Skip to content
    • about
    • ai in music resources
    • archives
    • art about music
    • atelier
    • books
    • brett’s sound picks
    • database (a cache of perceptions)
    • film
    • interview
    • keywords
    • music
    • thought tools
    • ventrilo-dialogues

brettworks

thinking through music


  • April 12, 2018

    Lessons From Dilla 6: Snare Drum Resonance Is Your Friend

    Snare drum resonance is your friend. Continue reading

    beat programming, hip hop, lessons from Dilla, Uncategorized
  • April 11, 2018

    Arrows Of Attention: Sports Talk As Creative Self-Help

    I hung in there. I hit some Quality shots. I gave myself some chances. I had a good routine and a good process—just sticking to the same old deal. I just need to trust my shots. I had some good looks today. I need to make sure I’m in the right frame of mind, trusting… Continue reading

    arrows of attention, Uncategorized
  • April 10, 2018

    Art About Music: Francois-Joseph Navez’s “Wandering Musicians” (1828)

    Continue reading

    art about music, Uncategorized
  • April 9, 2018

    Creative Strategies: Multiples

    multiple—having or involving several parts, parts, or members One of the most useful concepts in creative work is the concept of multiples. There’s no hidden meaning here—multiple simply means having several parts—but there is hidden power. The way to apply the multiple concept to your work is simple: conceive of and build multiple versions of… Continue reading

    creative strategies, Uncategorized
  • April 6, 2018

    Catching Signals: Notes On Junkie XL’s Film Scoring Videos

    “Hello! This is Tom—Junkie XL—and welcome to Studio Time with Junkie XL, who else?” -Tom Holkenborg, aka Junkie XL Even as YouTube has become a vibrant, open-to-all marketplace for amateur music producers to show off their production workflows (a topic I have been writing about in some forthcoming essay collections), it’s not as often that… Continue reading

    film sound, YouTube
  • April 5, 2018

    Lessons From Dilla 5: You Don’t Have To Stay On The Grid

    Play a metronome along with this and it will never stay lined up. That’s a good thing: the musical time lives. Continue reading

    beat programming, lessons from Dilla, Uncategorized
  • April 4, 2018

    Resonant Thoughts: Erling Kagge’s “Silence” (2017)

    “Negative beauty—by virtue of all that is not present.” “I am constantly interrupted, interruptions engendered by other interruptions. I rummage around in a world that has little to do with me. Attempt to be effective until I realize I won’t get any further regardless of how effective I’ve become.” “The essential thing is the contrast… Continue reading

    Resonant Thoughts, Uncategorized
  • April 3, 2018

    Art About Music: Jan Brueghel The Elder’s “The Sense Of Hearing” (1618)

    Continue reading

    art about music, hearing, Uncategorized
  • April 2, 2018

    Wander

    wander – to move in a leisurely, causal, or aimless way I wander all the time when I’m running which is to say that for a part of each day, most days of the week, I’m outside wandering somewhere—going up and down back streets, over fields (such as they are in New York), past airports,… Continue reading

    Uncategorized, working knowledge
  • March 30, 2018

    Notes On A Nils Frahm Concert

    In mid-March I went to hear Nils Frahm perform at The Knockdown Center, an open barn-like space in the middle of nowhere in an industrial neighborhood of Maspeth, Queens. There were about three thousand of us, drawn by curiosity about how Frahm might perform his part-neo-classical, part-electronic, part-almost-pop yet always experimental instrumental music. I walked… Continue reading

    concert reviews, delay effects, techno-musical systems, Uncategorized
«Previous Page Next Page»

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: Arovane On Decisive Sources Of Good Musical Ideas
  • Musical Ideas
  • 2 September
  • Curating the Week: Juggling, Music Teachers, Writing, Tacit Knowledge in Research
  • 8000 Studies

Subscribe To Brettworks


©

brettworks

2022, All Rights Reserved.

Blog at WordPress.com.

Loading Comments...

You must be logged in to post a comment.

  • Subscribe Subscribed
    • brettworks
    • Join 761 other subscribers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • brettworks
    • Subscribe Subscribed
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar