• 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


  • November 29, 2024

    Art About Music: Sebastiano Lazzari’s “Still Life” (18th c.)

    Continue reading

    art about music
  • November 28, 2024

    Brett’s Sound Picks: r beny’s “braid into chorus” (2024)

    Continue reading

    Brett’s Sound Picks
  • November 27, 2024

    Database: Arvo Pärt On Music’s Independence From Instruments And The Value Of Interpretation

    “Music has to exist by itself . . . two, three notes. The secret must be there, independent of any instrument. Music must derive from inside, and I have deliberately tried to write such music that can be played on a variety of instruments. It does make a difference to me from which instrument to Continue reading

    database
  • November 26, 2024

    Music Is Not Content

    Music isall vibration,ambiance,call and response,code,competition,enchantment,entrainment,evanescent,gendered,improvised,mathematical,metaphor,midi sequenced,mood altering,notated,oral tradition,pattern,prophecy,playlisted,recorded artifact,rehearsed to death,remembrance,ritual,sampled,sexualized,signifying,sociality,structure of feeling,symbol,soundtrack,subliminal,technique,trippy,viral,virtue signaling,you and I jamming. Continue reading

    thought tools
  • November 25, 2024

    atelier: ember study

    Continue reading

    atelier
  • November 22, 2024

    Database: Jonny Greenwood On Acoustic Instruments And Hearing The Physicality Of What’s Happening

    “I always found acoustic instruments, certainly orchestral instruments, to be capable of much more variety and strangeness and complexity than nearly all of the software I’ve used in the past.” “I also love a recording where you can hear the physicality of what’s happening, whether it’s the breathing of the player or just the effort Continue reading

    database
  • November 20, 2024

    Atelier: piano timeless 1.10.24

    Continue reading

    atelier
  • November 19, 2024

    Resonant Thoughts: Toby Manning’s “Mixing Pop and Politics: A Marxist History of Popular Music” (2024)

    “What’s audible in millennial-angst music isn’t piety but a profound sense of loss: not of something remembered but, in this retro, YouTube, internet meme era, something re-remembered” (518). “The centrality of sampling and quotation in contemporary music, alongside the perennial accessibility and audibility of music’s entire back catalogue, means the past is always alive in Continue reading

    Resonant Thoughts
    books, music
  • November 18, 2024

    Keywords: Musical Idea Curating

    If you compose music with a computer, eventually you’ll face the accumulation of what you’ve been doing over the years. Digital files, while invisible, add up, with only their names and dates as clues to how they might sound; you can’t be sure until you double-click, load, and play. Musical idea curating is periodically listening Continue reading

    curation, keywords
    art-curation, music
  • November 15, 2024

    Database: r beny On Uncanny Valley Acoustic-Like Sounds

    “Currently, one of my favorite synthesizers is the Korg Z1. 80% of the sound sources on this album are the Z1, whether heavily processed or not.” “I love the uncanny valley acoustic sounds that physical modeling synths produce and the [Korg] Z1 is just an absolute gem in that regard. For myself, physical modeling is Continue reading

    database
«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

  • Brett’s Sound Picks: Musicentrydelete’s “Depth” (2025)
  • When Less Leads To More
  • Omni 98 bpm
  • Drumming Diaries: Grip
  • Resonant Thoughts: Molly Bang’s “Picture This” (1991/2016)

Subscribe To Brettworks


©

brettworks

2022, All Rights Reserved.

Blog at WordPress.com.

  • Subscribe Subscribed
    • brettworks
    • Join 772 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