A
pioneering musician who is well established in the avant gard / progressive
guitar world, Robert Spalding Newcomb presents another side
of his muse with his 2008 double CD set, Anastasia Of The Gardens
- Electronic Works 1988-1997. Guitarist yes, but who
knew Robert was such an electronic music aficionado? His double CD
set sounds more like Wendy Carlos than say, Carlos Santana. Reflective
of the daring vision of artists in the mid and late 1980s, Newcombs
electronic music set uses computer software programs that skillfully
implement nylon string MIDI guitar with keyboards, but the end result
is anything but solely guitaristic. Amazingly, Newcombs late
80s music is also superbly recorded and sounds great 22 years
later. Recorded in NYC, New Hampshire and Michigan, the sound throughout
is highly experimental but the soundtrack / audiolog type results
are quite listenable. The two CD set is superbly packaged and is filled
with all kinds of information and historic liner notes on these early
recordings. Another Newcomb CD worth giving a listen to is Undiscovered.
A 2007 live recording from Ann Arbor, Michigan, the 62 minute
CD is broken into two partsConnecting The Dots (Suite
For Guitar In The Present Moment) and Light Of Life,
which is an experimental foray using amplified sitar. The sound throughout
is more guitar-centric sounding yet its also highly experimental.
For a look and a listen to Newcombs more direct yet amazing
guitar work in action you can always look back and listen to his 2004
Native Planting CD, which combines thirteen concert
and studio recordings from 2001 to 2004 featuring Newcombs deft
approach on amplified sitar, nylon string MIDI guitar and assorted
high tech computer gear. These three CD releases combine for an up
close and personal look at one of Americas most sonically adventurous,
eclectic guitar figures. www.PartialMusic.com
mwe3.com
presents an interview with
ROBERT SPALDING NEWCOMB
MWE3:
You are renowned as a guitarist, but you also continue to be involved
with a variety of musical art forms and structures. Would you describe
yourself primarily as a guitarist and how would you say being a guitarist
born in the 20th Century has shaped your musical sound and style?
Also what kind of trends do you see in the musical development in
the 21st century?
RSN: I have been playing guitar for more than 40 years, so yes, this
is my primary instrument for musical expression, no question. My path
has been informed by many twists and turns which have brought into
my life other instruments, some short lived (tinwhistle, 5-string
banjo, alto sax, tabla, conga, hammered dulcimer), others which I
have relied on extensively in studio and compositional work (electronic
keyboards, numerous synths, DSP boxes, computer hardware, commercial
software and many programming languages). Aspects of all these explorations
have become embedded in my work today. Our time, and I mean the last
50 years and the next 50 years, is an amazing time of confluence.
Having guitar as a musical basis during this era has allowed me to
relate to many other instruments and traditions very easily as they
have come into view through the increasingly powerful lens of our
communications tools that carry our musical information.
To give perspective to my work I continually reevaluate why I do it.
I have two precepts that seem to sustain me no matter what form my
creative work takes, whether guitar based, sitar based, computer based,
or word based.
First, the process of music making must nurture the growth
of the individual (and audience) toward integration of self.
Second, the resulting musical structure must mirror a
symbolic representation of the belief system existing within the artist.
These can seem fairly heavy, but if you think about it, if you really
are in the place you should be, there will be a synchronicity of what
you make, how you make it, and how it affects you and those who perceive
it.
MWE3: Looking back on your musical history, how and when did you become
interested in the guitar and can you remember how your early studies
led to interest in becoming a recording artist?
RSN: Coming from a naturally musical family, but without a formal
music education, music as a career didn't seem too likely, though
it was always a seductive alternative to the 'straight life.'
I was always singing or playing some instrument - drums, guitar, cornet
- and piano had a history in both my parents' families. Somewhere
along the line I kept returning to LPs of Segovia and Montoya as being
the most intriguing things I had ever heard, and of course was hearing
early rock in the early 60s, then the Beatles, plus my parents'
small jazz collection of recordings by Charlie Parker, Stan Getz,
Jelly Roll Morton, Fats Waller, even Thelonious Monk. They were hip
in ways they didn't even know. The 'recording artist' bug probably
hit somewhere in there, but the path ahead was completely unknowable.
Growing up, I was a competitive athlete but tore up an ankle playing
basketball my sophomore year in high school. While sidelined, I took
up guitar seriously, and have not stopped exploring life through its'
sounds since then.
