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brettworks

thinking through music


  • May 26, 2023

    Curating The Week: Blur, Imperfections, The Time Course Of Creativity

    • An article about optical blur (which has me thinking about blurring in music). “There are still artists for whom the purity of optical blur—a tiny depth of field with a single detail picked out, or total lack of focus across the composition—says something important about the limits of perception, or usefully frustrates a viewer’s… Continue reading

    Curating The Week
  • May 25, 2023

    Database: Grischa Lichtenberger On Steps Of Enhancement

    “I very rarely go back or delete. I add one eq after the other and each one of them is like a step of correction or enhancement of the previous one. Of course it is maybe the worst thing you could do, but it makes the sound more yours, or better: it crystallizes what your… Continue reading

    database
  • May 24, 2023

    Brett’s Sound Picks: Grischa Lichtenberger’s: “1011_11104_v_re_61011s1b” (2023)

    2023 Continue reading

    Brett’s Sound Picks
  • May 23, 2023

    SEK 9

    Continue reading

    Uncategorized
  • May 22, 2023

    The Analytical-Intuitive Fader

    “The musician, like the writer or speaker, regularly confronts his conduct as performance or not.” David Sudnow, Talk’s Body (1979) On one of my favorite VST synthesizers there’s a volume mix fader that allows one to move between the sounds of two oscillators (Osc). The control is delightfully simple: when the fader is all the way up,… Continue reading

    analytical and intuitive modalities
  • May 19, 2023

    Source Illuminated

    On Spotify, Apple Music Continue reading

    Uncategorized
  • May 18, 2023

    Database: Ital Tek On Inspiration

    “I try to see (inspiration) as a muscle I flex.” “The way I work is to create a huge amount of content/versions/takes whatever you want to call it and then hone it down over and over. I’ll get inspired by some happy accident when I unplugged a guitar and it made a weird thud through… Continue reading

    database
  • May 17, 2023

    Brett’s Sound Picks: Ital Tek’s “Cold Motion” (2023)

    2023 Continue reading

    Brett’s Sound Picks
  • May 16, 2023

    Marimbafied

    Continue reading

    marimba
  • May 15, 2023

    Commit To Beauty

    Each day I work I’m unsure as to how to alter music-in-progress I don’t yet like into something I do like. I’ve played something, made a sound or a sample, but when I listen back to the idea there’s no magic–it sounds lackluster, predictable, cliché. Often the problem is that too many little things are… Continue reading

    Uncategorized
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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

  • Art About Music: Google’s Lyria 3 (2026)
  • 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

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