gistfile1.txt

0:18
yeah what a great turnout hi Mark hello can you hear me I can hear
0:27
you unre we're here we we did it I feel like we succeeded
0:35
somehow you Le out to do a video call I know right talk about stressful um you
0:42
can it's it's the age OD story though you can sound check as much as you like but until stop playing and it really
0:49
counts um Mar I was I realized this morning it's been a long time since we
0:56
were hanging out I I was like that was 5 years a Go San Francisco
1:02
algorith I'm I'm I'm a little shocked um I know it's kind of like the co years
1:08
have just like being a it's almost like they never happen it's like a gap do you know what I mean like when 1999 sorry
1:16
sorry 2019 straight to 2023 or something yeah yeah like those years
1:23
seem to last forever but like looking back it's like they were just snipped out of time or
1:28
something I know people talk about the the analog minute being you know exactly
1:35
60 seconds and and to me I feel like that's where that completely went out
1:40
the window and we just had this like elasticity of
1:45
time yeah yeah I mean after a I don't know if you know but I I
1:52
was caring for my parents my elderly parents yes dur time so they're like in
1:57
the early 90s my mom had got like quite advance Advanced Dementia by that point
2:04
and Ryan moved in as well so we were like under strict lockdown for about probably like 18 months we were like
2:10
super isolated and in this in this weird environment with someone who's got
2:16
Advanced dementia and just it was like this really weird
2:22
experience and so yeah after a while of doing that after like a few months of being in that space it it was like it it
2:30
went totally science fiction basically I I oh 100% I couldn't believe
2:37
it my my grandmother suffered from dementia and and I as a you know mid
2:42
teen mid teens child slash teenager got to see it all unfold and yeah it is it's
2:50
kind of bizarre um you really start wondering about reality
2:57
and what is reality and and what Memories as well
3:03
um I think there's a there's a very um cruel or or seems strange side to it but
3:09
then there's this this other fascinating side to it too yeah I mean actually
3:17
definitely you know I kind of thought a lot about it and it actually yeah there
3:22
was a kind of philosophical element to it as well not in a kind of cruel you know sort of dry sort of way but just
3:30
the how you compute the emotional impact of that and you know what it does to you
3:36
I guess um yeah it was super bizarre for me I remember my my um my grandmother
3:42
ceased to remember like the last 20 years and so I inherited the name of a
3:50
an older cousin I became an older cousin so whenever I'd visit I was I was Steve
3:55
I was no longer Tom Tom didn't Tom was just a little boy that happened to randomly be around um it was it was
4:04
bizarre um yeah uh anyway Mark you've been
4:11
pretty busy lately I when I reached out you were over at grm there in France that's pretty pretty fun yeah it was
4:18
nice me and Ryan were doing a residency out there so we were in Paris for two weeks in their new studio and uh yeah it
4:29
was kind of quite intense cuz we're in the same apartment all day every day and then in the same Studio but we managed
4:36
to get through it all right um yeah it was good we did we made a new piece
4:41
together nice um like you know of a decent length or just some tracks or
4:48
yeah I mean like they wanted us to do a maximum of 40 minutes for you know with
4:54
these kinds of things it could have gone on for a lot longer it felt sort of squashed
5:00
yeah yeah 38 minutes were you guys on that that Booker system that you always see
5:06
everyone posing in front of for you know I mean there were a few big mod old
5:12
modular s in there I didn't an old Surge and then they'd got some
5:17
new a new uh what is it an old one that had been remade okay a new
5:25
implementation I guess and we had to go on that and I kind of like modular
5:31
sense but um we didn't use them for the piece I mean actually I was at EMS last
5:39
year in Stockholm and just for fun I just spent a week on their
5:45
surge it was I mean it's interesting to me as a Max user because I kind of grew out of analog modular since in the 80s
5:53
when I was a teenager I'd got a small I think it's an an ms10 and stuff like
5:58
that so I'd kind of grown up with modular analog since and and when Max
6:03
came along or when I encountered Max and MSP it was like this is great it's it's
6:09
like I can do all the things that I couldn't do on on those things and the benefit is of when you turn the patch on
6:14
it's the same you soled it but what occurred to me when I was working at EMS
6:20
on the surge was just how different it is working on a digital system and an
6:26
electrical system not from the point of view of human interface and stuff like that but I really it made me really
6:33
realize that Max has got a kind of cold hard logic to it you knowas when you're
6:39
working with something that's electrical it's almost like it's in it's
6:44
part of the same universe is youe you know what I mean it's like it it's it it it shifts about and it's it's
6:52
uh it's kind of got its you know drifts and stuff and and it's like gloopy and
6:58
stuff where you know Max is basically you're dealing with cold hard logic I think that's felt
7:06
after that experience yeah I always think of this when friends come over I can give I can
7:12
hand them a bunch of patch cables and say have about it make a sound out of this hardware and they can generally
7:19
make a sound if I put a blank Max Patch in front of them and they they're like
7:25
uh what do you want me to do with this and it's going to take them a long time to get a sound out of it um or a lot
7:32
longer than I think the the modular I'm trying to look at all these comments that are coming along because I'm sort
7:38
of ignoring them but oh it's pretty tough to keep up um we'll definitely have a bit of a um you know anything
7:46
that's accidentally triggering people or something which nor yeah I mean it was from my point of
7:53
viewers are you know I'm not saying that's I'm not making any universal claims or anything it just felt like
7:58
that to me but but yeah um and like you say it's it's kind of
8:06
more inviting for many people I guess to have physical things
8:11
to plug in and out yeah it's something I'm trying to always minimize that gap
8:17
between you know how quickly can a new person get in without reading you know 20 pages of tutorials and and make a
8:26
sound often a lot of the max workshops do are with super beginners like people
8:33
who have never seen it before you know they might have heard of it or and like
8:38
even things like this is you know like if you or I were to do a Max Patch and we oh yeah I'm just connecting that
8:45
cable it's like you don't actually think where am I clicking and how am I dragging but to a complete beginning
8:51
it's like yeah you have to click there and then hold it and then and it's almost like you have to guide their hand
8:57
on the mouse sort of or whatever ever but just the ergonomics of that can be
9:03
quite you can't really explain it well I I always that's always a stumbling block
9:08
in Max workshops for absolute beginners I think yeah if you got a patch C it's like you
9:16
put that in that hole and that goes it's kind of like yeah and I I found the
9:22
terminology for explaining it has hard to change and evolve like if I'm
9:27
explaining it to a room full of gen is it's it's X it's certain terminology if
9:33
it's a bunch of gen y/ Alphas then then it's you know they have this other in I
9:40
don't know all these generation things are by the way oh well if I was if I if
9:46
I have a room of 40 year olds versus a room of late teens uh the the the
9:51
terminology is that I can use is very different for explaining the same thing
9:58
um you know cuz you got these kids have had an iPad and a Mac in front of them since they came out of the womb
10:05
basically there's a whole different dexterity to the way they intera
10:10
interact and interface yeah yeah also how the the
10:15
navigation of menus and stuff and and systems is kind of like almost second
10:22
nature to that that you know if you gave it to my dad for example who's
10:27
93 he wouldn't understand about menus and you know it feels completely natural
10:33
to to uh little kids yeah my favorite thing is the kids just don't care for
10:40
rules so if if there's any rule they're like well why can't I not do that like
10:48
um which is if it's the rule they wouldn't be able to break it would they exactly um you can't break you can't
10:55
break the rules of physics yeah trying to explain best PR practices Max based practices I just
11:02
don't even bother um I mean thinking about as well
11:08
thinking about like teaching Max to to absolute beginners in Max another thing
11:14
that is really difficult is the kind of you know the order of like the only the the left in like and when I first
11:20
started using Max I'm like well why why have they done that that's really stupid very counterintuitive but now
11:27
it's like it becomes such you know it's like my universe works like that now yeah yeah
11:34
yeah yeah I think like that order operations yeah just my wife just asked my wife
11:42
about that she she she's like you do everything like a Max Patch um nice um
11:50
what else what else have you been up to lately other than grm um I I know you were recording an album back there in
