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Interview with Colin-Patrick Charles (alias saintpokie) - 11/14/2004

Rick: How and when did you get started making music? Are you self-taught or did you study with someone?

saintpokie: My parents started me on violin at 4 years old, and I studied with different teachers up until I was 18, plus viola later on. I got a lot of training individually and in quite a few ensembles, orchestras, and bands during this period, but for me it's uninteresting territory. Right before I quit, the month before I went to college, I was practicing at least eight hours a day. Violin was all I knew, but I wasn't passionate about it, so quitting seemed to be the best way to respect my desire to find out what I really was passionate about. Which turned out to be electronic music.

How does one practice eight hours a day and *not* be passionate? Sounds like prison ...

I knew I loved music. High school was brutal to me socially. I hated it. In retrospect I might have clung a bit too hard to my violin instead of finding a life, but I was pretty stupid then. Didn't really start thinking till after college. But who knows what they really want to do in high school? Certainly not me. I didn't even know who I was in high school. Starting to catch on now.

I dropped out of college after sophomore year, got a credit card and bought a Mac, Cubase, and a Roland synth. I've got a very solid feel for music, plus good training and discipline, so making the transition between mediums has been simple. Since I started writing music on the computer six years ago, any additional training has been through the cds and records I buy. (I ended up graduating college, by the way, two years ago - B.A. in philosophy.)

Have you had any composition teachers? Is the idea of studying with someone appealing to you?

I took a composition class in high school, a class that first introduced me to the world of computer music. The teacher had one workstation, a Mac, and a Kurzweil. That was the shit. I couldn't have even conceived of something like that before then. MIDI blew me away. All I'd known before then was sheet music and practice. Grew up in a musical bubble.

Learning about composition was inevitable with all the practicing I did. Violin teachers taught me what I needed to know about composition by high school.

The idea of training in or formally studying music at this point seems too slow. There's only so much theory one needs under one's belt to create art. Too much theory makes one think that more theory is the way to go. I was a philosopher for four years. That's long enough. If I knew exactly what I wanted to do with music professionally, I would know what sort of schooling to look for. But I don't, so at this point I'd rather just continue writing music.

Collaborations, when they actually happen, are great ways to learn - someone telling you why an idea does or doesn't work, responding to an instance of music with another instance of music. Finding collaborators is difficult, though, extremely difficult. Most of the people I've tried to collaborate with had ideas of what sounded good and when they didn't hear it after five minutes or work they'd lose interest. Or else the collaboration would take the form of a one time exchange of files - no real dialog. I'm working with a guy now whose got clear ideas, and is more than happy to give me his opinion on what sounds good and what doesn't. It's nice. I'd imagine your work with F'loom is similarly didactic, no?

Didactic? Not sure I follow you ... please explain.

A rich learning experience in which you and your bandmates learn from each other. Like when a collaborator says "that synth line is muddying up the mix" and I say "but the song needs that type of texture right there" which prompts a discussion on the aims of the particular piece. Whereas in school one might concede to the better judgment of the teacher because it's the only way to get an A, trying to rectify the intentions and motivations of a collaborator with one's own intentions and motivations isn't so cut and dry. There's a healthy amount of dissatisfaction that should occur in the process of making one's ideas align with another's, but invariably, for me at least, the satisfaction to be had from a song conceived through a dynamic dialog is far greater than the pleasure of hearing one's singular vision. A humbling empowering collaborations are, to be cliché.

Aha! Now I understand ... And yes, you're right, F'loom is very much a rich learning experience. It usually works like this: I bring in sketches of a piece; we try things out; I get suggestions and comments from Robert and Bess; I go home, draft version 2; we try it out; I get suggestions and comments; and so on, until the piece is "finished." A wonderful way to work, but you have to have both the solidity and *fluidity* of ego to take that much criticism.

How does your interest in philosophy inform your music?

I'm sure the many years I studied philosophy are largely responsible for my patience in listening to and analyzing tricky music.

I don't follow philosophy anymore, or read the books anymore, or much of anything these days aside from news. My brain works differently when I get absorbed in books - it definitely becomes musically unfriendly. One of the better feelings I get as a musician is a sort of wordless, spatial architecture of thought wherein music makes sense. Books throw this off, and philosophy positively murders it. Without question, I'm thankful for the time I spent thinking about thought - nowadays I'm more than happy to act on what I've learned, rather than staying swept up in the unending complexity of it all.

Nicely said. I also feel that "knowing" too much thwarts the deeper creativity. I like to proceed from unknowing, mystery ... which is one of the reasons (the main other being laziness) that I haven't bothered to learn some of the more esoteric Reaktor programming techniques.

What kind of music do you make?

It definitely has its roots in funk and dance. Beat-driven anything. If I'm not writing music with drums or rhythm, I'm writing music that implies them, or is taking a short break from them. I like melody, and get intricate once in a while, but for the most part, especially since I've been learning Reaktor, melody has taken a back seat to rhythm. Time signature, speed, I can be all over the place. My sound is getting close - I'm almost at a point I like. But it still flits about too much based on what I'm listening to at the moment, still not mature.

Perhaps you need a break in which you step back, stop listening to other music, and take a step forward in your own music? Listening can be a hindrance at times, I think.

It's funny you say that. For the past few days I haven't listened to anything (on a whim) and the juices are flowing harder and faster. I definitely need to strike a balance between listening and not-listening. Music's just so much fun to listen to though.

