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thinking through music


  • April 10, 2023

    Ad Hoc Processes As Creative Spur

    “If you do things the way everyone else does, you’re gonna get the same results everyone else does. It’s really, really good to mess with your process.” James Holden It can be useful for electronic music producers to regularly devise ad hoc workflow processes to spur musical output that’s original, or at least novel. There… Continue reading

    ad hoc processes
  • April 7, 2023

    Illuminating Source

    On Spotify, Apple Continue reading

    Uncategorized
  • April 6, 2023

    Resonant Thoughts: Adam Gopnik’s “The Real Work: The Mystery Of Mastery” (2023)

    “At the core of the mystery is a lesson we can too easily miss. It has to do with the way one time talks to another. We talk about things we prize, art above all, as ‘timeless.’ It’s the most familiar generalization we make: it’s a timeless picture, a timeless melody, or even a timeless… Continue reading

    Resonant Thoughts
  • April 5, 2023

    Database: James Holden On Process As A Living System

    “I usually sneak it up on myself, like I start designing an instrument and then the songs come out by accident as a result. It’s weird–sometimes I’ll go in the studio and something will come out by itself, but the process and the method of it is really important to me. I have to have… Continue reading

    database
  • April 4, 2023

    SEK 4

    Continue reading

    Uncategorized
  • April 3, 2023

    On Seeking Beautiful Outputs

    “I’m lazy; that’s why I like machines. They do things I would not have thought of. I can put things into them, and then I can see something happen there beyond what I would have had the time, the taste, or the endurance to have produced myself. I usually don’t want to slavishly make something… Continue reading

    beautiful outputs
  • March 31, 2023

    Curating The Week: Terry Riley, John Luther Adams, The Universality Of Music

    • An interview with Terry Riley. “Beginnings and endings aren’t that important, because you’re just tuning in to a sound current. Music is the involvement of the human spirit with sound. If you know what you’re doing in the arts, then you’re doing it wrong. That’s a pretty good maxim. I think before Indian classical… Continue reading

    Curating The Week
  • March 30, 2023

    Art About Music: Alma Thomas’ “Red Azaleas Singing and Dancing Rock and Roll Music” (1976)

    “Red Azaleas Singing and Dancing Rock and Roll Music” (1976) by Alma Thomas Continue reading

    art about music
  • March 29, 2023

    Database: Seth Drake On Harmonic Coloring

    “Let’s say you have a bunch of hot AF signals that hit a limiter and now, suddenly, these waveforms have gone from being big and round and way over zero to being square and sitting right at zero. Anytime you have square wave forms on the sides of those squares–as the wave transitions from the… Continue reading

    database
  • March 28, 2023

    Still In Motion

    (video: Jacques Barrette) 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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