brettworks

(Detail from Leonard da Vinci’s Portrait of a Musician, c. 1483-1487)

Something I encounter almost daily in the omnimusical realm of music production is the problem of connecting with my instruments, by which I mean DAW software, virtual synthesizers and samplers, and keyboard controllers. I depend on these technologies to make some kinds of music, yet my sense of connection with them is fleeting. When connection happens, the composing process feels expressive. But when connection isn’t happening, the process feels far from musical.

Why isn’t connection happening? Let’s begin with the DAW. I don’t make deep use of the DAW’s functionalities. I’ve used the software for decades, but I remain a dabbler. I could–I should–go all in and learn it as an meta-instrument, but I resist to preserve a measure of naivety and allow the software its own resistance to a creative process. I’m reminded here of an interview with Thom Yorke, who explains the appeal of working with Elektron instruments. Yorke fights with them to get them to do something:

“You throw something in [Elektron hardware], and you’re fighting with it, you’re fighting, and then at some point you’re like: oh my God! That’s crazy. What is that? You’re putting a sample in, and you’re giving it something that’s got nothing to do with that sample, creating something brand new out of it. That’s the core of it. That weird fight between, you know, something to do with the interface of an Elektron machine and the way the guy using it has to find their way through that.”

Another element of disconnection are the sounds in my software. I like some of these sounds a lot. But I rarely love them the way I love the sounds of acoustic instruments. Many electronic sounds are beautiful, but they live at a distance from what I want (a wanting I reflect on whenever I encounter sounds that miss the mark). Sometimes I customize sounds with effects and arrive somewhere unique. Sometimes I build sounds from scratch and it’s exactly what I need. But in general, electronic sounds lack the body of the person playing them. And when a sound has no body it has few traces of the human. This can feel alienating.

My MIDI controllers are a third element of disconnection. I have tiny 25- and 37-key controllers, as well as larger 49- and 61-key ones and am fond of none of them. The problem is that they all feel nothing like the acoustic piano they are distantly related to. This doesn’t have to be a problem—after all, controllers never claimed to be pianos, nor do they make sounds of their own (hence their “dummy” status). But for me, a controller’s fake-ness is distracting. Sometimes though, I can fool myself by getting the volume on my speakers just right so I have a believably acoustic experience in the room. Room sound can be enough to suspend disbelief and distract me from the reality that I’m playing plastic keys to trigger synthetic sounds.

Surprisingly, there are ways out of this situation of disconnect with the instruments in one’s digital musical ecosystem. One trick is to find a small but significant sonic thing to connect with, or as Harold Budd once advised, “just go in there and try to find something that sounds good.” The DAW may still be an overwhelming possibility space, software instruments an endless pool of not-quite-the-sounds I want, and the keyboard controller still a fake piano. But the problem isn’t with these fungible instruments. The problem is one of perception. In music, as with going for a run or taking a walk, openings for enchantment are everywhere, but it takes time. The trick is to let your focus alight onto what sounds intriguing and persist with that for a while until it reveals something significant. Now music has begun!