When I graduated from high school, and took a year off before college
to play and study folk and blues, I did not know it would lead to
never going to college at all, and following my muse through life
trying to make ends meet with day jobs while pursuing more and more
esoteric directions with my instruments and machines.
I
played steel string acoustics for so many hours a day during this
time that I literally wore off the end of my ring finger on my left
hand. A corn developed on the tip of the bone which became infected,
and I lost the tip of that finger and the nail. It took a good six
months to heal so I played in a Django Reinhardt adapted style for
a while. After this injury, the tip of that finger was never the same
and could not form a good callous surface for playing steel. So, oddly,
this is what led me to play nylon strings to this day.
The concept of recording artist versus that of entertainer has become
more deeply evident as we have watched serious art diverge from popular
art in the last 40 years. In the 60s, somehow or another, for
a brief few years, these two cultural arenas seemed able to coexist
within the same formats and hold some common interest. The commercial
exploitation of that time through the next few decades has accelerated
the fragmentation of musical circles, art circles, literary circles,
dance and performance art circles, and more recently technology art
circles. Trying to stay abreast of all this transition creates an
undercurrent that really has given me the challenge of keeping my
bearings artistically, drawing upon all influences that catch my interest,
but not allowing myself to be engulfed fully by the seduction of the
apparent safety or comfort of belonging to a movement or style. The
freedom of doing 'non-entertainment', including embracing the recording
artist role, has been the path for me most my musical life. Only very
early on, in my teens and early twenties, and then again in the last
ten years, in my mid forties to mid fifties, has live performance
been a conduit for me that has felt comfortable.
MWE3: What guitarists and recordings were you influenced by and can
you name some of your biggest influences in the rock, World Beat,
classical and electronic music worlds?
RSN: My web site (www.partialmusic.com)
lists dozens of these influences, along with notes on how I feel they
inform my creative impulse and process. I know there are dozens or
hundreds I have left out.
To name a few guitarists, in no particular order: Andres Segovia,
Oscar Ghiglia, John McLaughlin, Joe Pass, George Benson, Leon Redbone,
Robert Johnson, Blind Blake, Carlos Santana, Eric Clapton, Robert
Fripp, Duane Allman, Al DiMeola.
Other instrumentalists: Keith Jarrett, Vladimir Horowitz, Cecil Taylor,
Ornette Coleman, Eberhard Weber, Eric Dolphy, John Coltrane, Bill
Evans, Thelonius Monk, Anthony Braxton, McCoy Tyner.
Composers: Brian Eno, John Cage, Daniel Asia, Meredith Monk., George
Crumb, Otto Laske, Frederic Chopin, Wolfgang A. Mozart, JS Bach, Dave
Holland, Duke Ellington, Harry Partch.
Indian Classical Music: Ali Akbar Khan (sarod), Vilayat Khan (sitar),
Nikhil Banerjee (sitar), Ravi Shankar (sitar).
MWE3:
There seems to be an element of World Music in your recordings. Can
you say something about the eclectic nature of your music and how
these diverse elements work together in forming your musical vision?
Also how does your interest in yoga and Indian sitar music add to
the sound of your recordings?
RSN: I have a mixed opinion on the music business exploitation of
what is called World Music. On the one hand there is no argument that
global exposure to ethnically diverse music traditions has developed
an increased awareness of the value of these influences. However,
the embrace of what I would call the overlap or common ground shared
by most non-academically centric traditions, meaning those with oral
lineages, risks losing the very uniqueness that each one brings to
us. The inclusion of an exotic instrument or sample into one's process
and recordings doesn't by itself guarantee that any artistic value
has been added, despite the fact that an additional marketing tag
can be applied to the result.
For me, involvement with the Indian sitar and Hindustani raga and
tala theory, began before I even knew it, about 1974. I had listened
to many Ravi Shankar and Ali Akbar Khan recordings as a child and
teenager. When I made the shift to nylon string guitar, and then used
an old Barcus-Berry pickup to amplify it through a Fender Twin amp,
well...thus began a lifelong obsession with what was then called,
a la John Coltrane and McCoy Tyner, Keith Jarrett, et.al., 'free'
improvisation. As I grew as a musician and composer, I left the memorization
of tunes, songs, and eventually even harmonic progressions and lead
sheets, behind, and began creating 'sound and structure environments'
for myself to work and play with. This led to my computer music emersion
as the computational tools it offered were irresistible and produced
genuinely unique structures to learn from. Eventually the path led
back to sitar, as I began to work with this instrument in 2001, almost
by chance. The resonance this had for me was profound, like I had
done this before, and I was simply pulled into the instrument, its
complex sound universe, and eventually the very familiar energetic
and spiritual culture from which it evolved.
