Octant | TapeOp

Last summer, a friend was all excited about an upcoming show by a "keyboard duo" from Seattle. They played some kind of experimental electronic pop. Octant? Never heard of them, I shrugged. How exciting is a keyboard duo? "Well," he said, "they build their own light-controlled instruments and they have a robotic drummer that plays on stage with them." If you have a geek bone in your body, this should grab your attention, as it did mine. I went to see them and, sure enough, front and center were case-mounted kick, snare and cymbals being played by robotic arms. Octant's set, however, proved them to be more than a mere gimmick act. A couple months later, I called Octant mastermind Matt Steinke at his new secret lab (which he shares with bandmate Tassy Zimmerman) in Chicago...

Let's start by talking about your current approach to recording. I saw that the most recent Octant album [Car Alarms and Crickets] was finished this summer.

Yeah, we started in October of last year and worked on it over a seven-month period.

And were you recording in your house mostly?

We pretty much did it all out of our apartment. In Seattle, the rent is so high we just had a tiny little apartment. Compared to now, in Chicago, we have a much larger apartment paying the same amount of money. But it was tiny in Seattle — we had one room that we lived in and one room we converted into a recording studio. And then I did all the drum tracks in a practice space, which was really hellish because I was surrounded by hardcore bands. I would have to get there at five in the morning, before all the slackers got there. There were many times when I set up all my microphones and then there would be this loud "bwwwwwah." So that's part of the reason that it took so long. There were a lot of re-dos.

So, would you bring an ADAT down to the practice space?

I have a [Roland] VS-880 hard disk recorder. I use that to do all my field — I call them field recordings, where I go places and record my instruments that are too loud to record in my apartment or I go and record other people, other instrumentalists, in their homes. Then I sync them up in Pro Tools after that.

Are you using the Digidesign 001?

On the last record I used Pro Tools 4.3.1 and I didn't have the Digi card — I actually did it on the Mac A/V card on the G3, so it was all in 16 bit, it wasn't 24 bit. But then what we did is we went into a studio that had a full-on Pro Tools 24-out system and we bussed all the tracks out through tube compressors and tube amps and tracked it analog to clean off the rough digititis. And it seemed to work pretty good. In retrospect, I would probably invest in a 24-bit card and do it that way, but we were kind of tight with money.

So with only an A/V card in, you could add, at most, two tracks at a time?

Some of the stuff was done mostly on the VS-880, where I would put a test tone on every track, and then peel them off, two at a time, into the computer — sync them up there. I really focused on getting good tracks, trying to develop each track, as opposed to when you're in a studio where you're pressed for time and you just play and then see what you get, make the best of it in the mix-down. I wanted to do the opposite thing and work on all the tracks, work on incorporating digital-style recording with live recording. "Digital", meaning loops and edits and sound manipulation.

How did you record your first record [Shock-No-Par]?

I tracked that all on the VS-880. It has 64 virtual tracks, although you can only play back eight at a time. I used it as a storage — a tracking device. I would record the drums in Tassy's parents' garage, or in various other places, and then go home and add tracks. I would store up about 16 to 24 tracks, and then we took it into the studio at Jupiter and at that time we synced it to a 24-track 2" machine. We then peeled the tracks off onto the 2" and mixed down analog. It was similar to the second album, but done a bit different. With the VS-880 you don't have as much editing capability as you do on a computer.

Would you choose to do it that way again?

I think for the next recording we may go into a studio and do it live because there's more acoustical elements to the new material. I'm really longing for really deep analog sounds. It'll probably be partly done in a studio — definitely the drums in the studio and a lot of the bass — and then I'll have all the tracks dumped onto Pro Tools and take it home. And then embellish in Pro Tools — or, actually, I've been using Logic so I'll probably use that. I might do some mix-downs in the studio, but I'm really looking for more fidelity in the recordings. The next record is more conducive to that style of recording — it's more warm, the songs are warmer.

Do you use recording in your writing process, as a tool for writing, or taping practices?

Actually, I have been doing it that way for a while now. I've come full circle. In other bands, and when Octant first started, it was more of an art project. I had these kinetic sculptures that I was sequencing on a Mac Classic. I would make patterns with a grid sequencer, a step sequencer. It was pretty random. I would place drum notes on the computer and then use samples. Different samples would go with different drums. I would have vibraphone sounds or bell samples going with the drums. Then I'd mix up the patterns and vary them as the piece went. It was one piece, basically, called "Remodeled Percussion."

Was that the robotic drums?

