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thinking through music


  • December 19, 2023

    Database: Aphex Twin On Not Reusing Sounds, Avoiding The Obvious, And How All Sounds Break Down Into Really Simple Things

    “I’m not into multitracking, I like things to be live. I record everything live, and I’m not bothered about saving sounds. In fact, I erase them on purpose. I have a library of stuff, but it’s stuff I haven’t used yet. And also I don’t want to use a sound I’ve used before. There’s an Continue reading

    database
    Aphex Twin, music production, sound, waves
  • December 15, 2023

    OV 10

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    Uncategorized
  • December 14, 2023

    What Makes A Good Software Instrument?

    As a percussionist, I don’t have a favorite musical instrument, which makes sense because percussionist are, by training and maybe by temperament, generalists. We learn how to strike and vibrate a great many instruments–from tympani, djembes, and snare drums to marimbas, gongs, and glockenspiels–without playing favorites. Each instrument is a world and requires its own Continue reading

    software instruments
  • December 13, 2023

    Database: Frequent On Giant Effects Chains And Arbitrary Decisions Leading To A New Musical Place

    “Just make a giant [effects] chain. A lot of times people ask me how I make a sound, and it’s like, I just didn’t stop where you would have stopped twenty effects ago. There’s no secret thing: you just keep doing shit and eventually you’ll get something interesting. And that’s the non-technical aspect of it: Continue reading

    database
  • December 12, 2023

    Marimbafied 4 (sketch)

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    marimba, sketch
  • December 11, 2023

    Keywords: Loop

    The breakbeat, the round, the sequence, the riff, the inherent rhythm, the timeline, the tala–a loop is a groove propeller, a repeating bit that captures a feeling and spins it around and around until its sound feeling is airborne, aloft on its own motion, soaring over time. A loop proposes being circular for a while, Continue reading

    keywords
  • December 8, 2023

    Curating The Week: Nostalgia, AI’s Influence On Programming, Making An Album A Day

    • An essay on nostalgia. “Much as the pocket calculator long ago caused arithmetic skills to atrophy, newer technologies have made history ubiquitous instead of chronological, let alone explanatory. Mashups are now constructed with no real deliberateness but as part of a steady acquisitive spree through the videos that crowd our screens. We doomscroll and Continue reading

    Curating The Week
    AI, amanda-tyler, history, music production, nostalgia, novel, programming, publishing, writers
  • December 7, 2023

    Marimbafied (sketch)

    Continue reading

    from l’atelier, marimba
  • December 6, 2023

    Database: Paul Morley On The Thinking Process And Technological Limitations

    “It’s all about the ears and imagination and the process. It’s a thinking process, almost. Ideas come from various members, and then it’s survival of the fittest ideas. A lot of stuff is improvised, and then 6 months later you notice that an idea that happened there is still attached to the music.” “What created Continue reading

    database
  • December 5, 2023

    Keywords: One Instrument

    One Instrument is a constraint in the form of a pact with yourself to use just a single source for sounds in a track. I’ll make do with this you think, using the thought as incantation, and off you go exploring what you might do with the instrument. The One Instrument principle goes against the Continue reading

    keywords
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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

  • Database: Dave Stewart On Stereo Picture, Frequency Differences, And Demos
  • Brett’s Sound Picks: Musicentrydelete’s “Depth” (2025)
  • When Less Leads To More
  • Omni 98 bpm
  • Drumming Diaries: Grip

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