The
intersection of yoga with sitar was again by chance, and not really
a conscious thing. In NYC, in 1986, I met Swami Bua, an Indian yoga
master and guru, estimated to be 100 years old at that time, and studied
his primary hatha yoga technique almost every day for three years,
becoming quite advanced in that time. During that time I was working
on music that would find its way to two CD releases, On Time,
and Anastasia Of The Gardens. This was all electronic and MIDI
guitar based work. I was also creating music for another yoga teacher,
Leslie Kaminoff, for an audio instructional tape. In September 2010,
Human Kinetics published a yoga
instructional DVD by Kaminoff, which includes 90 minutes of
my music, including the very piece I did 20+ years earlier for the
project we did together.
After I left NYC in 1990, I continued to return to see Swami Bua for
classes when I could, but lost touch in the late 1990's. Much later,
around 1999, having returned to my hometown of Ann Arbor, I learned
he was still alive, now more than 112 years old. I eventually reconnected
with him, and made pilgrimages to the city to see him until his recent
passing in July 2010 at the age of 123. Two events of note are the
time I played sitar for he and his family for his birthday on New
Years Eve 2005, and the letter of introduction he wrote for me to
Ravi Shankar, around the same time. He had for many years taught yoga
to Ravi Shankars brother, Uday, a renowned dancer. What became
of the letter is not clear, but it is a treasure to me. I have since
met Pandit through unrelated connections.
So, sitar is one of many vehicles I now use to channel the music I
hear inside and outside. I really never think of this as World Music,
as for me the quest is to integrate all the influences into something
new, rather than replicate or exploit any one or few characteristics
that may have symbolic or cultural reference.
MWE3: You recently released a double CD of electronic works of music
you recorded between 1988 and 1997 entitled Anastasia Of The Gardens.
That set seems to be quite adventurous and much different from, for
example your 2004 Native Planting album, which combines classical
guitar with sitar sounds. How do you balance such an eclectic approach
to writing recording and can you compare your different recordings
and recording styles?
RSN:
I set out long ago to explore musical territory not yet discovered,
and to create a niche for my work that placed it in a category by
itself.
My relative lack of public renown or celebrity is due at least in
part to this strategy. I have covered a lot of territory, and seldom
become too invested in projecting any one style or persona too far
into the spotlight. Maybe this shows a weakness in marketing or maybe
a strength and integrity in the scope of my artistic vision. Probably
both. Believe me, I would love to have thousands if not millions of
people download, buy, and most of all hear my musical contributions.
How to accomplish that, and still follow the muse that takes me through
the myriad of musical nuance I am attracted to remains my biggest
professional challenge as an artist. I still depend on the day job
to make a living. When I no longer need to, the muse will have found
the answer to this conundrum.
The big irony of the age of the internet, is that although it has
enabled all of us to be producers and not just consumers, it has also
made it much more difficult for consumers to distinguish the value
or significance of any one artistic voice because of the immense crowd
now competing for attention.
Hopefully through stamina, integrity, good luck and karma, and definitely
with the help of genuinely enthusiastic promotional outlets such as
MWE3.com, those of us who have dedicated our lives to exploring the
mysteries of sound and music will find a way to be heard and appreciated.
MWE3: What guitars are featured on your CD releases and what do you
look for in a guitar overall? Do you have any electric guitars in
your collection? How about other guitars, keyboards and other gear
that youre currently using?
RSN: My first release, Dreams On Queue (1986), an LP, was recorded
in Brooklyn and New York during 1983-1984, using a Matsuoka classical
guitar with a piezoelectric transducer, played through a (1980) Mesa
Boogie single speaker hardwood amp (Mark I vintage), with a direct
line out to a few analog stomp boxes and a pre-MIDI digital delay,
then to a two track stereo Tascam 1/4" tape deck. No mixing at
all.
On
Time (1990), was all done with a Gibson Chet Atkins Electric
Classical guitar, played as a MIDI controller through the K-MUSE Photon
MIDI converter. I was a beta tester for Gibson West, who were the
first to attempt MIDI tracking for nylon string guitars, using infra-red
sensors, one pair per string. Because I was most focused on recording,
I opted to use six B strings on the guitar so that tracking was identical
on all strings, with no latency due to a variance in string diameter.
