and welcome to the show.
Good to have you guys.
Thank you.
Yeah, cool to be back.
Yeah, it's really cool.
guess that means you're enjoying coming on the show.
This is your third time here.
And you don't come alone, though.
No, I brought someone today that I talked briefly about last time because we had just started working together.
Yeah, was, so that was about five years ago.
And yeah, it was just beginning to be discussed working with a tap dancer.
And I really had no idea how that was going to work.
And now I've gotten to hear some of the music and it's really cool.
It's very percussive and textural and a lot of fun stuff.
I'm really interested to hear how you guys work that in.
So it's nice to have you both here.
Yeah, awesome.
Nice to be here, yeah.
So the album is out or would it be an EP technically or the yeah.
Okay.
Yeah.
Cause it's, see five tracks, but they're long tracks, you know, and I have some listens to it and really enjoyed it.
It's, it's, it's kind of transportive, you know, kind of like an ambient type of thing, but
A little more action-packed than a lot of the ambient music that I've listened to in the past.
Kinda just skirting on that line.
So congratulations to you both on it.
Nice, thank you, thank you.
I'd love to hear about how this came together and how you guys create these sounds we're hearing.
Where should we start?
Yeah, where should we start?
Well, first of all, we improvise.
So everything we do is made up on the spot.
I choose what kind of steps I want to make and what kind of rhythms and sort of textures that I want to contribute with.
And then Kristoffer...
does live programming, which I don't understand so much about.
But what I hear is that my sound changes and his sound changes.
then sometimes I can't even tell what's what anymore.
But we keep on improvising with the total of what's happening.
There's a lot of
talk about the approach to the music, but maybe we should explain the technical stuff right away.
I brought my little mics.
I don't know if you can see.
I have no, these are just very small mics, a little bit like those you would have in a musical.
a headset type of thing.
face.
But they're a bit more sturdy, wrapped in some kind of rubber.
And I put them...
Sorry, under my shoe right here.
Okay, so you're pointing at the spot between the heel and the toe.
So I guess you're not stomping on the microphone when you're tapping.
want to crush the mic, but this is a good spot for the sound to catch the sound of the toe tap and the heel tap and the flat foot and whatever sound I'm making with the shoe.
And I have a transmitter that sends my sound out so you can hear what I'm actually doing.
Yeah, the acoustic sound.
The acoustic
Even though the real acoustic sound is much better than the sound that comes from my transmitter mics, but it's better than nothing because it helps me.
We can make sure that the tap still comes out, doesn't drown in the music that Christopher is making that's coming out of his system.
If we want that, sometimes it's supposed to drown.
but it makes it possible to hear the actual taps.
And then I have a contact mic on my...
I usually have a little piece of floor with me, but it can also be put straight on the floor if it's a wooden stage, for example.
And this contact mic takes my sound and brings it into Kristoffer's setup.
And then he can use it.
and you can tell the rest.
Yeah, I think it's very one thing that's very interesting with this project is this like two angles to the same thing, kind of.
That's also why I wanted to bring on and do it together because it's like it's very interesting to look at the situation from two sides.
But like on a technical level, the signal is coming in.
And then it's a big Max patch that I made and also some loose Max for Live stuff that kind of routes this signal to all kinds of different places.
I have on my controller, I have many banks of parameters I can control and all of these parameters I can tell an envelope follower to also control.
So I can just grab any parameter that I'm controlling and then say, let's put Janne to control this now.
And then it jumps up the amount that I select.
So that's like one technique.
And then there are many more as well.
It's like processing just the raw sound from the contact mic.
And it's like sampling that and then using...
like a step sequencer, but instead of the step sequencer just clocking along, it's almost like, you know, on modular and so on, you plug in a clock to the sequencer.
And instead of having a clock, it's a tap dancer plugged into the sequencer.
So whenever she taps, yeah, exactly.
That's the real step sequencer.
With the tap tempo now.
And too many puns.
in here.
We got to get them out.
That's cool though.
But then everything kind of follows Janne's dynamic and timing.
And then as she said a little bit, like what she's controlling and how it's affecting my system, that's being changed on the spot as I'm playing.
Okay, so that's really cool.
So you've got the sound from the taps on its own that can be used for percussion and rhythms.
But then you've also got the actual audio it's creating and those waveforms can be used to change other parameters and effects and I guess really anything you want within the music.
So there's a lot of dimensions to what you're actually doing when you're tapping.
Yeah, it's like again a good parallel like Eurorec has been on a boom for a few years now.
So people are really used to talking about CV signals and it's almost turning this audio signal into a control signal.
So it's kind of the same thing.
Hmm.
Wow, that's very cool.
And I got to listen again now because
We also record everything we do.
There's so much to talk about.
I almost don't know where to start.
we record our sessions and also the live performances and the album that's out now that's called Live is from concerts, from those recordings.
And when we listen back to the recordings,
I don't know, I guess it can be the same for Kristoffer too, but I sometimes really can't know anymore what I did because it's so, there's so many layers to it.
Of course, when we have improvised for like 40 minutes, you've been on some kind of journey and it's very in the moment and sort of intense and sometimes...
after you just don't know what really happened because it's such an experience.
But also just listening back.
Sometimes I hear the taps and I can't, I don't know anymore how I, how it happened, how I did it physically.
And I, I personally really enjoy how abstract my own dancing becomes, how far away like it becomes a new
a new thing.
Sort of, it's me but it's also not me, of course, because there's so many layers.
yeah, and then if sometimes we also film, I mean, we film all our concerts, but sometimes we also film a rehearsal and then, and then that watching that and listening to it is
again a very, very different sort of total package or
informs you very differently.
now you've listened a little bit to our album, but we also have videos of all of those concerts.
And I would be curious to hear how you experience the music or slash the video.
When, if you would see it, if it would change how you would feel about the music or if it would be distracting or if it would be sort of amplifying or
Because it's such a different expression in a way.
Yeah, I have to imagine there's a lot of discovery happening for you as you're performing, as you're tapping to start to realize, I'm noticing I'm affecting this parameter because
if Christopher's moving things around and changing what's affecting what, I have to guess once in a while, cool, I'm making the music kind of move in this way and change in that
way.
Yeah, that's a real big deal for me, this experience.
it keeps like this project, band, where it feels like a never ending research journey or something.
And I just never get to a conclusion like, this is how I should do that.
Now I do it well and now it's over.
It just keeps on
challenging me and us, I guess, but I feel challenged all the time.
I feel, mean, I'm sort of discovering a lot, but just like in the actual moment of stepping onto the board or making a sound and then hearing if I have any sort of effect on
anything, we never
He never tells me what's coming.
Maybe he doesn't know himself yet.
Maybe I'm dancing for a little while before anything happens.
in that time, I'm only dealing with my own sound.
I can't sort of expect anything.
