Improvised Synthesizers with Owen Misterovich

In this episode of HAPL Podcast, Owen gives a live lecture about Improvising using synthesizers. This came from a live program at The Huntley Area Public Library. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:12

Welcome to the Huntley Area Public Library Podcast. I'm your host, Owen Masterovich. Today, we will be doing something a little bit different. Rather than a typical interview, today you will hear my lecture, QA, and demonstration about improvising using synthesizers. This came from a live program I did at the library in March. The program was also filmed and is up on the Huntley Area Public Library YouTube channel. So if you'd prefer to watch the video, go check it out. But for those listening to audio, I hope you enjoy. So my name is Owen Mysterovich. I uh work here at the library. I am the recording studio technician here. So I work over in the recording studio in the teens section if you haven't seen it. Definitely recommend coming by and saying hello, getting a little tour of the studio. Happy to show that to you. And yeah, so today we're taking a journey with improvised synthesizers. That's the whole idea of this. So this is going to be part lecture. It's going to be part performance, and it's also going to be a QA. So yeah. The reason I'm talking about improvised synthesizers is because I've had this particular fascination with improvisation lately within various genres of music. And I myself am an electronic musician for the most part. I play a lot of instruments and I got my start playing rock music, but these days I primarily play keyboards and electronic synth kind of music. One dilemma I've had while playing synth music is that because synths are so finicky and tricky and complicated, if you have a very complicated synth piece, it can be difficult to actually perform it live. So oftentimes for my own music, I'm left to actually just be playing a backing track for the most part because things become so complicated with sequencing and whatnot. So part of this was kind of an exercise to see if how can I make like dense electronic music that I can basically improvise on the spot. So that was sort of a challenge to myself. And because that's something I absolutely love about the guitar and the drums, is that it's so easy to just go off and jam and really improvise something on the spot. That's something really beautiful about a lot of acoustic instruments. So yeah, I wanted to bring that whole idea to electronic music and have a demonstration for people to see the capabilities of these electronic devices. Now, improvisation is a part of really most genres of music out there to some extent. You've probably most associated it with uh jazz music, because jazz is uh they use improvisation in a number of ways. So, from the actual sequence of notes that they're playing, whether it's a solo, um, to even the structure of the song can be improvised in that moment. Um I find that to be really interesting. I also find it to be so interesting to improvise musicians together and how they communicate. Because when when jazz musicians play, they're listening to one another and they're making decisions based on the actions that other musicians have made. Um, so in that way, it's like a conversation between musicians. And to me, improvisation is very linguistic in that way. It's very similar to language in a way, because when we talk as people, we're not like planning out everything we're gonna say before we say it. We're pretty good at improvising what we're gonna say in that moment. So to me, improvisation is this very human thing, very linguistic thing. Um yeah, I wanted to bring that whole idea to my favorite uh pieces of music equipment basically. Um so I'm gonna go ahead and jump right into my first performance here, performance one. I'm gonna do two performances today. I'm gonna do one with this big red keyboard and this black box here, which is a sampler. And the red one's a big synthesizer. Um I'm gonna do a set with these two devices, and then after that, I'm gonna do something with my laptop, and we'll talk about that. Um but before I explain too much, uh might as well do the performance, and then we'll reflect on it a little bit afterward. So, here we go. Okay, so that was the the first performance. Um yeah, and let me tell you a little bit about how I made this happen. Because probably it might just seem like I just pressed a bunch of random things and all of a sudden a bunch of sounds came out. Because that's what I kind of did. But um, there are some things going on to make this happen. So um when I talk about improvisation, I myself, as a musician, I'm improvising in this performance. But in a way, the devices I'm working with are also sort of improvising as well. So that convers that conversation I brought up earlier between musicians, that's kind of existing right now between me and and the machines, I guess. Um the way that works is so this this device here, this black sampler device, I can flip it around. This is called the Polly N tracker. It's my go-to device for making a lot of music. Um but it has some really cool features on it that allow me to um play with a little bit of randomness. So there's certain kind of unexpected things occurring that um are not necessarily up to me. Um so I can place a normal sequence of notes, say uh it's like bum, bum, bum. Those are always gonna play, but if I place these like two different notes in between there that are they have like a 25% chance of playing, all of a sudden, even though it's playing the same sequence over and over, every time it might play that little extra note. It might throw on that other extra note. And so in that way, um the device is kind of making decisions and improvising in a l in in its own way. That's sort of happening with the drum sequencing as well. So um there's certain effects I'm kind of playing with that that um sort of randomize the drums so that um they kind of select a random drum sound uh rather than me selecting everything for it. Um so that's what's going on with this little device. I'm not gonna go into too much detail, it's it becomes very convoluted. Um but yeah, there's a certain level of randomness going on with this device. And then with this red keyboard here, I'm