How did you get into building your own instruments and electronics?
I started out when I went to school at Evergreen, studied kinetic art and animation and electronic music. I made a lot of moving sculptures and a lot of electronic stuff that were more on the end of mechanics... making things spin. I made a piece that was a tower that had little robot figures in it moving around. It had wings that moved. It was one of the first things I did, but as well, I studied electronic music. They have a half analog/half digital music department at Evergreen and they encourage you to learn how to do both. Analog sequencing as well as digital sequencing and sampling and editing and stuff. So I had to learn how to do all the digital sequencing/sampling and then I decided for all my projects that I was going to do completely analog stuff because they had this really amazing Buchla Box synthesizer* there which I didn’t think I’d ever see again, so I did all my work on that.
That’s when I started getting into trying to figure out how these little modules worked, the different modules in a modular synthesizer such as oscillators, gates, envelope generators and the analog sequencer. That’s when I started reading about how different things worked and playing with them.
Then after I graduated I started doing that more in depth and started building stuff for my guitar, different pedals, modules and stuff, as well as modifying pre-existing pedals... tweaking them out. Like increasing the range on a vibrato or tremolo pedal or tapping into the control voltage (this is kind of technical talk) and figuring out how to modulate pedals with light and also triggering things with sound. Then I incorporated it into my band that I played in, MOCKET and SATISFACT. I had basically a modular synthesizer that I control with my feet that I built. It was all self contained. It had a power supply. It had a foot mixer that I made. Then I would run my guitar through it and also just trigger noise generators that I made with my feet. So I would play guitar and do all this other stuff with my feet. The thing about it was I ended up bending down on the ground half the show tweaking with my pedals. So I raised it up on a keyboard stand and made the foot mixer an extension pedal down to the ground so that I could do the mixing with my feet still but I would be able to do the tweaking and manipulating with light and stuff up high so people could see what I was doing. And then in January I had time off, I didn’t work for a while and I decided that I was going to build an automated drum kit which would function similar to a drum machine, but would be actual live drums that would move and play themselves with moving parts and integrating my kinetic art sort of perspective on it by making spinning parts and things that are entertaining to watch as well as listen to. I did that, it took me a while. I’m still working on it, it’s still a project I’m improving and upgrading, but it’s gotten to the point that it functions well.
Is it portable?
It’s actually pretty portable. I went down to California with all my stuff in just a car, so I don’t need a van. I am building a flight case for the whole thing because I want to be able to fly out to places to play instead of driving all the time. That’s one of my summer projects.
So with Octant there is basically a modular synthesizer that I made, and another synthesizer that my friend Kathy plays on a couple songs, and then there’s the automated drums and then the computer, which is basically the brain for the drums and a sampler. That’s the setup now.
The sampler is triggered from the computer too and that goes through my modular synthesizer, along with my guitar and my vocals. It (the synth) also has tone generators.
The guitar has light cells on it. Basically four light sensors so I can move around a source of light and alter variables on the modular synthesizer. For example, the closer I get to the light the higher the frequency of the filter is, so I can move around and adjust the filter frequency. It’s like adjusting the knobs on a synthesizer, but with movement so that you can see it happening. Also there’s lights that light up on the drums when they’re hit, so that will trigger different things on the synth if I face the drums with my guitar.
There’s also some photo-sensors on the drums themselves, so they also control parameters on the other synthesizer.
So when you perform is there a sense of random control that is also interconnected in some way?
Yeah, the idea is that different aspects of different sound sources and light sources control other instruments so that they interlock in a way.
But is there more variables than you can possibly control?
In a way, only with the guitar, but not as much as the cells on the drums, because they’re stationary.
Do you bring separate light sources on stage with you?
Yes. There’s light sources on the drums and then a bendy lamp that I use.
Now I’m starting to integrate video images with what I’m doing that’s also synced along with the music, so the monitor goes on in certain times in a song. It’s an old Apple II computer monitor. I guess the thing with electronic music is that you have such a wide tone range, there’s so much you can do with recording and getting sounds, you have a lot of freedom in that area, but you don’t have the visual aspect of what you’re hearing. That’s why I’m bringing in the light and the movement, because I want it to be something that’s interesting to watch as well as listen to. I didn’t want to have just like an animation in the background that’s synced up. That’s too easy. It’s really easy to just have a sequence and then have something on your computer making a little movement type thing, if you’ve got the money then you can do it. Anybody can do it. I wanted to do something that was a little more unique, something that you wouldn’t get to see normally.
It’s also taking it out of the electronic realm when you’ve got more physical, mechanical things going on.
Ideally I would like to get the percussion aspect of it to be creating rhythms and playing things that you couldn’t get a human to play. Right now it’s about up to par with a human, but in the future it’s going to be a lot more sophisticated. That’s one of the interesting things about having this setup; it can play patterns that a drummer can play, but because the patterns are so awkward the drummer would probably get lost after a while. Even though the patterns are not always very sophisticated or might be 4/4 time or not really fast, because they’re so odd a normal drummer might forget where he was. That’s kind of a fun thing about it, it’s always on, but I guess a drum machine has that to...
What sort of sequencer do you use?
It’s integrated into the computer. It goes out of the modem port and changes the pin arrangement so it fits midi, but I just use the computer as a sequencer. It’s the same idea. It’s an old Apple classic all-in-one-computer.
A pretty basic sequencer then?
Well, it’s like a 64 track sequencer, so you could control a lot of different things with it, but I only control two things because I want to keep the sequencing aspect to a minimal so it can be more live interaction. Mainly the computer controls the drums and some samples as well. My Macintosh is like thirteen years old. One of those first tube shaped all-in-one piece and a mouse. Now I’m modifying this old joystick so it can fit the mouse port, so we can control it with a joystick. So if you’re at a show you don’t need a tabletop for a mouse, just have a joystick... plus it’s cooler looking.