But then to deal with whatever's coming instantly asks for a lot of...
trust and sort of you have to just accept and move on immediately all the time.
And that's very challenging and very fun.
And then there's all the different things.
This is maybe a bit hard to imagine.
I don't know, but when I tap dance on different types of floors or different with the
different types of shoes.
I have different, I hear my sound changing, the acoustic sound.
And then I love this floor or I hate these shoes or like there's nuances that I am really appreciating that I know that nobody else cares about.
If I'm on stage, it can mean a lot to me and then it can mean nothing to the audience because they just, I'm just really nerdy about my sound, right?
So.
then I suddenly get like a whole universe of other sounds from Kristoffer and it changes how I feel about my body and how I feel about movement.
I can feel so light suddenly and I can feel like my feet can move faster than I thought I could.
And I will actually move faster, not just an illusion, but it'll sort of free me up or something.
And then other sounds just are so like if I have a little bit of latency sort of, I'm probably not using the right words for the technical aspects, but sometimes I trigger
something, but it's a little bit behind me in timing wise.
And then it can be
so heavy for me to keep going.
And I feel like my tap dancing technique is suddenly gone.
It's not as accessible to me as with those other sounds.
There's so many things that change in my body according to the sound.
And it's really interesting and exciting to...
play with and then to see what my legs are doing, what my feet are doing because it'll just sort of roll and then if I look down and I'm like what am I doing exactly right now
and I'm I can kick myself out of the thing I'm doing.
And sometimes I can see, okay, it's like a heel and a toe and this and that.
And then I'll be in like, I don't know, a seven, eight, or a really weird five, or some off, some uneven measure.
And I can hold on to it and keep doing it while being conscious about it.
But many things I have to just let happen.
because it's too new for me to get a grip on it, if you understand what I mean.
So, yeah.
So you're making me think of this psychological experiment that they do on people.
I think it's test like empathy or something along those lines where they put a fake hand on a table and then you have your hand underneath it and they're touching both of the
hands in the same way, right?
And what they found is if then they suddenly hit the fake hand with a hammer, people go, ow.
Mm-hmm.
they feel that so changes there.
Now if you're getting these different sensations does it almost do this sort of thing where the ground feels different than it really is?
Yeah, I definitely feel like this.
And I mean, it's not painful.
I'm not being hit.
yeah.
Yeah, absolutely.
Absolutely.
It really changes sort of my perception of my own kinesthetics, my own feeling of what my muscles can do.
what my physical body can do.
it can be really frustrating if it's like a sound that's sort of too heavy or too challenging and I sort of have to fight for it and I can work myself into a cramp or
something.
It can be tough, but it can also be the opposite.
It can be very liberating.
And it was also liberating just to understand that this is happening.
That it's not me that one day I can tap dance and the next day I cannot tap dance.
That it's not my skills, but it's really the...
It's external factor.
The feeling that I'm dealing with at the moment.
And in many ways I feel like this applies to life and...
other types of interactions as well, any kind of dialogue and how a certain voice impacts you and etc.
mean, it's much broader topic in a way, but in this case, cool experience and experiment.
I think more tap dancers should feel it.
should experience it because it's enriching in a way.
Yeah, it really says a lot about the way our brain is reacting to the sensory input that it's receiving.
And when your hearing is telling you something so different than what's actually happening, we go along with it.
I felt something like that sometimes if I have like a synth guitar.
where you kind of expect, or sometimes even certain pedals, where the guitar, you pluck the string, the sound happens, it's a loud transient, and then it fades down.
That's the normal thing.
But sometimes with different effects, you pluck it, it might swell.
And it almost makes you feel like your strings are loose or rubbery or something like that.
But it's not.
And like you said too, there have been times where I can play something until I look at it.
And then...
No, the strings are not reacting differently.
It's just the way I'm hearing it and it's hard to think when you're doing that.
Yeah, it's almost like...
It's the same thing as when people are...
If people are using VR and they get nauseous, it's because their senses are not matching up.
So the brain thinks that you're probably poisoned.
So that's why I want to...
Some people need to puke after they've been doing VR.
Because it's like your sight and sound is telling you one thing and then they're like...
I don't know, their movement and so on, their physical touch and so on is telling them something else and gravity, the sense of gravity.
And then if it's just like the frame rate is just a little bit choppy, then it's like the brain is like, no, I don't believe this.
But when it's enough, then it's like, I believe it.
I believe it.
Yeah, well, that's, mean, that's just fascinating that it, it takes the whole art of tap dancing and dance is usually, and music is kind of a one way street, right?
You dance to the music and now your dance is changing the music.
And there's this back and forth now that you wouldn't normally have.
mean, it's the tap dancers have been working with these types of things before.
But it's all very individual, of course.
And I mean, I come with a certain set of skills or background and every tap dancer is different, I would say.
But the biggest difference is that Kristoffer is so
so good.
So it just has a big sort of capacity for the technical part of it, but then also the musical part of it.
And of course, now we've spent five years and we keep sort of digging in this direction.
And that's a really big luxury to have.
I'm very glad that I bumped into Kristoffer in a project one day.
Because I could never, like if I would have started this kind of project on my own, I would have had to learn so much about the technical part of it before I even could like
play.
mean, play as in have fun and really get going.
And so...
So that's just really lucky, I would say.
Right.
You had to have somebody doing that stuff that you can interact with.
the surprise factor just seems really cool too, where you kind of like, yeah.
it's like I can set up something and then I can kind of guess a little bit what Janne is going to do with it.
But then she does something differently.
And then I have to make a decision like, do I now kind of just stay with this and then let Janne explore it and she will figure out the cool way to use it or
Do I adapt to what she is doing?
And this like back and forth conversation is happening all the time.
Do you need to have some kind of click track metronome that you follow or does she set that?
Yeah.
Right.
And then because you're using those sounds almost like you said, like CV, it must be a very fluid type of thing, right?
Yeah.
Everything is just very one-to-one in a way.
for example, in this project I need to have the buffer size on 64 to keep it snappy enough because the tap sound is so short.
So I had done some of these kind of techniques before with drummers.
But if it's like a snare drum, the sound is much longer.
So if there is a little bit more latency, the snare drum masks it because there is sound in the gap.
But with the tap sound, it stops so quickly that if there would be more latency, you really hear it.
So I need to have it on 64, need to keep it very snappy.
And then as Janne talked about, it's like...
very different how you experience the different sounds.
like the technical latency is stable, but the practical latency depends of course on the sound.
Like is there a of a round attack curve on it or is it a very defined attack point?
And how quickly does this happen?
And what frequency range is it in?
Is it kind of
continuation of the acoustic tap sound or is it a super different one so you really hear when it starts and all of this kind of stuff really affects the groove and how everything
feels and melts together and so on.
