Ryder Timberlake is "Spiral Cheese Horizon"
I’m proud of the progress we’re making with the Speed of Sound events. Every second Wednesday of the month we showcase three electronic musicians, each with a different attitude toward performance. I really love it when fledgling “bedroom” producers – those artists who employ their desktop computers as virtual recording studios – break out of their cocoon and come out to play live.
Ryder Timberlake, aka “Spiral Cheese Horizon” is such an artist. With realistic looking (and even animated) patch cords, meters and shiny hardware faceplates, the virtual studio software known as “Reason” is Ryder’s audio toolbox of choice.
A "real" studio rack
Reason's virtual approach
For many old school engineers, Reason is a good choice because of it’s resemblance to actual studio machinery. And while the realistic quality of it’s interface is candy for the eyes, it’s also an excellent choice for newer generations since it does an excellent job of replicating the actual signal flow of a real studio setup.
Although virtual studio technology has empowered thousands of new artists, good songwriting skills are usually achieved from practice and and dedication.
Ryder’s output is intelligent, emotive and expertly arranged. You can experience it here.
His “epic” sound would be perfectly suited to television and film work and perhaps even more appropriately matched to a three dimensional virtual reality. Timberlake’s nostalgic obsession with old-school gaming consoles (e.g. Super NES) has permeated into the music he makes. Thus, video games would be the absolutely perfect recipient of SCH’s sonic treatment, where 8-bit arcade blips converge with grandiose cinematic themes. In fact, he recently did just that, scoring a friends text-based adventure game, “Give Me Your Lunch Money”. He admits that it’s by no means a global phenomenon, but that it is, “seriously a dream come true.”
It’s a pleasure to host an event where we can support newer artists such as Ryder and provide a stage to showcase their talents. Speed of Sound is also about pushing the boundaries of how performance itself is perceived. The technology used can open a huge gamut of possibilities and the artist(s) have the ability to go where no other artist has gone before. But with that pioneering spirit comes risk. The risk that machine failure will rear it’s ugly head at the worst time – while you are playing live. The most professional electronic musicians know this and prepare accordingly. These unplanned “surprises” are useful however and help artists to prepare better.
SCH engaging the audience
Spiral Cheese Horizon essentially brought out his entire computer studio to Rachael’s last Wednesday, June 9th to perform his amazingly crafted songs. Luckily SCH had no noticeable breakdowns during his performance, but his computer monitor was compromised during transport to the gig. Unmoved by this dilemma – a small portion of his monitor was “dead” – Mr. Timberlake continued his concert like a true pro.
One unique aspect to SCH’s show is his irreverent banter with the audience between musical passages. His tangential rants are delightfully humorous and serve to lift the veil which typically accompanies eclectic artists with cryptic production/performance aliases. It’s no wonder that his interview would follow suit. Here it is:
Almost all electronic musicians and producers come from simple beginnings, putting together a “bedroom studio” with affordable hardware or used gear found in pawn shops and garage sales. Could you tell us a bit about the equipment you started on and what it was like to work on a song in those days?
I’ll gloss over the set-up I started with about 10 years ago that I used for a year or so before being booted ought of the music scene by major life events. It was a Yamaha PSR-540 and a shareware midi sequencer, that was IT. Man it was barebones, but I WISH I still had the music I did back then…it was lost/purged along with pretty much every other creative thing I’d done in the years prior to that when I ran away from home at 16 to try and start my new life in Japan (another story entirely). More recently…this was maybe summer of 2008…I was living in Switzerland, close to a buddy of mine who is an emcee and producer (MennyOdds). I’m seriously into hip-hop – good hip-hop, that is – and at the time I was having one of my biannual cycles where I dedicate a lot of time to freestyling and writing and generally just flirt with the idea of being an emcee. He totally had a bedroom studio, I don’t think you can meet the definition more perfectly. Laptop with Reason and Cubase, an actual recording booth that a friend of his and he had BUILT together, sweet mic (his dad’s mic actually, no way he could have afforded it), and some kind of really fancy sampler he’d managed to snag cheap off of ebay. And some kind of Midi keyboard. Actually it was a damn sweet set-up, we produced a number of tracks there, it was just a really comfortably lived-in setup in a BEAUTIFUL area, right across Lake Geneva from the Alps. Anyway as I was making beats I realized the possibilities of Reason for making some straight instrumental tracks, so I started experimenting and when I got back to the States got hold of a copy of Reason and an entry-level keyboard (Yamaha PSR-E213) and never looked back. At that time I was working on the same desktop I started college with – a Dell multiplex X280 or something like that, with a 1.something ghz processor and 256 (yes, 256) megs of RAM. In retrospect it’s kind of amazing the thing could do anything interesting with reason at all.