In school my big plan was to do big multi-media work. I ended up playing in bands because that was kind of the closest thing to playing music and having a performance.
It’s also the most acceptable form of performance.
Right, but now I want to take the focus off of me and put it more on the object making the sounds. Creating sort of a set that you can watch and listen to that’s not like a standard show. Maybe because I’ve been playing for a while and I’m sort of over the general rock band, going to see bands and being in a semi-conventional band and I felt like I was neglecting a certain side of myself. That’s why I started doing Octant, but as well also I wanted to start a home base for doing other projects, multi-media stuff. I’m going to be selling and distributing my animations as well soon.
What sort of animations do you do?
It’s stop-frame animation. Most of the stuff I’ve done right now is done on super 8 and 16 mm and it’s converted to video and edited on video. This fall after I get my computer setup I’m going to do most of it on the computer. It’s still going to be stop-frame, but shot and edited on the computer.
(At this point our conversation strayed into animation, indie label self-production, DVD and the future technology and distribution of video and music... so it comes into conversation that Matt works at a pawn shop, so I digress...)
So working in a pawn shop do you end up finding new things to fool around with?
Getting parts you mean? Yeah, I use broken things, a lot of broken parts and integrate them into what I’m doing. Also it pays well and I only have to work a couple days a week, so I can spend the rest of my time doing this stuff. It is a nice base to work off of.
I started working on a project from Craig Anderson’s Electronic Projects for Musicians, but never really ended up finishing, because lack of tools and time.
Electronics is probably one of the most frustrating things to do. There’s probably no way the average person could do it unless you’re raised in the 50’s and studied it in school. Education has gotten so bad that way. My old boss, at this amplifier company I used to work for, he learned how to build electromagnets in pre-school or wherever, maybe like fifth grade or something, but they built radios and learned all that stuff. I don’t know, maybe they put too much importance now on computers and maybe not so much on the science behind the computer. It’s pretty frustrating. It took me maybe a year of working really hard to get this thing working. The motivation that I had was that maybe if can learn this it will stay with me for the rest of my life, basically saving me a lot of money because you can build things instead of buying them. You can repair your own things but also you can invent things that haven’t quite been done. When you can manipulate technology, you can pull it in other directions as far as art is considered. Most inventions weren’t invented for the sake of art, but if you can take that knowledge and put it towards creative use, you can come up with different sorts of inventions and musical instruments as well.
As a musician you also have the motivation of being able to use what you build.
I’m always trying to think of some sort of super amazing, easy to build, little analog device that everyone wants, just to make some money because that sort of thing seems to be really in demand right now.
Well, I bought one of your pocket photo-theremins, largely out of curiosity.
The new one’s I’m making are going to be ring modulators as well so you can plug your guitar into it and change the frequency of the ring modulator with the light. You’ll be able to stick them on your guitar.
I started to make the ring modulator from the Craig anderson book.
That one’s pretty cool. There’s some good modifications on the internet for that one too. The ring modulator schematic I have is a passive ring modulator. So you make an oscillator and then you combine the oscillator with the sum and difference with your guitar or vocal input. So basically its a two input thing with one output and one of the inputs you have to put an oscillator into and the other you put the instrument into. It’s not powered. It’s just a series of transformers and diodes. I’m going to make the basic schematic for the tone generator that I have and add that on.
I think the best thing to do with electronics is just start out with simple stuff and learn the basics. The electrum-harmonic guitar synth is just a series of little oscillators and little easy circuits, but it’s all in one. So if you try and build the whole thing you don’t understand what you’re doing, you don’t understand how it works because you can’t see all the little bitty things in it. But once you learn how to build each little separate component, then when you see it as a whole you can say, “Oh, this is the power supply, this is the oscillator, this is the LFO,” you know what I mean?
A good way to learn also is one of those 101 Projects books at Radio Shack. They have a digital one where you can have voice recording, you can do sampling and stuff. And there’s an analog one you can build like flashing strobe-like LED lights, and oscillators and amplifiers. But then you can take the amplifier circuit and apply it to like a guitar; plug you guitar into the amplifier circuit and then run that into your amp and there you have a distortion pedal. You can take the flashing LED circuit, hook up a vac-tek (sp?) to it, which is a flashing LED and a light cell and you put the let cell between the signal and ground and there you have a vibrato pedal. It’s like basic circuits that if you think about you can apply to music and make use of a lot of it.
(discussion of artist Kenji Yanobe follows and how incredible he is, welding, work space limitations...)
Yeah, I built this drum kit in a tiny room. One room of my apartment is a mess, a mechanical, electronic catastrophe. The other room is a normal living space. Basically what I did in my apartment to put things together was a lot of drilling and bolting things together instead of welding hard surfaces together, which would be sturdier. I ended up drilling holes and screwing together, kind of like an erector set, and that way I can take it apart and transport it. It ended up working out really well, but I am going to end up having some things welded. Some of the casing is made out of wood. I just broke out the power saw.
I don’t think I’ve ever worked as hard on anything, but I just felt like I really had to make it because I’d been thinking about it for years like, “Wow, wouldn’t it be cool to do this?” “Yeah, but I’ll just never be able to do it.” And then I got laid off work and I thought I’ve got tons of time I may as well just build this thing. I spent 40-60 hours a week trying to make it work. I think I’m more of a hands on person as well. Once I start tackling something I can usually get it to work. I’m not very theory based. Some people can just read about something and say, “Oh, I know what to do.” Then just draw a plan and get someone else to build it, but I’ve got to get in there and start making things by trial and error. That may be the only way to build things really. I guess there’s a lot of theory involved, but it’s not until you really get in there and start making it can you really understand what’s going on.
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