Name: Sebastian Pfeifer aka Beifer
Nationality: German
Occupation: Producer, composer
Current release: Beifer's Constant Transition featuring Wanja Slavin, ENJI, and Moritz Stahl,  is out November 17th 2023 via tunnel.visions. There will also a Record Release Concert November 23rd 2023 at BLITZ Club, Munich.
Recommendation: https://www.eso.org/public/images/eso1714a/zoomable/

[Read our Wanja Slavin interview]

If you enjoyed this Beifer interview and would like to stay up to date on his music, visit him on Instagram.



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?

It's difficult to say in general terms. I listen to a lot of different music and my body always reacts differently depending on it. I love it when you hear something and you don't yet know the feeling that the music triggers in you.

I recently discovered Alfred Schnittke. The Piano Quintet in particular had some passages that triggered new things in me. Great recommendation!



I go to live concerts a lot and have often asked myself whether I prefer to listen with my eyes open or closed. I haven't found a solid answer yet. I think that the music tells you when to open your eyes or when to close them, so you just have to go with the flow.

What were your very first steps in music like and how would you rate the gains made through experience - can one train/learn being an artist?

I've always liked hitting things that make some kind of sound. When I was 5 or so I started taking piano lessons and later I added cello and drums. I never really practiced much and was even kicked out later by my piano teacher. That was a great feeling!

From then on I taught myself music and then started writing and producing it myself. At some point around the age of 15, I reached the limits of my ideas and needed new input. I started listening to and playing jazz, then took lessons again and actually ended up at a jazz college. You learn most by doing. Experience is super important, but I think it's even more important to always reinvent yourself. This way you don't get rusty.

Anyone can learn to make art, it's actually the easiest thing in the world. The only thing that stops many people from doing it is the fear of failure, comparing themselves and not taking their own art seriously.
 
According to scientific studies, we make our deepest and most incisive musical experiences between the ages of 13-16. What did music mean to you at that age and what’s changed since then?

This is exactly the time that determined a lot for me. Back then I listened to a lot of dubstep (Skrillex, Virtual Riot), trap, EDM and flume (!!!).

At a LAN party, a friend gave me a cracked version of FL Studio and I started trying things out myself. Music quickly became my biggest hobby and quickly took over my entire attention.

Nothing has changed to this day! Except my music taste.

What, would you say, are the key ideas behind your approach to music and what motivates you to create?

Trying! I always try out a lot of things, harmonically/rhythmically / sound-wise and see what that does to me. I try to listen to as much different music as possible and take the things I like best and make something new out of them.

And I noticed that you learn the most and have the best ideas when you don't judge music!

To quote a question by the great Bruce Duffie: When you come up with a musical idea, have you created the idea or have you discovered the idea?

I believe that ideas are discovered. Especially when improvising live, there are often moments where you play things that you've never heard before and that sound really exciting, and you wonder where it actually came from. It's almost spiritual!

It's exactly the same with production. When an interesting sound suddenly comes out after a long chain of effects. Or when experimenting harmonically, when a structure crystallizes by chance.

Paul Simon said “the way that I listen to my own records is not for the chords or the lyrics - my first impression is of the overall sound.” What's your own take on that and how would you define your personal sound?

It depends. I have no hierarchy as to what I listen to first. The music usually determines it itself, you just have to listen.

My sound is always changing, at least I hope so. I've now made a very electronic album with a lot of groove and jazz solos and next I'm working on a kind of symphony that's a lot about space and calmness. I'm also currently writing for my jazz quartet. All of this affects the sound.

I'll still try to describe it in a few keywords: space, dark, rhythm, complex, new, experimental, electronic, driving, synth, soundscape, textures, world, drums, samples, Schönberg, Brahms, John Coltrane, chords, energy, Playful, exciting, not knowing, free fall,
 
Sound, song, and rhythm are all around us, from animal noises to the waves of the ocean. What, if any, are some of the most moving experiences you've had with these non-human-made sounds? In how far would you describe them as “musical”?

You can perceive something musical in every sound. Sound is music, music is sound.

When I go for a walk I am always happy when a car honks or a church bell rings. Then I try to identify the tones and intervals, or in the case of church bells, the polyrhythms and overtones. If the sound composition becomes too complicated we usually hear it as texture / noise. I find these textures particularly great. Noise is not just noise. For a lot of the tracks I make, I often spend hours finding the right noise.

