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Exploring music as an artistic medium with thoughts from creative Meow Wolf minds on how to get started.
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Illustration by Alec Pedraza
Contributing authors: Les Stuck, Crystal Cortez
Hello again friends, it is time for another dive into the series of Approachable Art. With the help of some incredibly talented Meow Wolf-ers, we’ve looked into getting started with different artistic mediums such as installation art, painting, and writing, but now we venture towards the ear-tingling land of music.
Music has always been around us as humans, from communicating stories and empowering rituals, to livening up entertainment for communities. Music developed as we as a society did, with various people creating different sounds and instruments from what was around them, then creating a multitude of rhythms that developed the musical genres.
While the construction of music is an art in and of itself, the message behind the music has always had an equal artistic importance. The songs, sounds, and stories that have been shared over generations have carried such weight in the words and musical emotion. Music has impacted the world and has been critical to our key cultural moments.
As we look towards modern musical development and technology, that changed how we create music and adapt the sounds that we have used before for different artistic endeavors. Technological advances have also given us a radical expansion into individual music discovery and sharing, allowing people to use new sounds and create further.
Let us now tune into our Meow Wolf artists and hear their experiences and advice on music creation and see what magic you can glean from their musical adventures:
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I make electronic music and design interactive sound experiences. That involves planning acoustics, locating speakers in a room, working on mood boards with the other artists, composing in Ableton Live, building generative music software environments in MaxMSP, connecting everything together, testing, mixing, and documenting. I also work to help the company grow and explore new technologies and methods.
I started playing Blues harmonica in high school and college, learning about the Blues by listening, being a radio DJ, and playing in bands. Being able to improvise a solo came from just copying artists I admired. If your tastes are eclectic (from Sonny Terry to Charlie Musselwhite) you will copy what resonates, and in the process find your personal style.
Then I wanted to expand, and I became enchanted with classical violin and electric bass. Trying to decide between the two, I realized that I had to force myself to practice violin, but I would just pick up bass randomly and start playing. So I decided to get serious with bass, and learned really fast. So choosing what happens naturally instead of doing what I thought I should do was an important decision.
In college I randomly took a course in radio production and realized I really enjoyed working with microphones and editing sound. I got pretty good, but soon realized that I needed to move to a big city to surround myself with people who were much more talented than me. That was an important step. You can try to push yourself to learn, but it’s better to just dive in the deep end of the pool and become the least knowledgeable person in the room.
I took on a job as an intern at Hyde Street studios, cleaning bathrooms and reading equipment manuals. I worked my way up to staff engineer and recorded a lot of punk bands, like the Dead Kennedys and Flipper. I was always looking for unusual projects. One of them was working with William Forsythe and the San Francisco Ballet, for a composer who wanted to make a piece with samplers and drum machines, but didn’t know how. So I had to learn those instruments. That’s when I realized that a recording studio is a musical instrument.
The ballet project went so well that they invited me to work on a project in Paris, and I moved to Germany to work with them full-time. I had been studying ballet and Afro-Haitian dance in San Francisco, so I understood how music and movement work together. It was such a natural fit that I began coming up with ideas and making little sections of music, which led to a choreographer asking me to make some music for them.
Over time, I got some amazing gigs composing music for dance (New York City Ballet, Paris Opera Ballet, Tokyo Ballet), but even generous commissions are not enough to pay the rent, so I continued to work as a sound engineer. That’s another important lesson. It’s almost impossible to make a living as an artist. Either you make boring commercial art, or you take on a “day job”. If you take a day job, I think it’s best to try to find work in the same field. If you're a painter, work in an art store, gallery, or as an artist’s assistant so that–while you’re paying the bills–you’re also learning and networking. One of my day jobs was doing live sound for the Ensemble Modern, and we toured all over Europe, culminating in Frank Zappa's Yellow Shark tour.
Gradually I learned how to make music with computers, and since I was always looking for unusual ways to make music, I explored programming music with Max. At the time that was quite unusual, especially for someone who could work with classical instruments, so that led to a job at IRCAM, a computer music research institute in Paris, where I was Musical Assistant for Pierre Boulez and learned how to use Max in live performance.
Then I became a father and got laid off from my job, I had no way to support my partner and my 2-year old child. Time again to fall back on my technical skills to support my art habit. I became Technical Director for the music department of Mills College in Oakland, where I worked for a long time. I learned all about American experimental music, continued building interactive and generative Max projects for music and video art.
During a fun vacation in Santa Fe, I visited Meow Wolf and reconnected with a former Mills student, Matt Hettich, who led the Sound team. When a job opened up, my diverse experience was a perfect fit. I’ve been here for six years.
Listen. Listen to music you like and try to understand music you don’t like. Listen to a song several times and each time focus on a different instrument. Sing. Dance. Try to copy music you admire. Try making musical noises with random instruments. Why is some music interesting and other music boring? What music do you hate? Why? Try to find value in it. What music do you love? Why? Try to find something you don’t like about it.
Forget about fame. Forget about money. Don’t fetishize cool hardware. Don’t be afraid to ask stupid questions. If you do find a way to make music, give it your love. Find a way to please/inspire another musician/artist. Collaboration is a great teacher.