Your current performance rig involves the use of a desktop computer and virtual studio software. Can you explain how that has changed the way you now make music?
Spiral Cheese Horizon performing at Rachael's Cafe (6-09-2010)
I’ve been used to a desktop for a while now…in fact, I’ve never played live with anything else. I’m kind of spacey and disorganized (dear God I hope employers don’t do exhaustive googling research cause I really need a job right now…I’m organized on the job! Seriously!), so things’ll occasionally get lost in the woodwork…my first show I had to play one track as an MP3 (ouch!) because I had somehow gotten rid of the RNS file.
There are those who decry the use of software for music production and even more so when it comes to live performance. What are your feelings on this issue?
Okay now this is a fascinating issue. What makes it okay for Daft Punk to just sit up there with their predominantly automated set in Ableton – barely doing anything we could call “performance” in a more traditional sense – but if some pop star gets caught lip-syncing at a concert, they’re lynched for it? I’m really not sure and I’m pretty ignorant about this stuff. I mean, what do most people who go to electronica concerts think the performer is doing? Surely they don’t think he’s playing each separate part on a keyboard as it comes in? Do they think he’s clicking buttons to cue different sections? Checking levels and twiddling knobs? You can never separate performer from performance from audience – the terms have no meaning without each other – and I think the legitimacy of any given kind of performance has everything to do with audience expectations. There are cultural and subcultural and genre-specific scripts dictating what a performer and what an audience will and won’t do at any given show – knowing when and how to violate them, and to what effect, is what separates the guys like me who are just in it for a good time from the geniuses and genre-makers and shakers. But I think most electronic performers are doing right by the audience – so if you have a problem with me standing behind a table playing air sitar while my set runs in reason – well, I guess you have a different definition of performance than I do.
On the same note, and hoping this doesn’t sound like me waxing arrogant scholar here, I just really get excited about this kind of talk – there are two other issues I want to briefly touch on. First of all, what’s the role of the computer? If the computer is actually the one bringing the music to life, doesn’t that make the laptop more performer than the composer? Or is it that the actions of the composer in creating and shaping the piece – actions that have been encoded at a time remote from that of the current performance – are themselves the performance? In the domain of pragmatics – a subdomain of linguistics, which is more or less (ha!) what I did my Master’s in – when we talk about temporal deixis, we talk about the coding time (CT) of an utterance versus it’s receiving time (RT), most often with regards to written communication. So if I write you an e-mail saying “I had a BLAST at last night’s show”, I don’t think there’s any doubt that I wrote that e-mail, in short that I formulated a message, and you received it and understood it in some fashion or another, but probably pretty close to the meaning it had in my mind when it got mapped from concept to form (if that’s indeed how it works..!). At the same time, you receive and understand that message at a time remote from my formulation of the message, so you could certainly argue that, in fact, your computer – - by virtue of being the temporally most proximal thing to your understanding of my message that is still involved in this message’s transmission – not me – is in fact the communicator. Certainly it’s an opportunity to discuss and hopefully more accurately define our terms anyway – communicator, communication, performer, performance. I like the idea of the electronic artist performing for her audience in the seclusion of her bedroom studio, and I think there is a very intangible and indefinable kind of creative ripple effect that accompanies this, where the performer and the piece become inextricably attuned to each other. So in that way, if on the day of the actual “performance” you put just some guy off the street, or even another accomplished artist, up behind the boards to watch over a largely or entirely automated set, you’re just not going to have the same quality of show. But that’s all very mystic and new agey sounding – DEFINITELY self serving! – and certainly inscrutable to empirical analysis.
Your music has a distinct cinematic sound. You’ve indicated that you’re not classically trained in music, but that’s hard to believe given the epic quality of your output. Are there some specific influences that helped shape your sound?