11:58
2021 for editions Meo when a dear friend Peter passed away did that did that come
12:06
out well it was a comp it's been a complex story so I'd kind of recorded a
12:14
I'd recorded a new album and I was going to edit it but like I was unsure about so Peter Peter
12:22
had said do an album for Meo and I was like yeah yeah but then as I'm making the album I'm like is this the best
12:27
place for it then then pet died right like [ __ ] well what do I do now there
12:33
was like this whole question of like yeah not just like what's best for the album but what's best for this
12:40
moment in history yeah and Peter's wife
12:45
who who kind of now is taking over um Meo was like At first she was like
12:52
well Peter didn't hear it so maybe it's best not to release it and I was like yeah fair and then and then recently I
12:59
saw her in Vienna maybe a year ago I saw her in Vienna and she's like look I I think you ought to release it on editions Meo so it's just been on my
13:06
it's been in a kind of 75% finished State on my computer I can't finish it until I know exactly where it's going
13:13
right right that's the way I work it's like all my records are kind of label specific if you see what I mean so if
13:20
it's on this label it's like in a holding pattern waiting to land and if it's Landing in this label it's going to
13:27
be this sort of form so anyway Isabelle was like yeah let's do it and
13:33
and so yeah but in the meantime since then I've just recorded a hell of a lot of other
13:39
stuff and I'm kind of like now I've probably got like about Five
13:45
albums of of like Max based stuff all rhythmic Max based stuff on my
13:52
computer just stuck there and also like my problem like growing up and my early
13:58
sort of like professional work for me it was all about the album you know it's like I I
14:04
grew up loving vinyl records and and the album was like the
14:10
you know it was the thing that was the center of my practice it's like I make albums but then the past 10 years or so
14:18
maybe 15 years of encountering a lot of music from different Traditions including like Western
14:24
classical as well as like um in indan classical music and stuff like that it's
14:31
kind of like the album format has become less important to
14:37
me and also because I'm making more and more work in in
14:44
Max where really the it's like the the patch can result
14:50
you know the P the thing that I made as a patch can result in so many different versions of
14:55
itself that the albums just kind of like become something that's not that interesting anymore do you know what I
15:01
mean no completely I mean it's almost just like a way of a kind of superficial
15:08
way of documenting some things it's become some kind of it almost feels like
15:13
a weird business card now like that you hand out at a festival and maybe someone
15:19
will take a listen or maybe it'll end up in the trash after the festival I still I still love I still
15:26
listen listen to vinyl that's how I listen to mus music and I still buy vinyl but it's just making it and also
15:34
I'm making so I've been making so much stuff that just doesn't translate to two channels you know
15:41
and I he that someone's asking something yeah I can't I can't help it feel maybe
15:48
the the monopolization of you know Digital Services too like spottify and
15:53
that have kind of hampered people's enthusiasm for it just almost feels like
15:58
oh well I just put it out there it's a flash in the pan for a day and then it's
16:04
over should we be responding to people's comments no we'll we'll we'll have an
16:09
AMA kind of towards the end I mean if something if something jumps out there you're G to there's going to be a lot of
16:15
action in there um folks if you do have a question for Mark there will be
16:21
uh yes Madison yes uh there will be a point at the end where we'll we'll ask
16:28
Mark questions from the chat um Mark I believe you have some some Max Pat to
16:33
show us oh you asked me to show something yeah let's have a look home last night and I was like oh
16:41
[ __ ] what what kind of oops I swore then am I allowed to swear in this yeah you can swear uh that's the that's the worst
16:48
swear word I use by the way yeah that's that's totally flying I mean what about BX bollock is
16:54
classicar in America but it's quite a strong swear word in Britain yeah interesting I remember when I was a kid
17:01
watching like The Flintstones and there's an episode where Fred Flintstone says bollocks and it was like what CU
17:07
real now it doesn't feel so strong but as a kid that was up there with the like Class A swear words do you know what I
17:13
mean yeah yeah no 100% parents basically if someone has immigrated from Australia
17:20
to America I'm well aware of the different classes of swear words and where they fit into different countries
17:26
and it's fascinating what what will start a fight and what won't start a fight and what will escalate what what
17:34
won't escalate um yeah um and even Australia and and
17:40
England have their differences in in words but I think England and Australia
17:46
are actually quite culturally quite close I mean I remember the I went to North America I was like whoa we speak
17:53
the same language but this is so weirdly different to what I'm used to and then
17:58
after that that I went to Australia and I thought I would really not like Australia cuz my my only exposure to
18:04
Australia was like sit TV series and stuff like but actually it felt really
18:10
familiar like Australia felt like a bunch of people from the north of England got had gone over there well was
18:17
all criminals from North from yeah it's kind of true it's like uh you stole a life of bread and you found yourself on
18:24
a boat for 6 months and if you were lucky you were still alive and you you got to then you got to then leave in
18:30
Australia for the rest of your life yeah I mean I've got I I did some research
18:36
when brexit happened I researched my family tree because I'm me and Ryan of are Irish heritage and unfortunately I'd
18:44
missed it by a generation but there were a few members of my distant family um
18:51
what is it when you kind of force someone to go to Australia what's the
18:56
word uh conic went they were they were shipped out to
19:02
to Australia for ax of arson which is basically what I realized
19:08
was it was terrorism they were like Catholic terrorists fascinating why do you burn
19:14
buildings down you you so anyway you know it
19:19
wasn't all bad I mean so if you could make it out there on the boat which was also
19:24
treacherous uh and do your do your term just because no one was out there at
19:30
that point they would offer you a plot of land and everything after you finished your term and maybe you could
19:36
end up doing all right like yeah yeah well I'm sure they did I
19:41
mean you had to get through the indigenous people didn't so do so oh no not at all unfortunately I know that
19:48
story um especially being Tasmanian um Australia arguably still
19:55
Reckoning with all of that actually
20:00
um people were asking if you can share the patch um I mean I'd rather not share
20:07
the and also it won't do anything because it communicates with like VST instrument and it yeah I'd rather not
20:13
share the patch no that's fair enough um it looked a little familiar to the one I saw you do with uh trying to you did a
20:22
stream on in the pandemic with uh oh I'm blanking on his name
20:29
yeah I know the yeah Jacob yeah yeah yeah I mean it probably is similar
20:36
that because most of the things I do are very similar but um so Mark I some uh I know
20:44
you're a fan of a few outboard Hardware since that you interface you mention you use VST I'm curious what VST you're
20:53
using with this P this is instances of fm8 because that there's two P two
21:00
pieces of work which were both commissions for organ so the P so basically I use the patch
21:06
to to develop the work for a real organ do do you ever take any um I know
21:14
fm8 can load in like DX7 sisx algorithms and stuff do you
21:20
ever do that yeah yeah I've got all the stuff from the dx100 and the tx81z and
21:26
the DX7 I'm less interested in DX7 sounds and
21:31
more interested in the four operator sounds for some reason I think that's because
21:38
like um I had a tx8 On's Z it was like towards the end of the
21:45
80s probably like the first digital syn I got like I I basically what I used to do is I'd save up money buy a syn save
21:54
up some more money sell it then get a better one so I went through various analog Sims
21:59
and then finally saved up enough to get a tx81z yeah it's sold like you know
22:04
something probably much more better than that to get the tx8 On's Zed you know I got I probably sold something like an
22:12
sh101 get but you know you could get you could like I remember people offering to sell
22:19
me like um 303s for like 30 someone said you want to buy the 303 for £30 I was
22:25
like I'm not spending £30 on a on a TB 303 three yeah on a bit of shitty rolling
22:33
plastic but um yeah so like digital syn at that point analog syns were very
22:39
cheap and digital syns were more expensive um but yeah and also just like
22:45
the history of house and techno I think the four operator FM stuff featured a lot more strongly than the six operator
22:52
stuff yeah I um I mean it's fascinating to me that the tx81z is still the tap um
23:00
and that it hasn't blown up I mean that that lately base sound is just I mean
