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brettworks

thinking through music


  • January 15, 2024

    Of Sines 2 (rework)

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    Uncategorized
  • January 12, 2024

    Curating The Week: Art’s Colonial Legacy, Prompt Principles, AI and Formulaic Art

    A short documentary about art’s colonial legacy. “In the scales of knowledge, all the museums in the world will never weigh so much as one spark of human sympathy.” 26 guiding principles for querying large language models. “Clearly state the requirements that the model must follow in order to produce content, in the form of… Continue reading

    Curating The Week
  • January 10, 2024

    Database: Prok Fiskal On How Bad Sounds Evoke A Certain Thing

    “I didn’t want to do a nostalgic thing but those sorts of sounds, I really love them, I really love a bad accordion synth, it sounds really beautiful in a way, or a really shitty choir preset can sound lovely.” “I wanted to use these sounds in a way that wasn’t nostalgic. But they have… Continue reading

    database
  • January 9, 2024

    Keywords: Musical System

    (Image: Polina Kuzovkova) A musical system is a cybernetic circuit linking the musician with a set of technological tools. The circuit can be instruments and hardware or, as is increasingly the norm, the virtual software components of a studio in the computer. In the DAW, the musical system is the DAW + its sounds, VST… Continue reading

    musical systems
  • January 8, 2024

    HT Dub 2 (Exult)

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    Uncategorized
  • January 5, 2024

    Resonant Thoughts: Steven Johnson’s “Where Good Ideas Come From” (2011)

    “The patterns are simple, but followed together, they make for a whole that is wiser than the sum of its parts. Go for a walk; cultivate hunches; write everything down, but keep your folders messy; embrace serendipity; make generative mistakes; take on multiple hobbies; frequent coffeehouses and other liquid networks; follow the links; let others… Continue reading

    Resonant Thoughts
  • January 4, 2024

    Database: Virtual Riot On Building A Map Of Sound Design In Your Mind

    “With Massive, before Serum, there were no tutorials. And I was just turning every knob and imagining what that might mean what I’m doing right there […] I was like, Just turn every knob, remember what it does and start to build in your mind a sort of map of, Okay, this does this, this does… Continue reading

    database, sound design
  • January 3, 2024

    Keywords: Minimalism

    (Photo: Sarah Dorweiler) Minimalism is an artistic philosophy of doing more with less (or doing less with even less), of limiting, reducing, or narrowing one’s palette of materials and toolkit of techniques with which to create. In music production, minimalism entails committing to, and maximizing the potentials of, a few good sounds (or one great… Continue reading

    keywords, minimalism
  • January 2, 2024

    SEK 5

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    atelier, sketch
  • December 30, 2023

    Resonant Thoughts: Errollyn Wallen’s “Becoming A Composer” (2023)

    “Trick yourself or be forced into writing something very fast and you will see just how quickly you become an animal. All nerve endings and responses, ears on wire stalks.You know it all already.” “Intuition is an awareness of patterns, above and below the surface, seen and unseen, heard and unheard. For me, the act… Continue reading

    composing
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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

  • 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)

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