Transcript
Speaker: Welcome to Chasing the Beats, a show dedicated to weeklybeats.com artists, their songs, and stories from the 2024 season. I'm your host, SQF, and our guest today is One Zero.
Speaker: All right, welcome One Zero, a.k.a. Maurice. Oh, thanks for having me on. Yeah, man. Am I audible? there i think I'm pretty low. It'll it'll do some correction post-processing. Oh, great, great.
Speaker: I look a little loud, actually.
Speaker: Well, I'm stoked to have you on the show. If people are not familiar with your works, you, I think are the most prolific music creator that I've had on here yet
Speaker: you've been making song a week at least since 2014. twenty fourteen Yeah, right. And then we'll dive into your other side projects and everything.
Speaker: But I'm just very interested in meeting someone are you getting to talk about that experience. Like that's huge. Yeah, we can just start diving because it's definitely given a shape to creative work since I started. I mean, the story there, maybe I just wind back to of 2013. Yeah.
Speaker: You know, ah I had been working, I've been working in tech startups and you had, it was at that point, like six months into another startup job.
Speaker: And I was thinking, know, I haven't done a lot of playing out. I haven't done a lot of, you know, and I had been performing a lot, you say, you know, 10 years before that, like 2003 was a very busy year, like including the tour and some other stuff.
Speaker: Yeah. I was doing shows fairly consistently, but when, you know, job stuff was getting more intense, I took a step back from a lot of, you performing and scrambling to get shows or, you know, things like that.
Speaker: And, you my kids were, you know, were, you know, yeah I had a family by that point. didn't have kids in 2003. Then it was like, focus how family's doing, focus on the job.
Speaker: so yeah you know then then it was like okay focus on yeah on you know how the all the family's doing you know focus on the job and what time and attention do I have left over for music? I didn't feel like I was moved to compose a lot.
Speaker: It just seemed like you you reach the end of the day and it's, you know, I just got to punch out. but But we took a little break to visit some other family outside of town.
Speaker: And i was looking as I you know but typically do yeah once a day, look at the Peter Kern's Create Digital Music site. And he had had a link to this project, Weekly Beats. And I oh, what's that?
Speaker: And read about how that people are doing a commitment to do yeah to do a composition every week. And I thought, and I don't have a project in mind. I'm not like trying to complete an album.
Speaker: yeah I don't have songs that are just you bursting out. But I can like sit there for a few hours a week and do something. And, um, so I, this was like right before 2014 started. So I had like some, some lead time to get into it and started.
Speaker: And the other first few were kind of not all that good. It was just, you know, know, here, here's something I did in, you know, MIDI instruments in live or did some MIDI instruments and slapped a guitar on it. And well, there it is, you know? Um, and,
Speaker: Then, I mean, don't know, I want to say like a month or so in, i like had an idea for something that kind of like, oh, that's ah so an interesting idea. it was like a fake fall track.
Speaker: and And so I was like, well, that was kind of cool. That that worked out nicely. and then You were like getting in the rhythm of like making things. Yeah, it's like, well, you know because if I'm...
Speaker: If you're doing piece every week, you know sit down, it's like, well, do I have an idea? No, I don't have an idea. Well, let's see. Well, what could I do? Well, let's see. What if I did something like this? What if i you know ah approached it this way? What if I did a rock song? and What if I did a you know something very low-key and vibey or something? but you know Just changing things up a little bit.
Speaker: And, you know, I reached some that I wanted to listen to again, or I wanted to you play in the car during the commute or something. So, oh, how did I do this week? Well, you know, does this, what did I like? What did I not like?
Speaker: And and i came eventually to a point of of thinking, well, you know, i can try stuff. It's if I... you know If I am really completely... if there's nothing at all in the tank this week you know and I come up with something and it's not all that good, who is hard?
Speaker: Nobody. There's essentially no cost to trying stuff. right and And if it is bad, you know it's like, you know i I got another one coming this week.
Speaker: We'll do do something else. Yeah, when you get to that point in... the weekly beats year where you're like, screw it, I'm just going to try some stuff.
Speaker: Yeah, I was listening back through some in in prep for our conversation, and I was thinking, like some of these, like, okay, that's a lengthy experiment, this one.
Speaker: this You know, this one could be about a third the length, you know, whatever. There's like one idea here, and I stretched out. But some them were like, oh, the first half of this is pretty good. you know It's just the back half is not so good. but But I mean, you know there's...
Speaker: yeah Throughout the years, I was kind of expanding out through things and trying different stuff. And it was it was kind of a you know journey of discovery. There's been some consistent trends that I've noticed, which is, for example, one of the of the pieces we're going to look at, I think... Let me actually...
Speaker: open that live set so I can count this, which is, let's see, this one is, so looking at looking at one from the end of 2016, sorry, Ableton has to launch, but there were a lot of tracks.
Speaker: you know There were, let's see, this one in particular is
Speaker: we've got we've got some drama, some anticipation. but Drum roll, please. I have like two drums on there, like two instances of drum rack, maybe three.
Speaker: Two synths, one electric piano, three or four guitars. Let me see. Like a whole a whole band. Yeah, a whole band. It was like like a large larger band. Okay, nine tracks of instruments.
Speaker: And that's, you know, that's a lot. then I wouldn't, I probably wouldn't do that now. Yeah. I mean, i kind of want to go back to 2014 still like your, your first weekly beats experience.
Speaker: And, you know, I'm looking back to, to my weekly beats year last year you know, kind of having this like relief of like, oh I get to take a little bit of a break.
Speaker: What made you want to just like keep rolling on? it was So it was kind of an accident in a way in that I'd reached the end of the year. And during during that year, I'd had you know three, four pieces that kind of kind of stuck in my mind, like you know surprised me.
Speaker: And ah you know toward the end of the year, there there was this little glitch that showed showed the site ready to take another full year of submissions. I thought, oh, doing it again for, you know, for 2015.
Speaker: And then they corrected that, you know, and so was back to showing the full, you know, all the weeks, you know, filled. And I felt like, well, I'm kind of disappointed. I thought, you know, it's giving shape to my week in a way it's giving me something to do creatively. I'm i'm I'm not ending the week with nothing.
Speaker: he And yeah whether whether I put something out or collect it or release it or you know even tell anybody about it, whether anyone listens or not, I did a thing and maybe I learned from it.
Speaker: So I thought, well, let's just, maybe I'll i'll just keep going on SoundCloud. So i did ah filled out I ended up filling my SoundCloud account for 2015 with 52 pieces.
Speaker: Nice. and And some of those weren't bad. you know Those were... this where you know Some of them some them had had a thing to them. They stuck in a way.
Speaker: ah And you know so a lot of them were a mix of... There's a mix of like electronic kind of stuff, like some dub, some funk, some dance-related stuff. I was doing a little bit more with the local community that was involved in ah you know electronic production,
Speaker: So there there was a lot of attention toward how is your kick drum sound and stuff like that. Right. And, you know, getting getting the you making sure that the frequency bands of the kick and are not interfering with the bass and things like Right. And that was very a very useful lesson to to focus on. Mm-hmm. So you always it doing it through 2015 also gave me new stuff to take to these monthly meetings. um So it was just kind of a continual slow path of growth.
Speaker: And we we talk a lot about the community aspect of Weekly Beats. How was that in 2014?
Speaker: 2014, I did get you know some interaction from people, got got some you know some positive comments, got some not so positive comments. It seemed 2014 started trending toward like the people who sort of like to stir things up. They kind of fell off.
Speaker: and And so we had more um you know more more generally constructive comments. I was more of a busy commenter in 2014 and 2016 than later. I haven't admittedly commented as much and in recent times. I mean, it's tough.
Speaker: Yeah, for practical reasons. I'd like to It's its challenge. It is. It is. Yeah. it's it's difficult It's difficult for me to, like say, roll into Monday morning and get work done and put on weekly beats because I'm thinking like, Oh, what would I, what would I advise this person or or yeah what do I like about this? What does this remind me of?
Speaker: i i was early on, I would comment a lot of like with production notes. um So, Oh, I can hear you doing this. Like if I could hear where someone could maybe benefit from like, Oh, maybe look at, you how you're mixing this. Like if, if, if it's very, very quiet,
Speaker: then maybe there's some really low sub bass that's just chewing up a whole bunch of the sonic spectrum and then you compress it and everything else gets flat but so like things that i would notice i could comment on and you know be helpful yeah it's hard to be in listening and commenting mode yeah at the same time or like you know passive listening while you're working and be ready to like comment on something Yeah, I mean, I'd like to bring my full attention to it.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah. and And that's instructive for me and for other people as well, potentially. but it's is So I did end up missing that in 2015 because one or two people might make comments on SoundCloud.
Speaker: There's less in the way of commentary. um But it was, you it was nice to go back into 2016 and oh, here's the community again. Yeah. Yeah. saying Oh, and I recognize this person. I recognize that person.
Speaker: Yeah. so the the first year you kind of spent a lot of time just experimenting, sort of figuring out like the rhythm of making music every week.
Speaker: and liked it and then kept going in 2015. How, since you've done this so many times now on and off weekly beats years, have you noticed any overall trends of,
Speaker: learnings or like just getting the reps in Like, what is it what is it like if you could go back to like 2014 year, like this is what I've learned in all of this time?
Speaker: Yeah, I think that there's there's a number of different things. I've noticed the trend of I'm using way less tracks. um there's and And we can get to a pivot point little in a little bit where I'm down to like- got so many jumping off points. Yeah.
Speaker: ah So I kind of want to use the use chronology as a working term. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's, there were, once I had done the first year, I felt a certain amount of yeah like ah general Just because the way the community is, I felt a general safety around being able to try stuff.
Speaker: So, like for example, in 2016, a friend of mine, was talking to who this friend who was not on Weekly Beats, said, oh, I want want to hear you make a track using just cowbell.
Speaker: And, um, and so I'm like, yeah, you know, like, yeah, this, but let's do that this week. Yeah. And, uh, I didn't, I did not send you the link to that, but let me find that because it's, uh, it might be worth dropping in for a few seconds.
Speaker: it's so So I ended up, I don't recall how many tracks I did. Maybe it was an eight track one. Uh, but it, I, you found a bunch of cowbell samples yeah and arranged them in a MIDI instrument and just sort of build up this like drum line concept that, uh,
Speaker: just like a sort of marching band of cowbells, like from regular sized cowbells on up to like refrigerator sized cowbells, because the, if, if I did it that way, I could get a full arrangement of like, bass, baritone, that kind of thing.
Speaker: So you, you felt safe with the community. Yeah. I mean, it was like a little, it was a little silly, but I also wanted to make it like cool. So I yeah put this one, I'll drop the beat in, or I'll drop this in, drop a link in the Discord.
Speaker: All right, I'm queue it up here. that might That might be a place to start with the music example. I'm mixing up time signatures there too.