And then it's also very interesting for me because okay I have the kind of overhead to keep up with
all of these technical layers and like, okay, now I'm gonna sample here and then she's gonna trigger it like this and then I mix it like this.
And then the next one is like, okay, keep track of the harmonies and the tonalities.
But then it's like, then we are playing, I have no idea what time signature she is in now.
So then I only think about it as pulses.
So it's almost like putting the time signature in live to like one fourth.
So it's just the same over and over again.
But that's just sometimes.
Sometimes it's very clear, sometimes it's impossible.
that's really funny.
So you're not getting any kind of indication.
This is the beginning of the bar.
It's just kind of always at the beginning of the bar.
Yeah, and sometimes we are like, we have different, so it's like, I think the one is here and she thinks the one is here.
And then we just play and that actually creates a very cool groove.
then the patterns then like, overlap and they sync, but they go in different rounds kind of.
Well, that's a trick I like to do in my own just regular, you old fashioned music production is have like a three bar loop, a five bar loop and a four bar loop playing
together.
It works really nicely with percussive stuff because
there's not as much, I can keep my chord progressions maybe in like a common time, like four, four, but then all this other stuff is looping in these different kind of patterns.
It really extends the musical idea out a lot.
Yeah, it's fun.
Yeah.
And if it's like, it's quite common to like, if you have a sequencer and you can maybe set the length of the different rows.
So you have one that's like seven steps and one with eight step.
So it will take like eight steps or seven steps before they sync up again.
So they will create a longer, longer phrase.
But then you add the thing that maybe the timing goes like one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.
So then it's like, then it's not, or this, this synchronization points kind of move in a different flow as well.
It's a, it's really fun to play with.
I enjoyed a lot this sometimes these, yeah, polymetric feeling type of things that we do, but also this slowing down and speeding, speeding up and, and, or
being busy with texture and then suddenly letting some groove roll out of it and sort of plastic feeling.
And I often try to remind myself that it's also cool to have a steady groove sometimes and then just to like provide something that's as even as possible for a long time, either
without any feeling of a
of bars or with the proper time signature that's easy to understand or to feel.
my problem is that I will react so quickly on any impulse and any inspiration that it's hard to...
I have to sometimes remind myself of how real drummers work.
and how they can actually hold the groove for a really long time and keep it steady and keep it grooving.
not, and if they take a, a break and then come back to it, that they're just as steady as they like, of course that's an ambition for me to, to, I want to be able to do that.
It's just so much fun to jump from one to the other, like to, to, to play with stuff.
So it's tempting to.
Yeah, and many times I am doing something steady and I get an impulse and then I have this dilemma.
Can I now play and let my, can I let the groove go and play with this new thing I heard or does everything fall apart if I do that?
And that all depends.
And sometimes I don't know, we're in the middle of the music and I don't know how many layers are connected to my sound.
And so if I stop, maybe the whole thing stops.
Or not.
And so I have some strategies to figure things out in those situations to test, to double check what's actually attached to my feet right now and how can I keep it steady and then
make a more conscious choice.
If you understand what I mean.
Yeah.
just so many layers sometimes.
Yeah, you must sometimes wonder how much power I have right now.
Christopher, what am I controlling right now?
It'd be nice to almost have like a communication device.
Yeah, because it could be, feel like I could have like five instruments that I'm playing at the same time.
And then if I hear that the rhythms are really clearly all mine, then yeah, then I can assume that I am playing them.
But sometimes some of these sounds are uneven in how they sort of react to me or how I play them.
So it's harder for me to detect that this one bass sound that comes every
fourth hard stomp I'm doing is also something I am doing because it's in between all the other steps and sounds and rhythms that I'm making and it's only reacting when I hit the
heel just there with the mic.
like it's a...
Yeah, these are like interesting, almost like playing games with each other, you know?
So when I'm playing there and it's like, okay, I can, for example, say this bass.
is I have a sequencer and then I press in some notes and then every time she taps hard enough it plays the next note.
Then it's like very one-to-one.
It's like this will follow Janne's groove perfectly.
But I can also do something differently and like play the bass like manually and loop it.
But I close the filter almost all the way.
And then I like sidechain, use this envelope follower to Janne.
So every time she taps, actually the filter pops up.
So that's very different thing.
Like this bass actually has its own timing, but it also follows Janne's timing.
And these two can kind of push and pull together.
And then all of a sudden they're like, okay, now it perfectly locks.
And then maybe Janne thinks, yeah, it's more like one-to-one thing.
And then she like stops or do one of these tests or change it.
And then it's like, no, the bass is actually now just playing differently, but it's still playing.
And I tried to stop it.
So it's like all this back and forth.
It's a little bit of a game kind of.
Right, you're like kind of figuring out what's happening as you go There's a sensation of that sometimes if you're Playing I think especially like electronic music side sometimes
jam with other people using live say for instance Ableton live and There can be a point where you're wondering like am I making that sound or are you making that sound?
Like who's who's doing that and like you can then you realize always me
Because, but with this, when you have the different ways to send the information back and forth, and it's much more abstract, I suppose, right?
Like a tap doesn't usually mean a filter opens up in kind of the regular world or normally that we're used to.
Yeah, and then it can be like even the next level, can be also that both the sound, like the acoustic sound of Janne or the sound from the contact mic goes through some effects
that we cannot hear yet.
also this track and the bass track, they both go into a different kind of distortion bus.
And then it's like, yeah, if Janne taps now,
the raw sound will get through, but she will also open the filter of this bass, so we'll actually kind of squeeze out this raw sound.
And then after like three bars, actually, there is a little bit of a too low note in the bass, so then the raw sound comes through and it creates kind of a feedback.
it's like, so there are all these kind of interactions also interacting with each other, you know.
That's really cool.
And that's something that happens a lot of times with acoustic instruments.
Just even when you're within a room or recording on to say tape, there is some sort of interaction that happens a lot.
And I've found in my own productions, a lot of what I'm doing is trying to recreate some of that.
but now you've got it on a new level.
I love it.
What is your actual gear that you're using?
What pieces, how many things do you have to make all this magic transformation and communication happen?
We know we got the two mics, right?
So.
yeah.
So that's start.
And the contact mark on the floor then.
Okay, so it's like three inputs you're getting.
Actually, the acoustic sound doesn't go to me at all.
That just goes to the PA.
So it's just the contact mic that goes into my setup.
And then for the most part, I use a setup that actually people can go and have a look at in the previous episode of that I was on the music production podcast.
But a quick, yeah, second time.
But a quick recap is that I have two Mac Minis.
And the reason why it's two is because I've used the same setup for quite a while now and the earlier Mac Minis.
Like I could do a few tracks, but since I had to have this low buffer size, like when I wanted to expand it, I actually had to get the second computer.
So it's the two Mac Minis with sound cards.
And then for the controller part, it's a Linnstrument, the Linnstrument 128.