It was that and some other sculptures that went along with it, and other sound mechanisms. That was for an installation performance. And then it evolved into a band after that. But now I'm going back to where I'm sitting down and writing the material instead of writing while I'm recording, how I have done with the past two records. I'm actually sitting down with a piano or a guitar or a drum sequencer and composing, as opposed to creating loops or patterns as I'm recording.

Do you have a background in traditional piano music?

I do. I studied classical piano and classical guitar growing up. My family is very conservative, so when I was in middle school watching MTV and wanting tobearockstarmymomtoldmeIhadtoplay classical guitar. Before that, I took classical piano and sang in choir — very traditional — and bass drum and kettle drum in school band. And then, when I went to school at Evergreen, I took some theory classes to learn counterpoint and how to compose in a classical style, just to get a good, solid background in jazz and classical composition. Then I started to venture toward experimental music and electronic music. I ended up becoming completely engrossed in it. I did all my compositions on a Buchla synthesizer. That's where I started to learn electronics, from wiring LFOs, oscillators and filters and seeing how the whole electronic music system functioned. When I graduated I got one of those 101 project kits from Radio Shack and I started building my own oscillators, LFOs and filters, and then started making my own designs. Then I got a job doing electronics, and from there on it snowballed and I became completely engrossed in it. Also, in school I did a lot of kinetic sculpture, electromechanical stuff, and I made instruments as well, so when I finally had enough electronic knowledge to create electromechanical instruments, which was a pipe dream I had when I graduated, I started Octant. Then I devoted all my attention to it. That's my evolution. Meanwhile I was playing in rock bands, punk bands, Mocket and Satisfact. But those projects are over now.

Someone told me that for a while you were making and selling electronics?

I did that for a while, but I wasn't making enough money to make it worth it. So I decided to devote all my creativity towards instruments for myself, as artwork. Mainly because it turned into a business and I was caught up in bookkeeping and trying to fill orders. I made these light-sensitive tone generators that were pretty makeshift — they were tiny handheld instruments, the chassis was an Altoids can, and it had a 9V battery and a little oscillator. It was actually a pretty thick-sounding oscillator — it had an inductor coil so it was actually pretty hot, pretty loud. Trading Musician sold 30 of them and Catch of the Day sold 20-30, and then I decided to stop doing it. I was hand-soldering and hand-drilling and, with parts and all, I was only making like six dollars an hour. It was great because I was selling art, but it got very difficult. So now I just focus on developing one-of-a-kind pieces, and putting lots of work into the aesthetics of it, the way it looks and the way it sounds. Most pieces I create are for my own performance or recording, and I'm sure down the road I'll have so many pieces I'll have to sell some. I do hire-out projects for people, like Miranda July — little things for people, but they're usually not too happy when they get the bill. [laughs]

They don't realize what custom electronics means in terms of money.

Yeah, it's not a very lucrative field to get into, or I haven't found it to be anyway. I'm still going to make some more Theremins. I have all the parts to do about 30 more, so I'll probably sell those as a limited edition directly off my website. A lot of what I do is I buy a lot of junk and I pick out the parts that I like and I create Frankensteins. Like I'll pull a filter out of a synthesizer and an oscillator out of another thing and piece them together, then throw in an LFO that I built, or a sample and hold circuit that I built. I like to build stuff from scratch, but [with found components] a lot of the work is already done, so for me it's not worth inventing because somebody already did all the math, so the actual invention comes in putting the pieces together. That's how I build my instruments. I have drawers full of different things I've collected and I label each drawer. And I also collect a lot of toy sound circuits that are pretty generic. You can also get chips that make different kinds of sci-fi sounds or whatever, or any kind of sound. They're little synthesizers that have pre-set sounds in them. They all have analog oscillators, so what I do is tap the oscillator and I create CV [control voltage] inputs and then I can modulate the sample rate. I hacked apart a Dr. Sample and created a light interface for it, to modulate the sample rate and the various effects.

Wow. You should write some articles for Tape Op.