23:06
it's on almost every pop hit in house track from the from the 80s and it just seems that people just
23:13
haven't caught on that this thing is like in existence yet still somehow like
23:20
which is fine by me I mean um it just I know what you mean about the sound I
23:26
have a a TX 02 which is like you know the rack of
23:32
the DX7 this but is this like sounds funny CU like it's not like the D the
23:38
802 is like high high quality but like there's a Sheen to that versus that 81z
23:45
has this grittiness which is probably the the extra waveforms um yeah yeah yeah I guess so
23:54
but a really nice synth is the fs1r I don't know if you know that one which was the yes gener it was the last I think it's
24:01
the last FM syn they made of that they probably made some more recent ones but they' made some more re the F the the
24:09
fs1r I mean that that was a commercial failure as well for them I think they
24:15
only made it for less than a year 1999 uh and then it took like 15 years
24:23
until people realized like just how powerful it is yeah yeah and now I think they're
24:29
worth quite a lot of money yeah um I couldn't pay the prices they're asking
24:36
now but I was I I spent a long time waiting to find one at what I thought was a reasonable price and found one
24:44
eventually I got one from New York for like $200 that's where I got mine nice
24:50
and I don't know if you know Taylor D pre I was like will you this and next time you come to Britain will you come
24:55
over with it and he's like yeah yeah all right so so that's how I got I got mine
25:01
you're you know Taylor that I mean of course you do that that makes sense yeah Taylor's great um I mean back
25:10
in when I still lived in Australia he was coming out pretty regularly to play like Lawrence
25:15
english's uh room 40 events and stuff and 12K was just I mean there're still
25:22
putting out a lot of material but in in that there was an ERA there like 20067
25:28
they were putting out a lot of stuff yeah yeah yeah I think they went
25:33
through a really good they they were really interesting I'm not saying they're not interesting now but for me the around
25:41
the early 2000s they were putting out some interesting stuff yeah he was and
25:46
he was in Japan a lot too um yeah I I don't know why but I really feel we
25:52
ought to get the we're just Meandering because they not of this because we've not got this stream you know one thing
26:00
we could try Mark is if you if you Lo go on uh if you logged off or maybe even re
26:08
rebooted your Discord the entire app and then jump back in the call
26:13
it's it's one thing give a shot so let's see what happens I might forget how to
26:20
get back in I don't normally use Discord so well just text me if you get
26:27
stuck all right folks we're going to try and
26:33
get this patch going because you know we all want to see it um am I prepared it
26:39
first especially for today
26:45
say okay here he's coming
26:52
back and he back let's see what happens it's not going to work I don't know
26:59
why it's not even worth it it's not even that interesting of a
27:06
patch is it working yeah I can see it on my
27:12
screen I mean I don't need to see it if the majority of folks can see it uh okay
27:19
no I see it this is yeah it's it's totally Discord can't handle it for some
27:24
reason let not but what I was going to say is let's just get the audience to ask some Max specifically Max question
27:32
because just a bit Yeah folks uh I I
27:37
have a question here from a um he's in the channel here M Mark I'll ask it his
27:43
name is Philip Meyer and he's like I'm always curious how people tackle composition at what Curtis Rose calls
27:50
the macro scale or someone else might call arrangement we have lots of ideas about how to generate sounds or organize
27:57
sound object into rhythms and patterns but the next level up is more difficult
28:02
and and I think Philip feels like you're you know you're you're working a little more at that macro level so you mean
28:10
like the distinction between I think one of Curtis's kind of uh the the distinction he makes is
28:17
between like the generation of sounds and the generation of Note data got like mirrored in Max between
28:25
audio rate and control yeah is this is this what we're talking
28:32
about here yeah and you know just where you Le have one beat or you know one
28:38
yeah one beat but within that beat there's you know
28:44
movement but also the question is the maybe the question to the group is to
28:50
what extent is that distinction actually reinforced by the way musical
28:56
instruments bu to us as users like for example if you if you play a
29:05
drum is that distinction still meaningful do you know what I mean between yeah because I guess to an extent a
29:13
drummer is aware of like if they move to the the drumstick to a different part of the drum they're going to make a
29:19
different sound but the is that hierarchical distinction between events and synthesis
29:28
still present in the act of playing real instruments do you know what I
29:34
mean and I think maybe to some extent is it I don't
29:40
know yeah I like that Phillips Phillips added a little more can you see the comments here he's like for example on a
29:47
drum machine you have like a one bar pattern and then you have this collection of onear patterns how do you
29:54
actually turn that collection into a piece of music
29:59
you mean me personally I yeah I believe so what I do
30:04
a lot of so I'll do like very simple patent generating systems and I tend to
30:09
use the preset box loads and if I said I play any
30:14
instrument it's the preset box so I tend to like make make patterns and store
30:20
them in presets and then often a live performance will be me just jumping
30:25
around the presets and I kind of tend to group presets together you know these are the more intense ones these and then
30:32
there might be like a line of things in a preset box that like I can follow and it you know what I mean totally know
30:39
what you mean uh I I I'm not adverse to the preset box myself um hang on there's
30:47
a question are the patterns generative or are they set so they're generative but that there's it's not like you know
30:54
there are different levels of generativity where you might have kind of it a generative process that kind of
31:01
stays in a certain behavioral level do you know what I mean but no like for example if you shake a tree it's like
31:08
the leaves are moving but you're not doing the tree is not going to go off in some random Direction so it's like you
31:14
kind sh a tree in a certain way and the leaves will move in a certain way so there's a there's a level of generativity but it's not like going to
31:22
go off in a complete tangent right I so the levels of Genera ity that
31:28
I work with are just kind of like little behaviors like this do you know what I mean not not kind of
31:35
like um things that could move into like a completely new
31:40
Direction yeah yeah do you I I believe
31:46
so yeah uh do you do any interpolation of the
31:51
presets yeah I mean I used to yeah and before P storage was a thing I used to I
32:01
I I did do like around 2002 when I was still working with Matt as
32:07
snd I developed some ways of like interpolating between different drum
32:13
patterns um which we played around America a bit and it was kind of all right um but I
32:22
don't really use that too much these days because I kind like the way it
32:28
sounds when it switches I think um yeah I wouldn't I wouldn't say
32:34
interpolate between them yeah I often between synthesis
32:40
settings right there's something I think more fluid about interpolating you know
32:46
synthesis versus pattern Pat drum patterns there's something weird I find I getting these weird in between spaces
32:53
that I don't like if I'm interpolating them yeah yeah but the point is this it's like you might not like them but if
32:59
you listen to them enough you might like them and and so I this is what I found
33:05
that I was like i' i' have I'd have these you know these these positions
33:10
that I interpolate between and I remember like we we toured America
33:17
I think around 2005 and it was we were supporting orer and we was we were
33:23
playing big big clubs and stuff and I I had this kind of like in interpolation thing where it it made kind of one quite
33:31
boring Rhythm interpolate into another one and I kind of lik the fact that it
33:36
went into these difficult places do you know what I mean and yeah and I often think the way that it's
33:42
a really difficult it's it's difficult to describe how your aesthetic prejudices
33:51
evolve and shift but I think they do evolve and shift in response to those
33:56
kinds of things that are immediately not that interesting do you know what I
34:01
mean I think I think for me it's like I'm always aware that I'm I'm trying to
34:09
take cues from the equipment and let it kind of like not be
34:15
so judgmental do you know what I mean about is this is this instantly appealing or you
34:23
know it's the bits that are kind of like quite yeah like a bit not
34:30
necessarily grotesque but just like a bit sort of like rubbish yeah the rough
34:36
go that actually like might hold some aesthetic kind of
34:42
Interest yeah so yeah I think that's sorry I'm I'm cutting you off I think
34:48
that's like it yeah yeah I think that's an important way of of how aesthetic
34:55
positions evolve I it's not in response to what is aesthetically understood and familiar