Spiral Cheese Horizon celebrating the moment
I could talk for hours about my musical influences and since I feel like I may have already been inadvertently a little rude in rambling on for so long, I’ll keep it short. A few musicians in particular have affected me immeasurably at one time or another. Mozart, the guys who did the music to FF Tactics, Motoi Sakuraba, Yasunori Mitsuda, Yoko Kanno, Michiru Yamane (the OST to Castlevania: SOTN is AMAZING!!!), Kevin Riepl, Tchaikovsky (is that how you spell his name?) I don’t want to give the impression that it’s limited to this list – the full list I’m incapable of remembering and doubtless includes thousands if not tens of thousands of artists, famous and “nobodys”, some of whom I’ve probably adopted my style to suit and then conveniently forgotten and considered the change original XD. If you asked me on a different day or in a different mood the list might be different too. I realize that’s a lot of Japanese artists people probably haven’t heard of, but Mitsuda, Kanno, and Yamane are all really famous and really talented artists in Japan and internationally, expand your horizons some.
Many genres of electronic music are referenced in your music. Are there any genres or particular artists you favor?
I really love Daft Punk. It’s funny, because I used to find them utterly boring and trite. My buddy would start bumping one of their albums in the car and I’d be like, “Can’t we listen to something else?” What changed that was a combination of “Stronger” by Kanye coming out and another buddy of mine giving me a copy of Alive, at about the same time. That did it somehow. I’m also a big fan of a lot of Aphex Twin, though honestly the guy’s so damn prolific I feel like it’s impossible for any one person to like all or even most of his stuff. I mean, the guy’s been around so long I don’t think even HE still likes all the stuff he’s done. Venetian Snares. ‘Nuff said. Those are the big ones of the top of my head…I love the aesthetics of most electronic genres, very notably drum & bass, and I dig a lot of artists, but I just feel like most artists tailor their music excessively towards the club scene, again, ESPECIALLY drum & bass…to the point where I’m usually bored out of my skull after listening to one minute of it. It’s like, couldn’t you at least give me a damn bridge or a solo or something? Unless I’m dancing, in which case I could usually care less.
Which producer, band or artist has really caught your attention in the last 2 years?
Hmm, well, within the realm of electronic proper, I’d have to say Venetian Snares. As I said, I love the aesthetic sense of drum & bass, so when someone actually does it right I get incredibly excited about it – most other guys, even the really famous ones, put me to sleep.
If you could imagine a live performance by Spiral Cheese Horizon five years from now, what would it sound and look like?
Oh man, are people still going to be giving me gigs five years from now? That in itself is an exciting prospect. Hard to say really. In my short time on this earth I’ve often found myself captivated by the idea of performing sold-out concerts to massive crowds – who’s to say it can or can’t happen – but in general the idea of fame kind of terrifies me. You see how f@$%# up most of these people’s lives get with the fame – they’re just human, damn!!! – and it makes you think hey, you know, I may think I’ve got a lot of willpower or core values or whatever, but you can bet your ass some of the most lost folks in that bunch went in thinking the exact same thing. So I think it’s good for us that the music industry is so cutthroat – it keeps us in line where we’re not strong enough to keep ourselves in line – making music for the right reasons. If you look at it that way, Fifty Cent, Miley Cyrus, all these artists who just make you groan and reach for the dial the second they come on the radio – they’re really like guardian angels, living their miserable lives in the spotlight so we don’t have to. I don’t want to give the impression that I think all famous people are like that, but let’s face it, most of us aren’t strong enough to lead anything less than empty and miserable lives once we’re the most popular kid in school. sorry, TANGENT. Um, I would say the show would look a lot like the one last night at Rachael’s. Same laid-back, nerdy and vaguely Zach Braffy stage presence and delivery, same rocking out with air instruments. I really do love that part. Most of the changes I foresee happening involve technical developments in terms of musical skill, mastering, a lot of the electronic-specific wheel-turning and knob-twiddling, and generally just tightening up the set. Some of the tools of direct audience engagement from stand-up comedy I really dig as well, and I like to talk to people and tell stories, so anyway if I can incorporate those things more effectively, unobtrusively, seamlessly into the performance – well, I would really like that. I’m a textbook Leo, I really like to rule the room, ha. Though I have to say, I’m usually TOTALLY wrong with these “where I see myself in five years” things!
http://www.reverbnation.com/wryder
~Written by Mark Kunoff
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