using something called an arpeggiator. And maybe for those of you that like synthesizers have heard this word before. Um basically what an arpeggiator is, um, so rather than me just playing a normal chord and I'm deciding the rhythm of it. An arpeggiator instead, it does all that rhythmic work for me. So I'm just selecting the notes, and the machine itself is actually uh is actually deciding the rhythm for me. So to just demonstrate, I'm gonna just press a note here. I'm only holding one C note down right here. But it's actually um kind of randomly cycling between octaves with that note. Um, and then if I were to hold down more than one note, it's now cycling between the notes in that chord. So I use this and I I um I layered it with two other synthesizers at the same time. So they end up making this very layered kind of chord sound going. So one synth is doing that, another one is doing similar things, and then this one is kind of slower. So when I put them all together, they're all kind of playing randomly at different times. Um and that's because I have this set up so that it's not arpeggiating in a certain specific way. Sometimes you can select it where it goes, it says up, so it just goes up the notes that you've selected. I have it selected to randomly play, to randomize those notes. So that's kind of what's going on there. Um so I myself in improvising, but these devices are also kind of adding in their own uh content to the music as well. Um but yeah, that's that's how this setup works. Um now, these keyboards and synths are great, but um not everyone has access to some crazy equipment. Like this keyboard here, I believe, is like it's like a$5,000 keyboard. I mean, most people are not gonna be able to have access to something like this, although you can get access to this keyboard if you book some time with me in the studio. So I would recommend that if you're curious. But I also wanted to give people options for how they could do this on their own with minimal equipment. So I brought along my laptop because the beauty of our modern age is that you can make really complicated music with just a laptop and free software. Uh I'm using a piece of software called VCV Rack. Um, the one I have is actually not free, but it's very similar to the free version of it that's available. Um and what it is basically is a digital modular synthesizer. Um for those of you that don't know what modular synthesizers are, instead of every part of a synth just being in one keyboard like this, they're all broken up into little modules. So if you're a really big nerd like me, you can customize your own synthesizer and make really wild and crazy patches. Um it's not for everybody. Certainly, this is not a beginner-friendly tool. It's quite intimidating. Um, to me, that was what was exciting. Uh, it's something I would I experimented with a long time before I ever actually made anything that sounded good with it. Um but yeah, I would definitely recommend if if you're curious about modular synthesizers, to check this out before you go out and buy modular synthesizers because they cost a lot of money. To get to see the patch that I made here, if you were to like break this down into real patches or real modules, this would probably cost something like$5,000 to be able to make a synth like this. So what's awesome is you can just download this free software and you can get the same sounds just out of your laptop. Um so with that being said, I can jump right into the the next performance here. Um and instead of using a keyboard, I've decided to use this game controller to control the sounds that are happening, which may seem a little weird, but um, the cool thing about VCV Rack is it has a game controller input. Um and I was just kind of playing with it, and then I realized, oh, this would be a great tool for improvising with. Um and so the way this operates is I have a lot of synthesizer sounds, or not a lot, but there's like two synthesizers going on, and then there's some drum machine sounds going on. And I have various parameters mapped to the buttons and joysticks on this controller. So, for example, when I hit the X button, I can just show you, it will start the sequence. Um There's a bunch of other things. So, like if I hit the triangle button, it creates this weird um infinitely decaying reverb. Um when I play with the joysticks, they will decide whether or not there'll be kick drum in it. Uh or if there's gonna be snare drum, depending on if I move it to the right or if I move it to the left. Um it may seem a little weird like I'm playing a video game up here, but uh it's wild how much you can actually control an instrument with with a game controller. I mean, it like an instrument, it's just made up of buttons. Uh and any instrument out there probably has a similar amount of buttons because it matches up with how many fingers I have. So naturally, this is a um a good tool for making music with. So I'm gonna jump right in and start my second performance here, and then we'll reflect on that a little bit, and then we can get to the QA if anyone has any questions. Thanks, y'all. Alright. So, as you can see, you're able to do quite a lot with the little game controller. I literally got this for like 10 bucks, too. I mean, this thing. This is probably your cheapest possible setup here. Um, I will admit it is quite complicated. It would be probably a little confusing for anyone to just jump right into this. And maybe people were watching the screen a little bit as I was playing with this, but you can kind of see that different things sort of happen on the screen as I'm as I'm moving things. And the reality is I have this joystick, like each joystick mapped to like eight different things. So when I'm moving this, it may be changing when the kick drum is playing, but it's also changing how the synthesizer sounds at the same time. Um and this is where if you're doing this yourself, you just get creative and you kind of experiment and try different things. And so this could end up being a million different sounds. I just happen to kind of develop this setup and it sounds like this. But yeah, um, yeah, I guess that's that's where I'm at. Um, does anyone have any any questions at the moment about what occurred? Any advice? Any comments? Yes, Jim.