35:01
but it's in response to what is aesthetically unfamiliar I think you you basically
35:08
described my favorite thing about working with Max is like Building A system that will show me things that I
35:15
didn't expect or didn't or or show me the rough edges or the kind of happy
35:21
accidents um yeah but also it's like if I made a piece of work and it turned out
35:27
exactly as I had intended I'd be really disappointed you know I think it's
35:34
it's because it's like what's happened along that process is you know it's like
35:40
I've not actually yeah it for me it needs to the the intention is a starting point
35:46
I think not an ending point yeah yeah but also even when you use the word
35:53
like happy accidents it's like that's What discovery is you know
36:00
it's like um I I've you know like there's I've got a problem with the way that people talk
36:07
about yeah we really leave room for like mistakes or like or like uh things to go
36:14
wrong but but actually what people are talking about
36:19
is just things that are unanticipated right and I think I think
36:25
because in in the west I I think there's an overwhelming Prejudice towards the belief that creativity is about control
36:32
and Perfection and the realization of ideas and stuff that anything that is
36:37
countered to that is necessarily deemed as some sort of accident or mistake but
36:43
actually it's just Discovery right I think for me the word
36:48
the unanticipated is is more interesting than things like accidents or
36:56
mistakes yeah I use that term actually because it comes from um a series a
37:03
photographic series it's my favorite photographer Wolf Gang Tans German German artist uh he did a
37:12
series and some of them were titled you know he was literally experimenting with
37:17
uh dark room chemicals and came out with some
37:22
phenomenal visuals through that method and I've kind of I just discovered this
37:28
20 odd years ago but it's kind of stuck with me ever since like um and yeah I
37:34
guess I guess if you know a synthesizer so well that there's no longer any
37:40
possibility of you know uh a an anomaly
37:46
occurring I mean I would find to me that would get boring um probably L
37:53
interest but it does happen it's like like like said I had an sh 101 for a
37:59
long time and I kind of by the end of my time with that instrument I kind of I'd
38:05
always go to the same places in it do you know what I mean yeah and they were nice they were nice things but it's like
38:14
um yeah but I don't think there's anything necessarily wrong with with getting to that level of
38:21
knowledge of an instrument right because to that point it means you've internalized the character of the
38:28
instrument right do what I mean so like your aesthetic uh vocabulary has has grown in
38:37
response to that right right
38:42
yeah yeah yeah I feel like uh I feel like I used to see people hone in and M
38:49
like you know uh become the master of a certain synthesizer or something 10 15
38:56
years ago I see it less I I think people turn over gear pretty quickly now and so it's it's less common I did
39:04
see a performance recently with an old um an old M Audio trigger finger and I
39:10
was incredibly impressed with how this artist used just one m audio trigger
39:17
finger and that clearly put in some time with it and it was
39:22
masterful um and it's like you just don't see that so often now
39:28
um I'm not sure if it's a cultural change or what but yeah I think just let people do what
39:36
they want to do and just see what it's like there I I think actually right now there's
39:41
like it's for me you know growing up weird electronic if you were into
39:47
weird electronic music you were definitely an outsider you were a minority you know and it was for it was
39:53
weird kids who didn't fit and stuff yeah but now you know weird electronic music
40:00
is is uh you know there's so many more people doing it from very different
40:05
backgrounds and in different ways that I think it's just really great that it's become that you know
40:12
um so uh I'm not really I mean Master is a
40:19
really it's kind of a weird sort of um it's a weird one because like the
40:27
example I always refer back to is when the future when future were like making
40:33
acid tracks they were like there's a famous interview on British TV where
40:38
they said they didn't know what they would do they didn't didn't know how to use the the machine the tb303 and they'd
40:46
not got the book and you know just they were in a position of like the complete opposite of Mastery of that
40:52
instrument but through their embodied exploration of it made something really
40:58
great do you know what I mean if they had been masters of that instrument they wouldn't have made acid
41:06
tracks um something it probably would have been more like I don't know some
41:13
kind of disco track or something by or something right right yeah no that's
41:20
true it's a tricky one I mean and also like having studied Indian classical music of bit
41:27
and also like I met when I was in Japan recently I met a a a shaku Hatchi player like a
41:37
really someone from yeah someone who was a master of of that I guess you call it
41:44
but but what occurred to me was that in the west when we talk about master it's often about skill and control and
41:52
Perfection but like talking to like Indian friends who are part of like a Indian classical tradition Mastery is
42:00
understood a lot less about control and much more about being responsive and like intuitive
42:07
and um kind of having a symbiotic relationship with the instrument
42:14
you um as well as like yeah this this guy who played shaku Hatchi it was like
42:21
the bits that um you know the kind of spiky bits that were like not
42:28
the that that came out of the process of playing it were were kind of like interesting I don't know if if if you if
42:35
I ever I didn't but there was this text by this guy what's it called
42:42
um boyo I think some kind of 17th century shaku
42:48
Hatchi Zen Guy and um in this text when
42:54
I when I first read this it was like totally mind blowing to me because he says in this text it's a text on how to
43:00
play L how to play shakuhachi he says if from the beginning you try to produce a
43:06
splendid tone no he says if you try to produce a splendid tone that's really
43:12
kind of quite um what's the word he uses something
43:19
like Despicable or something it's disgraceful to try to produce a splendid tone that's what he says um and and he
43:28
says things like if whatever the shaku Hai cannnot produce automatically human
43:35
skill cannot kind of compensate for so I kind of like you know this is like 3 400
43:41
years old text from a completely different tradition but it's foregrounding the idea that as a
43:48
performer or as a player you're actually responding to what the material is giving you you know you're actually
43:55
you're not in a in a role of absolute control sort of right it's symbiotic to some
44:04
degree yeah yeah yeah there's a good question here um from someone called
44:11
mizy Mark what do you think of the distinction between using your own systems instruments or using stuff other
44:18
people made is the system if the system is such a big part of your music does it
44:24
feel like it's less of your own artwork
44:32
well I use instruments that designed by other people um and I think I think
44:39
we're always operating within Frameworks you know I think even if if you're a guitarist or a
44:44
composer Orchestra you're working within Frameworks and systems I don't think there's any such
44:50
thing as like being completely free of the the
44:56
structural stuff that you yeah so
45:01
um true I'd find it a little bit weird to use other people's Max patches but
45:09
um and and I really like making Max patches like I like
45:18
um but for me making Max patches is all it's very it's always they're always
45:23
very simple things that I'm dealing with like what happens if I connect this to this and it's it's very very super basic
45:30
you know it's it's not anything complicated at all and I also really love making a Max Patch and then
45:37
actually like making it more and more
45:44
um not efficient but just like doing it with the least number of boxes possible
45:51
right yeah yeah so you get that that brings reliability right I mean does it
45:58
does it bring some consistency to the patch you feel or does it bring
46:04
reliability CU like you know you could use one object that does something
46:09
complicated or lots of objects that do something simple hang on someone saying I'd argue
46:17
sometimes oh God that that message is already
46:24
gone I think they're responding to
46:30
but yeah what was I going to say um yeah I think we're always operating
46:35
within systems and I think
46:43
um I mean for me it's not like it's not about
46:50
like I'm bothered about it being my property or anything
46:57
it's just like yeah using someone else's Max Patch I've I don't think I mean I use
47:04
some kind of granular synthesis patches a bit that other people a long time ago
47:10
that other people wrote but um why does that person ask that
47:16
question yeah I I'm not entirely sure I mean I think it's an interesting one and it's like question back to them yeah the
47:24
question all right let's see if m replies but uh they saying elaborating there's a new
47:32
trend of more experimental devices being becoming commercially marketed things
