Skip to content
    • 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


  • June 20, 2024

    Database: Christian Fennesz On Transforming And Pushing Elements

    “I do classic multi-track recording on a sequencer and that is no different from what I did on a four-track in the early days. It’s a very traditional, rock & roll process.” […] “Then the interesting part starts. I’m trying to transform an element and push it as far as I can to get something… Continue reading

    database
  • June 19, 2024

    Perspective Lessons

    (Photo: David Hockney) “I feel the important part of making a track is to recognize the point where you have to listen to what the track wants. This point comes in around 40 – 50% of the whole process, where it’s not so much about what you want with the track anymore, but what the… Continue reading

    perspective
    music, perspective
  • June 18, 2024

    Marimbas + Five Parts

    Continue reading

    atelier, Uncategorized
  • June 17, 2024

    Keywords: Closest At Hand Sound

    Closest at hand sound is the principle of using the instrument, device, sound, sample, or effect that is easiest to play or manipulate right here, right now. The closest at hand sound trades vagueness for specificity, grand plans for small actions, possibility for commitment. The principle was explained by pianist and composer Harold Budd as… Continue reading

    keywords
  • June 14, 2024

    Brett’s Sound Picks: Taylor Deupree’s “Stil. (For Vibraphone & Bass Drum)” (2024)

    Continue reading

    Brett’s Sound Picks
  • June 12, 2024

    Same Walk, Different Music

    Benge, Twenty Systems, “1981 Yamaha CS70M.” Benge (Ben Edwards) is an English musician with a longtime interest in analog synthesis. His 2008 recording Twenty Systems is an archeology of iconic synthesizers that traces a history of selected models from the late 1960s to the late 80s. Each track features a single instrument recorded without effects,… Continue reading

    same walk, different music
    ambient, experimental, music, synthesizers
  • June 11, 2024

    Lost In Oscillation

    Continue reading

    Uncategorized
  • June 10, 2024

    Keywords: Listen More

    To Listen More is to understand better what’s missing from your music. To figure out how to improve it—finesse its details, make its rhythms move, its melodies conjure, its ambiances enchanting, its arrangements tight, its mixes cohesive—listen to how other musicians have approached these problems of tone, texture, time, impact, and form. Their music is… Continue reading

    keywords
  • June 7, 2024

    Performance Lessons

    “The performer necessarily comes at the music from within […] Most often the performance situation catapults a musician into a rare and unusual condition, one that reveals the basic features of experience with eloquent directness, free, at least to some extent, from the usual overlay of cultural and philosophical presuppositions that nearly always obstruct our… Continue reading

    performance
    music
  • June 6, 2024

    Database: Leafcutter John On Sound Sources

    “The rule is anything can be a sound source as long as it’s right.” Leafcutter John database 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

  • 14 October
  • Database: Christian Löffler on Working Quickly and Using Field Recordings
  • Curating the Week: The Additional Touch, Philip Glass’s Music, How to Write a Paper
  • Performance Practice: Lessons from Music for 18 Musicians
  • Resonant Thoughts: James Marriott’s “The New Dark Ages: The Death of Reading and the Dawn of the Post-Literate Society” (2026)

Subscribe To Brettworks


©

brettworks

2022, All Rights Reserved.

Blog at WordPress.com.

  • Subscribe Subscribed
    brettworks
    Join 780 other subscribers

    Have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.

  • brettworks
    View site in Reader
    Manage subscriptionsSign upLog in
    Report this content
    Collapse this bar