SPEAKER_04 25:49

I got a quick yeah. So what you just did, yeah, um, was that all improv along with pre uh predetermined sounds? Or did that um did you already have that uh track put together?

SPEAKER_00 26:04

So yes, this is there are certain elements that are predetermined, certainly. There are also elements that are not predetermined. So um one predetermined element is the synthesizer sounds. I've I've kind of just created a patch that I was happy with for both of these sounds. These are the two synths that are going on. Um and so I kind of just made that ahead of time. The actual melodic content of things that is fairly random. Um, it's fairly improvised on the spot. Maybe not even my improvisation, but the computer's improvisation. So I have one of these buttons on this controller mapped to my sequencer here. So this box right here is my sequencer. As you can see, there's some like blue blocks. These are all notes, basically. Um, and they're all going to each of the synthesizers. But when I press this button, it completely randomizes this sequence. Now, it's not just random notes, because otherwise it would sound like garbage, if we're being honest. It's gonna sound random. Um it's actually playing in a certain key. So the key I have it in is C mixolydian. And so every time I hit this, it's gonna hit a bunch of random notes, but they're all within that key. Um so there are certainly rules at play. There are things that are predetermined, but there's also elements that aren't. Sort of like jazz in that way. With jazz, you might um have a melody that everyone is gonna come back to, a place for everyone to land in the structure of the song. Um, but there's also elements where it might go off into some places. So um I think that's tends to be true of any improvised music, that um it's never fully improvised. Um, there's some level of preparation that goes in, whether that's being a talented musician and tapping into your talent as a musician, um, or you know, learning these chord structures ahead of time. Um but hopefully that answers your question question, Jim. Maybe there's a little more in there. Um anyone else have any other questions? Yes, Suzanne.

SPEAKER_05 28:17

Um, so I was curious not a musician. Sure. I was curious about the difference between the two pieces. So in the first piece, it read almost verging on classical to me, and it seemed like it was directing you. In the second piece, it was more like electronic music, and you were directing it. So what's the technological difference between the two?

SPEAKER_00 28:43

I see what you mean, and I I think there's a reason for that. Uh so all of the melodic content was happening in the second piece is all decided by the computer, really. I'm mostly deciding on other things, like the dynamics of things, how loud or how often things come in. But the actual melodic content, like I showed, is being decided by the sequencer. Whereas the first piece, I'm kind of the one mainly deciding what the melodic content is of the piece.

SPEAKER_01 29:15

It almost seemed the opposite to me.

