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brettworks

thinking through music


  • July 8, 2016

    Notes On Virginia Heffernan’s “Magic And Loss”

    “All ‘realism’ grounded in the confidence of art’s ‘fidelity’ to reality is a conceit of certain technologies.” – Virginia Heffernan, Magic and Loss, p. 127. Among the many pleasures of reading Virginia Heffernan’s Magic and Loss, a wildly creative, energized, and forward thinking meditation on the Internet and online experience as a global collaborative artwork,… Continue reading

    book reviews
  • June 28, 2016

    Curating The Week: On A Composer’s Class Notes, Google Ideals Of Mind, And The Microphone In Politics

    • A composer shares his college class notes from a class taught by Alvin Lucier. “Art doesn’t have to please, make you happy or sad.” • An article about the impact of Googling on our ways of thinking. “We’ve adopted the Google ideal of the mind, which is that you have a question that you… Continue reading

    Curating The Week
  • June 23, 2016

    One Way To Listen To Music: Notes On Mark Fell’s “Multistability 6-B”

    One way to listen to music–and by to I mean up and over and through and around music–is to imagine it as proposing a set of ideas for our consideration. From this perspective we can think about any music as sonically embodying, modeling, and organizing itself through these ideas. As we listen the ideas become… Continue reading

    Electronic music, enchantment, music criticism, music reviews, perception
  • May 24, 2016

    Ventrilo-Dialogue: Theorist Versus Pragmatist

    Theorist: To compose music is to engage philosophically with music. Music is always about other things–about a bigger picture. Pragmatist: Not at all–to compose music is to engage tactilely with putting sounds together. Music is always about just music. T: But surely you want to know to what end you’re doing the organizing? P: I know my… Continue reading

    theory and practice, ventrilo-dialogue
  • May 19, 2016

    Curating The Week: On Music Fandom, Aristocracy In Popular Music, And Reggae Drumming Intros

    • An article about music fandom. “My fandom is obsessive, possessive and largely static. When I am lucky enough to identify with a piece of music, I cling to it like a relic. There’s no use trying to convince me that my artifact is something other than my own personal Dead Sea Scrolls, something to… Continue reading

    Curating The Week
  • May 14, 2016

    On Resonant Thoughts: Geoff Dyer on Clichés

    “Beware of clichés… There are clichés of response as well as expression. There are clichés of observation and of thought–even of conception. Many novels [or pieces of music, say], even quite a few adequately written ones, are clichés of form which conform to clichés of expectation.” –Geoff Dyer   Continue reading

    Resonant Thoughts
  • May 8, 2016

    Notes On Kyna Leski’s “The Storm Of Creativity”

    “The principal consequence of the creative process is transformation.” -Kyna Leski, The Storm of Creativity, p.4. There is a reassuring and distilled clarity about Kyna Leski’s excellent recent book, The Storm of Creativity (MIT Press, 2015). Leski (http://kynaleski.com), an architect, designer, and teacher at the Rhode Island School Of Design, takes you by the hand… Continue reading

    book reviews
  • May 3, 2016

    Curating The Week: On Time, Tape Loops, And Harmonica Playing

    • An article about time. “Is our experience of time’s flow akin to watching a live play, where things occur in the moment but not before or after, a flickering in and out of existence around the ‘now’? Or, is it like watching a movie, where all eternity is already in the can, and we… Continue reading

    Curating The Week
  • April 29, 2016

    Notes On A Tim Hecker Concert

    “A lot of good things come from isolation and hard work and being truthful to some object. The first work of artists often comes from that angle, the liberation of expectation from what that work will be.” – Tim Hecker (interviewed here). Recently I went to see the Canadian electronic musician Tim Hecker perform at… Continue reading

    concert reviews
  • April 25, 2016

    Curating The Week: A Trial Over Opening Chords, Music Listening, And The Spatial Layout Of Orchestras

    • An article on the case of whether not the chords of Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway To Heaven” are stolen. “While it is true that a descending chromatic four-chord progression is a common convention that abounds in the music industry, the similarities here transcend this core structure. What remains is a subjective assessment of the ‘concept… Continue reading

    Curating The Week
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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: Actress and Suzanne Ciani’s “Concrète Waves Barcelona B4” (2026)
  • The Real, The Virtual, and Thinking Compositionally
  • No. 6
  • Art About Music: “When Is That Young Man Going Home?” (1931)
  • Curating The Week: Freedom, Exceptionalism, Finishing

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