Name: Jake Meginsky
Nationality: American
Occupation: Composer, filmmaker
Current release: Jake Meginsky's Trinities is out via Poole Music.

If you enjoyed this Jake Meginsky interview and would like to stay up to date with his work, visit him on Instagram, and Soundcloud. For the thoughts of one of his collaborators, read our Bill Nace interview.



Where does the impulse to create something come from for you? What role do often-quoted sources of inspiration like dreams, other forms of art, personal relationships, politics etc play?

My desire to make something new can come from a lot of different places – sometimes there is a personal relationship or an urge to share or communicate something that initiates the process. Other times it can feel like wanting to solve a problem, or “address some issues” as Milford Graves would say. Often it feels much more mysterious or opaque.

The urge frequently comes on as a type of pressure that builds over time. For me, the pressure mostly gathers around sonic material but it can manifest around anything. Once I feel that pressure, it becomes more about shifting into a receptive state of being, in order to let the thing get into the world, and allow it to be what it wants to be, releasing the pressure.

The creative process may ask questions of me along the way, or connect to aspects of day to day experience, but the cycle of pressure and release seems to connect to, or embed me in, a realm of consciousness that is beyond my normal daily experience.

For the track “2521” on Trinities, the music was a response to a specific request that came from my wife Sarah, during the birthing process of our daughter Luce. We were stuck in the hospital for a week straight during the height of the quarantine, no visitors and no coming and going for fear of no re-entry. Sarah asked me to play music that would soften the harsh environment of the hospital. I brought a 4-track, a small synth and my computer with us, and made this track in the room, for the room really. We ended up listening to it continually and it also became the soundtrack to the shimmering post-partum period.

Other parts of this record came about during the intense grieving for the loss of my mentor and friend, Milford Graves, that same month. This music felt like a way to connect to him, to process his departure, and to stay in dialogue with him around our last conversations.

For you to get started, do there need to be concrete ideas – or what some have called a 'visualisation' of the finished work? What does the balance between planning and chance look like for you?  

Ideas can be helpful for me to get started on making something, and can definitely be a catalyst for engaging and getting to work. But I try not to stay too attached to an idea. Usually the initial idea is transformed, reshaped, expanded or contained in a larger constellation during the actual making.

I don’t know if I would frame it as “chance” but I’m most interested in things coming forth that I couldn’t have previously imagined. I hope to start the process one way and to come out different. Sometimes it can kind of feel like I’m following something, some kind of shadowy thing that I can only sense in the periphery, and the work becomes the attempt to move it or coax it into the center of my view.

I love doing site-specific installations because I can show up with a bunch of materials, and then the space itself, or perhaps the spirit of the space, starts to point towards a new approach.

Is there a preparation phase for your process? Do you require your tools to be laid out in a particular way, for example, do you need to do 'research' or create 'early versions'?

Sometimes a thing will just come out and seem done, crystallized. Other times there is a lot of process, research and discovery.

I find it’s pretty different every time, and I find that each project requires a degree of openness towards unfamiliar ways of preparing and working.  

Do you have certain rituals to get you into the right mindset for creating? What role do certain foods or stimulants like coffee, lighting, scents, exercise or reading poetry play?

My studio is always incredibly messy and I feel a bit like I’m at the edge of chaos in there. Maybe that’s the mindset I need, I’m not sure, but it’s always been like that. I’ve tried at various times to address it, with no success, and at a certain point I just started to accept it.

As far as stimulants, the studio is always littered with those tiny ginseng shots.

What do you start with? How difficult is that first line of text, the first note?

Usually I just start playing, creating a patch, improvising, and bringing my attention to what is resonating.

With modular synthesis, you are building something all throughout the process – building a unique instrument, as well as inventing a compositional or improvisational logic of sorts.

Once you've started, how does the work gradually emerge?

Usually a project starts taking up more space in my mind, starts asking for things, a certain sound, or a certain feeling. On good days and I can hear that clearly and attempt to bring it forth – other days, it can feel like the thing is gone and it’s all dead ends and frustration. Both are important I think.

The music gods demand their offerings.

Many writers have claimed that as soon as they enter into the process, certain aspects of the narrative are out of their hands. Do you like to keep strict control over the process or is there a sense of following things where they lead you?

