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[[ idea for image: Klee Twittering Machine. ;;; shiny hanging sculpture from Mass MOCA ]]
It’s electronic in the traditional sense, grounded in the synthesizer music that started with Buchla and Moog in the 1960s. “Symphonic” is shorthand for the sensibility, dynamism, and attention to detail borrowed from classical music tradition.
To be honest, this is not like any music I know. Some people tell me it makes them feel floaty and they see images of outer space. Others call it psychedelic and say it takes them on a journey inward. Some say it reminds them of soundtracks for scary movies. My favorite response is from people who say they relish the details and the way it twists and changes from one shape to another.
Whatever you call it, I ask that when you listen with fresh ears. Don’t assume you know what kind of music this is.
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/ThinAirX/ is spacemusic with a jam-band sensibility. But not free jams. The pieces are composed, with themes and structure and discernible musical ideas. Not scored note by note but, as with jam bands or jazz, each performance is unique, capturing the energy of the moment.
The music ranges from ambient and dreamy to raucous noise. Harmonies from modal to atonal. Melodies from chromatic angularity to singing themes. Sometimes all in the same composition.
Steve is a veteran electronic musician, enthralled with all the fantastic sounds that modern circuitry can generate. But it’s electronics grounded in a musical sensibility shaped by a lifetime of listening to string quartets, renaissance masses, Beethoven, Ives, Subotnick, Stockhausen, Reich, Ligeti, Zappa, Beefheart, “more Grateful Dead shows than I can count” and a degree in Music from Harvard.
Before switching to the clarinet Steve played keyboards and synths—you may have heard him perform solo as /Thin Air/ or with Art Cohen as the duo /Delicate Monster/.
Find samples of Steve’s music on SoundCloud. Search “ThinAirX”
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It’s electronic in the traditional sense, grounded in the synthesizer music that started with Buchla and Moog in the 1960s. “Symphonic” is shorthand for the sensibility, dynamism, and attention to detail borrowed from classical music tradition.
To be honest, this is not like any music I know. Some people tell me it makes them feel floaty and they see images of outer space. Others call it psychedelic and say it takes them on a journey inward. Some say it reminds them of soundtracks for scary movies. My favorite response is from people who say they relish the details and the way it twists and changes from one shape to another.
Whatever you call it, I ask that when you listen with fresh ears. Don’t assume you know what kind of music this is.
#### Electro-symphonic music
**It’s electronic music because it celebrates the endless variety of sounds capable with modern circuitry, yet it owes a lot to classical music in the way it develops musical ideas. And by “classical music” I mean ALL Western music from the 12th to 20th Centuries. I’ve always been a voracious listener, and I listen all the time to a crazy assortment of music. I have a degree in Music from Harvard.**I call it “electric-symphonic music” as a nod to it’s classical sources, and to distinguish it from dance music and beats that some people associate with electronic music.**I get bored easily and vary my music as much as possible. I use a range of compositional approaches, and push the electronics to make new sounds and textures. The you’ll hear sounds ranging from ambient and dreamy to raucous noise. Harmonies from atonal to modal. Melodies from chromatic to singable themes. Recognizable clarinet timbres to monstrous textures created by flangers and ring modulators. Sometimes all in the same composition.**It’s not hard to hear my special fondness for 20th Century classical music. Electronic sounds spiced with atonality. Compositions of noise, a la Subotnick, Stockhausen, Ligeti, Henry Cowell, George Antheil. At the same time, if you listen carefully and you’ll detect compositional ideas poached from Beethoven and Mozart, Palestrina and Dufay. And Miles Davis and Frank Zappa.**Unlike many electronic and space music acts, I don’t just perform free jams. My pieces are composed. They have beginnings, middles, ends, are in separate keys (or modulate) and unfold discernible musical themes. Yet they are not scored note for note (been there, done that). As in jazz––or live Grateful Dead––each performance of a piece is a separate instance of the core composition.**In the end, all the talk and terminology, music history and labels mean little compared to the experience of listening to the music. What matters most is what you experience and think and feel and see when you listen to my music. Then, please, describe to me in your own words what you hear. My hope: the sounds are good enough to be called, simply, “music.”*
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Kandinsky on the Radio is the best tracks from the hundreds of jams I did in the spring and summer of 2020. It captures my excitement as I explore what I can do using only an iPad as the sole source of sounds and effects.
Every track (except Whale) is derived from a single live performance in my studio. I selected the ones that I thought were the most musical, then cleaned them up by removing obvious mistakes and boring bits. These were all recorded directly to stereo: what you hear is what I heard as I played. No overdubbing or multi-tracking. No pre-recorded anything.
Limiting myself to the iPad is not a gimmick. “iOS music” is the latest and possibly best way for creating music that’s just as good—and in some ways better—than electronic music produced with hardware gear. In just the last few years the iPad processing power and iOS signal processing have reached a point of sophistication that is uncompromising. There is no compromise in terms of audio quality. And the flexibility offered by the iOS apps is liberating. What you are really witnessing in the tracks of Kandinsky on the Radio is me discovering what the iOS music can really do!
One major advantage of iOS music is how easy it is to manage and integrate many different apps, and multiple instances of the same app, to create one monster instrument. For example, in my previous setup where I played a clarinet through guitar effects pedals, I struggled to manage two hardware loopers—all those cables and pedals and inflexible settings in the hardware. With the iPad I easily manage four loopers, and can configure and blend them any way I want. Same with delays and other effects. I also have four arpeggiators (“arps”), which I could never do with hardware. Another example, because the grand piano is just another app, I can drive it with the arps, and then reverse the signal—one of my favorite effects.
I'm a fan of neo-classical music (Stockhausen, Ives, Ligeti, Reich, Bartok, etc.) and I believe that the extreme techniques of this music are perfectly suited to rendering with electronics. My tracks are a demonstration of this idea.
“Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire.”
— Gustav Mahler