Talk about your relationship with beat a bit more. Are you a 4/4 guy? Syncopation? Groove? Jazz feel? Autechre-ish?

My own experience working with Cubase and a synth was rigid, as far as rhythm goes. I'm sure that, in the right hands, these could be used to explore rhythm much more than I did. But everything I'd end up writing with that program was based solely on arrangements, and not on real-time improvisation. And so much, so very much cutting and pasting. I was very concerned with creating rhythms that would vary throughout a song, but all such variations would be written into MIDI clips or cutting and pasting samples differently, all very calculated. There was no spontaneous engagement with the music.

I bought Reaktor because it was mentioned quite a bit in interviews by artists I like, and because I had a credit card. (I'm still paying off the first batch of equipment I bought six years ago - now I'm paying off that plus Reaktor and a new laptop, ha!). At first I used it like I used my Roland, and most of the music I was writing was structured like my old music. Then I began messing around with the sequencers, and since then, the old way of doing things has gone out the window. Suddenly it was possible to set a rhythm in motion and push it this way and that way and backwards while it unfolds, creating music in real time.

Now that I know I can mess with tempo and meter in real-time, my interest in rhythm has superceded all other compositional concerns. I like a good groove, and would have to say that a danceable beat is my favorite, but knowing that I have the ability to take a song on a rhythmic tangent opens up more possibilities than a traditional drum fill does, can make a song tense in unexpected way, making the flow back into a groove more rewarding for a listener. But that's another thing I'm working on, nothing for the Reaktions site yet. Nothing I like.

What instruments (software, hardware) do you use?

The same as I said before plus Reaktor.

Do you miss using a physical body (violin) that generates sound?

I don't miss playing an instrument - it's a bitch to stay good and I don't regret the time I've spent on a computer instead. I can feel the cavity where acoustic instruments should be in my music. But every time I decide to give an instrument a try, I'll do dozens of takes and come away with nothing usable. I do try, though, once in a while. Inevitably, an hour later I put the instrument away and do it with a synth in a minute.

I plunk around on my guitar or violin for fun, but identify solely with electronic music and composition.

Who are your main musical influences, "heroes," etc.?

Music from Tigerbeat6, Scape, Irrational, Kompakt, Planet-Mu, Sonig. Listening to a lot of Twerk and Sutekh these days. And edit on Planet-Mu. I used to listen to the Orb enough to call them my hero. Don't have a hero at the moment. Maybe J Lesser, for gearhound. That's main - secondary would be jam bands, Soundtribe, Grateful Dead, Disco Bisquits, Medeski Martin and Wood. I could spin this list for ever - so much music I listen to. It wasn't fair for me to say before that I flit about - friends and collaborators say I have my own style - I just wish I could hear it!

Why don't you think you can hear your own musical voice like others do?

Cause my music is always a response to something. Like, for instance, when I talk to the high school kids I work with I talk differently than I would to my boss or my parents. That sort of mutability is the only thing I notice in my music, the way I respond to this or that idea I've heard or thought of. My friends, on the other hand, notice the consistency. Or so their responses imply.

What are some of the trademarks of this consistency (according to your friends)?

The music of mine that my friends have heard is consistently "wicked" or "dope" (unless they think it sucks), and I'm pretty sure they're not just humoring me when they say good things (though once in a while ...). Most of the people who've heard my stuff aren't musicians, but friends who like music, so the feedback isn't phrased in terms I could apply to the process of writing, rather to my enthusiasm.

Do you truly *enjoy* listening to other people's music? From beginning to end, open-eared, with the innocence of a child? Or do you listen professionally, critically, to get a sense of what bandX is doing, what you can glean from it?

How about all of the above? I can put on a track cause I'm trying to figure out something for a track and end up forgetting why I put the music on in the first place. And there've been plenty of times I've put on a track cause I wanted some funk and ended up figuring out something I'd been working at before. Goes both ways. I'm glad I can't decide these things - it's way more fun that music is still unpredictable in how it affects me.

How do you feel about the current state of popular/downtown (as opposed to academic/uptown) electronic music? Does it excite you?

What do you mean by this one? What's an example of popular electronic? Remember that I live in Chicago, not Europe.

Popular electronic is pretty much everything you mentioned above. By academic/uptown I mean the stuff that the colleges/universities and grand (well-funded) institutions like IRCAM and European radio stations produce: Boulez, Stockhausen, Chowning, Machover, Subotnick, Risset, Dodge, Mumma, Neuhaus, etc. EMF is a good place to find out about these cats: www.emf.com.

If that's the case, I like the pop music. I've listened to some of those academic musicians. I can get into them, but at times it can be like reading a book. I'm up for a challenge, especially with regard to music, but my heart rarely follows my head in this regard, and usually gets me to turn on something with a heart and an ass after not too long.

Heart and ass ... ? Please elaborate. Why doesn't "academic" music have them?

Careful. I don't want to make a blanket statement about a field in which I'm not well-versed. By heart and booty I mean music that evokes emotion and is rhythmically engaging, which I don't mind if you read as rhythmically conventional. I've always been compelled to listen to things that didn't make immediate sense to me, and sometimes to listen repeatedly to things I don't understand or can't get into. But music for me is first and foremost a tool for happiness, not contemplation. The academic music I've heard mostly just evokes the latter from me. That's my ears, though, which have their own history and prejudices. Academic music is what it is, like pop music. I don't hear much heart in academic music, but that doesn't mean it ain't there. Just means I know what I like.

You can find saintpokie's pieces and email address on his Reaktions.com home page.