Speaker: right, here's the a little sample of the Cowbell one.
Speaker: That's pretty sweet. Thank you. What did it make it groove? It grooves. I think my favorite part is the refrigerator-sized cowboy.
Speaker: Well, we'll throw a link in there to listen to the whole thing, too.
Speaker: well we'll throw throw a link in there for to listen to the whole thing too and so i felt I felt a certain safety around doing that. Like, i you know, it wasn't I wasn't afraid of looking weird or silly or something. I mean, you can you could do it.
Speaker: You do whatever you want for a week. You know. if you Yeah. so already back in 2016, the like you said the the not so nice people had sort of not shown back up. And it was kind of like, sounds like the community that I know now.
Speaker: Yeah, it was it was entirely, you know, constructive and open. I think if I and look at the comments on that one, mean, you know, people seem to dig it. They thought it was thought it was entertaining.
Speaker: Digging the percussion, know, lot of comments on this. That was a fun one. But you just, you know, the freedom to try things because you as long as it you know exceeds a minute or whatever the lower cutoff is, it exceeds a minute in length.
Speaker: You know, it's, you why not do it? Why not? Why not put it out there? Yeah. And I imagine some of those experiments took you in completely new directions.
Speaker: Yeah, there there were. There were some some that I did that were lot slower. There were some, I want to say 2016, that were completely ambient. Not that I wasn't a stranger to ambient music. I've been doing everything's live that way. Yeah.
Speaker: Some were very soundscape-y. Some were ah out of the thought of, like let me just play, yeah let me build a piece that has just E in it. you know just just the Just the note E. um Some challenges. Yeah, some challenges. Why not try you know something very restrictive?
Speaker: There were some that I did... in maybe 2016, 2018 that were, was playing I think this might've been 2016, I was playing around with playing around with trying to understand all-pass filters a little bit more. I was building up these all-pass filter networks in Max4Live and doing these sort of weird delay networks and in Max4Live that I would combine with sort of extreme... you familiar with the Max4Live device humanizer?
Speaker: I'm not. I'm not even familiar with Max for Live. Okay. So ah yeah in the Ableton world, ah there's a Ableton Suite, for example, is able has a bunch of built-in instruments.
Speaker: One of the features that you also get is what's called Max for Live. And Max is a graphical programming language for...
Speaker: essentially yeah anything numerical, but also for audio. there's there's You could do um control data and MIDI stuff in like message-based Macs, but then there's the Macs signal processing, which lets you do um essentially live audio stuff.
Speaker: And it was one of the, it was invented, I want to say in the eighties by um Miller S. Puckett. He was at IRCOM at the time and he'd come up with a system and left Earcom.
Speaker: i and And when he got his next position, which i think was at UCSD, he wanted to do something similar, but he wanted to make it open source. So he also invented pure data.
Speaker: And those two things are around today. there's you know um Max was eventually brought out of Earcom and is developed by a company called Cycling74.
Speaker: And yeah Miller continues to work on pure data. um Wow. But the, ah I'm going say 2016 was interesting because that was when Cycling74 was, they may i don't know exactly how this was done, but around that time, Ableton bought Cycling74, which is actually great for both companies.
Speaker: because there's you know continuance for Cycling74, which is this sort of small niche company. And i don't know I don't know of other financials, but I know personally I felt a sense of relief. Oh, okay. Max is not going to disappear.
Speaker: This has a path forward. And one of the features of that was for Ableton to include in in Ableton Live, the ability to make your own Macs stuff.
Speaker: yeah The input output would be, you could think of it as as essentially having a graphical language for developing your own VSTs. Got it. So i was I was fiddling with that.
Speaker: um And and maybe making weekly beats tracks with Macs for Live? Well, were we're involving Max for Live in some way. like okay he's the The reason why I was interested in all-pass filters was there's a are Are you familiar with Valhalla DSP?
Speaker: ah Yes. Okay. So Sean Costello, the Valhalla guy, he in 2015 gave some talks at the um Seattle um Audio Engineering Society meetings on the history of reverb. And you can find these. they're You can find them and listen to them. They're they're actually quite brilliant.
Speaker: The one is called A Thousand Years of Reverb. And then the next month he came back for another talk where he was, the thousand years of reverb talks about, you say starting with stone cathedrals as essentially, know, reverb chambers, right? They were built for that sound.
Speaker: um And you go back to the music created at that time for those places, the reverb is an essential part of things. There's,
Speaker: a like For example, like you could look at fast passages in string quartets that may have been written in those times. And you know they're really kind of meant to simulate chords because you things get smeary with this big reverb-y space.
Speaker: and And he you know takes us up through smaller echo chambers, concert halls, um plate reverbs, spring reverbs, and then into early you know early digital stuff.
Speaker: And then the next talk, he focused more on the 90s with what the Alesis Quadriverb and stuff like that.
Speaker: I'll send you the links. I'll to dig them up. But yeah there were these really amazing talks. And the Quadriverb, which is like you know the Sandová Tekker, there's this kind of to it.
Speaker: and it's it's got this it's got like this really unique digital smear to it. And some of it has to do with the bit depth. And I can't remember if it's 10 or 12, but you know, it's not, it's, it's more than eight bits, but it's not quite 16 quality. So there's, there's a little bit of, you know, stair-steppiness.
Speaker: Mm-hmm. But some of the quadroverbness comes from the use of all-pass filters to kind of smear things out and make it not so not so delight delay, delay, delay, delay. like It would be very boingy, like as a slapback kind of thing.
Speaker: Got to add some natural elements to it. Yeah, but it's entirely not natural because of of how they're simulating it. But it also ends up being a really cool sound. So I was like, oh, I want to kind of get get my hands dirty with this and play a bit with the with with what the all-pass filters are doing. I don't i don't think I really cracked the nature of it for myself, but it was like it was an interesting experiment.
Speaker: I mean, it ended You got me Googling so much stuff over here. yeah It ended up, I mean, like i I crashed live a bunch of times because the the plugins that I was building out, like had these all these filters in them and I had done it very inefficiently and essentially made the program unusable while I was using.
Speaker: But it was it was like, know, education. And does this break off into a slight segue into your live performance stuff?
Speaker: to some degree because i was i was doing i started using pure data some years before um and pure data was attractive because you could just like download it and it was free whereas max you know came with a price tag um and i was you' playing around with pure data I initially, when I started performing, i was doing on was doing sort of like guitar through pedals and simultaneously triggering a bunch of manipulated samples with a laptop and using a piece of software that a local band had developed for themselves.
Speaker: The band was Operation Reinformation. And they had this piece of software called Back to Basics. So I loaded a bunch of stuff in there. And um then there there was an OS change that made that unusable, unfortunately.
Speaker: so So I had to to figure out something else. And I ended up using a Max patch that was developed by... you Because Max will let you develop patches that you can run a standalone application. there's one person who developed one that it was like a bunch of delay. you could set up a bunch of delay lines and add some remodulation and some other stuff.
Speaker: And i was using that for performance for a few years. um And then some OS change rendered that impossible to two and work with. And to kind of catch everyone up, you run, this is another Bandcamp account, SNWVSignWave.
Speaker: Yes. though And you've been doing a live stream ambient show every Monday.
Speaker: Since when? so Since 2020. Since March of 2020, when lockdown started. All right. Lockdown project. that yeah Although the sine wave project began earlier in that I was doing some... I was coming up with patches that would just... There were like banks of oscillators, like sine wave oscillators, hence the sine wave thing. The SNW beam. Yeah.
Speaker: That's a sweet band cam name. it it it it does it does It seemed fairly natural to me. Some of it was also um influenced by the band Silkworm, who you know their with their t-shirts, of which I have a few, ah with SKWN. Oh, yeah. Sinewave makes some sense.
Speaker: It also made sense to somebody else. Somebody else started a YouTube channel with that name. Mm-hmm. uh years after um i'd been i'd been active on band camp for years and recently found this channel there's like one song on it but and so since 2020 you've been making a song a week and doing a live performance yes on mondays yeah essentially there's some weeks i took off for various reasons i mean i've made i've kept the song a week commitment
Speaker: And with the the sine wave project, you compile them... each performance into essentially an album, right? Yeah.
Speaker: it's like an album a week as well as a song a week. Yeah. Right now you've got 258 albums or 257, about to be 258. I think I'll probably put out the eighth tonight.
Speaker: Okay. So by the time this airs, there'll be 258. Although if it airs a couple of weeks, there'll be, I might be closing on 260. All right. So probably close to 260 at this point.
Speaker: Like that is just astounding to me. yeah it's so like it In a way, this kind of goes back to what you would you said at the beginning, which is the thought of how how they may not so much inconceivable or unimaginable, but maybe maybe just you looking at where you finished 52 pieces how do you get 592?
Speaker: seems like a long road, I wasn't setting out
Speaker: you know like that's he makes it seems like it seems like a long road but i wasn't setting out to do ah particular number. it was more, i want to integrate music into my weekly life.
Speaker: yeah i want to I want to make sure that I continue to engage in regular music making. as opposed to having a plan. And in a way, I think that's, there's a, I think it was, um there's a, there's a story about the photographer, Jerry U. Welsman, who was teaching somewhere, I, I want to say in Florida, I'm,
Speaker: There's like three different versions of this story, but one of them was that he had assigned half of his class to do to make exactly one photograph that was like the best perfect photograph they could make.
Speaker: ah right And the other half of the crowd the other half of the class was assigned, take as many photos as you possibly can. yeah And the the at the end of the semester, the the as many photos as you possibly can side of the class produce better work than the and the one perfect photo.
Speaker: It's those reps. it It is about the reps. And yeah, and yeah like if this photo sucks, who cares? i'll do you' you know You'll do the next one. and So what keeps you going is just knowing that like every week you're going to create something. Going to, you're going to do something.
Speaker: And, you know, if I'm really busy or distracted or, you know, life is going on and, or you know, we're, we're looking at the world and feeling, uh, you know, feeling kind of at sea what's, you know,
Speaker: What can I do? Well, one thing I can do is I can make something and maybe it'll be good. yeah There's there there is a stretch of work that I was doing. 2015, 2016, up through
Speaker: And like there there was this period where he was also doing a lot of like funk related pieces. And some of that was just like kind of psyching myself up, you kind of putting, putting that attitude into the music.
Speaker: There's ah a, you know, keep going sort of message to myself. And giving your yourself a pep talk through music. It's like, but yeah what do I want to hear right now? You know, well, know, it's,
Speaker: know that's That's one guiding principle for some pieces. Yeah. and i'm oh god i was i'm I'm curious because like I feel like I'm still trying to get into the really experimental phase.
Speaker: like I feel like my first year was just kind of understanding how I make songs. And ah while also like trying to hit a deadline while still trying to push the boundaries in some ways.
