I will talk about practice research and technical work, in the context of my PhD research and the broader field of new interfaces for musical expression (NIME) and AI and music. In some areas, especially those that involve technical work and creative practice, writing technical papers can feel artificial. For instance, in NIME, it is clear that new instruments necessitate of technical infrastructure, yet it is hard sometimes to pinpoint where the technical problem lies; and when we finally define it, it might feel too much a reductionist formulation. There are too many non-technical factors involved that do not fit a typical linear, problem-solving technical narrative. In such instances, I am not suggesting that we throw away technical writing altogether, but rather that we rethink where we locate the knowledge contribution. I propose displacing the focus from technical artefacts and the problems they allegedly solve to the technical practice and labour that goes into building them. I will discuss how practice research, a mode of research often used in the arts, can reveal valuable insights that are not strictly technical yet we arrive at through technical practice. I will be expanding on my recent paper at the Journal of New Music Research ("Ways of writing, ways of knowing: technical practice research in digital musical instrument design"), where I draw from STS, design and HCI literature to propose a "technical practice research”.