Yeah, I've got some stuff I could send you. I'm trying to make a circuit that will be the world's easiest LFO circuit, using LEDs that flash automatically, and controlling the voltage that goes inside of them. It may actually be a random LFO circuit — the modulation would be in the amount of random activity, it wouldn't necessarily be in the pulse rate. I also do a lot of circuit-bending [see more below]. I've also veered more away from electronic tone generation and gone towards electromechanical, acoustic-electric sounds. Like this one thing I'm working on is a switchboard for 24 motors with rare earth magnets that spin underneath strings and bow them without touching them. And then it utilizes electromagnetic pickups. I'm trying to create more melodic instruments. A lot of what I've made is atonal. It's a lot more difficult [to make melodic instruments] and it requires a lot of respect for instruments that have already been developed. You also have to think about different ways of manipulating objects to create sounds that haven't been done yet. But the thing with electromagnetic instruments is that there's still a lot of room for innovation. I mean, there's the Rhodes piano and the electric guitar, but there are so many other ways of harnessing the sound of metal vibrating over an electromagnetic field that haven't really been explored yet. And there are different ways of acting upon the metal — of hitting it or plucking it or bowing it — that haven't really been explored yet either. I'm also interested in creating sound tanks and creating acoustic-electric effects. For example, a spring reverb is a simple one, but I'd like to create something that uses sympathetic strings and maybe utilizes different types of environments, like water. Different spaces for the sound to resonate in. It helps a lot with electronic music because a lot of the problems you have with electronic music is resonance. Acoustic spaces can solve a lot of problems and create harmonics that make it a lot more rich sounding.

What of the instruments that you've built are your favorites? Which ones do you use live?

I'm really happy with the new version of my robotic drum kit. I haven't had the chance to unleash the possibilities of what I can do with it yet 'cause I haven't had a practice space. There are interesting polyrhythms I can do with it that an actual live drummer couldn't or wouldn't do. So I'm really happy with that. I have a new light-modulated sampler too, the Dr. Sample with some other samplers built into it as well. There's a bunch of lo-fi sample rate, 4-bit samplers in it as well that have analog clocks. So, with light, I modulate the voltage of the clock and modulate the [sample playback] rate. You can get some really interesting sounds with that, you can manipulate it with your hands. It's like a turntable almost, but even more malleable because you can move it really fast. And the way it's set up is very ergonomic. I build all my light modulators in spheres and your hand fits perfectly over it and the light drapes across it evenly, so it tends to be really fun to play and a lot of interesting sounds come about. And then I have a bunch of little toys, more novelty instruments. One instrument I built out of a Tommy organ keyboard, I gave it a talkbox-like feature. I put a telephone speaker on the output so you can stick it in your mouth and slobber all over it. You can create a filter with your mouth. It's a fun instrument because it's a toy, and I tapped the pitch resistor to give it a variable pitch control. The neat thing about it is when you vary the pitch control, the keys go all out of wack, and the relationship changes, so that instead of half steps you get quarter steps, or whole- tone scales. Another thing I just did is a tiny synthesizer, which is a Frankenstein creation. It has an interesting sound because the oscillator is from a toy keyboard and what I did is I circuit-bent, meaning I went in and put my thumb on the ground and moved my finger around while I played it until I found warbly sounds, or until the sounds were broken-up.

So it was actually conducting through your hand?

Yeah, it's really fun and easy. You put your thumb on the ground or on one point, and then touch different pads on the circuit boards and you play the keys and your hand becomes a resistor. Then you just wire a switch to each pad, and put a capacitor or a resistor or trim pot on there, and you tweak the pot until you get the desired sound, and then, when you flip the switch, you can go between different levels or circuit-bent sound. [Note to our gentle readers: don't do this with high-voltage circuits, please!] So that oscillator is there, and then it has an analog filter with a sample and hold circuit based on the new random LED design. It's kind of like the [Z Vex] Seek Wah, which is a sequencer with different trim pots for each step, and you can set different levels of a filter, and it sequences through the filter. It's kind of like that, but it's completely random. It's a bunch of LFOs playing against each other. When the LFOs go at the same time, you get a lower amount of resistance, depending on how many LEDs are on at once, how many are lit. So it's kind of like water. It's little things vibrating against each other. So it has that circuit in it. And it has a really amazing visual interface as well, with the multiple flashing lights.

What do you call that piece?

I haven't thought of a name yet. I just designed it yesterday. It's a little smaller than a shoebox.

How, exactly, did you come to build the robotic drum set? That is such a stunning visual piece to see live. Did you use servo motors, or what?