Speaker: And, you know, naturally there's like patterns that develop. and just listening through your catalog, which we'll get get into more of the listening later, but. you definitely have like made like hard turns at certain points.
Speaker: So how do you how do you look back and say like, oh, I really wanted to kind of take this like a completely different direction in some cases when I've been doing all this other experimenting or like I've been kind of in like,
Speaker: doing the same thing for a while. Yeah. Yeah. there's There's a kind of there definitely stretches where I felt like I was treading water. And okay so that's natural. Yeah, that's kind of that's natural. Yeah. It's like, oh, I'm just getting a piece out. OK, well, there it is.
Speaker: ah And that's OK. You know, that's it's OK just to put the reps in. Yeah. there there was There was a teacher I had years ago who whose suggestion in in writing was to write the crap out, was was her advice, which was to say, um you know do yeah again, do as much work as possible to the point that you have exhausted your your reflexes and you've become bored by your common moves.
Speaker: And even now, I mean, are times when I'll be like, you know, that melody is a little familiar. I've probably or that figure is familiar. I've probably done that a couple other times.
Speaker: Yeah. But, you know, it's, you know, oh, am I ripping myself off or is it expressing a motif? You know, that's the that's the question.
Speaker: But the the thought there is, know, if if i notice it, then i can yeah i ah could say, i'm going to make sure that I don't repeat something this week.
Speaker: one One thing I will do is rotate through instruments and say, you know like oh that i have a bunch of guitars and many of them are in different tunings. So it's like, oh, I'll use this one, which is in this tune.
Speaker: Or I'll use this that has this capability. or you know this one is particularly purpose and so can it. built for this purpose and so i can use it change a part of the process. Yeah, exactly. It's some sort of effect on the outcome. Yeah. And and so i' I'm limiting myself in some ways, but I'm opening up possibilities in another way.
Speaker: Then I push against that like this, for example, i think it was actually 2014 late 2014. i went to this like gear swap thing and I brought a pedal that I wasn't using.
Speaker: And ah this one guy had made this extremely cheap guitar out of like a neck with a smashed acoustic with the ah frets ground off and this plywood body. And it was sort of like what what you would...
Speaker: Like if if you were a high, this ah this is not an insult. This is if you're a high school student in woodshop and you kind of remembered seeing Klein guitar and and you wanted to reproduce it from memory, like this is the kind of thing you'd cut out.
Speaker: Yeah. And I like I need to have this. So like, will you trade a pedal for it? is Yes. And so like I have this fretless that I mean, it's tuned with zither pins and it's like very crude, but it's like there's going to be songs in here.
Speaker: You know, there's there's yeah i in my responding to the instrument and and working with it, there's going to be something that comes out. Yeah, that's that's super interesting. Changing some part of the process, like say there's some some stuff in 2017 that I did that I thought I'm going to take out all the direct signal and have just the reverb.
Speaker: and that was cool. um Some of them were like... Oh, just the wet signal. it Just the wet signal. And, know, I'm going to have the drums in the last minute.
Speaker: You know, just on impulse. Like, let's, you know, let's kind of upend the process and see what happens. Yeah, because, i I mean, in a way, what makes music interesting is the unexpected.
Speaker: And so and you're kind of like, throwing unexpected things at yourself to to sort of suss out some unexpected music. Yeah, to get a different response. I mean, it's sort of like the there's the debate around using large language models for generating music.
Speaker: And I think that stuff is generally pretty boring. you I want to hear hear the struggle. yeah I want to hear but hear someone try for something, and maybe 60% of what they're trying fails.
Speaker: But then this other thing, they've reached this other thing somehow that they wouldn't have got to. like That's but like victory. yeah that's That's someone pulling something valuable from chaos.
Speaker: yeah Whereas if a machine just grinds through a bunch of examples and comes out with something like who cares? Yeah. I mean, I think that's why everyone appreciates art is that there's the struggle inside.
Speaker: Yeah, and and you always, you have your goal, you have what you were going for, and you one almost never reaches it. It's not like, oh, that worked out perfectly, exactly the way I intended. No, there's going to be stuff in there that surprised you. Like, I will sit i will now sit down to, yeah I'll have like an idea in mind, I'll sit down and I'll start working on it.
Speaker: And then the thing that actually comes out is different. so Oh, yeah you know yeah. Okay, so let's follow that. I've got to get a piece done. I've got to, you know, let's follow what I've got as opposed to sitting there grinding away at something that's not happening.
Speaker: Oh, for sure. Yeah, i mean, I ah definitely feel that of like, here's the direction I think something's going. Let me just continue experimenting. And then you go back to like the original version and you're like, wow, this is like nothing like what i set out to do.
Speaker: Right, right. You always end up in a different place. Yeah. So so each each one is a discovery. on So the the we we did one thing we did sort of get off the path with was the sine wave stuff, which is that I'd been doing banks and megs of sine wave stuff, and then I was asked to do an installation.
Speaker: I thought, well, let's... And the way this installation would work was people would make like certain sounds. There was like a room filled with bubble wrap. was like, well, there's nothing sonically interesting about a bubble pop, so what can I do with that? And I was like, well...
Speaker: Well, I could delay it, you know but then it's just like the frequency spectrum is not interesting because it's all the same bit. Well, then I should make pitch shifts.
Speaker: So then I started doing this big network in pure data to do pitch shifts and delays. And said, well, if I set it at one setting, that's going to be boring, right? So I've got to make a change. So then I did this thing where I'd have a random value selector and then a random amount of time to reach the value. Then you know once once some setting reaches that value, then it gets another random value. And so I'd set this thing up and let it go and it would be doing you know all kinds of wild stuff. It was
Speaker: uh it's kind like i don't i the experience i had at the time being in that installation was kind of like being in a brain eraser or something it was just it was like going through something now the the live project is like what is your motivation for continuing to do that because it feels like a different kind of creation than like making a song Yeah, it is a different kind of creation. it goes back to when I started public performance, some of the thinking there was how can I as a solo act do something? Because I could sit there and write songs with pieces, but then I have to like get everybody together and make this band work.
Speaker: Whereas if I'm creating more soundscape-y kinds of things, then I can do that as a solo person. Or if I'm go if i'm intending to go out and perform as a solo person, what kind of structure can I have that's going to make this kind of work? So I've gone through different iterations of that that would let me you know play you play guitar and or electronics live. There was one that pitchtshift thing ah pitch pitch shift and delay thing that I did. I did a number of performances um around that.
Speaker: I used it once for um the, I did an installation at the second conference on deep listening. which was in 2014.
Speaker: fourteen I'd also gone to the first and done a little sine wave installation there. and I ended up ultimately getting my deep listening certificate. Awesome. When i when i put that in the I put that in a hallway and people kind of had to walk through it.
Speaker: And actually, and this is like a this is a big thing for me was Pauline Oliveras and her partner, Ione, made some sounds into it. And the patch kind of freaked out. you know it was something some Something weird was happening there.
Speaker: So there was definitely some energy going on. But she she said it was fun. so I'm like, okay, Pauline Olivero said this piece was fun. I'm going you knowm going to go with that. But I was fighting feedback the whole time.
Speaker: And you one of the one of the student interns at Rensselaer Polytechnic was like, oh, let's let's see if we can figure this out. Oh, we but will put a felt filter in there. And I was like, oh, yeah, okay, I can build a notch filter real fast and put it in there.
Speaker: and And that so as I made it work enough because it was like a square hallway, so it was very you know resonant. And I thought after that, you the next, the the literal next time someone asked me to do a show, I'm going to do the show, but I'm going to embrace feedback.
Speaker: I'm not fighting anymore. So i I went to the show um with the laptop, a converter, and a couple of microphones, and I just like held the microphones out in front of the PA, and that was the sound source.
Speaker: that That's one of the earlier pieces on the sine wave band count. It was July 2014 or something like that. Awesome. But it's all feedback. And I did a bunch of those.
Speaker: And then I did some pieces with guitar through that. And was kind of like, those are kind of seasick, kind of because you play a note and then the pitch, you know. But it was an experiment, you know. Yeah.
Speaker: And then I thought, you know after After a while, yeah that that system tended to work a little better if I did oscillators into it rather than guitar. But then I started thinking, and this is 2019-ish, end of 2019, what about a about ah like a simpler delay that's not going to change?
Speaker: you know Maybe I could like do some long delays. sort of the Frippertronics model, but do four of them, you know, and and also make it several several like I could stick some notes into these different length delays and you know they'll come around again, but each time they'll be offset differently.
Speaker: So then now I've got a field of notes to respond to. Right. Like I can i I could play very fast if I if i needed to, but at the same time, like that's going to be dangerous because it's going to use up a lot of the sonic field.
Speaker: um it's going to be It's not going to be a discovery. You're just going to, oh, there's that thing again. Got it. Whereas if it's these longer delay banks comes around again, like, well, i've now i've got like I've got a course to navigate here.
Speaker: you know I've got got you know these number of notes coming around again. Whatever I play has to be compatible. or or it has to be dissonant in an interesting way. So I ah did a few shows with that and that was promising.
Speaker: Then the pandemic hit. And then you had to move it to a live show. Yeah. Well, my thought was since I had done, a done so live why shereen yeah i had done some live streaming before there was like a few years before and was asked to do a show in Memphis.
Speaker: and I couldn't get away for it. So I worked it out with the promoters that I would live stream from home. And it was it was and it worked, it was amazing. it was like, you know, that ah the promoter plugged his phone. This is the Memphis Concrete Festival.
Speaker: the One of the the you organizers plugged his phone into the PA and I'm like sitting right here you know like live streaming this you to this performance in Memphis and he's texting back, they're applauding. you know it well. It went all right.
Speaker: And so I had done live streaming before by by setting up this Icecast instance in the cloud and streaming to it. And when they so when lockdown happened, I saw friends lamenting online, I was going to go to these shows this week, and now I can't because there's nothing happening. Everything's canceled.
Speaker: I thought, well, yeah I've done live streaming before. Here, I'll do something. It went okay. Some people listened to it. And thought, well, you know I might as well put it out. I might as well do another one next week.
Speaker: And what? I'll do eight of them and the pandemic will be over. and ah So then it became a thing that sort of snowballed where in the early days of it, there were it was kind of like, how do I fill an hour?
Speaker: like got know That's yeah it's a lot lot of time to be just improvising stuff. And I got better at it. um Just from repetition, I had some disastrous tech problems. Some weeks had to be like, oh, you know well, the no show tonight, but I'll be on in a few days.
Speaker: um There were, especially in the early pandemic, there were people setting up other streaming events. And um yeah there's a community that i'm I'm part of that was doing a lot of this sort of thing, like a lot of in-person events, and we moved them online.
Speaker: So i you know did some stuff for those, but they were on Twitch, so that got me into doing Twitch streaming. Sweet. was like, oh, well, that's that's great. And I can see the comments. I can see that, you know, wow. As opposed to... People are applauding.