That's kind of my MIDI keyboard where I play notes and so on.
And then I have a split.
on the left side, I also have some of the pads.
I use this polyphonic expression, so I don't play notes.
I just control parameters with it.
Then I have...
little fader fox controller with 24 knobs and a couple of the monom grids.
But then this whole magic is that with this monom grids, they are controlling this max patch that I talked about.
And then all of this stuff get like a lot of banks.
So then I can like this, these 24 knobs, actually, it's like 200 knobs, or 256 knobs.
And then I have
about that last time and I avoid banks.
I want my knobs to always do the same thing and you're like, nope, not me.
the secret trick to make this work is my tiny little Arduino screen.
So it has just two lines of text, but it is right there in the setup.
So whenever I turn a knob or press a button, says on the screen what I just did.
So for example, if I go to bank one and I turn knob one, I go to bank two, and now the physical knob doesn't line up with the parameter on bank two.
As soon as I touch it, it says on the screen, like, okay, you are trying to control filter cutoff and the physical knob is here, but the parameter is here.
So you have to go here and get it.
So I don't have to like listen like, is it working now?
said, okay, now I think it's working, but I can actually see like, you have to go to value of 20, then I get it.
so it won't do anything until you pass through that value with the control.
Gotcha.
like the pickup mode in live, except I kind of recreated it in Max so I can see it on the screen what value I need to get to.
Yeah, nice.
That makes a lot of sense in that case.
So I usually use the, I forget what it's called right now, where it kind of, if my values say it's 64, but my knobs at 20, and I turn it lower, will move the, it's value scaling.
Yeah, it's a scaling, something like that, yeah.
Yeah, so that way at least it does something, you know, but you don't want that in that case.
How long did it take you to build that setup?
Was this something that you, I have to imagine?
I mean, unless you are kind of a wizard here.
So I would have to imagine there's a lot of figuring this out and adding things and going rather than I built it all and now we're ready to play.
Yeah, actually, I did it as part of my bachelor project when I was studying music technology.
And then I actually just wanted to make a system where I could control a lot of things in a small amount of space.
And I had tried a few different ways of doing it.
Like I the Ableton Push 1, et cetera.
And then like you can...
move around and all of this.
But the problem with that one is it's so locked in, like you have to use it exactly how Ableton wants you to use it.
While I like to set up all this custom stuff.
So it started with me thinking like, how can I do this?
And this was also like learning max kind of project.
And then it just started there.
And I was like, yeah, now I can control this.
this now I made this virtual banks.
And actually, the way I do it now, I am actually able to get the value somewhere else and just combine the two.
And then my my what's it called?
Valet, the counselor, guidance person, my teacher.
He said like, Yeah, it's very nice to things you're doing now.
But
If I were to say anything about the whole setup, it's quite like binary now.
It's like on and off and very like you have these knobs, but there is no like, no like human expression, weird input kind of things.
So then I implemented this, the polyphonic aftertouch things on the, on instrument.
So, so these pads control the same as the knobs, but I can do multiple fingers and like move up and down.
And I was like, yeah, and it would be maybe nice with LFOs.
So I made that.
And then also, yeah, envelope.
And I was like, yeah.
And we can also do maybe audio envelope.
And not too long after this, I was invited to join Janne for project.
And that's the first time we met.
And then I was like, yeah, tap dancer, Wonder what cool connections I can get from that.
Like you think about the whole world as the big modular system of plugging everything into everything, you know?
So that's where it started.
And then it's just slowly, slowly built over time.
like I added the second Mac Mini, which is like, it's controlled from the first one.
it's basically just like a little module kind of, you know, those old rack synths that they would just plug a MIDI cable into.
Kind of like that except it has the media and the audio.
Hmm.
Well, it's kind of comforting or reassuring to hear that it was this development.
Because I think, anyone like listening that wanted to try to figure out how to build some kind of setup like this, it seems overwhelming if you look at it where you are today.
Seeing that it started somewhere and built and it's even really cool that this was your learn max project so you had this mission and through that mission you're learning the
software which is ultimately taking you down new roads even still today to Change things if you want or interact differently
Yeah, and if people want to start trying out some of these things, now there are actually quite a lot of built-in tools into Live with some of these, like there are envelope
followers in Max for Live that you can route the stuff.
And I remember in the earlier projects, I also just used the sidechain input on the filter and on the gate and so on.
Just make sure like the attack and look ahead and all of these parameters are like on the lowest level.
snappiest and so on.
you can actually, that's, I also teach like yourself and one thing I very often tell my students is that if you start first by understanding what is happening like practically,
like musically, like if you can just describe the sound, you don't think about the technical stuff, but it's like what is happening here?
And then like you understand that, it's getting brighter, the more sound that comes in.
And then you can go to the next level.
It's like, okay, and how would we implement this in the most crude, easy, technical way?
And then you can like build and build and build on.
And if you think about it like this, then it's also much easier to get familiar with different gear and different software and all of this, because all of them are
building on the same concepts.
And then you can make your super fancy custom solution that makes you able to do the ultimate version of this and change the routings and so on super fast.
But you can actually start building some of these things and exploring it in your production and simple things like, okay, I have a synthesizer here and I put a gate on it
and I side-chain the gate to a drum kit, for example, inside Live.
Yeah, learning those small things.
That's a lot of what we do is these little building blocks.
It's very modular.
Like you said, like once you learn on a synthesizer, envelopes and filters and LFOs, suddenly you can do that on almost anything.
Any synthesizer, any sound really, you start thinking of things a little differently.
Yeah.
The envelope follows a cool one.
yeah, and then you've done it on a synth and it's like, yeah, and here's a sampler.
It's like, it's all the same.
We just changed the oscillator part to a sound file.
Yeah, that's how I explain it too.
It's normally we have sine waves, but now we have the sound of maybe in your case, tap.
Yeah
I could certainly see how it's challenging to try to recreate a performance in your case because there's so many variables and sometimes that even happens, I mean even just
playing my guitar sometimes I hear something I gotta figure out what I did and it can be complicated if there's some effects going on or some processing happening but in this
case, yeah.
Yeah, but it's also, yeah, that's true.
But it's also like, I feel with every music project, you kind of decide on what is the focus on the project and like, okay, now I'm going to go on stage and I'm going to do this
thing.
And that thing can be like, okay, I'm going to go on stage and I'm going to show.
Like we're to play the most technical rock music and I'm going to play the fastest on guitar and everyone's going to be really wowed and then they're going to be very energized
by all these rhythms.
Like that can be one thing or it's like, okay, I'm going to go out and I'm going to sing the most heartfelt and everyone is going to cry.
And with this project, I feel it's very much this like exploration aspect.
So like now we're going to go on stage.
And we're going to have this conversation where we are constantly exploring and talking to each other.
And then we're going to see what comes out of it.
