Reating aural magic with machines
Cnovelty value which quickly wears off. But if digital music — that populated by sounds and effects generated in computers and orchestrated meticulously within software — is chasing its tail these days, some pioneering artists, including in Hong Kong, are seeking to bring “the energy and spontaneity of live music” back to the electronic sphere. And to do this, they have taken the bold step of shutting down their laptops.
“For a long time, the technology has been the computer and just what kind of sound designs people could get out of that,” says Casey Anderson, a local techno pioneer. “Now there are new ways of playing live, new ways of thinking about techno.”
Modular method
Anderson came to Hong Kong from the United States as an exchange student in 2006. That year he went to a rave party on Lamma Island, and “just completely fell in love with that kind of music instantly”. After immersing himself in the sounds, the scene and mastering the DJ decks, he turned his attention to figuring out ways to make live techno. “I tried to do things on the computer for a long time and it just didn’t feel much different from work — I’m not against computers, it’s just not for me,” he says. He began looking for alternate ways to create the futuristic genre that would be more spontaneous and enable him to “get into the flow and get things done quickly”.
A couple of years ago he heard about modular synthesizers — a type of synth that consists of separate specialized modules that can be connected together with patch cords. Since they usually don’t have a keyboard, they require a wholly different mindset from traditional musical instruments. “I started ordering parts for a synthesizer without knowing how to put them together and just got a soldering iron and figured out how to do it.” In under a year, Anderson had a full working synthesizer in the leading Eurorack format. He’d built most of the modules himself, aided by plans sourced from online Eurorack forums.
So just what’s the beef with computers? Proponents of true-live electronica who have demoted their laptops believe there are three essential keys to making machine magic. One is to reintroduce the human element and spontaneity by ceasing to rely on the easy “perfection” provided by computer software. Barnaby Bruce, whose solo act sees him playing acoustic percussion pieces, a keyboard and analog synths while operating pedals and drum pads, says that practically everything the audience hears is played live or triggered live, as with arpeggiators, rather than part of preset arrangements. To do this, a performer needs to have intimate familiarity with their setup, but it pays dividends. “I’m not locked in by things I’ve already recorded. I have some idea of what I’m going to play — a certain groove, say — but it’s not fixed. I can take it in various directions.” The encouraging result is that “most of it doesn’t really sound like electronic music as people would know, it sounds more analog”.
The other essential key is to bring warmth and depth via analog rather than digital processes. Anderson, whose Eurorack modular synth has by now grown into an attentiongrabbing beast of a contraption, says, “It’s almost like a living thing. It’s almost all analog, and it’s using just the electricity from the wall. The different melodies are determined from voltage — higher voltage is a higher note, and then you also have rhythms being created by voltages. It’s kind of like an analog computer from the 1950s where it’s 1s and 0s, but it’s based on voltage so it’s still analog. What I do is just improvise throughout the night feeding it different parameters. It’s kind of a back-and-forth, with the synthesizer just spitting things out and me trying to control it and build off of it.” This means that each of Anderson’s performances, such as those at Hong Kong’s Sonar and Clockenflap festivals and at the club Savage in Hanoi, is unique and nothing can be replicated — making it a liberating antidote to performance rigidly centered on computer sequencers.
The machine code
Sequencers are software that allows composers to orchestrate unlimited numbers of electronic instruments. They were made possible by the development of MIDI (musical instrument digital interface) in the early 1980s. When electronic instruments are connected via MIDI to a computer, a sequencer such as Notator Logic can notate a performance in real time. The captured performance can be replayed on any electronic instrument, edited just like a musical score, and enhanced by MIDI Control Change Messages. Sequencers became a great tool for producers and performers, and heavily influenced the course of popular music from the 1980s on along with the working habits of musicians and composers. The techno beat can even be traced back to popular sequencers of the late 1980s such as the German product Steinberg Cubase. Once you loaded it up on your computer and pressed play, it would emit a stream of unmodulated thuds at 120 beats per minute — perhaps the result of some deviant Teutonic joke perpetrated on an unsuspecting world. Later as computer power grew, audio recording, sound generators and complex effects processors were incorporated into sequencers, necessitating a fancier moniker: digital audio workstations (DAWs).
On the downside, this incredibly powerful technology has led to a tendency to both overpolish music production and take some of the fun out of funk — which leads to the third essential key to making vibrant electronic music: experiment as much as possible. Dennis Wong, Hong Kong’s prime exponent of the “noise” genre of experimental live ambient sound creation, wouldn’t normally be found dead using sequencer — but still found a use for MIDI. “My interest is to try and find some imperfect kind of instrument, that people usually kind of hate, or that doesn’t work — and use it.” After MIDI was developed, devices called MIDI-to-Audio Converters came along which enabled composers to transform actual audio into MIDI information — at least in theory. Wong got hold of a “very stupid and cheap MIDI converter, which converts every note wrong, or randomizes the sound, which is good for me because I’m not making normal type of music.”
Thus, while there will always be a place for computers in electronic music, there is a growing preference for standalone machines among both experimental and techno artists. Hong Kong producer Frederick Neve creates powerfully minimal “creative techno, deep techno and dub techno”, which he puts out on his label Typhoon8 Records. He too believes there is something enriching in taking or creating sounds outside of a computer. “Personally I am influenced by Detroit music, the old guys, Kevin Saunderson, Jeff Mills, Derrick May, all those kind of things. I’m using less and less computer. I like to have machines,” he says. “Machines” include standalone synthesizers such as the classic analog Moog, old drum machines and effects units. “I just use the computer basically to record everything. I find it more creative to turn the knobs on machines than just clicking the mouse.”
My interest is to try and find some imperfect kind of instrument, that people usually kind of hate, or that doesn’t work — and use it.” Dennis Wong,