Speaker: Yeah, as opposed IceCast where, like, I don't get any stats and I don't... No one can comment unless it's, like, on social media in some other way. No human feedback. Yeah, so I got more human feedback this way. And, you know, it's like there's not... I mean, some streamers will be like, oh, here's my space. And, i you know, it gets you can see have a very small room here. And, you know, there's not really a good place to put a camera. it's so I...
Speaker: put up a visualizer, like have a little you know all right sine wave visualizer that just responds to the live waveform and changes color because ah you know if if we change and we rotate through the colors, that's at least a little visually different.
Speaker: Oh, yeah. So that you that's the practice that I followed in doing these Mondays. After a certain point, the hour seemed not quite long enough to bring to completion. So yeah so at this point, it's an hour and a half.
Speaker: And an album. Yeah, and an album. An album every week. Awesome. Well, I think we should start listening to some of this music. Yeah, yeah. I'm going divert from my my usual stuff.
Speaker: And we're going to go kind of on a history tour of one zeros music and start with 2014. Oh, let's see. What we have in there?
Speaker: All right. So you sent me ah by cell. Right. Right. So that that was interesting. Well, let's listen to it and we'll come back and talk. Okay, great.
Speaker: you
Speaker: That was Sell by Sell from Weekly Beats 2014.
Speaker: that was cell by cell from weekly beats twenty fourteen yeah that that one was The impetus for that was I had just gotten a pedal.
Speaker: It was a germanium fuzz. So wanted to and to kind of lean into that. um Yeah. you know And you did. yeah I think I had the bass line first.
Speaker: So that was like the, you know, I was just kind of going with it. um And it it it ended up being like satisfying and ah kind of had me chasing the funk thing for a while. Not immediately, but i know like in the next few years, you know like, oh, well, you know what do I feel like doing? oh we'll do we'll do some funk, you got got a wah pedal got uh in fact i think this that prompted me to get a wah pedal there's there's why in there that it it's it's a purpose-built thing for another instrument so i ended up uh kind of kind of wedging it in there somehow and this was 37 yeah of yeah so yeah of
Speaker: yeah yeah 2014 and it just kind of like woke something up in a way that that's like one of the ones I think of from from that year where like okay yeah I really hit something that I'm happy with yeah I really like the the like kind of poly rhythm going on where it's sort of like upsetting at some points and then like comes back where we're like okay and now we're cool and then like it happens again you know Some of that is also the the the the one fuzz pedal because it's modeled on the Vox repeater pedal.
Speaker: So there's there's this hard tremolo that's like the spike that's going on. Oh yeah, that's what it is. But it's also not controllable. Like I can't lock it to a MIDI time clock. So I got to get as close as I can. and That makes sense. you know So that's where it's drifting around a little bit. Got as as good as I could.
Speaker: i i think it's kind of a cool element to it. Yeah, it's a little it's a little less controllable. or If it were like rigid and on the on the bar line or something, it might not be as engaging. So this one you said kind of, when you think of 2014, you think a lot about this song. Yeah, that's the that's the one that's like, okay, yeah, it wouldn't have existed if I hadn't sat down to do something that way.
Speaker: yeah Yeah, I did. I didn't go into that week particularly inspired more so than usual. it was just like, oh, I've got a pedal, you know, got it. You don't want to use that, you know. what One of those weeks where like, it all worked out. And that was actually really cool.
Speaker: everything Everything fell into place. All right. We're going to keep it moving on since I'm playing more songs this week than I ever have to ah to hear the history of one zero.
Speaker: The next one up is going to be Winter Sun from 2016.
Speaker: That was Winter Sun from 2016 and a full band. You said how many tracks? think nine tracks on that.
Speaker: And I would say dramatically different. Yeah. From 2014 that we just heard. yeah the the Well, the 2014 track was a little bit of an outlier and that's,
Speaker: it was, it you know, kind of went hard in that way. There are other ones that from other years that that went hard in their way. But um this one, ah yeah so by the time we got to 2016, you know, twenty sixteen you know the part of it was kind of wanting to sum up the the year vibe, the changing the year feeling,
Speaker: It was a little warmer, I remember, so it was just kind of there was like vibe. You know, it's hard to capture. Yeah. But I was doing a lot of like, you know multiple drum machines at the time, plus, you know, electric piano, some synth. The synth bass was a go to because you're easy enough to enough to just like tap out on the keyboard.
Speaker: um And this was the final song of 2016. And so that yeah yeah and so you i that was
Speaker: So that you know that guitar I'd gotten earlier this earlier that year and just wanted to get a bit of a dubstep thing in a way, but also add some guitar to it.
Speaker: And so there's a sort of yeah moving between um know melancholy and assuredness kind of a thing, sort of sort of a mixed sensibility.
Speaker: But I do think of that song a lot just because I i nailed this feeling. Yeah, it it does have a great feel to it. And we were talking briefly while the song was playing that gets cut out that I was like, it's cool to see just how your song style and feel has changed. I know we've only listened to one from 2014 and one from 2016.
Speaker: Very small sample size, but when I think about the tracks that I make, it's hard for me to really see the evolution if I continue to do this, but it's cool to look back at yours and just see how much you've kind of like ah morphed and reinvented and, you know, which we're going to continue to hear as we go through these.
Speaker: think I think it also it kind of goes back a little bit to one of the things you had mentioned earlier was that there there are sort of left turns throughout you know the years where maybe a seam runs out.
Speaker: you know There's something, it's kind of like, I'm not feeling doing this right now. Or you like it's been a while since I've done funk stuff. Because I feel like, well, you know, I explored that and expressed that. And, know, I mean other people do it very well.
Speaker: So, you know, do we need my adding something to the pile just to say i did it? Right. So it's sort of like a like find find a way to be good at your own original stuff versus kind of creating other people's stuff so much? Maybe not so much that as, mean, a genre is a framework and i you i could yeah i could try to do something you know for the first time and probably do it badly.
Speaker: And there could be learning that comes from that. So it's still worth doing. But also, you know i have to look at and what am i what am i going to feel like completing in a week, for example. like um I think also with the with the album of a week going on as well,
Speaker: there is you know there's a certain amount of time and attention required there. And it makes me perhaps a little less likely to um spend time working on a drum arrangement necessarily. You know, like I've got you know you know kind of make sure that I'm focusing on you know on your life. you know Life has to happen.
Speaker: but it's a there's so there's there's Everything's kind of an opportunity cost in a way. There don't if i there are some weeks where of it gets extremely busy and I'll say, well, okay, about all that I can do right now for practical reasons is do an ambient improv.
Speaker: There we are. you know That's that's That's out there. you know that That took me a little bit longer than the time it took to play it. you know The time it takes to listen to it is about the time it took to create the thing. Exactly. and Yeah. and That doesn't necessarily devalue it. that's more um Those kinds of improvisations are, I'm very close to the source of you musical inspiration because i've i've I've started the clock, I'm in the moment,
Speaker: you know, I have to come up with something and, you sometimes I'll do three or four of them and it's like, okay, well, this is the best one. And you don't have the time for second guessing, like trying to perfect like all the other things when you're composing a song. Yeah. I mean, I've done those, I've done that too. Like for example, the, the, um,
Speaker: There's a the one community I'm part of, which is also where you know where I know JWH from and and Emily. was We were doing these various in-person get-togethers. And i think Josh had mentioned you know ah how I had a conversation with them and got them interested in the Weekly Beats thing. um and that That was actually in 2016 at this one event up in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.
Speaker: remember working on you know working on my track in the in the motel room. i'm like, okay, well, I've got i've got to like kind of remove myself from what's happening for a few hours while i work on this thing. And you know there was an opportunity cost there. It was like, okay, I'm working on this thing now. And and yeah I'm kind of happy with the the thing that came out as a result.
Speaker: But also like you know just trying to find the right balance. and Maybe you know some weeks require... more more stuff um but i mean if i go in with like a a bunch of drummer arrangements of oh well i've got i want to do like you know four tracks of drums and two bases and it's like well now i've got it now i'm gonna spend time making all this stuff work together yeah yeah and i mean that makes sense you've got a lot of stuff going on and a lot a lot of goals and Sometimes those goals don't match up with two drum tracks and, you know, like a huge arrangement.
Speaker: Yeah, there's there's another factor also, which is that I think the more tracks that you throw at something, sometimes it's you can you can sustain interest by switching instruments or effects around.
Speaker: But there's a question of how how much in how much interest can you sustain by focusing on say melody or chords or timing um and that that may that may lead us right up to the next left turn um which is which is the star hopping yes all right let's listen to this one
Speaker: you
Speaker: are
Speaker: are a
Speaker: That was Star Hopping, and this was from Week 39, 2021. Yes. Yeah, so that for that, I remember at that time I was listening to Shara Lombardi's bit, and was thinking about, that was a band of two guitars, you know, two guitars in voice.
Speaker: And, you know, there's like a fairly rich vibe um with that minimalist setup. And so I was thinking a bit about that. at the time, I was also in ah in a work situation in which I was being paged fairly frequently and fortunately working at home.
Speaker: But there was
Speaker: you know I, I did not want to spend too much more time sitting in front of the computer working on, you know, working on drum placements and, and, uh, MIDI, you know, MIDI's piano roll stuff.
Speaker: Yeah. And, uh, and so I thought, well, let's just, let's just take a left turn and try that. And then that ended up, uh, kind of, uh, being the detour of the next subsequent years. Uh, I mean, I, I went back for, for some pieces to do more full band stuff.
Speaker: Um, but yeah But the minimalist guitar stuff kind of became the norm. Yes, there it became sort of the the current the current landscape. I mean, some of the thought there was, you know, what can I you what can i do with two or three tracks. Star hopping, I'd like five tracks.
Speaker: Not all going at once, but you know different different flavors. Yeah, different layers. Yeah. and and I thought, well you know what can I do with like three? and three's ah Three is a fairly natural number.
Speaker: for guitar if you've got like if you've got you got your bridge pickup, your neck pickup, and you've got both pickups. and Because if you if you record the same way,
Speaker: On two different tracks, you can end up with some comb filtering when you things are out of phase, ah um which can be a sound in its own, but it was something i was trying to avoid.
Speaker: on But also, it gave keeping a I fell into this thing of ah keeping it as direct and unaffected as possible. And some of the thinking there was, well, now i have to work on my arrangement, so I'm not hitting the same note at the same time in two different channels.
Speaker: Now I have to think about, I'm not giving myself too much sonic variation, so can I make a a piece flow and sustain interest with chord progressions and melody changes and timing changes?
Speaker: you know Can I make this thing out of parts and have it, you know, have it flow together into a kind of whole. Yeah. Whereas, you know, some pieces I've done in the past were kind of like floaty. And i mean, even like the beat oriented pieces, you know, there's, it gets into a mood and kind of stays there, even though certain things vary.