If you encounter a musical interactive at Meow Wolf, play with it until you discover something that’s not immediately obvious.
I was once recording a rock band on an analog multitrack tape recorder, and I messed up the sync on a rhythm guitar overdub, adding an eighth-note delay, making the part change from down beats to upbeats. So much fun!
J.S. Bach Chaconne, Aphex Twin Syro, Webern Bagatelles, Gamelan, Gagaku, Fela Kúti, Morton Feldman Piano and String Quartet, Charlie Mingus Goodbye Pork Pie Hat, Laurie Anderson Walk the Dog, Morton Subotnick Silver Apples of the Moon, Beach Boys God Only Knows, Ice Nine KIlls A Work of Art, Beyoncé Cuff It, Sophie Ponyboy, Stravinsky The Rite of Spring, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee Trouble in Mind
Sounds of suffering.
I’m a Show Audio Designer. I flesh out the audio dimension of our exhibits to complete the visual and story worlds.
I was raised in a very musical family: Dad was in a Puerto Rican rock band from the Bronx, and Mom was a midwestern concert flutist. They formed, and are still in, a band together, so making music was always a natural part of life in our house. As a kid I sang in choirs, and studied flute and piano in school. It wasn't until my early 20s, when I became interested in electronic music, that I started writing my own pieces. This led to me playing synths in a touring band for around 5 years. My band came up in a vibrant DIY scene in Portland, Oregon where failure was fully supported as long as you were authentically trying something. That freedom allowed me to experiment with performance art, stage props, and audience participation in my sets. This ranged from making hundreds of creature masks for the audience, to parading people around the city during intermissions. Looking back, this was a clear precursor to the interactive installation work that would come later. I always wanted to get everyone in the room involved in the music.
For a long time, my music life existed on the side of arts non-profit work until I decided to go back to school and study music production and creative coding. This opened up a huge new world for me. The agency I discovered in being able to handle all parts of the sound process—from writing, recording, mixing, to ultimately designing and coding my own software and hardware instruments—was liberating.
I became really interested in the body’s relationship with technology and started to build strange musical interfaces, like an elemental altar with flame sensors, a headband that moved light and sound in the direction you looked, boxing gloves that triggered sound with each impact and other fun things. I also created sensor performance pieces; for example: An ultrasonic sensor instrument for four performers and mirrors. This all led to me working for some years with a studio for artists with cognitive and developmental disabilities. We jammed together and, based on their feedback, designed instruments adapted to their specific needs. This work was picked up by the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression in London.
Around this time I got into immersive spatial audio and the dean of my program asked if I’d be interested in learning and developing a curriculum for a 32 speaker array they had sitting around in a closet. Nobody knew how to use it, so I taught myself spatial audio programming in MaxMSP in a couple of months. I used that knowledge to lead an annual student residency in composition for multichannel installation. This landed me a teaching position in the Sonic Arts & Creative Coding departments where I taught and developed curriculum for around 5 years.
On the side of all this I became obsessed with sounds of the more than human world and leaned into my field recording practice. Listening to the natural world through my ears got me interested in more direct ways of translating the world which led me to bioacoustics. I partnered with Portland Parks and Recreation to complete multiple bioacoustics-focused projects, including: A plant electricity sound walk at the Portland Rose Test Garden, sonifying roses in their blooming stage, and a site-specific installation reading dormant plants at Mt. Tabor eruption site. Since then, I’ve had the opportunity to work with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association for the past two years. I’ve been interviewing and attending lab sessions with Marine Acousticians to study sonic tools for marine life preservation and anthropogenic noise monitoring. This collaboration with scientists led to two immersive sound installations: one in Corvallis, Oregon and one in San Francisco, California.
Aside from my sound art practice, I create music for theater productions, films, and am still producing albums and performing often. Last year, I self-released my first album on vinyl (bucket list!) called Erospace. Over time, I've followed wherever sound leads me and I'm grateful I’ve crossed so many mediums and collaborated with amazing people through it.
Tell everyone what you’re interested in doing, this is how you’ll find your people. Maybe someone has an instrument they aren’t using, wants to jam, or knows where you can book shows. Then book a show before you have a band or any songs, at least that’s how I got started lol.
Wow, so much of my best work is the result of mistakes. If I'm not actively making mistakes all the time, I don’t think I'm doing it right.
Right now...Miss Columbia by Lido Pimienta, anything Jlin touches, the new Juana Molina album, Transcendence by Alice Coltrane.
I’m really mad at ship and oil sonar sound for how it damages marine life.
From anywhere you start, there’s a way to adventure into the world of music and sound. Try something different and don’t be afraid to be uncomfortable. Embrace the discomfort and explore with others that can help you grow. Listen, explore, and always ask questions to see where those conversations take you. That could be the link that leads you further down your musical journey (and we’re excited to see where that leads you)!
If you would like some musical inspiration, sit inside a space in your closest Meow Wolf and just listen. Hear the sounds and then listen again, you’ll find new elements you didn’t notice before and garner a new appreciation for each piece. You could also sample a new genre at a Meow Wolf concert near you too.
Want to listen to Les and Crystal’s song recs? Take a look at the playlist below and happy discovering:
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