SPEAKER_00 29:18

Totally. They are very opposite in that way. And there's kind of good reason for that. I wanted to show kind of two different ways of doing it. I also wanted to show how our peggiators, in a way, are um, even though it's me playing the keyboard, it's also kind of the keyboard itself applying its own improvisation, if you will, to it. Um, but yeah, that's a really good uh observation. Part of it too is I'm with the first piece, I really picked a pretty simple kind of walking down chord structure, and then like one little extra section in there. And that was kind of in my head the whole time. I didn't have an exact plan of when those things were gonna happen, but I knew I'm gonna do this walking down thing, and then I'm gonna go to this other set of chords. And uh so in that way, it it's more close to maybe more traditional music, um, because I'm just like it's a pretty set chord structure. Whereas this, because it's so randomized, there's some pretty weird out there elements that are like um it's hard to make this sound normal, I guess. It it kind of automatically sounds experimental and weird, but that's what I like about this side of things as well. But that was a great observation, Suzanne. Thank you for that. You had your hand up, right? Yeah, uh, I just want to ask, are you into any like experimental artists or bands? Certainly, yeah. I I um I like really experimental music, and I also really like experimental but accessible music. Like so stuff that like taps into experimental stuff but is still kind of poppy or accessible in some way. So I like both things, like um Wolf Eyes, is I don't know if you've ever heard of them. They're probably my favorite of like the really experimental electronic stuff. You ever heard of uh Psychic TV? Oh, dude, I love psychic TV. They're like one of my all-time favorites. Them and uh uh Throbbing Gristle? Yeah, Throbbing Gristle. Yeah. I love all the the industrial music. Like that's that's kind of what got me into synthesizers, was like nine-inch nails and industrial music. But yeah, certainly uh I love all that stuff. I also I also love like poppy stuff too. I love like disco and like house music, you know, the kind of histor, you know, like the 90s drum uh EDM genres I think are really cool. Um as well, uh I would say my favorite these days has been uh IDM music, if you know that genre. It's like Apex Twin. I don't know. If you're really into like that house music record store in Chicago called Dramophone Records, okay. I don't know if you've ever been there, but they have like a ton of house music. Sweet. Like all this turntable stuff nice. It's awesome. That's awesome. I'll definitely have to check it out. I have a few house records in my collection, but I want to like really beef it up. I'd like to DJ with some of that stuff at some point. Sweet. Thank you for the recommendation. Yeah. Uh yeah, Scott.

SPEAKER_03 32:26

When you're making music, you're sitting around Sunday afternoon. Yeah. So you're playing. Are you also recording? Are you like, oh, that was great. Is it recorded automatically? Do you have to decide to record it?

SPEAKER_00 32:44

Sure, that's an interesting question. I guess it depends on what's going on a little bit. So are you referring primarily to this kind of music? Yeah, what you just do. I guess um my approach with something like this would be to just let it go and record it, um, see what happens, and then from there kind of make decisions about ooh, do I like this? Should it just be these two minutes of this? So you can cut it apart. So I cut it apart. Certainly, certainly. Although I'll be honest, like kind of the reason I did this whole program was to explore improvisation more than I have in the past. Um, so the music I've been making lately has been primarily composed ahead of time, like using electronic equipment, so I'll like sequence stuff. I just got really into like super detailed sequencing, um, which I loved and I thought it it leads to such cool things, I'm really able to like shape this song exactly how I want it. But then I was kind of missing the elements that surprise you, I guess. Um that I guess when I typically sit down to make an electronic track, I'm normally um I guess recording is a weird word because that the recording process comes much later, I guess. Um the song will exist on this device. I'll I'll keep adding layers to it. So I'll start with the kick drum. Okay, that's sounding good. I'll add in a little snare drum, I'll add in a hi-hat. Okay, I like where the beat's at. Now I'm gonna add in a bass. Okay, everything's sounding good. I just need to like tighten it up in these in these ways. So, like, in a way, the song is composed well before I ever recorded it. Or like I haven't even thought about recording it yet. Um and then once I've fully composed the song, that's kind of when I go and I record the piece. Um, but it in a way it depends on the style of music I'm making. And it I know, so like what's going on here, this is how I'm approaching this. A hundred different people will approach it a hundred different ways, you know, um just like anything. But um, particularly with synths, because there's so many parameters and ways to do things. Um, everyone's gonna have a bit of a different approach that works for them. But hopefully that answers your question.