Speaker: But there's, but also like, you there aren't too many chord changes in some of the earlier stuff. Yeah. And that's, and I mean, now some things like there's like like going back to cell by cell, you know, that's pretty much kind of,
Speaker: that's a maybe more modal. I mean, it's got, you know, it's got pretty much one chord. Uh, the, and the, you know, the variation is, is in the melody of the lead guitar and the melody of the bass, uh, and then some dropouts.
Speaker: Um, well, maybe there's one chord changing, but still, it's, uh, it sounds like you are kind of like stripping everything down and focusing on,
Speaker: really the core parts of what makes a piece interesting. Yeah. I think that's, that's fair to say. and one, one thing I've noticed in this period also is the great variation that comes from just like how my touch is on the instrument.
Speaker: Yeah. Like all the, there's room to notice all those like subtleties. And like you said, like if you've got three guitar tracks, It's like what rhythms can you make with one guitar and then what melodies and how do they not clash with each other? And this is kind of like a whole ah exploration of constraints in a way. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: There's there's the the having multiple tracks means it's a conversation. So you know there's something something going on and then I can respond to it.
Speaker: yeah So it's like there's always the, usually actually start very quickly. Just sit down and start playing something. Oh, well that might have a thing in it. Okay, well, what but if I respond to that? Okay, now I got two things. How would I respond to that? Do I put chords under it? Do i know do i have like a third voice? What do wanna do with that?
Speaker: And that's kind of occupied the last few years for the most part. There there were some some detours.
Speaker: i I feel like I might be coming, you know, to the end of this in some, you know, fairly... Interesting. You know, not... I mean, none of the future is foreseeable, but... Yeah.
Speaker: You know, there there have been a few junctures where I thought, you know, i'm kind of, you kind of feeling like there's you know is is there is there a sense of discovery or is this a retread and typically i'll feel something that i can discover is is happening um but is that like you're almost feeling like you're in that sort of musical rut realm and you need to take a left turn somewhere maybe not so much rut, as but in the sense of like compressing something down, then there's energy. you You put energy into squeezing something or reducing something, getting something smaller, and then it breaks out. And there's an expansion. Yeah.
Speaker: So it might be in in that sense. But then they're thinking in in the terms of this genre, there's There are some approaches that I kind of keep going at. and then when i sit down to actually do them, they end up being denser.
Speaker: Like there's, you kind of wanted to do something very sparse with a lot of ah lot of space in it. And I haven't really done that yet. So it might be might be using the same working methods, but exp expanding in form. Reducing even more.
Speaker: reducing but also inviting inviting more silence in. that might be you know That might be one approach. Letting it breathe more.
Speaker: Letting it breathe more. There might be, there's some pieces that I've done in in this realm that have been more dialogues between instruments rather than, I've typically stayed to one instrument for each week out of the thought that, um first off, I mean,
Speaker: really intonation of guitars. I mean, like you can do your own intonation and I do, you know, work on my instruments. um But, you know, fret placement is not terribly consistent across instruments.
Speaker: Mm-hmm. So, you know, like I can kind of hear out of tune this on on some. Yeah. Now, I did build an instrument specifically for that.
Speaker: i do want to talk about that. Yeah. I think we should listen to Eastern next. yes So this is toward the beginning of the. This is the 2022 when I was, I, week forty one for foods part of 2021 and part of 2022, I'd gotten away from the solo guitar thing and gone back to fuller arrangements. But then I got back into, know, the, you know three, four guitars again with this one.
Speaker: And I mean, maybe a few weeks before my memory of it is that this was fairly early on in trying it again. got it. All right, here we go. Eastern.
Speaker: you
Speaker: Bye.
Speaker: All right, that was Eastern. And you said that this one was kind of like a bit of a breakthrough moment for you? Yeah, there's, I mean, there's there's the the middle eight section that, that, um, that,
Speaker: seems a bit delicate and then it kind of comes out into this stronger section and that that has a you has a kind of very a very yearning melody to it uh that was like oh yeah i really i did hit something i pulled something out of the ether here with this one love it when that happens So it was it was a little of a surprise, i think.
Speaker: So that prompted me to think, oh, I can get enough of these pieces together and put them out. I'll do some collections. Got it. So this was sort of a moment where you're like, oh, I kind of like this style and I'm hitting some good things with it. Maybe I can make like an album of all this style.
Speaker: Yeah, I'd been thinking of collecting a bunch of pieces together and putting them on because I hadn't done that with the Weekly Beats before. and and some of the other pieces that were similar an approach,
Speaker: I would do them and i think, you know, I've got something here. you know, when I listen to it, like, you know, by the, you know, third or fourth day of listening to it, it's kind of like, oh, this is, you know, maybe this goes on a bit too long or maybe there's not quite enough here or, you know, I'd take that section out or whatever. And that, you this one didn't require too much fiddling. There were a few little timing tweaks, but it was, know,
Speaker: the the overall shape of it the direction the melodies were all you know the okay this is you know this is leading to something this this feels like a how do you feel like
Speaker: your style had changed from star hopping that we just heard to eastern ah know that this one is more going more towards like a true clean guitar sound without the distortion, but there's still similar like minimal guitar tracks. Yeah. There's, there's still a minimal approach in a lot of ways. in some ways I think this is a little less minimal than star hopping because I'm not letting these big notes sustain into ah into a big reverb. I'm making it more, this is,
Speaker: There's like a rhythm section. there's Yeah. And then we pass off the rhythm section, like which guitar, which which pickup is doing the rhythm. Just ah a little bit of sonic variety. But typically, yeah, there's like there's a rhythm section.
Speaker: it'll come in, it'll drop out, or the rhythm section will now go to a different voice. and So it's kind of a it's more of a conversation, whereas star hopping was kind of uh one thing with a lot of supporting the big chords got it but this is more of like a trio in a conversation more finger picking more ah more engaged like ah maybe a more immediate engagement with the instrument
Speaker: Yeah. You can hear a little bit more of the details. Whereas with the fuzz, you know, I can, I can, can vary from note to note, but it's, it's all kind of squashed.
Speaker: And to kind of touch on what you were just mentioning about your instruments is I know that you have a and I think this is the guitar you were talking about building a just intonation guitar.
Speaker: Yeah, that that kind of comes from one of the sine wave performances in a way. So the... and twenty twenty three i did a ah an In performance and as part of the PRF BBQ in Chicago.
Speaker: And I flew in for it, so I didn't want to fly with a guitar. I ended up borrowing a friend's guitar, which is a you an aluminum baritone guitar owned by Christopher Williams from Maple Stave.
Speaker: And they're a band from North Carolina who are very dynamic and complex. you know Two baritone guitars and drums, very intense and you know very impactful.
Speaker: And one of the things that I didn't do was I didn't think to ask, was it in ah conventional tuning or was it? And it was not in a conventional tuning. And I did not find that out until my set began. i'm like but Oh, no.
Speaker: So of leaning way over trying hear this thing acoustically before I fade up the notes with the volume pedal because I didn't quite know what I was going to get. but And so that that performance was me learning how to play that guitar.
Speaker: But the the exciting thing was in the last piece, i I had this minor second going on on the low string.
Speaker: And so I had like one, I put one of the notes in one delay bank and the other in another. And when they would come around, this phenomenal pulsing would happen in the PA. a And I can't really hear it in these headphones, but if I play it in the car, the car shakes.
Speaker: like, this is fantastic. This is absolutely hilarious. um So, yeah know, I was like, yeah, i want to I want to do more with that. And, you know maybe if I, you know, start getting to like, you know, half tones and quarter tones. I mean, half tones we already have, but quarter tones. And yeah, so was thinking about that. And i ended up looking into a couple different builders who made Nex that way. And finally finding, you know, Ron Sword with ah metatonal music.
Speaker: and commissioned a knack. So, you know, I said, well, this is what I want. And kind of want like 24 frets per octave. And then he said, well, okay, what tuning do you want? And so I was like, well, I kind of want it to be close-ish to, I want every other to be close-ish to, you know, conventional fretting, but the nearest just intonation interval.
Speaker: And then I'd like some other just intonation interval in in between. So the, The actual fretting scheme, okay now I can no longer play bar chords. I can't play them on this instrument because the frets are too close together. It's too fuzzy.
Speaker: Yeah, I saw a picture of it. I was like, whoa, that's a lot of frets. It's a lot of frets. It does lend itself to finger picking, although my fingers are a little big for the low end of the neck. So I've had to adjust my playing style a little bit for those for those pieces.
Speaker: I started doing a few of them toward the end of last year and I've done more, done, you ambient performances with it as well. It's, it's, um it's an instrument I'm discovering.
Speaker: So it's, it's a kind of conversation. How long have you had it at this point? i So I had ordered the neck in 2023. It took Ron a little while to get it to me. And then after that, it took me months to put the instrument together.
Speaker: So it was it was, you know, a lot of the slowdown was, like, 2024, a lot of it was me, like, grinding away on... like, oh, you know, I've got to got to get the wiring right. And the Tully Deluxe, like, there's not a lot of room to work. So it was like, it's taking me forever. And then just getting, you know, making sure that the frets were level and crowned. i mean, like, leveling was difficult because I have a straight edge for...
Speaker: regular, you know, for conventional fretted guitars to, to see where the neck is, to see whether it's got a bow or back bow what. And this one, I had to like make a tool to, to tell me whether this is in back bow or, do i have relief on this?
Speaker: It finally did it. You know, i learned a lot about fret crowning and fret filing and, and, um, you know, it was, you it's it's about where I want it. You know, I did play out with it in May, like last year, but that was like too early. It was actually it was not playable yet.
Speaker: But but if that was an awkward performance. But I mean, like, okay, you're still you're still getting it like set up and now Well, now it's about right. I mean, the the weather changes, so, of like, the way the weather's changed, I probably need to loosen the truss rod just the tiniest bit.
Speaker: But it's it's kind of kind of about right. um But that's, you know... And so you've added enough time to kind of experiment with it, and What do you like about it so far? I've never played any sort of like microtonal or just intonation instrument, let alone guitar. well It does depend on on the the fretting scheme that you've chosen. And I think in if i if I were doing another one, i would probably choose i would choose different intervals, to for a for variety, but also i would like I wouldn't have them quite so close together up above the 12th fret.
Speaker: if As you know, I mean it's it's like really i have to kind of like really come in vertically and get right down on top of them with my fingernail, because otherwise it's just the notes aren't going to sound right.
Speaker: But um the quality of the harmonies is very different. I mean, your octaves... and fifths sound about right.
Speaker: you know They sound normal. They don't sound unusual. But when you get out beyond that, um the harmonies get very very different. That's when you get those like clashing waves. um if they're If they're really close, you'll get the difference tones.
Speaker: But then in between there is an interesting territory because you you get stuff that sounds... ah in this In this case, the fretting scene is... there there's a lot of pentatonic stuff I can reach.