And we kind of know some things because we use the same instruments over and over.
like maybe I start doing something and it's like, this sounds a little bit similar to one thing we did.
So maybe he's trying to go in that direction now.
So maybe I'm going do something towards that.
But on the way we change and it's always this back and forth and that's kind of the core of the project in a way.
So then we actually don't want to recreate that much because that's not what the project is about in a way.
But I could imagine that we could go there at some point.
Like it's just there's sort of like too much to do.
too many nice things to explore and to practice with.
So for example, we had a release concert two weeks ago, I guess, and we were so lucky to have it in a theater, a big black box.
And we wanted to use this occasion to work with the space as well.
And it was super, yeah, I mean, it's challenging and it's hard work and we did it, it worked, but it's hard work.
But we really enjoy discovering how this then works with certain visuals.
We also have a miniature version of our playing together where I play with just fingers and Kristoffer has that.
absolute minimal setup.
And then it's projected on a big screen and then later there's another visual coming in and then there's light and then there's some haze and then I'm moving through the whole
space and testing, know, if I get, when I get closer to Christopher, when do I start triggering something?
Is it when I'm five meters away or four meters away?
And it's just, I just really love to work like this.
So, and it's like, there's not enough time anyway.
So we just have to sort of keep on our track.
But I'm also curious how it would be to do like sort of boot camp, to spend a week.
trying to recreate certain things again and again and again and to see what that would do with our, with my tap dancing and with his playing.
Like how would that, would that free up in the end free up some brain space so I could do...
I don't know, that I could tap dance faster or be more clean or would it be really satisfying to sort of nail certain things even though they would be weird and in weird
time signatures or with seven funky layers or whatever.
I'm also curious about that, what that would tell us and what we would learn from it and what we would...
sort of take into the next stage of our project.
If we sort of learned this or nerded around this for a long time.
It's sort of on our list of things that we could explore, but that list is long.
It's like there's so much, there's so many things.
We also, a year ago, there was another huge...
release of my own album where also Christopher joined me for one track and at the concert we had a third player, a percussionist, like a classical percussionist played on a
vibraphone.
And then also I played on a self-made chime made of hanging taps.
Anyway, there were like...
First of all, there was one more person which was a huge difference in our interaction.
And then there was Harmony coming from him on the vibraphone.
And it was just super interesting to see how our music changed.
I loved it, but yeah.
And we are in a kind of an interesting spot in the project now, I feel like, because
Now we have been doing this for some years.
think it's in February, we have our fifth anniversary for the very first gig we did as a duo.
And I have kind of forced myself that I have developed the setup a little bit in the beginning, like when I added the second Mac and so on.
But other than that, I...
tried to really stick with the same setup.
So I didn't change the live set or anything.
And I was like, how much can I get out of the same thing?
Because I can see many things that I could kind of pre-set up that would make it very easy to make something that would probably like impress people or like, yeah.
then we got this huge complex sound that moved in a space like this and all of this if I had prepared it beforehand.
But I thought that it was an interesting angle to like not do that and not take the easy route in a way.
And just like, okay, if we just stick with the same instrument now, what can we do?
And in some sense, I feel a little bit like now that we made the record as well and played many concerts.
That was kind of a spot.
to also make a choice if we want to stick on just the same path or if we want to move in a different direction or like expand or push something.
So I could, for example, see like I have a few instruments that is like all made in Max that are very like specific.
Like there is a drum synthesizer that I made that is very like tuned to Janne's input and so on.
And I could see, for example, making
more instruments that is like this instrument is like already tuned to this project.
You can still go many directions and so on but but the core is kind of tuned to it because now it's sort of like I'm using this other instrument that I'm almost like kind of hacking
or like forcing to to adapt to the other step dance.
So that could could be a direction for me at least to go in for example.
I guess that happens with projects, right?
Like you create something and you're learning it and experimenting it, even if it's a kind of just a group of an ensemble of players.
And then you get maybe like some kind of product, like an album.
And then you kind of say, okay, now what?
Do we keep exploring this?
Cause there is kind of always infinite things to explore, but do we want to shake it up a little?
they want to go in a slightly different direction and see where it goes.
It's very interesting too what you guys say about maybe trying to recreate some of the music because sometimes when you again like I can really only speak I can't speak to this
dimension of like otherworldly instruments you guys are using but
When you play with people, you might start jamming and you kind of feeling things out and you get a sound.
then when you start trying to recreate those, it might put you into more of a routine and what you do, but you also get a lot of freedom.
now how you do that, there's a lot of changes to what, how am going to perform this part now?
Now I'm going to really refine that.
kind of exciting because you guys are, I imagine there aren't too many counterparts musically to people that are doing things like this.
So you have a lot of options, a lot of freedom, lot of space to explore.
That's true.
And then it kind of, then you have to also choose where in this like a circle of development you want to be.
And if you want to move and so on, like if you imagine something like, like a circle, circle of life.
So you have like in the beginning you have like a
some academic that figure out this math equation and then there's this programmer that turns it into like a sound product that they upload on github and then there's this noise
musician that experiments with it in a venue for like four people and then you end up with like a more kind of commercial plug-in product maybe and
put into a mainstream DAW.
And then there are like the experimental people trying it out and then it moves on.
Then you get like super commercial pop music in the end that makes a lot of money.
And then that money gets kind of fueled via tax, kind of back to funding grants for the academic and the experimental artists again.
And then it keeps on like going like this.
And then
You can choose where in this do I want to be?
Do I want to be in this super experimental space?
Do I want to be in this middle point where it's like, actually now we are implementing some of these techniques, but it's clearly music, or do you want to be in this more
polished, or do you want to move back and forth and so on?
There is also another type of circle, I guess, if you think about our gigs.
We've been performing for...
Well, mostly it's sort of in a music situation, music festival situation, but sometimes it's more like a party situation.
Like the festival opening has just happened and then we're playing right after the opening and people are maybe already a bit happy and chatty and...
And then as you might have heard on the album, like on one track, people are really shouting and enjoying the music and really with us, like almost dancing themselves.
And then other concerts, people are really like the release concert.
just had people neatly sitting on their seats.
I think they'd left their beer outside.
I'm not sure.
This music has the potential of being really...
If I keep my groove more steady and if we have a focus on a certain type of build-up, then it can sort of become a techno party almost.
And that's very different from those sessions where it's more like a soundscape or a movie or something.
very uneven and glitchy.
So we can also think, let's do a year of party music and try to play as late as possible in any club and make people dance with what we do.
And then I would have to change my tap dance a little bit and you know, that would be...
But we can also think more like, we wanna...
play like, how do you call that?
Like super long, like five hour sets at some museum and it just keeps going and people enter and exit and we just keep going.
And we've also had concerts where contemporary dancers have moved into our space and away again and have suddenly like been a part of our expression.
And yeah, so.