47:38
like Lia and Soma for example I sometimes find myself feeling a bit like
47:43
cheating when using other people's stuff to make experimental music um I don't
47:49
think there's any such thing as cheating yeah I would say that too it's and music is about
47:57
from like in really music is about being is about
48:03
having fun you know music is about being with your friends or being on your own and
48:09
and actually enjoying the process of making music and it sometimes gets difficult and it sometimes becomes a
48:15
pain but um if at some point you're not enjoying
48:21
it it's like yeah just do what just do whatever you want to do and
48:29
I I I I do strike a lot of Max users coming up against the cheating or how
48:34
much how much patching or how much repatching of this person's patch do I need to do to make it call it my own
48:41
that kind of phenomenon um and yeah there I really don't believe there is I think cheating
48:47
is taking someone else's finished track and Rel labeling it your track and
48:54
releasing it perhaps I I mean yeah but that's that's
49:02
um yeah that that I mean that's yeah that's a complete that's Ste that's stealing
49:08
um yeah um I think the trend of SE more experimental devices commercialized is
49:15
just the development of technology in in in music I mean you can only make so
49:21
many more subtractive sense and to make things more ex you know interesting and
49:27
appealing these these you know Hardware companies are having to think outside
49:33
the box a bit more also a lot of the hardware companies they're not these big multinationals that are you know a lot
49:38
of these companies making these weird little sents are just kind of like people who are obsessed with weird
49:44
little sense who just you know they probably don't make a lot of money they probably just make a you know they
49:50
probably just survive and do okay right and also like the more different ways we can have
49:57
of making music I think the better and and and also seeing how people who are
50:05
non-experts can pick a lot of that stuff up and just make sound is I think is a really good thing
50:12
and and yeah like like Ryan for example like
50:17
tonight is down the road working with a bunch of kids from the town and he's
50:23
been developing like Max patches just for little kids to use just just weird things that just make
50:30
bizarre squeaks and and the kids love it and you know these kids are often kids
50:35
that would get excluded from normal music lessons because they don't sit and concentrate or they're on some spectrum
50:41
that means they find it difficult to like Focus or whatever yeah so you know the more the more
50:48
varied we can be in our approach I think the better and
50:54
um yeah that that's great that all this stuff's coming out and I think if people want to use it even in the context of
51:00
professional work then just just use it and and enjoy it yeah I'm all for it I
51:07
mean I had to I had to sit through a few weeks of piano lessons in my childhood and I wish it was I wish that instead
51:15
they' been showing me some experimental Max Patch I think I would have gravitated
51:21
to the way music is taught I don't know what it's like over there but the way music is taught Britain is just like
51:27
it's it's brutal it's just it's a it's cruel it's just like it's like why
51:34
why yeah it it's not nice I I'm like one of the trustees of the local music
51:41
education Hub so it's like in charge of Music provision for um all the schools
51:48
in the area and um actually all the teachers are
51:54
brilliant but it's like the big challenge is is how to actually join up
52:00
and you know if we could get these weird little syns and buy 2,000 of them and distribute them around the town it would
52:06
be fantastic because that's what the kids all want right you know but I think we've got
52:12
something like in storage got we've got something like 3,000
52:18
trombones it's like nor and trombones are brilliant things I'm not against people using trombones but it's like um
52:27
I keep getting distracted by all these comments sorry yeah I guess the problem is though that the second you like I
52:33
want to play the trombone is you have all of these you know teachers or older
52:38
people saying this is how you play the trombone right and then but if it's an experimental little experimental synth
52:46
then then the there's no like manual on how you have to play this thing and how it should should sound and so the kids
52:56
have more freedom then and they're not like restri you know that's a restrictive thing I mean I think it's
53:02
all in across all Western culture but like this is how you play the piano and here's your piano lessons and like the
53:10
creativity is is comes well if you're lucky and you can stick with it maybe
53:15
the creativity comes later well actually evidence shows that it doesn't because the kids that actually stick with music
53:22
education and get good you know they'll they'll do exams and and and get to a
53:27
level of proficiency which is enough to get them in a good music school yeah
53:33
then go on to this is really going to trigger some people now but then go on to to I'm not even
53:41
going to say it I got friends who work in like in like music institutions who basically would say that most of the
53:48
students are kind of traumatized the education and they leave
53:53
um just feeling worn out and and disenfranchised
54:00
and not doing the thing that they started off loving right
54:06
um so yeah it's um so I just to be clear I'm not again I'm completely in favor of
54:13
m music education for as many people as possible I'm not in favor of the way it
54:19
becomes about being about certain kinds of music and certain approach music
54:25
making um and I'm always getting in trouble for this kind of thing
54:31
because but I am actually you know I think music education is really crucial and everyone
54:37
should be able to engage in yeah the way it's done like GE
54:43
there's a there's a there's a writer Georgina Bourne I don't know if you've heard of Georgina Bourne and her
54:48
research shows that a level m in Britain you do a levels before you go to university a level music actually turns
54:54
people off music I'd believe it yeah yeah I'm I'm interacting with some
55:02
total virtuosos who you know composers and and you know they're 90 20 year olds
55:10
with you know they've already done phenomenal stuff and then to see them discovering like more experimental music
55:17
for the first time they they feel relieved and they're so excited um and I
55:24
feel like the these people that I'm fortunate to interact with if they
55:30
didn't discover this right in this moment they're they're going to be gone in in a year or two they're going to
55:36
quit and take on another career or something because they their borderline burnt out already um and it's
55:43
fascinating to just show them this kind of no roof way of making and exploring sound
55:50
again and they they they seem relieved I I wouldn't say it's no rules but I just
55:56
said different rules right right right there's still systems wherever you go
56:02
yeah um but yeah I think I mean I remember
56:07
the first time I used a synthesizer it was I mean it's a really stupid story
56:13
because I'm from a kind of M like steel workking mining area and in
56:19
Britain in kind of like working class houses on the out on this on the side of
56:25
a building is a Coal Shed So it's where you would traditionally keep the coal for the fire in the winter and I remember the
56:33
first time I used a synth it was my older cousin had a moo in the Coal Shed
56:39
of his house and we went around we went round at Christmas some family get
56:45
together and I was like you know I'm just like this is boring why am I here and soone said go into the Coal Shed and
56:51
have a go on your cousin's new synthesizer and it was like a kind of
56:58
copy of a moo yeah and as soon as my finger touched the cut off
57:06
frequency and I went it was like it was like a light lit
57:11
up in my head amazing and and uh
57:17
yeah so you know people need access to that stuff so was he uh was he not
57:24
allowed to bring it in the house he had to keep it in the co shed or too loud yeah he probably wanted it in the Coal
57:30
Shed because he he allowed him to escape from the house oh that's amazing you
57:36
know this is this would have been the early 80s and the my these two cousins
57:42
were a little bit older than me and they lived kind of closer to the center of Sheffield so you know they would have
57:48
been part of that whole early Human League scene and going out to those
57:53
clubs whereas I was like you know the the further away you got from the epicenter of Sheffield City Center it's
58:01
like you went you like lost six months for every mile or something so I was like three years behind or
58:10
something so yeah I I can relate to that growing up in Tasmania in the 80s I mean
58:15
and then in 1988 as an 8-year-old going to Melbourne I realized that we were
58:23
several years behind um in everything from Fashion to yeah technology to
58:31
transport um The Gap is less in these days due to the internet and various
58:37
other things capitalism but um yeah it was a pretty big gap back then
58:44
um oh someone is like what are your what what's your latest like what's your favorite books right now Mark any books
58:51
that have been jumping out at you here we go folks
58:58
you really laugh at this this is what Ryan got me for Christmas