This made the very nice audio out signal unusable, so I was working
in a MIDI controller mode for many years and doing no performing at
all, and actually not working with a guitar sound as my timbral source.
The whole project was sequenced in MOTU Performer on a Mac SE (!)
and Mac IIx. I did extensive sequencing and layering of MIDI controller
data and SYSEX. Sound design was a big part of this album, and I was
using the Opcode Editors suite at the time. I had a classic 'MIDI
Studio' setup during this time which included a Roland D50, Roland
MT32, Roland MKS70, Yamaha TX81z, and Alesis MIDIVerb II.
{A side note - During the 1980's in NYC I supported myself as a
self-taught programmer, cutting my teeth on some very complex business
systems. I helped write some of the first home banking systems, the
first program trading system at NYSE, etc. In 1990, I moved from the
financial industry to digital audio, and worked for New England Digital
supporting the Synclavier products. On Time was remixed and mastered
using a NED Post-Pro digital workstation and a Soundcraft 200B board.}
Synopsis
(2000). is a compilation which attempts to trace my creative work
from my first solo nylon string guitar improvisations (1975), recorded
on a lo-fi cassette recorder, through my computer software generated
compositions from the late 1990's which were featured in computer
music conferences internationally. The audio quality on these recordings
vary widely, as do the instruments, gear, and technology employed.
The intent is to show these evolutionary steps side by side, in sequence,
to give the listener a thread of how one musical idea, informed by
its place in time, led to the next. Of my published recordings, this
one is probably the most difficult to listen to, but might actually
shed the most light on my musical path from 1975 to 1999.
On
Native
Planting (2004), I had a large palette to work with as
this project was a result of 3-4 years of intense live performance
and studio composition, so I produced a mixture of instrument based
work as well as some software assisted tracks.
Tools included: Nylon string MIDI equipped Godin guitars (Nylon SA
and Grand Concert SA), sitar (my first student model), Waldorf Microwave
XTk keyboard/synth, Lexicon MPX1, Emu Morpheus, MaxMSP, SuperCollider
2.
Unlike in my earlier MIDI sequencing projects, this period was marked
by building solo performance environments that could be recorded live
on stage or in the studio directly to a stereo recorder. To do this,
required precise pre-production design of synth patches, loops, software
based event triggers, etc. All of these pieces on the CD represent
single take performances. With the help of MaxMSP programming, one
piece for instance brings into play 24 previously published and unpublished
tracks stored as 'samples' being quasi-randomly triggered as I perform
on the Waldorf XTk and laptop at the same time. Other pieces are straightforward
guitar, some with MIDI patches attached, some with only Godin's beautiful
nylon string sound.
Undiscovered
(2007) is a live performance of solo guitar and amplified sitar, uses
a minimum of technology, and is fairly close to my current performance
stance, though I am now at work on re-integrating much of my more
electronic and multi-layered intelligent software designs into a live
format (see below).
The sitar used here was built for me in Varanasi, India, in 2006,
after I toured there for a month in 2005 as a guest of the US Embassy,
performing with Stephen Rush. The guitar used is the Godin Grand Concert
SA. For ambient and synth effects, I am using a Boss GT6 floorboard,
Lexicon MPX1 and an Emu Morpheus.
Anastasia
Of The Gardens (2008) is a double CD that pulls together
electronic work I produced from 1988 through 1997, in NYC, Lebanon,
NH, and Ann Arbor, MI. This release covers a lot of timbral and technological
territory. The first disc contains studio based material produced
through a toolset similar to the one described above for On Time,
but has a much harder edge to the style and shape of the work. The
two large compositions offset each other in that Camouflage
is an experimental and virtuoso display of synth chops and MIDI guitar
playing (the Photon variety) in a rock opera setting, without the
vocal track. Conversely, Yoga Matte is a somewhat Eno
like fabric of melodic fragments tied together loosely with a set
of timing clocks which cycle through combinations of sound creating
a mosaic, giving the overall affect one might experience while doing
a series of yoga postures. Both pieces use MOTU Performer for sequencing,
with extensive MIDI controller and SYSEX management.
On the second disc, all but one piece is software generated by software
algorithms I designed and coded, known collectively as Music
In The Air. These were presented around the world in the 1990's
at computer music conferences, and the paper describing the theory
behind the software was published in 1998 by the Cambridge University
Press (UK), in the journal Organised Sound. This is very abstract
music, though many people tell me that if they listen to my improvising
and to the software generated work, they occasionally cannot tell
which is which! This to me is a great complement, as my software uses
as its basis a complex analysis technique applied to my own improvisations,
building new compositions based on what it learns through that analysis.
