Name: Andrea Taeggi
Occupation: Sound artist, producer
Nationality: Italian
Recent release: Andrea Taeggi's Nattdett is out via Hands in The Dark.

If you enjoyed this Andrea Taeggi interview and would like to stay up to date with his music, visit his official homepage. He is also on Instagram, Soundcloud, and bandcamp.



When I listen to music, I see shapes, objects and colours. What happens in your body when you're listening? Do you listen with your eyes open or closed?

Music hits me in different ways depending on the content of the material, the listening environment and the sound system—whether I am at home on my hi-fi or in a club can make a big difference. I am normally most affected in my chest and belly in the latter case, whereas in the former it tingles my head and throat the most.

Nowadays audio has been been mapped to different parts of our bodies that resonate to specific sets of frequencies, a knowledge used in healing practices with Tingsha bells (or Tibetan chimes) for instance. I have always been intrigued by the physicality of sound (which simply put consists of compressed airwaves) and by the fact it is an invisible medium.

I listen to music both ways, but I tend to close my eyes when the material is more abstract or has a narrative approach. I find it very exciting to visualize the sound-stage in my mind, letting imagery manifest spontaneously.

How do listening with headphones and listening through a stereo system change your experience of sound and music?

Listening with headphones invites a more intimate contact with sound, as a result of the proximity between the source and our ears. It also helps visualize the placement of the elements more accurately and imagine their interaction with closed eyes.

A stereo system instead, especially if it’s full-range, impacts the whole body and the listening space you are in as well, including phenomena such as early reflections and resonances coming your way from all directions.

In the studio, I tend to switch often between monitors and headphones and prefer the latter if it’s about placement of the element over the stereo image and tiny details which would otherwise go overlooked.

Do you experience strong emotional responses towards certain sounds? If so, what kind of sounds are these and do you have an explanation about the reasons for these responses?

There’s sounds that have long-standing memory associations, like that of the piano in my case, as I grew up with it and received a musical education.

Since these memories go way back, I feel a sense of familiarity to it. I suppose a lot has to do with process, as certain sounds (and especially some records) are tightly connected to a part of our growth, whom you shared that with and what was going on in your life in that point in time.

In a more abstract sense, I tend to be drawn to sounds that have a sculptural quality to them, which I perceive as three dimensional and tactile. I am excited by tingling, percussive and sparkling elements.

There can be sounds which feel highly irritating to us and then there are others we could gladly listen to for hours. Do you have examples for either one or both of these?

When I started to be interested in sound as a whole, as opposed to only seeing the informational side of music (harmony, theory and the like), I started to educate my ears to milestones recordings, as far as production goes (great mix & master). As a result of this, nowadays it becomes immediately clear to me when certain frequencies are harmful and I experience pain more than the average person.

For instance, in Berlin, where I live, I am always protecting my ears when an ambulance is driving by and it seems I am the only one on the street doing that. Frequencies that I find most offending range around 3-4 Khz, especially drums sounds like crash cymbals and hi-hats—they can get pretty nasty! On the other hand, I find the range roughly between 20-150Hz very soothing and pleasant.

I used to do meditation with the help of binaural beats on headphones, using an app where you would be able to decide the root frequency. I tried many options all over the spectrum and eventually favored the bass region indeed.

Have you ever been in spaces with extreme sonic characteristics, such as anechoic chambers or caves? What was the experience like?

Not too long ago I had the chance of visiting a few ancient hypogeums in Matera, Italy. They were used as water reservoirs and are truly uniquely sounding spaces. They are built as far as 30 meters under the ground level and they have peculiar psycho-acoustic qualities such as blind spots, phasing phenomena, unusual reflections and specific resonant frequencies which can vary depending on one’s position within the space.

I also remember being impressed by La Monte Young’s “Dream House” in New York, which is a permanent sound and light installation venue where such auditory artifacts play a major role. It was specially built around the perception of sound and how it can morph depending on your position in the room, the orientation of your ears and your height. Truly mesmerizing.

And I once went to an open air dance event, on a beach surrounded by the forest. As I walked towards the surrounding trees, I realized there would be an echo caused by the reflection on the branches and leaves … light and brittle. It was exhilarating to hear that in nature, as I only managed to emulate that effect using convolution reverb in the studio.

Do music and sound feel “material” to you? Does working with sound feel like you're sculpting or shaping something?