59:04
yes nice book of
59:11
kns amazing I'm just trying to find at that last algorithmic God assembly Mark
59:19
did you see that presentation on nuts it was it thoron actually yeah thoron had a
59:25
lady there that did a full present I think it might be up on YouTube actually
59:30
um yeah she did a whole thing she even talked the audience through like making a knot and uh and talked about how it
59:39
was algorithmic to to do knot making she' actually discovered several knots
59:45
that she had made and discovered and every has got there's a philosophy like
59:52
a theory of knots there's a there's a a branch of science called knot Theory where that names every different not and
59:59
discovers different notes um but this is a really great book pedig [ __ ] of the oppressed I don't
1:00:06
know ah yeah and this is like um R who's a kind of
1:00:13
educationalist I think he's Chilean I okay and um it's basically how you how
1:00:22
you engage with this franchise communities and
1:00:27
Empower them amazing I basically use this as a Kind
1:00:33
of Blue I do a lot of I'm on a like I say I'm on this truste of this trustee
1:00:38
Board of this music service and a few other Charities and things in the town so I'm kind of like constantly referring
1:00:44
to this nice very cool my door
1:00:52
sorry all right I think Ryan's just got back hey shall I get Ryan up in the room
1:00:59
yeah here we go folks Ryan trainer is going to drop
1:01:08
in get another get another cup of
1:01:16
tea yeah we love a
1:01:21
cameo he's refusing to join uh just you got to tell him Mark I'm going to send
1:01:28
him an email his name his name his name came up when I when I pulled the
1:01:33
community they want to hear from Ryan so um I'll he's been doing these electronic
1:01:38
music Club work he started a thing called electronic music Club in the town and all turning up and they're just
1:01:45
making really mental electronic music and we've started we we're getting a record label together to release it
1:01:52
all that's awesome yeah let me just go through more books yeah
1:01:59
yeah yeah I'm going to um I'm going to send Ryan an email and try and get him
1:02:04
in here he's getting Max Max pulling out a few more
1:02:14
books they're all quite rubbish these
1:02:20
books it's a pretty good works as a good diffuser Mark exactly yeah yeah this
1:02:26
this was a really important book for me that was really when I first found
1:02:32
Richard Ry had a really big impact this is the essays on
1:02:39
heiger and other okay let's get that one
1:02:45
nice and I really like this book because on the back he looks really happy yeah usually it's like super
1:02:53
serious right like like yeah yeah uh the picture we used to to
1:02:59
announce this um chat actually Mark you looked pretty serious and a lot of people were like is is Mark okay
1:03:08
uh how is Mark doing generally
1:03:13
concerned I'm kind of okay I mean it's difficult to be okay in a world where so
1:03:19
many people aren okay but this is true this is true yeah um but you the the
1:03:26
people often say like what can what can we do you know what can we do as artists to actually make a
1:03:32
difference and the the answer that I found is you just work in your local
1:03:38
community that's that's what I think that's what I can do I can make a
1:03:44
difference to people around here do you know what I mean I I live in quite a deprived area it's not I don't live in a
1:03:50
f fancy part of town it's you know it's quite a it's quite a I guess you'd say a
1:03:55
rough a rough town right so yeah I think for me the difference I can make is
1:04:03
just if you can Empower if you can give people the means to kind of like start
1:04:08
that Journey then I think you know of of just
1:04:14
reading or music or you know I think that's that is the best that I can do
1:04:21
it's it's I I truly believe this in someone coming from a very very small small town like where basically my
1:04:28
entire life and career was was laid in front of me like here it is we drive by
1:04:34
the warehouses that you're going to work in from you know a very young age and this is this is the formula right and
1:04:41
it's like art art for me was the the exit gave me an exit strategy gave me an
1:04:49
alternative and it's like the smallest thing that a teacher or a Sensei or even
1:04:55
just a facilitator in the community can show you the smallest thing and it like
1:05:00
you said it like turns on that light bulb or lights that fuse and then all of a sudden you see an
1:05:07
alternative option to um yeah and also I
1:05:12
think although the dis like I kind of make this naive distinction between being a passive consumer or an
1:05:19
active uh agent you know and I think the more you can do you know it's like Diet
1:05:24
it's it's good to grow your own vegetables and cook your own food and
1:05:31
right I think just the act of being involved in some sort of creative
1:05:38
practice G gives you a way of kind of like articulating your experience of the
1:05:43
world and I think that in itself is like a kind of a a healthy thing to
1:05:50
do really difficult talking and reading comments at the same time yeah someone actually says here in related like you
1:05:56
talked about the stress and challenges associated with bad music education how do you believe music can positively
1:06:03
impact our health and well-being you've kind of just already answered that with you know the work that you and Ryan are
1:06:08
doing in the community and um yeah yeah also you know
1:06:15
like like I'm not yeah I mean I think it's
1:06:22
just rewarding as well you know and I think if you want to find sort of like any sense of fulfillment as a human
1:06:29
being I think helping other people is the is the
1:06:35
way to do it right um and uh yeah you
1:06:40
know like these days it's always about this the the pursuit of happiness is seen as this kind of inner journey into
1:06:47
like fixing yourself or whatever right but I think the the way to
1:06:54
find not happiness but some kind of sense of like
1:07:00
um place in the world is is by just [ __ ]
1:07:05
I sound like some weird evangelic Evangelical kind of Mentalist but you know I just think it's good to work in
1:07:12
your community no honestly I am with you there I find it more fulfilling and and
1:07:18
gives me more of a sense of purpose to go out and do that then spending this uh
1:07:23
journey of going going inside myself and trying to deconstruct the last 40 years
1:07:29
of my life I honestly would rather just try and Elevate people around me yeah
1:07:37
yeah that's more or just just give people the means
1:07:42
to actually start that journey and right right and
1:07:47
uh yeah and get switched on I guess to stuff yeah it's always you never know
1:07:54
what it is that's going to switch flick that switch for some too like sometimes you can show them something and you're
1:08:00
like this will do it and it's not they're like not but then you show them the alternative or something that you
1:08:06
perhaps didn't you perhaps underestimated even a tiny little bit of patching or something and you see you
1:08:14
see them just go or just a whole bunch of random stuff you
1:08:19
know just Alternatives I think uh it little more on topic someone
1:08:27
asked a question before like what kind of sound uh you spending much time on
1:08:33
sound design and sound sound Spectra like what is the sound Spectra that
1:08:38
fascinates you I know you've done a little bit of your own kind of like algorithm programming on the old
1:08:44
Hardware before and is there kind of an area there right now that you're you interested in or is it more about
1:08:52
systems and and sequencing well it's a bit of All Sorts like for
1:08:58
me when you talk about when I talk about creative practice you kind of end up
1:09:04
dividing it up into bits like we can talk about this but actually creative practice is for me sort of like an
1:09:11
indivisible hole so it's like
1:09:16
um but but in terms of like my approach
1:09:22
to kind of music making I think a really a few really important things that I
1:09:28
encountered were like very early on a combination of a mono since than a drum
1:09:34
machine be kind of became kind of foundational for my musical cognitive World sort of that
1:09:42
this that sort of the interaction of those two things and then although I grew up listening to
1:09:49
things like throbbing gristle and kind of weird electronic music the really big thing for me was was
1:09:55
uh when like deep house kind of made it to Britain so like you know just like
1:10:02
percussion and nice deep cords Lush cords um and I kind of encountered that
1:10:10
I guess like 9ish and at that point I kind of moved
1:10:16
away from like the world of like throbbing gr and psychic TV I mean I'd already moved on from that but but I
1:10:23
went into I became quite obsess with the kind
1:10:28
of the FRA the musical Frameworks that were that what house was basically like
1:10:35
deep and I think even the work that I do today like we just did this me and Ryan just did this big multi Channel piece in
1:10:42
grm and someone was asking me about like how I deal with all this and essentially
1:10:47
it's like a combination of kind of percussive rhythmic elements and like
1:10:53
kind of toal spatialized um textural material which
1:11:00
is kind of like derived from that early interest in the two elements of house
1:11:06
music yeah so yeah in terms of
1:11:11
