Part 2
If music is a language, what can we communicate with it? How do you deal with misunderstandings?
NB: It’s easy and comfortable to lean on the music-as-universal-language metaphor, but I don’t think music’s is-ness resides in communication. Putting music in the language box limits its possibilities, I think. It’s more spatial than that.
CT: I’m having a hard time thinking of any feelings or big ideas that can’t be communicated with music. I guess I wouldn’t take medical advice from a musician. If a musical idea gets lost in translation or isn’t working I often bring it back to the practice room and figure out how to make it clearer or stronger so I can fit it in the next thing.
RM: Not sure about the first part but I think a lot of the good stuff comes from the misunderstandings. Being patient and open when things don’t click immediately.
Making music, in the beginning, is often playful and about discovery. How do you retain a sense of playfulness and how do you still draw surprises from tools, approaches and musical forms you may be very familiar with?
NB: I don’t think I know what else to do with music apart from play with it. Even the most rigorous compositional thing I have my hand in has to feel like I’m doing something in the moment or else it’s just a drill. The element of surprise might be overrated anyway; I don’t need to be surprised, I just want to be able to look at the thing from different angles. Sometimes that results in surprises though.
CT: I like to learn and I like to improvise, I like to approach creating music with spontaneity. I feel like every new thing I get into has a chance to surprise me when it comes out at any given point. Even playing things I’ve rehearsed and really honed in on, I try to be open to taking risks or letting the space breathe in a new way.
RM: I joke around a lot.
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”?
NB: The hum of HVAC units in the neighbourhood awkwardly harmonizing is pretty good. Ocean sounds too. I’m an ocean guy. Slowly shifting drones made by technology or nature or both are where it’s at for me, maybe not surprisingly.
CT: I went to a Heron Rookery not far from my house last month. It’s in a bit of a swampy area near a creek, and the combination of cicada drone, chirping frogs and prehistoric sounding squawks from the nesting birds made me feel like I was in a completely different sonic world. I’d say the palette I generally work from is using tools that try to recreate the world of natural sound.
RM: Spring peepers surprise me every year. It’s cool to me that animals and insects dig polyrhythms.
There seems to be an increasing trend to capture music in algorithms, and data. But already at the time of Plato, arithmetic, geometry, and music were considered closely connected. How do you see that connection yourself? What aspects of music do you feel can be captured through numbers, and which can not?
NB: I refer to Tony Conrad’s accompanying essay to “Slapping Pythagoras” – a fun read.
CT: I love to think of music in shapes and numbers, little equations to be solved. It’s a true joy to figure out how I can fit the ideas I have into the phrase and structure that the three of us have created. So in terms of ideas, and the mechanics of music I’m really into numbers, but I think the magic is in how those ideas get blurred, what happens when it doesn’t quite line up right.
RM: Numbers do a good job of quantifying. I like 'em right up until I don’t.
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?
NB: It affects the way I live my life and vice versa but I’m not sure about “reflect” in this context. Playing for me is in the relationship between listening and action and they overlap a bunch. Life is like that too, but playing is a part of life, so I’m not sure how differentiated they really are. Open-heartedness is kinda the key to all of it.
CT: In music and life, I find the most joy in learning. An attempted balance of aiming high and finding satisfaction in the imperfect results.
RM: Kinda touched on this in a previous question but I like to live and play the same way. I hope that some of what I think is important is embedded in the music.
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?
NB: What’s the “that” here, being surrounded by sound? There’s never really silence, I guess, either around me or in my mind, but I dig quiet moments about as much as I treasure the feeling of being enveloped in the physicality of sound. Silence is just as important as sound insofar as neither is really “important” at all and I tend not to think of them as a binary.
CT: Most of my life is about learning and trying to make music. Because of that I really relish moments of silence.
RM: Things feel a little excessively noisy to me. Loud cars, ever-present smartphones, etc. I enjoy silence and that includes incoming communication and information. Those things feel like part of the noise floor.
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?
NB: I’m not sure I’m expressing myself through music so much as the music expresses in itself something I recognize in myself. I’ve been maybe equally satisfied by really good coffee and really good music, and the opposite is true too.
CT: I think I have a similar approach to mundane tasks and music. I’m hoping people enjoy the music, I’m less confident that I could make a suitable cup of coffee.
RM: I don’t. I think anything can be as deep as you choose to make it.
If you could make a wish for the future – what are developments in music you would like to see and hear?
NB: Any wishes I have for the future, and I have many, have little to do with
development in music, whatever that means. There’s plenty in music to discover as is.
CT: Universal basic income. I feel like there is homogeneity in who gets to pursue music professionally that is a direct result of financial insecurity. Also, being less precious about music that doesn’t move you. Art serves lots of different functions, it can still do a lot of good without being “high art”.
RM: More house shows.
