydelete’s “Depth” (2025)

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    Brett’s Sound Picks
  • January 13, 2026

    When Less Leads To More

    My hope for every music production session is for something unexpected to catch my attention and open a new perceptual world. But such worlds almost never open right off the bat. Like anything aesthetically significant, they tend to require time and attention–you have to work into them. How does one do that? It helps to… Continue reading

    composing
    music, music theory
  • January 12, 2026

    Omni 98 bpm

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    Uncategorized
  • January 9, 2026

    Drumming Diaries: Grip

    Leonardo da Vinci, Studies of hands (c.1480) After a week away from performing, I noticed while playing marimba something I never think about. My grip: it felt weak. For a percussionist, grip is the pressure applied by thumb and index finger to make a fulcrum on which to balance sticks and mallets. A weak grip… Continue reading

    Uncategorized
    grip, percussion, percussion playing, percussion technique
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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

  • Database: Christian Löffler on Working Quickly and Using Field Recordings
  • Curating the Week: The Additional Touch, Philip Glass’s Music, How to Write a Paper
  • Performance Practice: Lessons from Music for 18 Musicians
  • Resonant Thoughts: James Marriott’s “The New Dark Ages: The Death of Reading and the Dawn of the Post-Literate Society” (2026)
  • 5 October

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