like like the the way I think about music I think that's that's how I kind of think about
1:11:17
it yeah yeah and then in terms of sound synthesis so like yeah like I was really
1:11:25
used FM synthis a lot um like actually you know I talked about using the cut
1:11:31
off you getting an analog Sy and like wow there's a thing called filter cut off and you know it's it's so like
1:11:38
instantly pleasurable but it's like as a as a young teenager I was it
1:11:45
was like there's there's got to be more dials right as good fun as this do you
1:11:51
know I mean what and then I kind of read about FM synthesis like I I could not
1:11:56
afford to buy a lot of synthesizers so I only had one at a time but there was there were like synth magazines out at
1:12:01
the time so I bought those like bought every issue of everything so if you if you ask me any
1:12:09
question about any synth that came out in the 80s I'll probably about his architecture I'll probably know about it
1:12:16
we could we should do that as a test in a bit that that would be fun but yeah so I came to FM synthesis because I
1:12:23
thought it's a really amazing way of dealing with the spectral
1:12:28
content of sound um the CZ pulsewidth
1:12:37
modulation what what was that how did you see the comments oh here we are someone's asking about the CZ something
1:12:44
yeah did you ever use a kazio cz1 I had a CZ
1:12:50
203s ah which was the cut down version of that cuz I couldn't for is EZ
1:12:56
101 um but they were nice sense the fs fs1r so I know about
1:13:02
that yeah classic yeah uh someone asked about your they
1:13:10
said that you know I believe they were at your grm show in Paris last Sunday
1:13:15
the sound was Bonkers I believe you used Max curious to know how you and Ryan
1:13:20
splitted roles to synchronize both of your patches
1:13:26
you press the buttons at the same time there you go folks good old analog sync
1:13:34
um the thing is you can even play diff very different rhythmics structures against one
1:13:40
another and they can fit you know um so yeah we both had a a bunch of patches on
1:13:46
our computers and we had a rough map of like we'll do these particular I talk
1:13:52
about music in terms of behaviors so it's like I'll doing this behavior and you do this one so it's like a a
1:13:59
generalized root map but then we stop in each place and
1:14:04
explore and you can only really do that on stage in front of an audience um at the moment of the show
1:14:12
you know like you you to do it in the studio and pre-plan it wouldn't have
1:14:17
worked right right I'm looking at all these comments yeah someone says here
1:14:23
just just teaching and having workshops and Max come naturally to you I'd love to assist people in my community but
1:14:30
feeling like explaining Max to a group group full of people would be difficult
1:14:35
um it's a good question so although I'm I'm not an
1:14:42
academic and I I never had an AC academic position one of the first jobs
1:14:47
I had was managing some studios in a university so like I was about 30 and I
1:14:53
got a job it was like 1997 is I got a job in an art school
1:14:59
being in charge of the studios and you know technically I knew I I felt very
1:15:06
capable I knew a lot of I knew a lot of facts but then it's
1:15:12
like actually teaching stuff it took me about a year to to really feel confident
1:15:21
in getting information from you know into other people yeah and it's quite
1:15:28
it's and when I got to that point it was kind of yeah I felt like I could do it
1:15:35
but it took a long time to feel like I could really explain stuff and then and
1:15:41
then yeah just like teaching very basic Max
1:15:46
workshops just like this is a this is a button and this is a yeah just it's it's
1:15:53
you have to go slow and and really do the basics really slowly um and go around the room and
1:16:00
make sure everyone is at that same point because people people also if they're not feeling confident and they've not
1:16:06
got it and they're just going to stay quiet and then suddenly they're five steps behind and then you've lost them
1:16:11
you know and they so it's like you make sure that person who's like the quiet one who's not confident is is actually
1:16:19
at the same point as everyone else in some sense they're the they're the marker for yeah keeping everyone up to
1:16:27
speed yeah i' yeah I've kind of found too that you know getting getting to
1:16:34
somewhere fun sooner than later is helpful too like so there's a little bit of a motivator there for them to to
1:16:40
stick at it yeah we did this thing I don't know if you know this guy Finley Shakespeare is who's a British um music
1:16:48
maker and he also released the fun editions Mega and he kind of does like he he manages the moo sound lab I don't
1:16:55
know if you know this so it's a big it's a big collection of moo modular stuff
1:17:01
and um we raised some money to do like some projects in the town and we got the
1:17:08
Moog modular into so there's a there's a market just just down the hill
1:17:15
um like not not a fancy kind of farmers market type thing like brutal sort of like Inner City Market and we um we got
1:17:23
Finley up with the mve Sound Lab and put him in a Market unit
1:17:29
on for a week so it's like the Moog Sound Lab was installed just in a
1:17:34
regular shop unit in this market so you know here's some guy selling sausages and here's some person selling Fabric
1:17:41
and VES or whatever love it and then there's the moo Sound Lab there for a week and it was just
1:17:48
like the idea was that people just come through and and have a go but is with
1:17:55
something like that there's so many dials you can be turning dials and they're not doing anything so I said to
1:18:01
Finley like what you need to have is like three or four dials that you can say to people touch that and twiddle
1:18:08
that and it will do some like massively drastic thing really that they can really feel
1:18:15
that they're having an input and uh he did and it was good yeah that's cool that's cool yeah
1:18:23
it's funny often when you find that stuff in some random place where it wouldn't normally be like say I love
1:18:30
that it was in the market that like something about the alternate context just seems to make it more poignant
1:18:38
like yeah I imagine they got a lot of you know people had perhaps never even
1:18:44
seen or knew what a synthesizer was right like yeah and there were a lot of people well what the weird thing is so
1:18:51
this is a small town on the outskirts of Sheffield you know it's it's economically very depressed it's um you
1:18:57
know it's not in any it's probably like one of the least fancy places in Britain um and there were a lot of people who
1:19:05
were like very nervous so some people just stand at the door and not feel comfortable coming in but the amount of
1:19:10
people that turned up who were completely obsessed by modular sense who lived in the town have been completely
1:19:17
Anonymous I tell you there's about 10 people who who built modul s in the town
1:19:24
that I never knew about and that's quite an amazing all these like nerds turned up and so you discovered like this whole
1:19:30
underbelly that you weren't really sure was there yeah so it was kind of nice for
1:19:37
that in that respect yeah that's cool someone asked if you have any books
1:19:43
on sequencing that you would recommend I don't
1:19:49
actually but like yeah I mean I would say just have a
1:19:56
just use max or so you know like why why do you need a book yeah I would agree too yeah
1:20:05
like you know there's some great books on Max and computer music but
1:20:11
um but yeah just like the way I started with Max was the very first things I did
1:20:19
when I first got a copy of Max and and when I worked at this University I was able to buy a copy of Max through the
1:20:25
university so I think I got a copy about like8 about 97 when MSP came out I got that as soon
1:20:34
as it was available the very first things I did were kind of build copies of like um drum machines and stuff so at
1:20:42
that time there wasn't really any software that had got like an 808 style grid interface you know to do the
1:20:50
rhythmic stuff so I started off by by building that in Max great and then
1:20:58
thinking like how can I how can I develop that you know so instead of an onoff on each step there
1:21:04
was like a likelihood of a step happening there um which you know everyone's from
1:21:11
these days and but back then it felt like a big achievement for me to be able to do that and then have a parameter
1:21:17
that like increased or lowered all the possibilities so I could make the the rhythmic Loop more dense or L dens by
1:21:26
globally increasing all the probabilities or decreasing them and I did a lot of stuff like that and
1:21:34
then and yeah you just evolved from there um and now I have a set of like
1:21:41
concerns that um that I keep revisiting and which I was going to show
1:21:47
you now but um can't we're going to have to definitely have you back for Max
1:21:52
session Mark there's a good question and and we've kind of covered it already but I think it's I think it's worth like do
1:21:58
you feel that the location geography played a big part in your musical career
1:22:04
and was living in Sheffield and being in the UK and and being around those things very influential to snd and your own
1:22:11
work yeah yeah I mean totally like um for a start growing up in in a time
1:22:19
and a place that was like um quite difficult you know know like
