>>PREVIEW
PhonoTactic
Friday, September 16
Hillhurst Sunnyside Community Centre
Computers. Love ’em or hate ’em (or love hating them), there’s a pretty good chance that they’re going to be around for a long, long time. It’s hard to think of a single area of life that they haven’t touched, molested or completely overtaken. While some use computers to retreat from the real world, others have managed to use this powerful technology for positive, productive and creative purposes.
My first encounter with local electronic act PhonoTactic was at Cantos Music Foundation during Jazz Festival Calgary. Hardworking guitarist Jeff Drummond and his Gibson held centre stage while Byron Mueller serenely surveyed the crowd from behind his Mac laptop. "I asked Jeff to come to give the audience something real to relate to," says Mueller, "because for all you know I could be playing Donkey Kong up here." While I was reasonably certain he wasn’t playing Donkey Kong, my curiosity was piqued. What exactly was he doing up there with his mouse and mini keyboard?
Mueller is a classically trained keyboardist, bassist and generally affable fellow who has played with the likes of Tariq, Double UI, Strugglah and Difference Engine. He readily agrees to allow a relative Luddite into his studio-laboratory to shed a little light on his passion and the tools of the trade. PhonoTactic’s down-tempo, drum and bass, dub and deep house groove is the first project where he’s been completely in charge. "If I’d known this would have been this cool, I would have done this when I was 25 and not 35," he says with palpable enthusiasm.
Years of sideman experience come in handy on PhonoTactic’s new EP, Use Your Talent (If You Can). Such local singers as Andrea Revel, Bubba B and Iwango Jahfire share tracks with airy, open homemade beats and grooves. "I’m fairly mainstream – the stuff I do is traditionally based," he says. "I’ll take a rootsy bluesy Rhodes piano line. I come up with a verse or a chorus and I’ll build beats around that. Sometimes it’s centred around a vocal and sometimes it isn’t. It’s semi-instrumental, but it’s traditional rather than some wigged-out instrumental guy."
He’s forthcoming about sharing his trade secrets. Where did he find that killer Rhodes sample on "Listen 2 the 808"? "I get that question all the time – ‘Where’d you get your Rhodes sample?’ and I go, ‘Well, I walk over to my Rhodes and I play eight bars.’"
Mueller’s basement studio is neat and orderly. The trusty Rhodes shares space with a fine collection of vintage analog synthesizers, a Kurzweil sampler and a few cool toys and accessories that dominate two adjacent walls. The computer sits, relatively unimposingly, off to the right. While using computers to create and record music is nothing new, the ability to perform live and spontaneously before an audience of actual human beings is a relatively recent phenomenon. "Software’s kind of caught up with that whole concept instead of being destined to being stuck in your bedroom studio, there’s software out there that allows you to improvise mixes based on what you’ve created, and not only that, but to add to it all in real time which, to me, is exciting." Mueller explains. "You’re not just up there pressing play, but you’re taking chances, improvising like you would in any other performance situation."
Software allows MIDI (numbers that can be turned into music) and digital audio (music that has been turned into numbers) to live peacefully, side by side in perfect harmony. Several software synthesizers and virtual drum machines are only a few clicks away. Digital tracks appear as little pink squares of real estate on the LCD screen, where everything is laid out clearly and methodically. I watch and listen in awe as Mueller creates and layers beats in real time, adds an array of effects, brings tracks and parts in and out while noodling along with his free hand. It’s probably not as easy as he makes it look. All this suits Mueller just fine. "Technology caught up to where guys like me that are in their basement making electronic music, can get out and do their things live."
From his basement lair, Mueller plots and considers his next move towards global domination. He summarizes his philosophy and work ethic simply. "It’s about figuring out how you want to work and getting on it." |
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