Speaker: So it sounds pentatonic-ish, you know, it sounds conventional that sense. But then like a fret or two off of it, one fret off can sound out of tune,
Speaker: and but like say maybe three to four frets off of it or, you know, further a further distance away, like something that's not quite an octave sounds, um I think it can sound sour at first, but then it starts to sound ah just just different.
Speaker: yeah Some of the harmonies sound um brighter and more direct, than conventional instruments. and Some of them sound like yeah alien territory.
Speaker: yeah so So that's the interesting bit there is the not this is out of tune, but this is over in alien territory now. like You know yeah how you feel when you're like, OK, you know how you feel the major chord, know how you feel the minor chord, um you know how you feel is like minor sevenths and some other stuff.
Speaker: But then, like, you know, this is a you know it's hard to know how to take this sound, you know? Yeah, because, I mean, we're so used to hearing our standard tuned instruments and hearing these, like, kind of weird...
Speaker: ah just differences in in essentially wavelengths that we're not used to. Some of it's the wavelengths, but some of it is also the... it's The primary thing is the relationship between them because it's all about your reference pitch. The relationship between the wavelengths. so And in this case, I've got it tuned...
Speaker: ah each the The strings are not purely just intonation intervals from each other. They're a little more like i've got fifths and fourths. And I could tweak them a little bit and make them more purely mathematical from each other. that would make thee That would make the relationships even a little stranger. So that might be something that I do coming up.
Speaker: Because the um I chose to get it like frets all the way across as opposed to picking one reference pitch and locking in. Because Ron will do... partial frets older fretlets so that you yeah know where you can like move you've chosen well yeah he doesn't do the movable ones there's the guy in turkey who does those right like if you bought a fretboard ah buying a fretboard from him is about a thousand bucks um yeah i've seen those movable ones on the on the old internet Yeah, they um there's there is a guy in Germany who who made one, and I actually emailed him, and and he's like, I'm never doing another one. If I ever did another one, I'd order from the guy in Turkey.
Speaker: ah so and So like the you know it's arduous, and I was thinking, like you know setting that up would be kind of a pain, but it might be interesting to explore making fretboards for myself and swapping them out or something.
Speaker: I mean, I know you're always looking for another hobby, so. I've got too many instruments right now. but i But it's like, but at the same time, you know, like each, each instrument has a, has an expression. But in in this case, it's, it's like the, the alien territory gets, gets kind of interesting. You know you've,
Speaker: got, these are relationships that we've not been trained into yet. So yeah how do we how do we respond? What's that like? And you could you could do it with you know oscillators. You could just ah you know set up a bunch of oscillators in max or PD and set them up to particular intervals.
Speaker: You don't have to do it as frequencies. You could do it as frequencies, but then you can detune off of that. And you you could, have you know, that's sort of like Lamont Young's Dreamhouse, where you've got like a 32 pitch that's blasting out these speakers all the time. Have you ever experienced that?
Speaker: I have not. it's It's really compelling. i mean, I've been a few times and they they give you like literature to read, you know like to explain what it is that you're experiencing.
Speaker: And I noticed like the first time I went that like as I moved the page, the sound was different in my ears because it's reflecting off of everything in the room. If you turn your head a little bit, the piece changes. If you know if somebody comes in, the piece changes.
Speaker: And what is this dream house called again? The dream house. It's on church street in New York. It's ah Lamont Young, who was, uh, who's the kind of the granddaddy of minimalism. Um,
Speaker: And know in a way, the granddaddy of and ambient music in ah in a sort of way. You could also say Eric Satie, similar way. Lamont Young would also put you to Terry Jennings.
Speaker: And yeah there's like but you know there there is like a there was apparently at mills college in the bay area in like the late 50s early 60s there's this graduate seminar in music where like class members were like lamont terry riley pauline oliveros you know so it's you know some other some other people who had gone on to you know to affect the history of music wow so it's so you know these It's kind of interesting me that that these people go back to a scene.
Speaker: that the know The experimental music scene was a bunch of outsiders who kind of knew each other.
Speaker: sort who knows what weekly weekly beats will. Yeah, I mean, there are people. I know you know Josh has been collaborating with with a bunch of people. who you know We've done some collaborations.
Speaker: um there's There's a really collaborative community out there. so it's There's always an opportunity to get into something and cross-pollinating Oh, for sure. i need to do more of that next year.
Speaker: Well, let's keep the music going and bring it all the way up to 2024. Knot.
Speaker: the not
Speaker: All right, that was The Knot from week 46 of Weekly Beats 2024. You you know you said on this one, when you sent me some notes, this one felt like you'd finally opened the door accidentally were able to walk through. the Yeah, the 11 was kind of a you know you know having opened the door.
Speaker: got it. Although, I mean, earlier that year, thinking about it, i had done earlier last year, I'd done a few pieces in different time signatures. Like there was a piece that I did um in... did Were you aware of the um of Drew Daniels' ah dream ah genre?
Speaker: He's half of Matt Mars. And he had posted about dreaming this genre called Hit Em. that was in 5.4 and 212 beats per minute and and all with super crunched out sounds.
Speaker: And ah and so I thought, well, that's, you know, maybe I'll try something something in that. So I did something in five, but I was also doing like some other finger picking stuff. So I think that there's there's a piece somewhere in there that's seven.
Speaker: but these are But this one you, like you came up with the finger picking and and this discovered was a lot and discovered like, oh, this is like an odd time signature.
Speaker: Yeah, so it was like, okay, well, now that it's 11, I can kind of can count it out you know as as the 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, and that'll keep me on track throughout the tracking.
Speaker: own So I thought, well, how how many how many like things can I do in 11 here? Yeah. you know So the the court the chord progression ends up being fairly simple because you know I'm already doing too much fancy stuff with a time signature. Yeah. But the fact that I kind of made it feel natural is what what was also kind of a revelation.
Speaker: didn't feel like an exercise. i And it didn't feel to me listening to it that it was like a really odd signature. Right, right. it's yeah it It feels more natural.
Speaker: um Part of it is because I think it's it's um you you get ah you almost get four units. you know it's like You get four you get four four walts or three full waltz time measures and one that's got the last beat stripped off of the back.
Speaker: And this is kind of more of this like, you know, stripped that stripped down guitar. How do you feel like 2024 was different from the stuff that you're making in 2022? That's a good question.
Speaker: i think I think it's a continuation, though yeah there there were there were there were some promising left turns like the into the into the different time signatures.
Speaker: There's definitely a and a couple different tracks. like there's there's There's a more wistful, melancholy track going on through the year, um but then there are some that are more stepping forward.
Speaker: Like the knot is very fast and it's kind of it's kind of headlong. It's it's rushing into something. And i mean that was kind of an energy that I got i got something out of.
Speaker: Whereas they the more
Speaker: more melancholy stuff, I feel like I'm trying to move away from that. like agree it's not It's not the time to be melancholy. i don't We don't have that luxury.
Speaker: but i But then, you know, I mean, people are going to feel how how they're feeling they're feeling. I'm not the mood police, you know. Yeah. And sometimes it's just what, what comes out at the time.
Speaker: Yeah. What happens is what happens. Yeah. You know, like yeah if I've, if, if I'm having a certain kind of week, then something is going to come out that way. you and, and what is your like, cause you've kind of been steady with this style for ah few years now.
Speaker: What is that process? Like, do you just start like, just start, playing and recording and then... Yeah, I turn i turn on turn on the recorder and I don't know what I'm going to do.
Speaker: um or what I'll typically do is maybe maybe I'll sit down to play and I'll come up with a figure and say, okay, that's worth recording. And I'll, you know, Okay, so now got bar of that.
Speaker: I've done four iterations this pattern. That itself is a kind of habit, so I look at doing three. There's number of these that are... four iterations of this pattern you know which you know that itself is a kind of habit so i could you know i can look at doing three you know there's there's a number of these that are that are sort of like that, like three repetitions with a breath at the end.
Speaker: Yeah. Or, you know, there's, or, or the, the phrase has a little rest in there, which, and you're kind of talking about like, what are the, like the self-imposed rules or boundaries that I'm operating in this process? And where can i like break out of them to find some,
Speaker: new ground a little new yes some of it's that like if know if i've been doing a lot of this which i mean within the constraint of direct guitar then and you know three parts you know have i tapped it out or is there you know is there something a little more i could do like i ended up uh in part the one of the bands that i'm in there's a there's a um process of doing a different concept each performance.
Speaker: And we did one recently that was at an all-night art event. And the my sound in that band ah relies a lot on the Montreal Assembly Count to Five pedal, which is kind of a delay with a buffer that goes in two, different two three different directions.
Speaker: It kind of ah does pitch shifting, reverse, and stuff like that. It's very chaotic. um and And was thinking, oh, you know, I kind of want more tonal variety. So I ended up getting a lo-fi pedal that um has a reputation for being kind of ugly, but I i find that I can work with it.
Speaker: So I ended up using it in the improv this this past Monday. And there's a little bit of it in this most recent weekly piece that put up at Street Club. that it's got like a little hint of chorusiness to it.
Speaker: of And that's that's like some sonic variation, you know, yeah just because I wanted to use it. you know Yeah. um But if it kind of it's kind of like letting me the thought is kind of letting me rock the boat a little bit on on this approach rather than let me grind out another another thing.
Speaker: Yeah. In this case, ah like a lot of times oh I'll reach for a different instrument I'll say I'm going to do i'm goingnna do this like one guitar I keep in a tuning that's sort of like John Fahey's tuning. yeah It's like a baritone in like you know fifth, fourth, fifth, fourth, fifth, fourth, fifth, and um and then a major second on top.
Speaker: and like Do you find that you... keep coming back to this style or that you've kind of settled in this one particular area because you feel like there's more experimentation to do with these limits or like what else is is it about it?
Speaker: Yeah, I think, and I think at this point there, there's a, I'd done a lot of reduction sonically to get to this point of paying attention to you know fingering and you know note expression and tonality coming from my from my fingers. and and on the strings and there's a focus on the immediacy of picking up an instrument and just like, you know, a person in an instrument and not a bunch of stuff that's, that's getting in the way.
Speaker: And I like the immediacy of that, but I'm also starting to feel like there's an opportunity to kind of rock the boat some kind of, you know, broaden the palette again you know,
Speaker: there's there's there's really nothing stopping us from doing anything in music. True, true. Like you could say, i mean, that there's a, oh, well, I've i've got a bass line and I've got a drum pattern.
Speaker: And so I've got this groove going and I can put some compatible chords over at the top. Okay, now I've got a thing and it's, oh, it's this genre. So, well, oh, I want to do this other thing, but I can't do it because it's not in that genre.
Speaker: No, you can do that thing. you yeah you want to You want to pull out your answering machine messages and play them backwards over top of this thing you know ah and have a yo um plastic milk jug as your kick drum. you know yeah yeah You can do whatever. You can do those things. You're allowed to.