1:22:25
like in the 80s we'd got this right-wing government that was just Waging War on
1:22:31
the people it's Margaret thater right yeah yeah and I I grew up I don't know
1:22:36
if you know this this um bit of British history called The Battle of or Reeve which was the
1:22:42
confrontation between the miners and the police which kind of was a turning point in British political history so I kind
1:22:48
of grew up next to orve so I grew up in the 80s in a clim of like real mental kind
1:22:57
of social Division and unrest and electronic music discovering
1:23:05
electronic music and film and literature and politics at at the same
1:23:12
time were really important that's because of where I lived I think
1:23:18
right and then just just being in a town like Sheffield where there was a lot of
1:23:23
electronic music mus um so Cabra Vol were from there which were really Cabra
1:23:31
Vol were really influential I didn't really like them at the time but looking back on what they achieved and especially like what Chris Watson did
1:23:38
and what he's gone on to do yeah it's totally amazing um and then throughout
1:23:44
that period from that from then until the early warp years it it just felt like a
1:23:52
really a really great place to live and the thing about Sheffield is it's not a massive City I think it's like about
1:23:58
750,000 population so it's kind of like all the scenes have to kind of meet one
1:24:04
another you know it's not like you it's not big enough to have like separate venues for separate little
1:24:11
groups do you know what I mean yeah totally you'd all kind of meet and there'd be a lot of kind
1:24:18
of different kind of musical Traditions crossing over um also I think the way that like
1:24:26
Jamaican culture in Sheffield fed into how British techno music emerged so like
1:24:35
Forge Masters and that early warp stuff and the stuff in leads and Bradford maybe people haven't heard of Bradford
1:24:41
but it's it's another city in around Leeds and Sheffield where you know that kind of bleepy Bassy
1:24:48
sort of sound was really kind of grew out of um Jamaican sound system culture
1:24:55
so like the way British the way that a lot of British people uh responded to like the Detroit
1:25:03
techno was to kind of was to give it put it through this template of Jamaican sound system
1:25:09
culture so that for me I mean I wasn't part of I didn't go to Jamaican sound
1:25:17
system parties and stuff but you know it was it was th it was those kinds of
1:25:22
people that were organizing things in Che field so I kind of felt an affinity with it if you see what I mean yeah no
1:25:29
totally I mean I you know definitely recall coming up in a small scene where there was crossover and it was
1:25:36
impossible to not things just wouldn't happen if you didn't want crossover
1:25:41
because it was so little space um but then also just like the acoustic
1:25:46
environment that I grew up in so I grew up in an industrial area where all night
1:25:52
long there would be the sounds of machines just through the night you know like if I
1:25:57
open my bedroom window as a kid there was like a hammer that just went all night
1:26:02
like you know like every 30 seconds like some enormous piece of metal falling
1:26:09
onto and just just the sounds of like machines in the distance you know and
1:26:16
what that sounds like yeah and it lends itself to techno
1:26:24
Industrial Music uh there's There Is that real world element there and I
1:26:30
think we're so some a lot of us we don't know that heavy industry structure
1:26:35
anymore so much of it's done offshore now in you know China and elsewhere that
1:26:41
yeah I mean there's no more Mega stacks of of smoke shooting into the sky around
1:26:48
us anymore and oh
1:26:55
last those those machines then became the places where parties happened right
1:27:01
because you know it got because everyone in Britain towards the end of the 80s was so utterly pissed off with with the
1:27:10
[ __ ] that they were deal you know like the government were just doing it was just such a backwards government you
1:27:16
know like completely homophobic racist you know yeah yeah and everyone had just
1:27:23
had enough of it and everyone was just like we just everyone just took loads of drugs and parted because it's it was it
1:27:30
was like all they could do you know so the the the house music scene blew up in
1:27:37
Britain just because everyone needed it you know it was like yeah you needed that relief on
1:27:44
the weekend to get away from and and it went from like small little back rooms
1:27:50
in CL in clubs and whatever to to massive old factories that get into you
1:27:56
you know you break a hole in the in the in the brick wall to get in and take your speakers in and that was it and and
1:28:04
and it felt really idealistic at the time you know it felt like I mean I I've obviously got kind of
1:28:12
Rose tinted spectacles and stuff about that period but it it did really feel
1:28:17
like a genuine Force for change I think it was right well the the British
1:28:24
government saw it as a threat right because they met they passed a law on on repetitive music right yeah it was
1:28:31
illegal to if there were more than five people Outdoors listening to a repetitive beat you could be arrested
1:28:39
that is amazing because everyone wanted to do it because
1:28:45
right yeah yeah and saw it as a threat for sure response to it a really when I
1:28:52
a really great response to it was when they produced the anti EP which yeah really it was a great piece of
1:28:59
music and it was like this really spoton critical response to to that you know
1:29:07
we're G music where every bar is different and make sure you've got a musicologist at your party yeah yeah you
1:29:15
know it was and it was it was great you know it was like um and and everyone felt together in it everyone felt
1:29:22
like yeah really strong sense of community I love
1:29:28
it yeah I can I can imagine Sean laughing endlessly about why while they
1:29:33
were uh making that um Mark we'll wrap up here surely
1:29:39
but there's a couple more questions I want to tell one is like uh are you g to do another pressing of structure and
1:29:44
synthesis everyone's like it's sold out everywhere yeah I know so basically the
1:29:50
publisher sold out insanely quickly
1:29:56
and and the publisher is like yeah we do want to do another one but it's just the
1:30:03
the problem was it was it was expensive to make right because I want to have this paper I want to have this cover I
1:30:10
want to have like stupid little squiggly bits of panto and orange throughout the book so it cost a lot of money and the
1:30:17
publisher was completely supportive and uh never said we ought to
1:30:23
scale things back right right now there's only a we we were working on a
1:30:28
second edition with a a few of the bits in a slight different color
1:30:33
scheme um but I think uh that might be put off for a
1:30:39
little bit okay um well stay tuned folks maybe you keep your fingers crossed
1:30:45
it'll be around in the future uh didn't work the screen sharing we're
1:30:54
we're totally going to have you back Mark and we might do it in Zoom or something where it seems Seems to deal
1:31:01
with this stuff better I really like doing these things because it means I get out of cooking a
1:31:06
meal Ryan's what's Ryan's cooking dinner what tonight is because we've
1:31:12
been away for so long we're actually having fish and chips so I'm jealous on the way to the fish fish it's really
1:31:19
hard to get good fish and chips in America like they they say fish and chips but it's not like I had really
1:31:27
good fish and chips in America it's there it's around but like it's not as
1:31:32
common place as uh Australia in in in England fishing chips in Australia is
1:31:38
very good yeah yeah but fish and chips in gen like really it's not it's not
1:31:45
it's not that good I mean there's we go to a good fish and chip shop around here but you know halfway through it you're
1:31:51
like am I really eating this I I'm quite fond of a good Cardon chips out of the
1:31:57
newspaper but maybe I'm also nostalgic um yeah my dad really funny
1:32:04
sorry I've got to end on this story a few a few years ago I took my parents to Whitby Whitby is like a Seaside town
1:32:11
where it's famous for his fish all the like the award-winning fish and chip shops are there and literally my dad ate
1:32:17
fish and chips two times a day for a week
1:32:22
amazing which is kind of quite bizarre yeah it is quite bizarre but I can I can
1:32:28
I can 93 he still going strong yeah I mean I tend to do something similar when
1:32:35
I go home to Australia because you know it's just there so like make the most of it I put on about 20 pounds and yeah but
1:32:44
you got to do it Mark uh I want to apologize again for the streaming not
1:32:49
working it's honestly not you it's Discord I'm not I'm not I'm I'm it's
1:32:54
frustrating because we did check this and it was working and we even had your sound and everything so I think this is
1:33:01
just a the final reminder that we're going to have to consider doing it this in another system um because it's
1:33:09
frustrating for everyone but Mark I think I think everyone still really much really enjoyed having you and chatting
1:33:17
yeah yeah thanks for inviting me yeah and give me a minute I'll get you back and um we'll we'll go over some
1:33:24
patching what mate thanks so much Mark man all
1:33:40
right