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brettworks

thinking through music


  • November 14, 2025

    Cadences III (Remodels)

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    remodels, repetition
  • November 13, 2025

    Database: Robin Guthrie On Using Effects Pedals To Create One’s Own Sound

    “I found with a couple of the right pedals I could go anywhere and sound like me, which has more to do with limited playing skills and the chords that I make than anything else. It evolved from my frustration with being a really fucking mediocre guitar player when I was learning to play. A Continue reading

    database
  • November 12, 2025

    Resonant Thoughts: David Deutsch’s “The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World” (2011)

    “…in reality the future is unlike the past, the unseen very different from the seen. Science often predicts – and brings about – phenomena spectacularly different from anything that has been experienced before” (6). “Discovering a new explanation is inherently an act of creativity” (7). “We never know any data before interpreting it through theories. Continue reading

    Resonant Thoughts
    consciousness, philosophy, science
  • November 10, 2025

    Principles of Electronic Music Production

    Summary Over ten chapters richly illustrated with the practices and ideas of innovative musicians past and present, across a range of styles, Principles of Electronic Music Production is a companion book to The Creative Electronic Music Producer that looks at the producer as an omnimusical figure―a composer-performer-engineer who improvises, designs sounds, programs MIDI, sculpts audio, Continue reading

    book, hype
  • November 7, 2025

    Curating The Week: AI and Thinking, Sound Designing, AI and De-Skilling

    • An essay about AI and thinking. “It can seem unnatural, even repulsive, to imagine that a computer program actually understands, actually thinks. We usually conceptualize thinking as something conscious, like a Joycean inner monologue or the flow of sense memories in a Proustian daydream. Or we might mean reasoning: working through a problem step by Continue reading

    Curating The Week
    AI, artificial-intelligence, education, writing
  • November 6, 2025

    Art About Music: Ableton Live 12

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    art about music
  • November 4, 2025

    Brett’s Sound Picks: Steve Hauschildt’s “Dividua” (2025)

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    Brett’s Sound Picks
  • November 3, 2025

    Database: Steve Hauschildt On Starting From A Harmonic Point

    “Most of the time, the bedrock of a track is created through chord structures, so I’m starting from a harmonic point rather than a sequence or arpeggio. Once I have that harmonic foundation, I’ll use some sort of aleatoric randomisation or program a sequence or arpeggio into the sequencer.” Steve Hauschildt Continue reading

    database
  • October 31, 2025

    Resonant Thoughts: Paul Loomans’ “Time Surfing”(2017)

    “Being attuned to time, allowing it to ripen, trusting your intuition, using what emerges. It’s like surfing. Surfing with sensitivity and finesse over the ever-changing waves of time. Time Surfing” (31). “Choose one thing as your main task right now. Don’t have all kinds of different files open simultaneously as you work on them a Continue reading

    Resonant Thoughts
  • October 29, 2025

    Curating the Week: Jack Dejohnette, AI and the Sublime, AI and Cognition, Apple TextEdit, Writing as Thinking

    • A tribute to Jack DeJohnette. “The idea of improvisation is tied up in the very nature of our existence. We don’t expect our life to evolve without changing and we never know what’s round the corner – why should music be any different?” • An essay on AI and the sublime. “Sublimity isn’t an Continue reading

    Curating The Week
    AI, artificial-intelligence, technology, writing
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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

  • When Less Leads To More
  • Omni 98 bpm
  • Drumming Diaries: Grip
  • Resonant Thoughts: Molly Bang’s “Picture This” (1991/2016)
  • Omni 96 bpm

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