So there's so many directions and some of those directions would probably earn us more money and others maybe not so much.
But it's all so much fun.
So it's not like we only like the weirdest art or high art or low art.
That's not a problem.
The problem is that there's not enough time to do all of it.
So, but yeah, we enjoy it.
Yeah, you can really picture it at a lot of places like art installation, we're serious sitting down watching or, yeah, now we're having a party and we're dancing.
You guys are, it can be very interactive even I'm sure where people are dancing along with you.
It's really cool that you have that range in what you guys do.
Yeah, and it's also like in all of these settings, it's like you have different ways in for people as well.
Like some people are way into electronic music, so they're like, they connect with the sounds first.
And some people are very into the technical aspect and they start thinking about like how the system works and from like a tech angle.
And then I have some people who are either more into dance or just like this connection between us or maybe they have never seen tap dance before.
So that's the angle in.
And then it's like the door is open and all of a sudden they're like the gig is done and they enjoyed it a lot.
And they would maybe like, if you just like talked about it, they would maybe never put on this kind of music or anything, but.
They found a way in and then they enjoyed it when they were there.
You give people a lot of angles to appreciate it.
Yeah, but it's also what you're saying is it's hard to have people sort of understand what we're doing by just talking about it without them seeing it.
Yeah, that's frustrating.
And it's a story of my life because tap dance has certain connotations, certain stigma to it.
a lot of history.
And I guess in the US it's more common, of course, I mean, more people have seen it or have had a chance maybe to see it live.
But in Europe or in Norway, it's nobody has seen like I can, I can sort of assume that any audience sees it for the first time.
And that's good.
But it's also
It's not necessarily bad.
If they're already there to see it, then they see what we're doing and then we're already on one page in a way.
But when I'm trying to tell people what I'm doing as my profession, that's one discussion.
And also explaining about A and what we do, people get curious about tap dance, electronics.
it triggers something in people, but they will almost always assume that they won't like it.
Many times actually at concerts, like after the concert, people come up to us and it's like, yeah, I came here just because of my friend or because you have been like bugging me
about this for like four concerts now and I never showed up and I didn't think I would like it and I loved it.
But I couldn't imagine it before.
Yeah, it's hard to imagine, I guess.
To imagine the tap dance.
anyone that knows tap dancing has seen it before.
You don't see it in this world.
You don't see it in this kind of music.
I think showtune-y kind of musical type of stuff.
And of like a bygone era, really.
But this is really cool to see it brought.
so far into the future.
I have to disclaim right away though that it's not bygone and it's really alive.
You just don't...
haven't...
People haven't seen it.
There's so much great tap dancing in all kinds of genres.
Maybe there's not so much in electronic music yet, but there's...
course a lot of jazz music that has tap dance in it or tap dancers that work with jazz musicians etc.
it just has to come, it has to get some more exposure but it's really happening and there's some amazing tap dancers especially in the US but also in Europe hidden in every
city at least one.
And we know each other and I'm inspired by my fellow TAP colleagues all over the world.
Yeah, there's great stuff.
And everybody keeps saying, no, it's not dead.
It's actually very much alive.
But yeah, it's hidden a little bit for the...
regular public in a way.
Right.
Now, when you're improvising on this, of, all just in general in your music, mean, it's usually something musicians, whether they consciously say it or not, there's some sort of
agreement on certain things.
It might be the tempo, it might be the beat, the chords, the key.
that serves sort of as these safeguards so that it's not just pure chaos and it doesn't completely fall apart at any given moment.
How do you guys manage to do that with what you do when it is so experimental and...
you might not really know exactly what you're going to get as you're going into it.
Do you have things, I don't know where it would be, even if it's like physical cues or anything, do you ways to make sure it doesn't just totally explode in front of you?
All right, that's exciting.
I think it's like we get a little bit of a shared language by doing it many times.
So that's one thing.
then the other thing is like, if you are, let's say you meet up with a fellow electronic position, as you talked about earlier, and it's like, who is doing that sound?
whoops, it was me.
here this is not the case because okay maybe I don't know if I'm triggering this now or not but it's like Janne's like original sound is very defined so everything that is not a
tap sound is coming out of the computer so we know that and this also means that it's maybe more my responsibility that there aren't
too many clashing elements.
So if I feel like there is too much going on or we get like insecure, like maybe you get nervous or you're super tired or something, then if I manage, then always the solution is
to start stripping back layers.
And then it's like maybe we're stuck with just one and maybe this is like connected or it's just
separate one, but then we like bring it down and we just work with this one thing.
I think that's our biggest escape rope kind of.
other than that, we don't agree on anything.
Like sometimes it's like, what should we do now?
And Janne says like, let's do a pretty one.
And then that's where we start.
And then after five minutes, it's no longer a pretty one.
Yeah.
Right.
We do almost always agree on the time.
We say let's do 10 minutes, let's do 12.
It's usually 10, 20, 40 or 60.
And we have a clock because I really lose track of time sometimes.
And this is really good to because
Depending on the setting, I can assume that I will work a lot.
I will not leave Kristoffer.
I can leave him alone a little bit and he can do a solo.
I can step off the board.
I can be quiet for up to, I don't know, maybe three minutes even, which would feel very long.
But I can do that.
That's a part of things that we agree on, that we can leave each other alone.
And we're just two people.
it's also...
I mean, there's a lot of sound, there's only one person to deal with, which is much easier than if we would be a quartet or more people.
What was I thinking about?
Yeah, we know our instruments quite well.
I mean, I have like a hundred different things I can do, but Christopher has heard all of it at least five times.
We recognize each other's vocabulary, even though it's changing.
It's, how do you say, familiar.
And we like the sounds, so you accept it and you work with it.
We do listen back always, or as much as we can if we have time.
If we've done a little session of 20 minutes, we try to put it on right away and listen to it.
And then we do talk about it.
We will be like, this part could have lasted longer or...
Here I wanted to build it up, but you were pulling back.
Okay, okay.
then it's not that it's not that we're making any deals for the next time, but we're just reflecting out loud to sort of confirm our strategies and to be like, yeah, I can, I can
leave you alone.
You can deal with that.
Yes, it's fine.
I can also deal with it.
Yes.
Or some things have a limit like,
If I've started some kind of fast beat and I would like to keep it going for five minutes, but I just physically can't, like I will get a cramp.
And then I wish musically that I would have kept it going, but I just can't do it.
And then, you know, we don't look at each other at all, actually.
And as a tap dancer, I am used to...
working with musicians that take a lot of information visually, that look at my feet to see.
And here now she's hitting on, then I'm gonna like who use my movement as a sort of a hint of what's gonna happen.
But Christopher doesn't look at all.
To look at this little Arduino screen, know?
Yeah.
And that's, guess, this other aspect.
I mean, I've said it, but
just to underline it, when we've played for, we've had many concerts that last for an hour.