I resonate with the idea that music is coming from somewhere else, or maybe growing through us. I like what Morton Feldman says about it being a “wild beast” and preferring it that way, learning to meet it on its own terms.

I often improvise with other artists, and sensing when to lead, and when to follow is a central part of that work. This helps me in my solo work to become more open and sensitive to aspects of the music that aren’t planned.

Often, while writing, new ideas and alternative roads will open themselves up, pulling and pushing the creator in a different direction. Does this happen to you, too, and how do you deal with it? What do you do with these ideas?

I’ve often felt the pull to abandon a way of working and change course in the midst of making something. I try to just follow my gut. Sometimes I think that pull can be a way to hide from the work, and not push into deeper levels of the process.

With my film, sometimes the work got so hard and all-consuming, it felt like other ideas were coming to serve as a distraction or give me an excuse to dodge the hard work. Other times an alternative road is something to truly consider, a possible push towards a rich area of discovery. Sometimes it seems like a particular idea or hunch just needs to be addressed or explored so it can get out of the way and allow other things through.

I try to finish what I start, with the hopes that even if it ends up going nowhere, it will teach me something.

There are many descriptions of the creative state. How would you describe it for you personally? Is there an element of spirituality to what you do?

I think of spirituality as directly connecting to realms of consciousness greater than my own. I definitely believe music is one way to do this. Oscillations, resonance, rhythm, wavelets and cycles seem to be what’s going on underneath our experience of reality.

I think that by working with sound in a creative way, we interact with and open ourselves to this realm of vibration in a way that can be both practical and spiritual at the same time.

Especially in the digital age, the writing and production process tends towards the infinite. What marks the end of the process? How do you finish a work?  

I mentioned earlier a sense that the music or the film is asking for things. I think at a certain point it just stops asking, begins to settle, and that particular process feels done.

Or there is a deadline and that puts an end to it.

Once a piece is finished, how important is it for you to let it lie and evaluate it later on? How much improvement and refinement do you personally allow until you're satisfied with a piece? What does this process look like in practice?

I usually try to listen to it for a few weeks after I think it’s done, to really get to know it. I find it important to listen in different environments and mindstates, in the car, on walks and also in the studio, sometimes taking notes and other times just letting it in.

I try not to get too psyched out though, because you can really edit the vitality out. Unless there is something that really needs to change, that process can also be less about evaluation, and more about connecting to it outside of the making process, and accepting it for what it is.

What's your take on the role and importance of production, including mixing and mastering for you personally? How involved do you get in this?

The sonics, the feeling of the sounds, for me, are a crucial part of the music, and often very small differences in eq, amplitude, or compression can dramatically alter the way a record is experienced.

I don’t think recording is just capturing what happens. There is a translation process that takes the music from its ephemeral fluid state, in real-time, in a room, into the infinite state of a recording. I find that a lot of times it is subtle but creative recording and production techniques that help preserve the integrity of the sound as it lands on a record. This can be as simple as placing a mic in a strange spot in the room to bring out reflections that heighten the experience of the sound in space.

I always do the mixing myself and sometimes I do the mastering process. If I don’t do the mastering, I’m usually pretty involved in the process.

After finishing a piece or album and releasing something into the world, there can be a sense of emptiness. Can you relate to this – and how do you return to the state of creativity after experiencing it?

I can relate to feeling that way after a lot of heightened sensory experiences connected to music, like going on tour, performing nightly, and then coming home and there is the lack of that very rarified type of energy, sharing and openness.

That being said, for me once a record is done, I usually start to feel the faint pangs of pressure from something new, and I feel compelled to turn towards that.

Creativity can reach many different corners of our lives. Do you personally feel as though writing 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?

While I don’t have the same curiosity around coffee making as I do about sound, I believe we rearrange ourselves when we eat, drink or listen.

To your example, I often think about how food and music are similar in that they are created inside a process and then become part of our bodies, passing through the prism of our senses and going inside, transforming and exploding into new colors, waves and electrical impulses, creating new pathways and patterns that influence who we are at a foundational level. Both coffee and music can be shitty or transcendent.

I think mundanity is ultimately in the eye of the beholder, and that touch, intention, passion, imagination, presence and a belief system can all contribute to elevating experiences into the sublime.