I've experimented with all kinds of mechanisms, AC and DC motors, solenoids, and buzzers. Currently, I'm using one alarm system buzzer solenoid — it's a solenoid with a spring in it that vibrates against a wooden clicker and makes a rolling, rattle click sound. And then I use a lot of 115-volt solenoids — I would rather not use AC voltage solenoids, because it's AC and it's kind of dangerous to shoot AC all over the place. If it wasn't for my experience with wiring and building really solid electronics from my job, I would probably be electrocuted. What I have is AC hitters, drum sticks basically that are pulled down by the AC solenoids and are pulled back up with a retraction spring. The metal work is aluminum, because it's the lightest. It has nylon balls on the ends of the sticks. The drums are Ludwig. The whole thing interfaces to a D/A [digital to analog] converter, a series of transistor logic circuits and protection circuits, to isolate the DC circuitry from the AC, and to protect the MIDI interface from sucking AC through it into my computer and blowing everything up. So far I haven't had any accidents or embarrassing stage moments where things have just freaked out on me. Every time we play a show I'm surprised that it works, not because it's makeshift or anything, but because the concept of what's being done is so outrageous. It's really dangerous to shoot AC all over the place. You know, I would use DC, but I haven't found any DC solenoids or motors that pull enough weight. I need ten to 15 pounds of pressure. Sometimes I use two solenoids to accentuate one hitter, in order to get a really good pop. I have two different D/A converters for different types of hits — a fast one and a slower but harder-hitting circuit.

And the D/As go to MIDI?

Yeah, I use MIDI because it's so universal — you can use a computer or a sequencer or an instrument. I don't use control voltage, since with drums you only have maybe eight pieces, eight notes, and on a MIDI staff you have 128 notes. So I apply different velocities to different notes. So different hitters hit at different velocities. That's how I get accents, I don't do it with control voltages. It could be done, it just makes more sense to do it that way for me because, with drums, you don't really need to conserve notes.

Have you ever used the MAX program [by Cycling '74]?

I've just started to work with it, but it's pretty much the future of what I'm going to be doing. I want to get an iBook for live stuff. I've been using a Yamaha RMX-1, which I use live because it has a disk drive and it's durable. I've developed an interface for that, using light triggers to switch loops. But it seems like with MAX it would be much easier and much more fun. I want to do some video recordings of various soloists, singers, and then create MIDI compositions around their performances, then project them as a hologram and have robotic instruments accompany them live.

Wow. Yeah, you could do that with MAX, you can do Quicktime video syncing.

I'm very interested in doing light modulation into the computer and MAX would be the perfect thing to use 'cause then I wouldn't have to have all these cheap samplers packed into little boxes. I could just make interfaces, which would be much more fun and wouldn't weigh as much. [laughs] I'm working on a new instrument, which is a more portable version of the robotic drum kit. It's going to be an electroacoustic drum system that utilizes electromagnetic sounds, piezo-sensitive sounds, and acoustic sounds, and it will also have MIDI- ized acoustic filters in it. That will hopefully be done for our new record. What I've been doing is inventing a new rhythm section for each record.

Is the new one based around a physical, actual snare drum, like the current one?

It's actually... I've been getting really nitty-gritty with it, and I'm utilizing latex and plastic molding and creating my own chambers and my own parts. It'll change pitch by flexing pieces of latex.

Wow, that sounds so space age.

It's going to be really nice, a lot more interesting than a drum machine, a drum module or anything you can produce on a computer. And it'll also be a more practical product for a live, travelling application where you can actually take it on an airplane.

Is it a shoebox-size thing?

No, it's either going to be a case with components that come out and piece together like Tinkertoys, or it's going to be a very thin but wide chassis that mounts on a stand with a Plexiglas case so you can see inside, with little bullet cameras inside that film the mechanisms and project them to video. But the visual interface is also very important. It's important to me because I'm fascinated by free jazz, with the initiation of sound and the performance of sound and the concept of it and the creation of it, compared to digital manipulation. I'm trying to create a new medium of electronic music, a more external medium. One that's not contained inside of a little box. Like free jazz, where you have the fat bass player with the shirt undone and, because he's shaped a certain way, it's conducive to him playing a certain way — his fingers are shaped a certain way. It's about character, and personality, and it's about the physical act and the physical sound that's generated, and the variations and nuances of the physical sound. It's a little bit of a response to the digital revolution but, in a way, it embraces the digital revolution in the sense that it incorporates programming. So that's a lot of what I've been studying, and why I've been veering away from squawky electronic tone generators and moving more towards electromechanical instruments. And then there's also acoustic processing, which is taking electronic tones or samples and processing them by changing the shape of the chamber, or bending the plate or the resonating piece. Like, have you ever run a sound through a spring reverb and put a little wire on the spring and pulled on the wire? You get some interesting sounds that way. Another thing that's fun to do is solder a really thin magnetic wire, like the kind they use to wind pickups, the thinnest piece you can get, and solder that to the back of a piezo. Then run a sound from an amplifier into that piezo. On the other end [of the thin wire], solder another piezo, and have that be the input into another amplifier. And then create a feedback loop, or you can run sound through it, through the wire — it's really interesting.

So the wire would be resonating?

Yeah, the wire becomes the chamber.

That's crazy. You should write a book about "what do you do after Bob Moog has done everything inside the box?"

