Room 409 is a technological playground for students in our Contemporary Performance Program (CPP). We spoke with the trailblazing performer-composer and CPP electronics faculty member Todd Reynolds about technology, creativity, and fluency with electronics in today’s ever-advancing musical landscape.
SLIDE SHOW: The classroom is designed around professional-grade production and performance equipment available for students to use in the "Performing With Electronics" courses held in MSM's Room 409 (in final photo: MSM student Bryan Cowan).
We focus on the live performance, creation, and production of music using software and hardware. In the first-year courses, called Performing with Electronics, we primarily work with a Digital Audio Workstation (Ableton Live) and an object-oriented programming environment (Max/MSP). Along the way, we also introduce the basics of microphone usage, MIDI, and actually building and tearing down sound systems. Students who choose to continue on with the curriculum dive into hardware synthesizers, full-on concert performances, and wireless geometric controlling devices.
Our classroom is designed around professional–grade production and performance equipment, including computers, audio interfaces, six speakers for surround sound, instrument microphones, recording microphones, MIDI controllers (with an Ableton Push 2 and SoftStep 2 forming the foundation), mixers, synthesizers, and extensive software – which brings them all together into a creative powerhouse rig that is available to students whenever the room is available.
I love watching the students get hands-on experience, gaining ‘control’ of audio files and sound, and their lit-up faces when someone twists a dial or pushes a button and something magical appears or transforms in the sound field! They come to see the products of those moments as things they themselves can design and then use in their own music–making.
The most important technological skill one can learn today as a working musician is how to record and produce oneself. More and more musicians are recording in their homes and spaces to make money, to follow creative projects, to serve their community. While there are professional studios and engineers, learning how to record yourself enables you to make money ifrom your bedroom and have fun doing it.
It’s also important to develop fluency in a Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) – essentially a ‘studio in a box’ – where one piece of software with plug-ins allows you to create, edit, and produce music quickly and efficiently. DAWs include brands like Ableton Live, Logic, ProTools, Cubase, and Reaper, all of which have their unique strengths, purposes, and directions.
And, finally, my own life has been richer as a result of exploring and investigating music beyond classical music, both in genre and style, and this practice of musical expansion and awareness has increasingly become the norm as time has passed. Expanding outward, experimentation, fun, and play – these form the domain of creating with technology, and they’re equally available for every style and art form.
In today’s musical economy and ecosphere, especially in but not exclusive to New York City, the more genres with which you are familiar, the more musical languages you speak, and the more you understand how to produce music, notate music, improvise, compose, work with technology — essentially the more well-rounded you are — then the more diverse and exciting opportunities will open up to you. When I started my band, ETHEL, many years ago, we looked up to the few quartets who only played “new music.” Now, there are so many great New Music quartets that smash the limits of what used to be considered normal — including some that started right here at MSM, like Mivos Quartet. And each one has a corner in its own market. Times change and develop, and accompanying technology changes along with it, so it’s important to stay current with what’s happening now.
Making ‘records’ – as we used to call it! – knowing what goes into it and how to do it yourself makes one a valuable entity in today’s music business. Investing in your own learning, perhaps even in your own gear, and becoming self-sufficient enough to make your first Bandcamp release changes the way you think about your place in the world.
In the end, being able to record and edit yourself means being able to extend your own brand. Gaining and employing fluency in everything from the professional recording studio to the laptop studio to the iPhone video studio is vital, and, in the end, can be viral.
Yes.
Just start. Anywhere. Musicians can get stopped early because of an ingrained perfectionism and/or self-consciousness, and we can sometimes be embarrassed not to be great at something the first time around. I was there about 35 years ago – scared to improvise, embarrassed of my own shadow when I tried. I mean, what was I going to play?
What got me past it? Plugging a microphone into a digital delay, hearing my sound come back to me on repeat, and playing against it, realizing that as things unfolded and made more sense to me, it just wasn’t all that different from what Bach might have done on the organ while improvising for church.
Start by recording yourself more often – while you’re practicing, improvising, doing whatever – it doesn’t matter. Free softwares include Audacity, Garage Band, Ableton Note (on mobile), or Reaper for multitracking. Of course, a device like a zoom recorder works as well.
Start with an empty track, or even a track that you love. I love playing with James Brown, and I practice Bach over hip-hop. Whatever it is, find your sense of play – improvise something, listen, create a new track, and begin again, playing against yourself.
Careful now, you’ll get hooked! What tends to happen is that once you discover that ability to play with your sound, you begin to hear relationships and realize that what you make has value to you, and it can be developed. You begin to uncover your own music.
Buy a microphone. Mics don’t have to be expensive, start at any level. If you’re a hacker, buy a children’s toy with sound. Learn all about Circuit Bending. Do you have anything electronic at all with an ⅛- or ¼-inch output that makes sound? Borrow a guitar pedal from a friend, and then record into the softwares mentioned above.
Most importantly, follow your interests, wherever they may lead. Tune yourself, not just your instrument, to really listen to what makes you and your music-making unique – and follow that – even as you pursue mastery of your instrument or discipline. Technology is the biggest toolkit there is, with perhaps no zipper on the case, more and more fun and interesting tools just keep getting added to the bag.
Expanding outward, experimentation, fun, and play – these form the domain of creating with technology, and they’re equally available for every style and art form. Todd Reynolds CPP faculty member
Expanding outward, experimentation, fun, and play – these form the domain of creating with technology, and they’re equally available for every style and art form.
Todd Reynolds
CPP faculty member
Listen to CPP Faculty Todd Reynolds from a recent live-stream where he composed with electronics in real time, live from his home!
“The most important technological skill one can learn today as a working musician is how to record and produce oneself.” Todd Reynolds CPP faculty member
“The most important technological skill one can learn today as a working musician is how to record and produce oneself.”
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