And then I have like, I've done a little, I've done a 60 minute sprint in a way.
And my, I'm totally like, I've exhausted myself.
And of course he's also exhausted, but he's been turning knobs, you know, and looking down.
So.
So it's a very different material in a way or starting point.
then just one more thing, especially if I usually have a little board, a small, you know, one by one meter or something.
And if I step off of it, this you sometimes see in the corner of your eye that I'm going away from the contact mic.
And that tells
him something.
It's not always clear what.
It doesn't, you know, it just means that I'm leaving the effects now and that he can then change everything or he can keep it as it is and do a solo.
I can come back and it can still be the same or I can come back and it can be completely different.
But this is like one of the crossroads that I can.
show in a way that's like a visual cue sort of.
Yeah.
And for me, when I play it's one, I actually don't want much visual stimulation in a way, because it's almost like, you know, how the thing sounds better in the dark when you close
your eyes and so on, the music sounds more vivid and everything.
So it's, it's a lot about like, okay, I
cut off this sense in a way, then I have more headroom for the other stuff.
I have to think about both this technical thing and then I have to kind of visualize the whole setup like, now she's triggering this and this and this, but of course it's going
through that chain, so it won't make a sound unless I choose this thing.
Like I have to keep that in mind.
And then it's about listening to the result and so on.
And like that's kind of enough.
then I can't take in anymore.
So when we play, for the most part, I just have to listen to Janna.
But then it's like we have played so many times and I guess it's also a little bit about just like chemistry.
It's like some people you can say hello and then all of a sudden it's like three hours have gone because you never stopped talking and...
with someone else, it's like you really have to push the conversation and maybe there are some awkward silences and so on.
So here is like, feel when we are playing everything is just like kind of working and then when we're not playing the conversation is just flowing, then we're talking.
So it's like always just in process and flowing and in some sense it's quite easy.
Like there are some challenges and we have to work and everything, but it's not like we get stuck so much, I guess.
Right.
That's funny what you say.
Right.
So much of playing with other people is listening to what they're doing.
You remind me of funny things that happen in a band even when you're tapping all this time and you're turning, right?
Like sure, there's a lot of mental energy that goes with that.
There are certain things I, in my band, when we play, my drummer will be like, okay, here we go.
Cause his beats like do do da do do da.
It's like constant, but I'm just playing like bong, big one big chord.
Cause just everything else fills out.
It's like yeah, this is a real tough one for you, but for me, it's actually I don't do much You know, it's not quite as hard but that process of yeah sure No, no
I was just going to say the process of reflecting on what you've heard, even if it's, we're not going to do this again.
get the sense of like, I see.
So you were trying to develop that, you know, that's the cool thing we can do in the future.
It's, it's so valuable.
It kind of surprises me when, people don't do that with the people they play music with.
Like you don't listen to it, you don't talk about it.
Like, how do you know if it was working?
because I find that to be almost where the growth happens.
Not even so much the actual performing, but the discussion.
But I must say that what I said in the beginning, think it's so crazy to me how I experienced the total of our music when I'm not dancing and just listening to it.
It's like, don't know how to explain it.
I almost can't recognize it.
So when we listen back, I really discover it again.
It's like, this happened.
Is that my...
Am I doing?
Is this?
Are you doing?
And it's not that I wasn't present when we were making the music.
It's just, I don't know, sitting still and listening to it as its own package.
It's really different and I enjoy it a lot.
I hate to watch myself on the video dancing.
I don't want to, like, I don't want to...
analyze myself.
But if I can just listen to the music, it's sort of, it's not even me or something.
And it's own thing.
And I even enjoy it.
then it's no problem taking the time for it.
Like I still haven't watched the video of this huge performance I did two months ago, because I don't want to see that too, but also the other one.
I just don't want to like, give me a break.
But to listen to our music is, I don't know, this maybe sounds like I'm bragging, but it's a new experience.
I also play in acoustic bands, which I love.
And then when we do concerts, I feel like I know more about, like I'm more aware of the...
total.
And then now it sounds like I'm not aware of the total when we're working, which is not true.
But there's something different about the acoustic projects and this one.
But I just wanted to also say that when we reflect and when we talk about, like we never say, I mean, we could say, let's do a warm up and that's some kind of information.
Or let's do a nice one because the previous one was so sad or whatever.
We can have one little word, but we will never plan what it's going to be.
We will just set the time and go.
That's our preparation.
But then after we talk a lot, and then when we are reflecting, we never criticize each other.
ourself.
We will be like, I should have...
I wish I had done a different choice or I couldn't sustain this thing I was aiming for.
We will be critical and admit or wish for better or whatever.
But I will never say like, I wish you were a bit faster on the knobs, Christoph Ferguson said.
Or he would never tell me that I should have been more tight or whatever.
not the way we speak.
Of course, we could be talking like that, it wouldn't, but I'm very glad we are not.
I think this contributes to this feeling of trust and that you can take risks and that you never, I never feel like I have to be ashamed or embarrassed for anything I'm doing.
So it gives more freedom to make choices and also more like headspace to make choices.
yeah, it's a, this is not, I improvise a lot and in many situations I have to spend some time while on stage to establish trust or to establish my own confidence because it's not.
the room is shaky or the vibe is stressed or whatever.
And this we don't have.
And once we performed at a bigger venue in a bigger situation, then of course sometimes we are under pressure and that has an effect on both of us.
But we don't do this to each other.
And that's a good starting point for improvisation.
I also wanted to add that usually how I describe this difference between when you're playing and when you're listening to the recording after is that when you are performing
and improvising, you are experiencing the feeling of doing it.
But when you're just listening, then you are experiencing kind of the result and you're
you have a very different way into it.
And that's why I think it's super, super important.
I try to record every concert I do at least.
And for me, it's like almost every time a positive thing because either I get confirmed that like I managed to do the thing I tried to do.
And often if you like you do one f*** up and then you like really get in your head about it and then if you're like this concert I wasn't very good and then I listened to the
recording it's like actually this only lasted for like half a second and it wasn't even as bad as I thought but even if it would have been as bad as I thought like this was nothing
in the the whole of it.
But when I was there, then, now my confidence drops.
And like this thing that I'm judging, like my own playing, it's like, it doesn't feel as good.
But actually it's like kind of like your instincts take over and still manage to play nice.
So it's actually a really good experience for me to listen to these recordings.
Hmm.
That's a great point.
Cause in your head, right?
Everything can be, the world is collapsing, you know?
And it's nice to hear it and hear the proof that no, it didn't.
It really wasn't so bad.
So that the next time it happens, you roll with it a little bit better.
And cause that stuff happens, that's part of the performance.
That's part of live music.
It's sometimes it's the fun stuff even.
It's kind of cool that when we play in a band and we sped
up in the chorus that was exciting, know, whereas you might.
for electronic music.