Take it out of the box! I think that's the most interesting part, dealing with environment and space. That's taken from a lot of jazz theory, like Miles Davis was very aware of how he placed sounds and how they resonated in different environments. You can tell, the way jazz records are recorded, they're amazing the way things resonate, the way sounds come in and are placed. I've felt that electronic music is amazing and there's been a revolution and a revival, but it's been so internal. You get more out of it and it goes even further once you go acoustic. Once it exists inside of a space, there's some acoustic element and acoustic presence added to it. Even with recording it helps a lot. The same thing as why people choose analog. Those qualities just don't exist in a digital realm. They've gotten really good at it, I'm not going to say that you can't get the sounds, but it's so much easier to just track to a big fat 2" tape. It's much more forgiving.

We haven't really talked much about Octant as a band, as in having other people you work with. What is that situation?

Octant is basically a one-man and two-man, depending on Tassy's schedule, band. Tassy and I are married and we live together and I design a lot of the instruments, but she has an equal part in adding her opinions and insight to what we do. She plays my instruments, which is very noble, 'cause I can't find anybody who can really do it. The fact that we live together is the reason we can do this. It's difficult to get other musicians to want to work with my instruments. Usually the other musicians we work with are acoustic, or focused on one particular instrument. We play all instruments — percussion, guitars, basses, banjos, keyboards, the stringboard, we switch around and do different things, we play two instruments at once, we're a one-man/two-man band. When Octant first started, it was a one-man, half- man/half-robot band. I would play keyboard and guitar and sing along with the robotic and electronic accompaniment. It was a strange cyborg band — me with a prosthesis attached. Then Tassy started playing with me around the time I was working on the first record. The early Octant, which hasn't been put out, is mostly instrumental, not as much a pop-based thing. As people moved in it became more like a pop band. Next year, when Tassy goes back to school, I'll probably do touring as multiple instruments and machine again. It changes a lot, because the members aren't always the same. The next record won't be so dark and cold, it'll be warm and melodic, and not so much a kick-on-the-one, snare-on-the-two thing. It'll be more divergent than that. It won't be a dance record, or a rock record, or what you'd consider electronica.

You know, there are some points on the new album with banjo that are really unexpected.

I found that banjo stashed in a box in my parent's garage. It's definitely a piece of my roots from growing up in Texas — that and guitar and mandolin. I'm actually developing a bass banjo, kind of like a "mandobass," a bass mandolin. It uses a bigger drum, it has four strings, and no resonator plate. It has a tom mike on the inside to get the boom sound, the punch, and then an electromagnetic pickup connected to the bridge. That'll be on the new record.

Anything else you'd like to add?

I feel that with performing we're always butting heads with people who don't have an appreciation for something that is unique. It's like maybe you invent an instrument in middle school and play it in front of the class and everybody's like, "Oh, that was really interesting. I don't know if it was good or bad." That's been a comment made to us after we played. A lot of our society is very institutionalized, a lot of people are obsessed with genre and niche and being part of a mold. Or, if you're a band, sounding like someone. It's very frustrating and it's part of the reason we moved out of Seattle. We were frustrated with rock music because there were so many instrumental and structural limitations. Yet we grew up on that music — it's western music based on jazz and blues and it's something that you're part of, but at the same time having innovation is very cool. There's a bit of a trend where people are starting to appreciate experimental music again, at least out here in Chicago it's very much alive, and in Portland too. But also, electronic music is becoming institutionalized, more like a genre. My ideal future is going to see performance — not necessarily a band or an instrumentalist or a film or a play — you go see a performance. And it's however the artist or the composer wants to perform the music or the medium. It's not being a slave to the medium. It's utilizing different media to create something that is indescribable, not what you would consider music or film or anything — it is its own thing. That's my hope for the future, that music and art can be incorporated, completely ignoring the industry and constraints like money, just doing exactly what you want to. Ignoring set standards.

Yeah, that makes sense.

When I first envisioned Octant, it wasn't going to be a band, it was all sorts of things — anything I worked on. The electronics I built, and the performances, the films I did were all "by Octant." It was a multimedia project and, even though we've got a record deal and we've made records, I still see it that way.

Something without all these definitions on it.

Yeah, I really try to fight it, because it eventually erodes it. That's part of the reason I quit my bands before, I didn't want to be the singer or guitar player guy. Why does there need to be another Paul McCartney or David Bowie? There are people who are way better at it than me. I don't feel a need to follow in their footsteps. I've already completely internalized them, they're part of my culture. I've seen a lot of artists stifled by attitude and I don't want to be like that.