SPEAKER_03 35:12

Oh my god, no, it just must be really hard to know. Okay, I'm done. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 35:17

Certainly. That is like honestly the biggest challenge with making electronic music, I've found, is um, I'll sit on stuff for years and just keep adding to it and then taking things away and then adding to it. And in a way, I like that process. Um, it's kind of like, I mean, that was how I approached writing poetry when I was really into writing poetry. I would start with a rough idea and then kind of um take things away, sit on it over time, see how my my new uh perspective uh has developed and what I now think of this poem from the past. So that's kind of my process. Some people are much quicker with how they do things. There's this uh electronic musician called Music, actually, who's really fantastic, but I know for a fact that with a lot of the songs he made, he made them in like three hours. He made them and he was done with them. Like, so it really depends on the person, but yeah. Thanks, Scott. Anyone else have any questions, comments, concerns? Yes, Susan.

SPEAKER_05 36:24

Yeah. Um so do you consider the technology as the other musician that you're dialoguing with, like in jazz when they actually do it with other musicians? Or do you actually have you done this with other people?

SPEAKER_00 36:41

Sure, sure. I have. So um for this, so first to answer your first question, I do I that was kind of the idea going into this. Um, that feeling that you get when you improvise with another player. I wanted to get that feeling, but from the synthesizer equipment. So certainly that was the idea going in and what I was trying to achieve. Um, but yes, I've I've done a mix of all of it before. Um I have a couple friends that are also into synthesizers, and we've done big jams where we we're playing off of each other, but that the instruments are also kind of playing us as well. Um so certainly it can be a mix of of all of those things. Um it can get very complex pretty quickly. The more pieces of equipment you add to something, the more complex it gets. So in my head, this is a very simple setup that has two pieces of equipment. It probably looks maybe a little complex to most people. It's a lot of cables and stuff. Um but yeah, that's that's kind of my approach with a lot of this, it's just trying to be as simple as possible because there's so many elements and parameters that you can adjust. Um but anyway, I'm I'm going off on a tangent here. Yeah, any any other questions, comments, concerns? All right. Well, um I also have a piece of paper in the back. I wanted to give everyone some resources if you yourself were curious about making music. Now, of course, if you're here to just listen to music, you can ignore this. Um but um so VC V Rack, I'll start with since you guys saw this. Um there is a free version of it that you can find on their website. It's kind of like a trial version in a way, but it it can do a lot of stuff. So I definitely recommend checking that out. Oh yeah, Jim's got the papers. You can pass them out, that'd be awesome, Jim. Thank you. Um VCV Rack also has an open source version of it called Cardinal that's totally free. Um, and it has like 4,000 modules built into it. So either VCB Rack or Cardinal, you'll have it on your your paper. Now, I'll be honest, VCV Rack is a very difficult thing to jump into, so maybe that's not the best thing to start with. Now I would recommend though this thing called the koala sampler. If you're curious about making electronic music, that sampler, it's an app on your phone. Man, I've made so much music with just my phone and like sampling my own voice and sounds around. It's so much fun. It's it's like five bucks, so it does cost some money. But you do get Ableton Live Light, which is a really fantastic piece of software. It comes free with it. So if you're curious about getting into it, VCB rack or the koala sampler would definitely be good places to start. I also um I talked with this guy here about Reaper. We're we're talking about Reaper, it's a great digital audio workstation. Um it's what I use in the studio. If you're curious about getting to audio or music, Reaper is a great thing to download. But yeah, all there's a lot of resources on here. Band Lab is another free one that's just on your browser, so you don't even need to download anything. Um if you have a Mac, you can get GarageBand on your Mac or on your iPhone or iPad. So there's a lot of free stuff out there that has a lot in it. I mean, GarageBand is like having a whole studio in your phone. I mean, it's pretty crazy. So it's all out there. It can just be a little confusing to know how to get started. Um, so my recommendation is to just play around. I mean, with with the music I make, I often make like a hundred beats before I ever actually finish them into a full song. So I I kind of treat it as like sketching out ideas. I'll make a little one bar loop of a beat. That's just me sketching out. So that's my approach. You know, maybe you'll be a little different if you if you try making music, but um yeah, I hope I hope uh you gained something from today's program uh, or at least enjoyed the the really weird sounds that occur. Thank you guys so much for coming out tonight. Thank you. Thank you.