Indeed, since my early contact with analog synthesizers I have been fascinated by how sound can be so tangible and physical. My practice focuses on its tactile qualities, which causes to imagine buildings, spaces and materials.

Coming from a background as a pianist, I realized early on that metal and wood (the main building components of the instrument) speak to me more eloquently than others. I have then tried to bridge the gap between the acoustic and the synthesized realms focusing on what makes them akin in my mind.

I tried modeling the shimmering quality of metal percussion using ring modulation or the transient-rich quality of wooden drums using snappy synthesizer envelopes and resonances. I very much enjoy the gray area between those realms, which drew my research to physical modeling synthesis.

Also the intersection of digital and analog is a niche I like to explore, something that has been referred to as ‘virtual analog’. In other words, I particularly enjoy ambiguity or the “otherness” of sound sources and the curiosity arising from being exposed to them.

How important is sound for our overall well-being and in how far do you feel the "acoustic health" of a society or environment is reflective of its overall health?

There is an element of self-absorption and isolation that I sometimes find a bit worrisome, in the sense that so many people in cities tend to wear earbuds almost everywhere. Not too long ago, music was “site-specific”, as it could be only listened to in the space where it was meant to be experienced.

One example is the music accompanying religious functions, since it is integral part of the building in which it lives. Certain religious spaces were purposely built with a specific resonant frequency in mind, in order to amplify the voice of the singers and have them reach trance-like states.

I rarely listen to music on the metro or on the street, I prefer concert halls or my home for that, but I can imagine many people find it soothing, entertaining or simply distracting from the everyday grind. The element of escapism or disconnection from one another still troubles me sometimes though, considering I see sound and music as a coming together of people, stemming from a place of sharing.

Seth S. Horowitz called hearing the “universal sense” and emphasised that it was more precise and faster than any of our other senses, including vision. How would our world be different if we paid less attention to looks and listened more instead?

There’s something interesting and a bit controversial about how we have been enjoying music on stereo systems: we think of our vision as the main sense for us to explore the world (and it certainly had an evolutionary advantage), although the range of that field is narrower compared to the ears.

And for us humans vision is frontal. Hearing instead happens at a 360° angle, all around us, and is technically more adequate at informing about what happens behind our back, where the eyes can’t reach. It is curious to realize that we have prioritized the “visible” or the material, even though our ears can reach much farther, if we only were to trust them enough.

I think this question becomes even more relevant nowadays, where visual inputs are shooting off the roof and, sadly, it seems that our primary relationship is with a screen. Even though I try to be mindful of this, I realize that in my apartment alone I have a whopping amount of 6 screens and I don’t even own a tv.

Tinnitus and developing hyperacusis are very real risks for anyone working with sound. Do you take precautions in this regard and if you're suffering from these or similar issues – how do you cope with them?

I always carry a pair of earplugs in any of my trousers and bags, just to be on the safe side when I go to shows and music events. The idea of developing hearing-related issues is a real concern to me. I am trying to prevent hearing loss due to overexposure to loud sound, let alone more severe pathologies, considering that aging already causes a decreased response in the high frequency range.

For someone like me used to mixing their own records, that would be quite a drag! The conservatory in Amsterdam where I studied years ago was raising awareness on this issues and students received professional earplugs tailored to their ears. When I think of it, that was very educational.

We can surround us with sound every second of the day. The great pianist Glenn Gould even considered this the ultimate delight. How do you see that yourself and what importance does silence hold?

Cities have become quite overwhelming in terms of exposure to any stimuli, be them visual or auditory. Marketing people have been using music to manipulate consumers into buying more goods (your typical tech house beat in a clothing shop).

A better measure of health of a society would be a decrease of (sonic) inputs, in other words sharing a space where there is more silence. A direct advantage of that would be the excitement of hearing a beautiful instrument or a sound after not being exposed to any for a longer period of time. When you think of it, that was the norm up until just a few decades ago.

I suppose the overabundance of acoustic stimuli in cities in some way reflects the “chattering” and busy minds many people have to deal with, filled with unnecessary thoughts, fears, judgments … and generally a lot of junk. Garbage in, garbage out. A population with calmer minds would in turn mean cities with less overexposure to constant sound, I suppose.

Sometimes artists claim that music is the sound of the universe and the celestial bodies. Every time I hear that, I think to myself that silence is instead the non-sound of the universe.