"Making It All Click!" interviews Michael Garfield

So I was interviewed for the first time, legitimately, a few weeks ago, by Bryan Flournoy (host of the podcast "Making It All Click!"). Bryan is a self-proclaimed intuitive and uses said guidance to find some wonderful interviewees. He's also an incredibly nice guy (and, though he's slow to admit it, a talented lifelong musician). For these reasons, it was an honor and a pleasure to talk with him about the history and future of Zaadz Visionary Music in this interview:

Bryan Flournoy interviews Michael Garfield

You can read more about the interview (which focuses on The Dream Is Valid, the new Kiva.org benefit compilation we just put out) on Bryan's blog, here:

Bryan Flournoy: Today's Thought

I spend most of the hour elaborating on my "putting play to work" manifesto - the philosophical foundation for my love's labor at ZVM and the ideological underpinnings ofThe Dream Is Valid. How I think music can sneak social responsibility under the radar and make it a powerful element of commerce. Why I believe that the business of music can be just as important an engine of global benefit as conventional forms of service - if not more so.

I rattle on about other cool stuff, too - although I'm not sure what (Admittedly, I haven't listened to the interview yet, so don't know what he edited out), so you'll just have to listen to it yourself. Enjoy!

(Written for iggli.com)

Visionary Instruments: Tenori-on and Monome

Hopefully I don't have to do much convincing to establish with the readers of this blog that the computer is indeed a legit instrument. In fact, by some accounts, the computer might be the first global folk instrument. Those who still disagree probably do so because so much of contemporary electronic music is composed in sequencers and "performed" by pressing "play." Pre-recorded accompaniment is more like a painting than a dance - pretty passé, in an age when ubiquitous recording technology has restored the novelty of a live performance (thus the boom of live painting by artists such as Kris D on stage at concerts).

But this is the exception, not the rule. The first true electronic instrument, the theremin, requires just as much performance nuance as any other member of the orchestra - and for decades, conducters flirted with it as a worthy replacement for the first violin. In many ways, analog synthesizers require more instrumental expertise than the piano, not less. And today, there is a whole new generation of musical controllers that offer artists a more intimate and organic relationship with computer music software.

One such instrument is Toshio Iwai's Tenori-on, a kooky little sequencer grid that lets its user get inside the beats while they are playing (Toshio might be most renowned for designing the super-cool Nintendo Gameboy DS music game Electroplankton). Like with so many new instruments, it's a little difficult to find the words that describe exactly how it works; but basically, the Tenori-on is a 16-track musical control and display surface... See if this example doesn't stretch your powers of inference:

Thankfully, Toshio is gracious enough to give an in-depth explanation of its workings here (part one) and here (part two). And here's a video of the inventor himself delivering a solo performance on his adorable new device (notice how cool it is that you can see the blinking buttons through the open backplate of the machine):

Tenori-on has six different programs, which means six different ways to relate to its 216-button grid. Here's an artist painting sound onto the grid in "score mode," which isn't as euphemistic as it seems (although it does allow for Beavis & Butthead moves like this one):

Yeah, pretty cool. And notice that it a free-standing device - you don't have to plug it into a computer or a wall. Which is to say, it'd make a delightful travel companion (like theukulele I bought on a lark in Hawaii - or the kalimba I bought after torturous delibaration in the Ozarks, of all places). But before you rush out to buy one (and good luck, anyway: they're currently only for sale in the UK), make sure to check out the even-handed reviewshere and here.

...And consider that the Tenori-on has direct competition from (some might say, "is a rip-off of") the Monome - an earlier controller, designed by Brian Crabtree and Kelli Cain, that is superficially similar in that it is a blinky little music box, but significantly different in several important ways. Foremost among them is that while the Tenori-on carries all of its own sounds and programming, the Monome is a total blank slate. It is not a standalone musical device and contains no sounds or code of its own - which is bad if you don't likelugging around your laptop, but good if you like using your own sounds or exploiting open source software to do goofy stuff like run Conway's Game of Life (demo on the Monome homepage, here). Brian and Kelli's "about us" page reads like a design manifesto:

"we aim to refine the way people consider interface. we seek less complex, more versatile tools: accessible, yet fundamentally adaptable. we believe these parameters are most directly achieved through minimalistic design, enabling users to more quickly discover new ways to work, play, and connect. we see flexibility not as a feature, but as a foundation."

The kind of minimalism that extends to refusing the decadence of capital letters, apparently, but also enables a musical revolution. After Brian explains a bit about its history (and before Kelli talks about their cool packaging and weirdo felt-calculator-pillow-instrument) check out how he uses it to live-sample and remix a keyboard loop (!):



Here're a few demos of the Monome at work (at play):

The designers work out of their loft and can't possibly make enough of them to meet demand, so they do most of their sales through kits. With this "you build it, you hack it" mentality, people like Sound Tribe Sector 9's David Phipps end up creating their own custom models (good story about that here), such as this one:

Cool as hell. Too bad about the cheesy guitar riff, but otherwise a magnificent proof of principle. Notice how he's split off a piece of the board as a meta-control region, while the rest of it remains a step sequencer. I love blinky things. Especially when they make music.