Speaker: So why not why not just start shaking the boat a little bit? Yeah, since 2014, imagine that you've been in this similar sort of place where you're like, how can i rock the boat?
Speaker: very Do you remember a time where that happened and and like kind of what you did? Yeah, there was one, there there was a, I want to say it was 2016, I think there was one stretch where I'd gotten into I'd i kind of been tired of doing like the drum machine synth bass thing.
Speaker: And did a number of pieces using, I think there there was a there was a live coding a system called title cycles.
Speaker: um So like your piece is essentially like a line of code or a few lines of code in this live coding system. And I did a number of those to kind of step out from things.
Speaker: it So it was like a radical change of approach. And I ah found this one. ill have to go ill have to go back to the score, but I found like one so one kind of system that sounded like throwing a vintage Gretsch drum kit down a flight of stairs.
Speaker: And it was a you like very slowly. like you know it was It was kind of very slowly. was I was like, that was interesting. of there oh but That's one way. like Changing your system, you know getting out of your your digital audio workstation and into something else is one way.
Speaker: Yeah, so where that that turn, did that in it like kind of end that cycle that you were in before and take you to a new place? It didn't so much take me to a new place. is It in itself was kind of like, well, this is a minor scene that I kind of ran out.
Speaker: But then when I went back to you know working with Ableton, then it was like kind of like, okay, well, now I'm i'm a little freed up from habit. Got it. You stepped out enough to be like, okay, I'm i'm a little bit further away from like just my repetitive workflow. Right. And in in the case of like this sort of guitar approach, I don't necessarily think that this this coming week will be radical change from you know three tracks of guitar necessarily.
Speaker: But I'm going to start looking for ways to change something, you know, and maybe it will be, you know, maybe it will be a radical change for probably a few weeks. But also then, well, now now that I'm, you know, now that I'm refreshed from that, maybe maybe we do, you know, something with a different structure or something with a different timbre to it.
Speaker: um There's a little bit of, you know, one of the, similarly one of the problems that i was thinking about with the Monday performances is yeah know there's a lot of like, you know, okay, fade in fade in long tones, let them interact, um you know, make no choices that are not necessarily too dissonant because yeah I've also got, you know, friends who are listening to this as further meditation practice.
Speaker: I don't want to, start disturbing that practice. But at the same time, I don't want to be, well, this is more of the same thing. And so I felt a little bit of juice this week with changing up the timbres a bit more, making dealing with some the risk of a harsher timbre. a And you it is it is kind of a risk, but also if i if I'm controlling it, controlled risk,
Speaker: There's a little bit of a challenge there. you know there' and I'm balancing something. And so there may be you know there may be some opportunities for you know making timbral changes, making structural changes, um taking some other chances.
Speaker: think there was a sense of, I think over the winter i had a sense of like retrenchment Um, you know, we've got, we've got this very uncertain world and, you know, there's, there's a, you know, there is a times, you do you want to be taking a lot of risks or do you want to be taking fewer risks, uh, while you figure out your place in things?
Speaker: Yeah. And, you know, some people don't have that luxury, but as you know, in, in music, we certainly have that luxury. Yeah, that's very true. So it's you know know finding you know finding my place in things and finding how am I going to respond to what's going on? what's the think at least in my my experience of music is that that sometimes I'm getting a better sense of what's going on in listening for how the music's going to appear than working something out logically.
Speaker: Say that one more time. So if if I'm thinking about like, know, what is the state of the world and I'm trying to follow some logical progression, that logical progression could end up being, you know, i it could be, you know, I'm wrong.
Speaker: you know Or i'm I'm not sure, yeah i i know what i know and i know what what i I know what I know and I know what I think I know, but you know like what what's you know what's really out there, what's really happening. And sometimes like the sense of music is is a little more honest then than my thinking something through in a different way. This is my own experience, but yeah.
Speaker: I'm wondering where we should go next because I've got two more songs to play. Okay. One is Paolo Prieto. Yes. but this That was the one that set me off on doing the microtonal stuff.
Speaker: Okay. maybe the Maybe we should listen to that one from your sine wave project. Okay. And the the the moment to listen for is, I think,
Speaker: two and a half minutes in so it's a long piece but uh but we're here to listen so yeah so y'all better listen and if you're if you're listening through small speakers you probably won't hear it because they're not going to be moving enough air but if you've got a subwoofer you'll hear it yeah throw that sub on here we go
Speaker: I just mystify that like how you create this stuff, but I need to check out one of your one of your streams at some point. Yeah, the so the the system here is, i mean, it sounds synthetic, but it's just guitar through fuzz and wah pedal and volume pedal to take the attack off.
Speaker: Oh, okay. In this particular case, since I was but was traveling light, so I brought only the volume pedal and for the fuzz i turned ah I got a converter that overloaded more musically than the one I had been using.
Speaker: So this was So this was like fuzz by overloading the converter. I added a wah circuit to the performance patch so I didn't have to carry a pedal.
Speaker: um And then I had the little. And so this is all going through MaxLive. Yes, it's all going, well, not Max for live, but Max MSP. Max MSP. Yeah, so that's in this case, version eight.
Speaker: They're on to version 9 now, but there's something, some I've got a bug in this patch that doesn't work with 9. And so this patch, though, is something that you... Creating, yeah.
Speaker: In this case, it's eight tap-in, tap-out buffers. That's basically your delay buffer with feedback. So they're... In this case, the delay times are between probably 28 seconds minute.
Speaker: probably twenty eight seconds in
Speaker: But each delay bank is a different length. Each going to end up being assigned to a different delay, so it's going to come around to get again at a different interval than its neighbors.
Speaker: Okay. And the difference between like the lower tones and the higher tones, is that just like filtering in the patch? That's me playing.
Speaker: I mean, the difference is my note selection. Got it. So there is the first bass note that is going to matter shortly. Because it's going to come back around.
Speaker: It's going to come back around, and then there is fairly shortly after, there's going to be one that's a minor second away from it.
Speaker: really like this play by play.
Speaker: Because, I mean, you know this stuff so There's the millisecond.
Speaker: It just happened. No, they haven't coincided yet. But when they do coincide, there's a
Speaker: Yeah, I think that's the first coinciding. Yeah, I can see how the subwoofer would go off on that.
Speaker: Yeah, it was kind of hilarious hearing it through a PA. Yeah. It was a good moment. And awesome meditation music. I know that these are successful. when I've done them in person and people like lie down on the floor, which was...
Speaker: That was like, okay, I'm doing the right thing. it's It's kind of, ah I mean, i in the moment, I'm not really paying too much attention to what's going on around me because I'm listening for what direction is the music going to want to go into.
Speaker: Got it. In this case, i also had my my head right next to the neck of the insertion to try to like predict where what I was going to play next. Got it. Because like, there's so much stuff in delay banks going on that like, you're, you're not immediately hearing your input. Right. Or, I mean, I can predict what it's, you know, at this point ive I've, I've heard enough that I know what the general sonic field is, but since this, this instrument was in a tuning that I wasn't familiar with.
Speaker: Oh, this is the one from that performance. Yes. Yeah. This is the, this is the last piece where I like, I finally got a hang of it. Um, But i like you know if i change if I moved from this note on this string to you the next string up, I couldn't be sure that it was going to be the note that I expected.
Speaker: So I had to make sure, or else I was going to be like, oh, here's a guy fumbling around on this instrument. And then if i if I do that, I stick it into a delay line. It's going to be around for a while.
Speaker: The end of the day is a very difficult time to get the same. The end of the day very difficult time to get the same. The end of the day is a very difficult time to get the same.
Speaker: you
Speaker: That was the sine wave performance that we spoke about a little bit earlier where you had the weird, I'm going to call it weird intonation hu guitar that you were trying to figure out how to use? well that No, this was actually a friend's borrowed instrument that was in a different tuning.
Speaker: Oh, okay. since it was a baritone, the difference the the difference in cycles per second between the two notes on the bass string was a very low difference, and it was enough to get the pulsing.
Speaker: Yeah, that's what that's what set me off on on thinking, you know, I would like to explore that more and have an instrument where I can do that at will and have some closer intervals to mess with.
Speaker: I got it. That's what sparked me into doing the just intonation building the just intonation guitar. Sent you off on that journey. Yeah, which is still, I mean, the the original instrument, not a just intonation instrument, but it was the was the thinking about the different the close difference tones that i was focusing on.
Speaker: Very cool. And awesome meditation music. Oh, thank you, thank you. Yeah, and... I need to go back and check out more of your albums from that project and check out your live stream. Well, I have a post on Blue Sky. like some of them are Some of them are more... ah and recommend certain ones more than others, but I can give you a list. I mean, at this point, I wouldn't say, oh, listen to all of them because it's 257 releases. I've got a podcast to run, man. i Yeah, it's too much to listen to. But, i mean, there's certain ones that that stick out for certain reasons.
Speaker: I would say, know, like last week's definitely like did something, know, 256 was also very good. um The 258 that's coming out, I'd recommend. All right. I kind of hit something. i mean, the the the interesting thing there was is that when you remove the string attack,
Speaker: then timbre becomes very important. And so we start thinking, least, you know, like depending on how the wah pedal is set, depending on which kind of fuzz setting I'm using, depending on how I'm holding the note, or like if I'm using an ebbo, or you where, what the position of the ebbo is, um all those things matter in terms of what kind of association we make.
Speaker: And sometimes there are timbers that sound more like wind instruments, like a lot of brass in some of these, some like French horn, of tuba, some bassoon, oboe, um flute.
Speaker: And that's all through this setup. it's And the timbres are all just like my playing through few tone shaping pedals. And the the the max patch is just primarily there for delay and a little bit of tone coloring. But it's not, ah there's there's a like there's a little bit of I have a tremolo in there that I use sometimes very lightly. it gets a little more wind quality if it's subtle.
Speaker: There's a ah pitch shifter that I use more when I'm playing pedal steel um because that gives me extended baritone range. But generally it's about placing notes in time.
Speaker: And then I know they're coming back around so I can respond to them. But it's kind of like improvising with a partner. Yeah, because like you're throwing these notes into a delay chain and knowing that they're going to come back around and setting up what you're going to do when they come back around and also loading back in the delay chain.
Speaker: Yeah. So I'm adding material, but I'm also and also interacting with the material. And when I put, if since I'm usually swapping the delay lines for each additional note, they don't come back in the order that I played them in the first time.
Speaker: So it's going to be, you know, there's a little bit of a surprise. Well, I mean, you've had some practice with that setup with, you know, 258 odd albums. So like that is a whole deep experimentation of this whole, you know, setup that you made. And it's super cool.
Speaker: yeah so ah Some of it is like it's I've given myself a regular gig to become familiar with this and just work on, you know, it's not just filling time. It's about, so what how close can I get to the moment of musical discovery? where Oh, I got it. I got something.
