brettworks

thinking through music

April 13, 2016

Brett’s Sound Picks: The Field’s “Pink Sun”

“I think that the music of our time has succeeded in achieving a kind of texture in which musical atoms (pitches and intervals) and dualisms (melody and harmony, dissonance and consonance, diatonic and chromatic) become absorbed in an overall background, so that what one hears in a great deal of contemporary music is background brought… Continue reading

Brett’s Sound Picks
April 7, 2016

New Simplicities: On The Trickle-Down Of Pop And Soundtrack Aesthetics In Contemporary Classical Music

The phrase “new simplicities” occurred to me over the past few months while listening to the tuneful, accessible musics of Olafur Arnalds, Nils Frahm, Max Richter, and (even, briefly) Ludovico Einaudi. Much of this music is for piano or at least features piano, cycles through a few repeating chords, and lies on the gentler end… Continue reading

trickle-down aesthetics
April 5, 2016

Curating The Week: On Tim Hecker, Composers Doing Field Research, And The Decline Of EDM

• An interview with electronic musician Tim Hecker. “It’s a fight to dial into something that has meaning.” • An article about composers doing field research. “With a sense of racing against time, composers are conducting field research with the goal of preserving or celebrating lost tongues in their work.” • An article about the… Continue reading

Curating The Week
April 3, 2016

Musical Resonances In “City Of Gold”

“In a lot of ways I think food is starting to take the place in culture that rock and roll took 30 years ago, in that eating has become incredibly political. And just as the street has always dictated fashions on music and other things, it’s starting to happen that way in food.” – Jonathan… Continue reading

criticism, film reviews
March 29, 2016

Curating The Week: On The Sound Of Women’s Voices, The Biological Origins Of Rhythm, And Manfred Eicher

• An article about the history of policing women’s voices. “There’s a long history of men telling women to avoid rhetorical excess and to use their indoor voices.” • An article on the biological origins of rhythm. “Beat keeping might be rooted in a really old, widely conserved mechanism, which is basically how brains communicate.… Continue reading

Curating The Week
March 26, 2016

On Instinctive Travels And Paths Of Rhythm

Releasing five recordings between 1990 and 1998, A Tribe Called Quest pioneered new narratives for hip hop, eschewing the idiom’s traditional postures in favor of an “alternative” sound both musically and lyrically. In fact, upon its release, the group’s debut, Peoples’ Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm (1990) confused critics: Rolling Stone famously said… Continue reading

groovology
March 22, 2016

Brett’s Sound Picks: Trance Frendz’s “00:26”

A collaboration between Olafur Arnalds and Nils Frahm, “00: 26” is a beauty: an electronic keyboard sound sequenced in steady pulsation –rhythmic filter, filter-rhythmics– opening and closing in waves, keeping you in it. You can listen to this piece in the video below. Scroll to 28:26-33:50. Continue reading

Brett’s Sound Picks
March 18, 2016

Curating The Week: On Acoustic Ecology, Noise Pollution, And Roger Linn

• A BBC podcast about the science of acoustic ecology. “We look at beautiful scenery like this, but we rarely listen…Soundscape ecology is looking at the full acoustic environment.” • An article about how noise pollution is impacting our ability to hear the sounds of nature. “This gift that we are born with–to reach out… Continue reading

Curating The Week
March 15, 2016

Reading Analogically: On Creativity In David Gelernter’s “The Tides Of Mind”

“Creative problem solving is widely agreed to center on inventing a new analogy–sometimes called ‘restructuring’ the problem. When you suddenly see a connection between two things you don’t ordinarily speak or think of together, you have the basis of a new analogy, or a creative thought…By comparing a puzzling something with a something else to… Continue reading

Reading Analogically
March 11, 2016

Curating The Week: A Classic Public Enemy Track, Major Lazer, And Mapping The Sounds Of Ancient Churches

• An article about Public Enemy’s “Fight The Power.” “It’s easy to make a dope beat, where the kick and snare are keeping the groove together. But Fight the Power doesn’t have that. You can’t tell what the kick and snare are doing. They’re creating a backdrop, but it’s not pronounced, it doesn’t swing. It’s more… Continue reading

Curating The Week

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.