Again, one thing that sets the Monome apart from the Tenori-on in a good way is that it will work with whatever wacky software you design for it. Open source being the way of the future (at least, according to the present - open source social networking platforms, open source music, and even open source biology), techno-prophet Kevin Kelly of Wired Magazine argued in his excellent book New Rules For The New Economy that it's the most flexible products that will succeed. Which is why I so enjoy seeing cool unanticipated applications people find for the Monome like these:

(And you can simulate the Monome on your Gameboy.)

Lastly, you can ditch the fancy sequencing and play it like an "instrument," believe it or not. Its isomorphic button field liberates musicians from what the after-market innovator in this next video calls "the comforting tyranny of the keyboard" - basically, a major shortcut to learning music theory and exploring new tonal spaces:

So there you have it. Regardless of whether you prefer a pricey but immersive toy or a demanding but illimitable canvas, both Tenori-on and Monome deserve a place in the pantheon of visionary instruments. Both are changing the way we think and act about composition and performance. Both open new realms of electronic sound manipulation, and - at least for me - both provide a strong enough argument that just because something looks like a Speak and Spell (or maybe a Lite Brite) doesn't mean it isn't a legitimate substrate for groundbreaking musical expression.

If you're still not convinced (ahem), however, this might be your anthem:

(Written for iggli.com.)

Finding The Music In Noise

As should now be apparent from my essays on the Light Harp and on Tantric Listening, if I am a seeker of anything, it is of music in what is considered nonmusical. Consequently, I am a huge fan of music that draws its inspiration from environmental sounds. Clyde Stubblefield, "the world's most sampled drummer" for his work with James Brown (and thus himself something of an environmental phenomenon), had some great stuff to say about this in his essay on time for the September 2007 issue Modern Drummer Magazine:

"I learned to keep time when I was a kid by focusing on my walking. I really listened to all the sounds around me and always heard rhythm in them. Whatever the leg and foot patterns of my walking may be, that's the time I focus on. Those are my timekeepers.

I lived in Chattanooga, Tennesee as a child, and there was a big factory where they made cardboard boxes. The factory had a big smoke stack. Every morning it would start puffing smoke out, and you could hear it all over the city. So From early in the morning until about 4:00 p.m., you heard this smock stack going PUFF-puff-PUFF-puff-PUFF-puff all around you. I also remember the sound of the old washing machine at home going slish-slosh-slish-slosh all the time. And hearing that tick-tock of our big clock - it all stuck in my head. I would fall asleep to the sound of that clock. I feel that all of these things helped develop my time as a drummer."

Yes indeed, internalizing our environment is the evolutionary process itself (more on that here). So we are taking a more active role in evolution when we groove to the sounds around us, whatever they may be. Peter Gabriel, in his infinite wisdom, has of course already written a song about this:

Peter Gabriel - My Head Sounds Like That

Listening with headphones, you can hear the scratchy percussion track come in when he's singing about the burnt brown toast, and the dull repeating thud when he talks about his neighbor hammering something...it's a gorgeous song.

In the same vein, Björk made a whole movie, Dancer in the Dark, about the musical fantasies that take over a woman's imagination as she goes blind. Increasingly forced to rely on her hearing to escape her suffering, she fancies herself the star in a series of outlandish interludes:

Electronic sampling has helped us make sense of our busy industrial world for decades. When I got my computer, I was most excited about the little built-in microphone - suddenly I had a mobile recording studio! The first thing I did was go record the oh-so-melodic sound of rotors and computation that the ATM makes before spitting out cash (I'd been waiting to do it for weeks). That sample, and a synth flute I made from blowing a Tanqueray bottle, were prominently featured in my first electronic composition:

In my next piece, I carried it a bit further into Björk territory and made almost the entire song from random noises - including a soda fountain, wind chimes, a shaken box full of old toys, and the rustling pages of a book (Osho's Tantric Transformations)

Michael Garfield - ...And The World Rushes In

In the works are another song that grooves to the University of Kansas Herpetology Department's printer; one that squeezes anthemic glory out of a rusty dishwasher door; and a kind of tribal thing that features me drumming on the computer itself (oooh, how recursive!). Tonight, I'm playing a show with a electronic drum kits composed of little chimey things I found lying around at my old job in the candle shop. I'm sure that sooner or later the novelty of saying, "That gorgeous synthesizer tone is me dragging a chair across the floor" will wear off, but in the meantime it's a game I'm playing with the universe to find cool new textures and rhythms where I wouldn't normally pay attention.

The more I listen, the more intimate I become with the various properties of my surroundings - learning to anticipate how this table might sound if I struck it with that magazine, wondering whether my laptop mic is sensitive enough to pick up the sound of me rubbing two leaves together (and if so, what part of the drum kit would that be?).

It's a great game. But it tickles me when artists are not only paying attention to this stuff, but lending their creative ear to music that ends up doing something important. Tim and Chris Bran, aka the Vapour Brothers, showed me up with this gorgeous little cut-up ditty they created for SOS Live Earth ("Concerts For A Climate In Crisis"):

...Just in case you were wondering how to make cool music, commune with the kosmos, and help save the planet all at the same time. But don't think you need expensive recording equipment to start crafting your own found sound masterworks. The Freesound Project is a massive collaborate effort that collects and archives all kinds of cool environmental samples under a Creative Commons license for anyone to use. Thanks, guys!

And there you have it. Maybe now that jackhammer outside your window will put a little swing in your step. Why not? The world sings for us.

(Written for iggli.com.)