Speaker: Yeah. How much, how can i make that consistently a thing? Yeah. there's So there's that aspect to it. There's, you know some optimization that I've done to the patch, other changes that I've made.
Speaker: and like i started with four, and then I added sometime in 2021. I think I expanded to eight. And it was a it's been a it's actually been ongoing question of um user interface design.
Speaker: because I also mirror the patch to an iPad. with There's a mirroring app that you can run so that, like, oh, this designated rectangle, this will also be expressed on an iPad in a touch interface.
Speaker: And so I can make something very immediate. Like, for example, the there's a system I have for taking a baseline number of seconds or number of milliseconds, and then having multiples or subdivisions of that.
Speaker: So then I can i could say, well, this piece I'm going to do it's going to be based on like a seven structure where things are in a seven kind of relationship or five. And it four sounds very like expected.
Speaker: There's some that I've done in four. Then I've also got so what i've ah've got the system where the those divisions will populate buttons. So I can very quickly assign you know delay values to these and know that they're going to be in a certain relationship.
Speaker: Or if I want to make it more complex, I can just make them random up to a certain number and then select from there. And so then the relationships are very complicated, sort of like way Brian, you know, did music for airports of recording a tape loop, running off a random amount of tape and then doing the loop. So he had these multiple different loops of different lengths. So that's why the piece, the the parts come around at different relationships.
Speaker: And kind of to go back to ah something you said a minute ago, it's like, just like weekly beats, you are setting aside the time and outputting something that gives you kind of like this, ah dedicated space to do all this experimentation and learning and musical discovery.
Speaker: and surprising yourself about what comes out at the end. Right. Yeah. And it is to some extent, you as you, as you've mentioned, getting the reps in, because I think my, my improvisation has gotten better from doing that.
Speaker: um Yeah. And then there's always the look for the search for new challenges. How can destabilize it, but not too much? Yeah. There's, there's that aspect of it. There's also a certain, one of the things I found both with weekly beats and with this is,
Speaker: I think before before working with weekly Weekly Beats, I had a tendency toward a certain kind of perfectionism. Like, i work on something, and then, oh, I on don't know where it's going. Oh, I'll just just set it aside. It never comes out.
Speaker: And so I was doing, typically, the releases that I would do before that were particular live performances. Yeah. And so because like, well, here's a thing that took place during a particular time. That's what it is.
Speaker: And, you know, that itself is a kind of subversion of the perfectionist impulse, because there's there's a limit to how nice I can make this thing. Yeah, it kind of is what it is. It's documentary.
Speaker: Whereas what I'm finding with both with Weekly Beats, there is a quality of like working to refine something before releasing it, but then also saying, you know, okay, yeah we've got a deadline. It's a cutoff. This is what I did by this time.
Speaker: out Out to sea. Yes, it has to ask to do what it's going to do. you know, the more I do them, in a way the less any one of them like makes or breaks my feeling about playing music.
Speaker: You know, if I'm, if I'm off this week and I kind of got nothing, you know, I'm going to try something. I mean, there was a piece that I did with trying to remember the name of it. It was from the 2023 where was either 2023 or maybe 2024.
Speaker: um where it was either twenty twenty three or maybe twenty twenty four i can't, it was ah where i
Speaker: I thought I'm going to do, going to break out of the box with, um I did like some distorted guitar that was very like clipped. Like I played these chords and just like chopped the snippets. It was a very like hard cut.
Speaker: And i arranged that very intuitively. Intuitively. And I thought, well, that was an experiment. It's weird. you know it's and then And then Josh had heard it and he wanted to incorporate it in a piece that he was working So he added vocals over top and it works fine with the vocals.
Speaker: It was just a very, was very, oh, it was, the piece was called Avoid Cross Foxes. I have to check it out. And that's that was either at Street Club or Weekly Beats. I think it might have been on Weekly Beats.
Speaker: But one where you were like, oh, I'm just going to break out of the box. Yeah, I'm going to I'm going to like I'm going to just turn the table over. going to make I'm go for something that is probably not going to work.
Speaker: And still release it. And still release it. Yeah. so well Here's here's an experiment, you know, and who was hard? My issue is like I sort of limit my experimentation because I'm like, well, i got to get something out.
Speaker: So maybe I just need to say water for this week and get it. Yeah. The table over and just still put it out. Right. I mean, there's, you you could think of some change that you could make that you wouldn't ordinarily do. yeah I went through, I went through a phase with the MIDI stuff where I was like heavily gating drums.
Speaker: Like, so they were like real, like they were like clicks or pops. and And mean, you know, then I kind of got out of that. It's like kind of, heard what I needed to hear from that.
Speaker: i mean But it's a it's ah it's a technique that I could use at any time. It's in your back of tricks. It's not something I'll pull out typically, but if I want to destabilize something, I could go for that.
Speaker: Yeah. we're nearing the end of the episode. Yes. It's a very long episode. Yes. But I'm not going to apologize because, we had to cover your immense collection and try to capture as much wisdom as possible from you.
Speaker: ah hopefully I've provided, i provided. and we're going to play out the end of the episode with Nanon from, which was,
Speaker: one of my picks from 2024. i'm gladard Cause I was like, I really love this one. I want to play like to kind of see your progression through the years, but I want to play this one.
Speaker: So, but before we go, I want to kind of hear other like wisdom or like,
Speaker: What can you drop on us commoners that but can help us with weekly beats or just music making in general? Well, keep in mind I'm a commoner as well.
Speaker: oh man You're very, you got the reps though. you got got I put the reps in. I mean, that, that is the thing. I mean, it's, I didn't set out to do a particular thing for status. It was more that, you know, I kind of got in and kept swimming sort of the you the the way it worked for me.
Speaker: So I think I would say is do something. You know, if you're not and if you don't like what you've produced, like you say, oh, you know, that's just a retread of this or I don't have any ideas.
Speaker: you know that I think the moment where you say, i don't have any ideas, people get dispirited by that. But I think that's actually the most valuable moment because that's when you're free.
Speaker: You know, you're, you're, you're bored with all the stuff that you've done in the past. Now you're free of that. You don't, you don't have to carry it around anymore. You know, you could, you could take a stick and rub it against a brick wall and record that, you know, make that the basis of your track, you know, and that is such wisdom because I feel like i I, had to work on this like mental shift of,
Speaker: not feeling like anything was coming together and then trying to also work through that low point of like nothing's coming together and like go through the valley of despair and hope that something fun is going to happen and then when i was like oh i should just have fun things happen Yeah, I think it's it's it's about having fun. It's about, I mean, like that valley of despair, there's two ways out of it.
Speaker: there's Well, there's two approaches to getting out of it. One of them is, i mean, because there's multiple ways, actually. One is to... you know, do what you have been doing, which is to, you know, kind of hang in there and see it through.
Speaker: and there's certainly, there's certainly a way through it, you know, and you can, you can end up with, with stuff that you're like, that you're glad you produced that this, this, this, you know, I got here, I, so I weathered the storm, I got through this thing, you know, or you could, know,
Speaker: You could also use that as a moment to kind of blow everything up and say, yeah well i'm gonna i'm gonna like you know I'm going to have two bars of rhythm and then take the drums out.
Speaker: um And then I'm going to, yeah you know, take this guitar line and reverse it. Yeah. Just do something they like you've never done before. often and Yeah. Make it make an intuitive, capricious, ran as you know, just random out of the top off of the top of your head decision and see where it leads. Because it it's it might yeah the when you're when you're not having fun with stuff.
Speaker: Some of that is because, oh, i'm I'm going over the same ground again and again and again. yeah And I know where it leads and it's boring me. well then that's that That's especially at the time when you've got to and to say, well what what can i what can I do to shake this up? you know maybe this Maybe this techno track doesn't have any drums at all.
Speaker: Take all the drums out, you know, or maybe this, you know, you know maybe this like, you know, sample based rap thing, know, maybe you drop the samples out well and then.
Speaker: grab completely inappropriate samples. Like, is it like, Oh, here's just some shortwave radio broadcasts. Here's, you know, here's my car slipping belts yeah you know and put those in instead, you know? Um, very cool. It's like, there's the, think the, um, is it, is it, uh, don't believe the hype. There's this, um,
Speaker: think there I think it's in Public Enemies Don't Believe the Hype. there's a There's a ah ah trumpet, a squealing trumpet that is actually a horse sample.
Speaker: Oh, no way. Like a whinnying horse. yeah I mean, there's you know there's nothing stopping you from doing anything, really. you know you know I can't... I'm a semi...
Speaker: a semi-competent but you know more intuitive like one-handed piano player. I'm not like i'm not really a piano player. can't really play piano.
Speaker: um I can kind of poke around a little bit with one with the right hand and I can have any i have zero left-hand technique. But it's not a guitar. I don't understand it. But you know I could go base something on keyboard you know like yeah to... to to give my put myself in a position where my competence is at risk or or my competence isn't available.
Speaker: And so then everything is discovery. or and like you mentioned a while ago, taking these diversions and then still coming back to some of the similar stuff that you've been making, you can maybe drop some of the habits that you had and and go a slightly different direction It's like taking a music break while making different music.
Speaker: definitely. yeah and Maybe some of the last few years I've been alternating with the ambient stuff and then the clean stuff is you know it's kind of a constant cycle of break. and yeah I'm looking for looking for things to keep it fresh in a way.
Speaker: um Awesome. i mean i think that's you know If I had some advice to give, it would be that. that you but if you're If you're not having fun, then look for look for ways that You can destabilize the thing you're working on. Yeah. and The the act of making it come together, even without that brokenness or that strangeness that that can that's where the excitement comes from. Yeah. and If you could put that stuff together, you can put anything together.
Speaker: Yeah. I mean, you know, put your drums through a distortion, you know, yeah make everything, you know, take the wet signal out of the reverb and yeah get rid of the straight signal. Shake things up.
Speaker: Exactly. yeah do Do something unexpected. Surprise yourself. I really appreciate you taking the time. It's been super cool. chatting with you chatting with someone that's got all the reps in ah so i feel like i could talk to you for another and two hours you are a fascinating person with lots of lots of hobbies and you love to like chase the nuance and like go deep on stuff uh which is
Speaker: Very cool. Yeah. Thank you very much. yeah have say you work maybe Maybe we can do another one in the future where where i can I can get into some of the live performance stories.
Speaker: Yeah. I mean, dude, there's no shortage of stories with you. That comes from being around for a while. let's see ah Well, thanks again. you very much for taking this on. Thanks for giving me the opportunity.
Speaker: Yeah, glad to have you. And thanks everyone for listening. And thanks for putting up with a slightly different format. A little bit longer, but it's worth it. And um we're going to play it out with my favorite song from 2024, Nanon.
Speaker: And catch y'all later. Thank you so much for listening. All right. Bye.
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: do
Speaker: Music
