brettworks

thinking through music

April 10, 2015

Curating The Week: Music-Related Stuff Online

1. An article by Hua Hsu in The New Yorker about global music influences in electronic music. “Future Brown’s stylistic promiscuity aspires to a future built on eclecticism and color rather than on hierarchy and canon, velocity and rhythm rather than sing-along harmonies and riffs.” 2. The music critic Paul Morley interviews composer Max Richter.… Continue reading

Curating The Week

electronic music, Future Brown, Hua Hsu, Max Richter., music influences, Paul Morley
April 4, 2015

Production Stories: Sharing A Process Of Making (Electronic) Music

A friend of mine recently passed along my Singing Bowl Music II to a friend of his, Charlotte, who is a yoga teacher. A few weeks later, Charlotte got in touch with me via email to say how much she and her students had been enjoying their practice with my music as background sound that… Continue reading

Production Stories, singing bowl music

singing bowl
March 31, 2015

Brett’s Sound Picks: Second Storey’s “Reserved”

I found the artist Second Storey while browsing through a huge BBC new music playlist put together by DJ Mary Anne Hobbs. Second Storey’s track “Reserved” has a few compelling things going on: tightly syncopated percussion sounds playing individual start and stop patterns that dovetail; a sense of ambiance created through a combination of dry… Continue reading

Brett’s Sound Picks

Second Storey
March 25, 2015

Curating The Week: Music-Related Stuff Online

1. An article about the inspiration for a Max for Live device (software for use within Ableton Live) that injects realistic timing into multiple computer generated parts. “The timing of each individual note is dependent on every single note that both players had already played – a minor timing hiccup near the start of a piece… Continue reading

Ableton Live, Curating The Week, drone, misophonia, musical time
March 19, 2015

Outsider Music II: Notes On Moondog’s “A New Sound For An Old Instrument”

“I’m into swing. I get that from the American Indians like the Sioux, the Arapahoe and the Apache. They have this drum-beat, heart-beat. Bom, Bom, Bom…I got that influence when I was six years old in Wyoming. My father took us to an Arapahoe Indian reservation. The chief let me sit on his lap and… Continue reading

canons, groovology, music reviews, outsider music

Moondog
March 13, 2015

Curating The Week: Music-Related Stuff On The Internet

1. A brief interview with the composer Steve Reich who talks about contemporary music. “A lot of people who use computers are gonna come up with junk; most of the people who use notation came up with junk, too. But there are the Brian Enos – people who have imagination for a new way of working… Continue reading

Curating The Week

contemporary music, King Jammy, Steve Reich
March 9, 2015

On Outsider Music I: Lubomyr Melnyk’s “Cloud Passade No. 3”

“The piano and its sound are as much a part of the music as the notes.” – Lubomyr Melnyk I recently came across some piano music of Lubomyr Melnyk. He makes what he calls “continuous motion” music which involves playing rapid and continuous patterns up and down the keyboard for very long stretches while keeping… Continue reading

listening

Lubomyr Melnyk, piano music
March 3, 2015

Curating The Week: Music-Related Stuff On The Internet

1. A question-answer about Spotify’s shuffle algorithm. “Working at Spotify has taught me a few things, one of them being is that it’s really, really, really hard to build something that a human will genuinely feel is shuffled. People still constantly come up to me at parties and tell me that the shuffle functionality is… Continue reading

Curating The Week

musical training
February 26, 2015

Reflections On Melody: Listening To Shivkumar Sharma (Again)

The music of Shivkumar Sharma has an enduring appeal for me. Sharma is a master santoor player who combines the best of percussion playing and melody-making. Performing to the accompaniment of a tabla drummer, Sharma weaves line after line of dulcimer melodies within the rhythmic cycles outlined by the tabla. It’s groovy and endlessly tuneful.… Continue reading

melody

melody, Shivkumar Sharma
February 20, 2015

Curating The Week: Music-Related Stuff On The Internet

1. An article by Alex Ross on the music and career of Bjork, and the idea of musical genre. “Stream, delta, border, boundary: we keep reaching for geographical metaphors as we speak of genres and we sense that the real landscape of musical activity ultimately has little to do with our tidy delineations, or indeed… Continue reading

Curating The Week

Laura Cannell, musical genre, North Indian classical music

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.