• 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


  • October 12, 2023

    Keywords: Artifacts

    Artifacts are details, the hidden gems of a sound hidden within another you don’t truly hear until you excavate them. Artifacts are by-products of processes applied to sounds—where a distortion or a reverb leaves traces of its micro-textured grit or subliminal hum. Dig and dig deeper for artifacts by zooming in on them, amplifying them,… Continue reading

    keywords
  • October 11, 2023

    Database: Max Lauderbauer On The Overall Expression

    “…If I record something, I still do it very freely. I’m not into going too much into detail. For me, the overall expression is more important than little details.” Max Lauderbauer Over 200 entries in the database now. Continue reading

    database
  • October 10, 2023

    AC Dub 3

    Continue reading

    Uncategorized
  • October 9, 2023

    Where Do I Find My Sound?

    “I don’t believe in influenceunless it’s you, yourself following your own track.” Agnes Martin On Reddit, a young electronic music producer is looking for help, asking for advice about where to find his sound. “I do not know” he writes, “where to get the sounds that I hear in songs or how to create them.”… Continue reading

    Uncategorized
  • October 6, 2023

    Brett’s Sound Picks: Moritz Von Oswald’s “Infinito (Version)” (2023)

    2023 Continue reading

    Brett’s Sound Picks
  • October 5, 2023

    Database: Mark Clifford On Finding Details In Things

    “And it just seemed like the more I did to them—the more I tried things with them—the more ideas seemed to come out of them. To me, that’s the really interesting part of making music. The mixing part and finishing tracks…that’s not the interesting part. It’s finding details in things: that’s what really interests me.… Continue reading

    database
  • October 4, 2023

    Resonant Thoughts: Nicholas Cook’s “Music: Why It Matters” (2023)

    “But what makes music perhaps uniquely effective as ideology is what might be called its double nature. On the one hand it is, obviously, a human artefact, something that people make and that calls on a range of culture specific social practices and technologies. But at the same time we experience music as if it… Continue reading

    Resonant Thoughts
  • October 3, 2023

    7 Part Dub

    Continue reading

    Uncategorized
  • October 2, 2023

    Music’s Lacunae

    In our understandings and explanations of musical practice it’s the missing things that are most important. Too often when I write I don’t write about but around these things—busily explaining that which is extrinsic, not intrinsic, to the mysteries that underlie making music. We ask: What are your influences? What’s your favorite gear? How do… Continue reading

    Uncategorized
  • September 29, 2023

    Brett’s Sound Picks: James Blake’s “Playing Robots Into Heaven” (2023)

    2023 playlist Continue reading

    Brett’s Sound Picks
«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

  • Studio Observations: Listening To Improvisation
  • Database: Shane Parish on Revoicing and the Game Of Subtraction
  • Jup-8000, No. 1
  • Curating The Week: Blogging, Music and Truth-Telling, Memory
  • Resonant Thoughts: Daniel Poppick’s “The Copywriter” (2026)

Subscribe To Brettworks


©

brettworks

2022, All Rights Reserved.

Blog at WordPress.com.

  • Subscribe Subscribed
    • brettworks
    • Join 775 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