interview with beatsystem

The name Beatsystem came about when I put together an ensemble to play systems music, e.g. Terry Rileys's “In C". This consisted of students and lecturers from Bath Spa University College where I work. The idea was to take systems music into rock clubs and outdoor venues and away from the concert hall. We also wrote pieces that contained beats as well as systems, a sort of rock version of the Steve Reich ensemble. Hence the name and my philosophy of mixing the avante garde music with club/rock music.

I started making music in the 70’s using a Roland synth and a multi-track recorder, this took the form of Tangerine Dream influenced noodlings, I was also interested in the electro-acoustic work of people like Trevor Wishart and others, I did a lot of tape manipulation and experimentation. When I joined Bath Spa University College I was able to get my hands on a computer and software such as Csound this help me to develop my on style and get record deals.

Csound comes from a series MusicV programs originally developed by Max Mathews and John Pierce (no relation) at Bell Labs. The original brief was to develop programs that would reduce the bandwidth required to make long distance telephone calls, this led to the development of the “phase vocoder" and other programs and devices. Csound was an offshoot of this research that was designed to allow composers to manipulate sound in all sorts of ways. It is free and is constantly under development by all sorts of wonderful people, including my friends John Fitch and Richard Dobson and others. It has a very steep learning curve but is unique in its capabilities.

Visiting places and John Cage are my main influences but there are so many others as well, here goes: Robert Fripp Alvin Lucier, the minimalists, Early Blues and Gospel, Hip Hop, Dub and of course Ambient. My work often springs from a particular sound I have made via Csound or one I have recorded on my travels. I am also prone to being slightly political in my work, bringing to the listeners attention my views on the “exploitation of black music by whites" i.e. Alabama or the constant complaints about “lorries and cars on our roads" i.e. There are 23 million….

I don’t know that my tracks are ever complete. I constantly wonder whether I should add more parts, sometimes I add more parts for the listener rather than myself. I have heard drones that I could listen to all day on their own. I wonder if people really do “careful listening" any more? The drones on my early tracks being examples of this need for careful, deep listening, they are constantly changing and evolving. They are very much influenced by Tony Conrad, and the Velvet Underground.

I sent them endlessly downward as an example of what I was doing at the time and they loved it so much they wanted to put it out. The fact that someone was prepared to put out such a minimalist piece was what I was looking for in a record company.

They were so enthusiastic, they were great. Very encouraging, I think when they received my album 2297 they where shocked, it was possibly not what they were expecting, but they went with it. I think what was so good about Chris and Dave was they had good taste, they took chances. I hope em:t records continues to invade areas where nothing's definite.

Not really, I was working on the track and needed some beats and they seemed to work. I am from Bath/Bristol and had heard some drum and bass but it took a while to get into it. Actually, I took the midi file from a demo, I could not program like that at the time, I cheated really. It was a reaction to what was going on and still is going on in Tibet. The voices where really stretched in Csound by the way, and the bell are synthesized from scratch in Csound as well. Note that the partials die away to different sides in the stereo mix, and the harmonics of A turn into the drone, impossible to do in any other software.

endlessly downward is an example of a Shepard tone, discovered by Dr Robert Shepard. It is an aural illusion somewhat like the Barber's pole illusion. The pitch seems to fall continuously without ever going down in pitch. It was used by Jean Claude Rissett in little boy to represent the dropping of the atomic bomb over Japan.

I am interested in aural illusions and first discovered this one when it was mentioned in Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas R. Hofstadter. Bach wrote a cannon trying to exploit this idea which is explained, I did a version using midi volume control and was able to get pretty close using the organ sound that it was originally written for. The Shepard tone is synthesized in Csound although it is now possible to filter a sound so it resembles a Shepard tone.

the harmonic sewer reflects my view that conventional western harmony is a compromise, its what we have grown used to. This piece uses microtonal tuning which I find very interesting. Again it uses Csound as well as a human voice, used to singing in this way. It was a bit of a joke title used to “diss" academics at work.

This track alabama picks up on many of the things we have already discussed, it concerns white people appropriating black music, the use of a John Cage sample previously used in the track "invade areas.." and the fact that this started life as a “remix" of one of my own tracks.

The sample “Old Alabama" is from a prison song recorded by Alan Lomax in the early part of the last century. The other voice is from Voices of Black America and tells how the white man has exploited black music. It is the culmination of my ideas to bring together all these strands- electro-acoustic manipulation, political message, beats and real instruments. People seem to like it but I think that I will be moving away from these ideas in future and maybe using “dub" as the basis of some new pieces.

I have a track on The Csound Book CD that comes with the book together with its score. I also have had previous tracks such as Walk on the Wildside released on Fourth and Broadway (Island records), together with To a Brighter day on London Records FFRR label. These were dance records that did pretty good in the 90’s for me. I am probably going to do another dance single if I can, watch this space.