My software is written in HMSL/H4th, so that is the unseen driver
for much of the second disc on this release. Other tools used include
basically everything mentioned for On Time above, plus a cameo
by the Korg Trinity keyboard/synth on one or two tracks on disc two.
Over the years, with many moves, and the endless evolution of technology,
I have sold off, sometimes regrettably, most of the gear described
above. I would love to have every piece of gear and every instrument
I have ever touched with me, but they are like many people I have
known - here in my life for a while, then off into the past, following
another path.
Gradually, since about 1998, as I moved more into performance I have
felt the need to minimize the gear footprint of what I require to
express myself, whether on stage or in my studio at home.
My current studio and performance setup is basically the same and
consists of:
Guitars
- Godin Grand Concert SA, Godin Nylon SA, Godin LGXT.
Sitars - Custom made professional, made in Varanasi, India by Tarack
Babu; Hiren Roy Professional made in Kolkata, India. I have been using
K&K Sound Twin Spot transducers, but have recently begun using
a McIntyre ST-08 transducer.
Computer - Apple MacBook Pro (2008)
Peripherals - 8TB Firewire Drives, Roland GI-20 MIDI interface, MOTU
UltraLite audio interface, Marantz PMD660 recorder.
Speakers - FBT- two MAXX4a (12"), two Jolly 8ra (8")
Software & Programming Languages - Apple Logic Pro, MaxMSP-v5,
Sibelius, JMSL, SuperCollider v3.
Other instruments not used often: 5-string banjo, tinwhistles, Rikhi
Ram tamboura, Matsuoka acoustic classical guitar, Acoustic Image Coda
R- Series II amplifier.
MWE3: Can you tell us about upcoming plans for this year and beyond?
RSN: I have an all sitar CD release already in the works, and hope
to have that completed over the summer. These are compositions that
by all means draw from Indian Classical Music, specifically Hindustani
traditions, but are meant to be original works. With an instrument
as ethnically bound to a specific culture as the sitar is to India,
there is a tendency to be territorial about what is appropriate to
use it for. In everything I do, I work on extending familiar forms
and techniques beyond any boundaries that may exist.
I have not written notated music for other instrumentalists and vocalists
for about 30 years, and much of what I wrote then was never performed
and led me directly into working with computers and synthesizers as
my performance ensemble of choice. I now have several performers interested
in having me write ensemble and solo compositions for them. The settings
I have underway are cello quartet, solo percussion with Max software,
and saxophone quartet.
I
am also adapting all of the live performance repertoire I have created
over the past decade, about 70 compositions, into a software based
format, using Logic, MaxMSP and SuperCollider for all functions previously
carried out by the many hardware/software configurations I have worked
in. This should allow me to travel and perform more as the performance
material becomes consolidated, more convenient and portable for use
in building new concert venue relationships.
Perhaps the most ambitious project I have in sight is to rewrite my
HMSL/H4th software in Java using MaxMSP
and JMSL,
for offline composition and real time performance. The previous version,
written for Motorola 68000 machines, will not run on today's Apple
(Intel) hardware and OSX, as it was necessary for me write a hardware
specific custom memory management module for handling the vast number
crunching needed for the analysis and composition functionality. Much
of the design and data structures are able to be migrated from Forth
to Java. Since JMSL inherited much of the language structure of HMSL,
it is doable. The published article, describing the 'Music In The
Air' software project, can be downloaded from the 'Downloads/Theory'
section of my web site.
This is a huge project, covering 20,000 lines of code, and I have
made 2-3 attempts at doing it over the past 10 years, but never had
the right tools, and a clear vision as to how to efficiently develop
and then integrate it into my main body of compositional and performance
work.
At this point, I am able to see how it is an integral step for my
musical and professional evolution, as it can accelerate production
of new original work, make my performance configuration and style
even more unique, and also provide me with a wealth of material for
pursuing more scholarly publication. I am working on an article that
traces my improvisational techniques and theories, and would like
to find a good outlet for that type of discussion, in combination
with how I have interleaved software development for analysis of improvisations,
subsequent composition, and as I move my HMSL-to-Java rewrite forward,
live interactive performance.
Thanks to Robert Spalding Newcomb @ www.partialmusic.com