Art + Music + Technology

Oh yeah! I’ve been working on getting this interview for a while. It combines modular synths (love ‘em), compositional techniques, an extremely busy schedule – and even using the voice as an instrument! The time that I got to spend with Martha Bahr (Panic Girl) was more than amazing – it was transforming for me. The way that Martha approaches her work is going to be helpful to anyone making electronic music.

So I just spilt the bea...

Greg has moved onto new things – incl...

What can I say about Jean-François Charles, other than he is amazing! He is one of the people in this world that has bothered to describe spectral processing in a way that is both musical and accessible (to the extent that it can be…), and has backed it up with a great career of both performance and academics. With training as both an engineer and a musician, he was perfectly situated for the oncoming rush of music technology, and ...

Udit Duseja has built quite a career. Starting off dropping Pro Tools markers while hanging at a recording studio, he is now doing sound design and sound editing work across a wide range of films. In preparing for this interview, I did a fair amount of research (watching films – oh, so hard!), and was blown away by the consistent quality, and often unexpected surprises, found in his work.

In our discussion, we chat about his backgr...

Sometimes my attention is grabbed by something unexpected. In researching Peder Simonsen, I was very impressed with his production work, his work with modular system – but then I read about his work with the tuba. Microtonal tuba. In a group. That stopped me in my tracks, and I had to learn more. I ended up having a fascinating conversation with Peder, and got an amazing education about so many things!

In our discussion, we talk ab...

Steuart Liebig’s story is quite amazing. From high school jazz gigging, through extensive touring, to a spot as part of LA’s verdant experimental jazz scene, Steuart’s life of music is quite amazing. A proponent of the 6-string bass, you can find Steuart working in groups with Nels Cline, Wayne Peet and G.E. Stinson. His listing on discogs.com is pretty stunning, as is the stack of tracks that he has made available on his Bandcamp ...

OK, so this is a little different…

I, and many of my coworkers, tend to do special things around the number “74” (the company name is Cycling ’74, if you didn’t already know). For #374, I decided that I’d talk to David Zicarelli again – just like I did in #74.

When I asked him, he rejected the interview format, and wanted to do a Q&A, where we’d each get to ask each other questions. It started off interview-ish, but ended up with s...

I’ve been trying to get Elainie Lillios on the podcast for some time. I’ve seen her, and heard her work at SEAMUS conferences in the past, and she has come up in conversations several times during the course of the podcast. So I was quite excited when we finally were able to pull this together.

This interview gives me a great opportunity: I get to quiz someone on how they compose – but also, how they get their compositions into the...

Cameron Warner Jones is the kind of person that, once you’ve heard of him, you just want to get to know him. Imagine a person that gets his start in the dark halls of Dartmouth’s Computer Music halls, designs and implements the complex musical system used by everyone at the time, then carries on the work through the years. You know there are stories there, right?

Especially when the ‘musical system’ at hand is the Synclavier Digita...

I’ve long been interested in sound design and post-production work, so when I got the opportunity to interview Peter Albrechtsen and David Barber, I jumped at the chance. Peter and David worked on the movie The Killing Of Two Lovers (by Robert Machoian), which is rather unique because it has no traditional musical score; all of the sound in the movie is a combination of location sound, foley and designed sounds, carefully mixed int...

Part of my history is attending and teaching at University of Denver in the Emerging Digital Practices program. One of the professors in this department is Chris Coleman, and he was a fascinating person to be around – he was always digging into new technologies, checking out both software and hardware opportunities, and inspiring people to try things outside their comfort zone.

In our discussion, we dive into microprocessors, open ...

When Andrew Pask pointed me toward Plan 9 (and made an initial introduction), I couldn’t really tell what I was getting into. The soundtrack work was very interesting, and their recent releases mapped out a compelling set of skills. But then I checked out Modwheel – which is their sample library company – and started to connect the dots: Really unique sound design and instrument design led to quirky soundtrack work, which led to cr...

One of the big surprises of the late 2010’s was the acquisition of Buchla and Associates by someone local to me: Eric Fox of Foxtone Music. I’d heard of Foxtone, but never visited, and never expected something like this to happen in good ‘ol Minneapolis. But sure enough, Buchla was now based out of the Twin Cities.

While I’m not a Buchla user, I’ve always been fascinated by Don Buchla’s work, and I was interested in this new iterat...

Well, we welcome Mike Metlay back to the podcast. It’s been a while, and a lot has changed for Mike since our last discussion (episode 69!), and we find him in his new venture: as the editor-in-chief at Bjooks. If you are paying any attention to the world of electronic music, you’ll know that Bjooks just released a new book, entitled Synth Gems 1. Mike had a big hand in this release, and we quiz him about it in this interview.

Duri...

Paula Maddox is a wonder. She’s got an amazing history of synth design, and the work continues; her current company (Dove Audio - https://dove-audio.com/) produces modules in Euro and 5U format, featuring her unique take on wavetables-as-oscillators. We share a passion for wavetables and single-cycle waveshapes, so it was a natural that we talk.

In our discussion, we cover everything from her history in electronics, the path to syn...

Mark Fell is one of my favorite artists – his work is the right mix of comfortable and challenging, and his music is truly as good as his ideas about music! As a result, I end up listening to a lot of his work, from the SND material released by Mille Plateaux to his recent experiments with live musicians. I’ve also had the chance to speak with – and interview – him in the past (for Cycling ’74), so there was already a comfort level...

Carl Stone has been a huge influence on me – his work transported me from “Interested in that music tech stuff for making pop tunes” to “Let’s get serious!” His exploration into the nature of sampled sounds – and sampled/mashed/twisted tracks – took some of the ideas explored by Schaeffer, Cage, Reich and others, and gave them a whole new context. His recordings blew my head open, and continues to do so today.

Some time ago I conne...

Jeff Rona has fascinated me ever since he first appeared in Keyboard Magazine with his “The Reel World” column. It was a time when music-for-film was becoming interesting for tech-savvy musicians, and his writing fueled a lot of people’s interest in that work. With a background that includes working with Mark Isham and Hans Zimmer, Jeff has been in the mix for some of the greatest soundtracks in the last quarter century.

In our dis...

Will Kuhn is well-known in the Ableton Live community. He pioneered the use of Ableton in the K-12 classroom, and recently released a new book: Electronic Music School: A Contemporary Approach to Teaching Musical Creativity. I was happy to corner him recently, and we had a great chat about his background, how he approaches teaching, and how he developed the system described in the book. We also dive into some ‘hot takes’ from the b...