I'm always happy when there are thunderstorms. For me, the bass from a loud lightning bolt is the perfectly balanced sound. I even sometimes mix my basses like this. You just feel the pure energy of the lightning in your body.

From very deep/high/loud/quiet sounds to very long/short/simple/complex compositions - are there extremes in music you feel drawn to and what response do they elicit?

Extreme music is what drives music forward. I listen to a lot of “extreme” music: Messiaen, noise, rough punk, Herbie Hancock, Radiohead, Miles Davis, Stockhausen, Alfred Schnittke, Art Tatum, Christian Lillinger, Schönberg, Immanuel Wilkins (live!), former Skrillex, Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, Flume, Cecil Taylor, Kaja Draksler …

But also the other side: Mozart, Brahms, Chopin, Debussy, Ravel, Beatles, Oscar Peterson, John Coltrane, Beach Boys, Bud Powell, James Blake ...

Extreme music is always exciting, that's what I like about it. You never know what's going to happen and it's always fresh.

Could you describe your creative process on the basis of one of your pieces, live performances or albums that's particularly dear to you, please?

Sure. I would use the track “The Tragic Life of A Simple Man” as an example.



I once won a prize from the Domicil in Dortmund and was supposed to play a concert there. I had to fill some time and spontaneously decided to play freely on the piano. This waltz was created. A year later I was in Mongolia as an exchange semester because of my jazz studies. There I listened to the concert again and thought the waltz was quite interesting and wrote it down. When I was back in Germany I played the piece again and again with different bands.

Then I made my album and liked the idea of having the waltz in it. I wanted to have the melody in the foreground and add things around it. To me the melody sounds very melancholic, so I built a synth patch on my Prophet that sounds a bit like the sound doesn't always manage to produce a sound, like a beginner who's just learning the saxophone or something. That sounded very human and honest to me. That was the main sound (the filter creates the tone and the resonance is modulated by a random LFO just before the point where it oscillates).

Then I simply repeated the form and added more elements that made everything seem more and more unstable (piano plays the melody with a random LFO that detunes the patch). At the end, strings are added that play pretty outish tones and destabilizing everything even more.

I didn't know how the song should end, so I asked a good friend of mine, ENJI. She was living above me at the time, quickly came down and sang the melody a few times. That gave it the final human sound I wanted. Then I asked her if she could make a few noises. I then changed and arranged them a bit. The end of the track came naturally as ENJI sang a few loud notes using Mongolian techniques.

Do you conduct “experiments” or make use of scientific insights when you're making music?

Yes, that's basically my workflow. Try things. Right now I'm playing around with AI plug-ins and try how I can use them.

On the side, I'm currently building Ableton projects that are self-sufficient. This means you play a sound (anything) and the network then starts working and reinterprets the sound. I think it would be cool to make an album with just projects like that. Definitely sounds great!

How does the way you make music reflect the way you live your life? Can we learn lessons about life by understanding music on a deeper level?

You can't learn enough from music. Through music I learned to always be open minded. Anyone who spends a lot of time with music learns what is important and what is less important.

But you can also ruin yourself a lot, especially if you operate on a competitive level. At the beginning of my studies I was very competitive and compared myself a lot. That's not good for the music or you. Trust the process!

Do you feel as though writing or performing a piece of music is inherently different from something like making a great cup of coffee? What do you express through music that you couldn't or wouldn't in more 'mundane' tasks?

I'm sure there are people who put all their creativity and love into coffee.

The beautiful thing about music is that you can immediately reach people on a level that cannot be described. With music you can simply express things that don't exist and yet (almost) everyone understands them. But music is no exception, rather a concentration of humanity in one space at a certain time.

I think there is art in everything if you look at it from the right angle.

Every time I listen to "Albedo 0.39" by Vangelis, I choke up. But the lyrics are made up of nothing but numbers and values. Do you, too, have a song or piece of music that affects you in a way that you can't explain?

“Portrait of Tracy” by Jaco Pastorius!!!!! The way Jaco plays it (and if you know his story) is indescribable for me.



When I hear the song I immediately become very calm, thoughtful and melancholic. His sound, the harmonic tones and this depth are incredibly touching.
 
If you could make a wish for the future – what are developments in music you would like to see and hear?

Fuck the major labels! The radio has only played the same thing for 10 years, people have forgotten how to listen to exciting and innovative music. Pop music isn’t moving anywhere.

And playlists get on my nerves too. I would wish that this would change.