I can even play my Neutron on its own, without attaching a keyboard, like it has a sonic heartbeat I can bring to life. And, even though the Neutron is electronic and produces a synthesized sound, there is something very naturalistic about the way it reacts to itself and evolves in the moment. Some of these connections are default settings on the instrument, but others can be created spontaneously using the patch bay. Because it is a modular synthesizer, the discrete components of its sound are interwoven and can manipulate each other. What I love the most about playing with the Neutron is the way it listens to itself, and makes me listen in new ways. The Neutron fits the physicality of my improvisatory style, honed in middle school and high school over hours of relentless electric guitar noodling, and, in this way, has shown me a new path to making electronic music. ![]() I could, of course, make a simulated instrument in Max/MSP that exhibits all these characteristics (and many more, because that program is basically limitless), but I don’t have the skills for that right now. ![]() The knobs have character and ‘give’ to them, the patch bay can get cluttered with wires, and I hear the Neutron’s sound respond, often unexpectedly, when I move my hands around the interface, experimenting with different combinations of effects and settings. Mediated through the computer screen, mouse, and keyboard, there is not as strong, if any, tactile connection between me and the sounds I’m creating, which is very different from all my experience playing instruments. I’ve written some fixed media pieces using DAWs (check out Mechanismus), and played around with Max/MSP and Supercollider, which are incredibly flexible, coding-based programs, but, in addition to being hard for me to learn, I get stuck with the physical abstraction of the experience. ![]() Chris and I did an interview with experimental bassist Gahlord Dewald a couple months after Djentdemic was premiered in February 2016, and I even admit I’m not sure if Djentdemic is an electronic piece at all (Gahlord even teases me on air for saying something so ridiculous!). When I wrote the first of these works, Djentdemic for percussionist Christopher Sies, a few years ago, I wasn’t really sure if it ‘counted’ as an electro-acoustic piece because there was no fancy software at play. If you look at my new Works List page, you’ll see that there are not many electronic pieces listed there, and most of them are for amplified acoustic instruments. I’ve always been very interested in electronic music but insecure about my abilities in the medium.
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