I always think about this.
There are so many videos on YouTube from this like superstar EDM producers, who of course, like their performance is only like a DJ set and it's not really a DJ set, DJ set.
Sometimes it's almost just like a playback set in a way.
And then...
There are all these videos of when the CDJ crashes and it's like, boom, and it starts skipping forever.
Like people don't use CDs anymore, but the CDJ, like the Pioneer ones, so when it crashes and like comes all this weird noises on and there is this like big stadium of people and
they're just going crazy.
Like they're loving it and everyone is filming it just like woo.
And then the DJ maybe it's like dramatically,
this shitty equipment and turn it to the side.
And there's a state technician that brings out another like four thousand dollar machine like, okay, here you go.
Okay, now we can do it again.
Because like they realized that there is some humanity happening and there is something happening right now.
And like this is not going to happen tomorrow.
Like we are actually in a in a special moment right now.
So I think that
when you are able to bring some of these like human things in some way to electronic music performance is really, really valuable.
And I think like even now with everything being so like perfect and AI and everything.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, I think we crave that.
We want to know that I was at that show when this happened.
I was there when that, instead of like, I was at one of the shows where this happened every time.
So yeah, not a big moment, but when you experience it.
the contact mic off of the stage.
That's true.
By accident, I kicked it and it flew away and then I to run and get it and I kept on playing.
was a very spectacular moment.
was.
And she was also triggering this big like 909 style kick drum sound from it.
Yeah.
It was really funny.
But actually, like, of course, this was kind of a mistake and whatever, often in our concerts, sometimes we really try to go with this, like, and you can you can sense this
shift sometimes that like, okay, now it's like now there is a challenge here.
I think about this one clip that we have, where we play actually the stage below our studio here.
Janne is triggering this synth sound and it has like reverb on it and it sounds like very full and very nice and then I just like gradually I take away all the elements and I take
away the reverb and I make the sound very short so like now there is like no help in a way there is no like filling out and it's just like and it's like she stops and it's like all
quiet
And you really like people start smiling and they're like really.
And then the other is like, okay, here we go.
And the sound is just like following and it's like so snappy and everything.
But then you can, then you really get this like, okay, now actually we understand everything.
Now it's like very one-to-one.
And then it's like, okay, now we're going to float this space again.
But like, there are a few of these moments where it's like, you really.
You get a sense that people, they tune into some of these things.
Yeah, it's fun.
Audiences must, I must say, audience is really, really paying attention at our concerts.
really like staring and joining somehow.
it's especially when we have explained a little bit of what we do, they are like...
It's almost like school children like yes and they're in it together with us.
That's really nice.
We really appreciate this.
Yeah we actually do this pretty much every concert.
We play maybe like five minutes or ten minutes or something and then we stop and then we say like hello we're a blah blah blah and then we explain just very easily how it works
because
Then there's also a very big shift in the audiences.
Now they're kind of believing what they were thinking was happening.
It's like, yeah, I was feeling that it was very connected here and the time was going up and down, following.
It's like, yeah, now you can trust yourself in a way.
It's like back to this VR experience, now you can believe it.
And then they appreciate it more and they...
can just take it for what it is actually.
I think that's probably an important part for what you guys do because it is so different from what anyone's seen before.
To just give them a little window into like, hey, do see this that's happening here?
Do hear this that's happening here?
And then this is why it's happening.
And then you can go back to the kind of the music that you're making, but to...
let you know like, hey, know, here's, when I do this, this happens.
then we get, mean, you've seen, we've even seen that when like live looping was new and someone had a guitar and they were like, okay, let me show you, I'm going to start with
the beat.
And then they play the next part.
They kind of just tell you a little so that you're like, I see.
Instead of just, I hear seven guitars.
I don't know why, cause there's only one person there.
but also because, as you said earlier, usually people are used to the dancer just dancing to the music.
That's so normal for people that when we have not explained what we're doing, people have seriously thought that I'm just very, very, I practice a lot and I'm just exactly on top
of Kristoffer's music.
I just know where the beats are and then I'm sort of following.
And then when I tell them, no, I'm actually playing those rhythms that you're hearing, those sounds are...
They can't believe it, but they have then watched the whole concert thinking that I'm just there for the dance moves in a way.
And that's also not strange because it's so common.
you practice dancing and you make sure you know the music and yeah and the music maybe just there's no musician it's just coming out of the speakers and then you have people
dancing synchronized it's the most normal thing of course so I'm not I don't take it I don't think people are stupid it's just it is it took us some time to realize how
hard it was for people to get over their assumption of what dance is and what music is and how long they would stick to believing this, even though the evidence is happening right
in front of you.
It's just, you would rather assume that I have practiced a lot to make this exactly like this and not that I would play that.
Or that we would have the technical abilities to do it the way we do it.
And the ironic part is of course that this sort of like rehearsing and kind of faking it would probably be harder.
Because the timing is like so crazy, you know?
So for the tap dance, would be much harder than to just do it.
That's another idea.
We should make a music video once where we're playbacking.
our own music.
We're like fake tap dancing on top of some...
Yeah, and we're there with the sheet music and it's like, no, we're like have to take out the scissors and cut away a little bit of a bar and glue it together.
your version of lip syncing.
Yeah, exactly.
See how much we can get away with, like, how disconnected the movements and the sound would be, how long you would, like, accept it.
Well, we usually think of dance as a reaction to music.
You dance to the music.
So to you're dancing the music now.
It's so much more interactive than we're used to seeing.
It does sort of require, at least right now, right?
Like a little introduction, a little crash course here.
You know, I think that's cool.
It's also interesting how it brings some sort of energy into it.
This is also a project where I have to stand when I'm playing.
I can't sit and play this music.
Because I also start moving.
I don't move the same way Janne is moving, of course.
But I actually have to kind of activate my body in a way.
Like I can't do so much, like I just like wiggle back and forth and like get active in a way.
But still it's this like transfer of energy or like kind of feeling the vibe of it a little bit.
I love that myself when I'm producing, when I'm making music.
mean, playing guitar, you're standing, you're kind of already dancing.
So I'm kind of used to that.
But when I'm sitting at the desk making the music, sometimes I can't even tell if it's grooving.
So this desk actually is one of those rising desks that you can make a standup desk.
So when I'm making the music, I'm usually standing because for me,
If I start moving, I kind of know.
Because you know how it is when you're like programming things and you're being really selective about where every drum hit is going, every rhythmic element, it can get hard to
tell if it's robotic or if it's even working.
But if my body's just kind of naturally like, all right, here we go, then I don't need any more proof than that.
I can trust that.
Yeah, exactly.
that's a little tough for probably a lot of people when they're making music at a computer.
It's very sedentary and especially when you're making dance music.
Like how do you really know if it's working unless you're testing it out?
Yeah, and with that kind of music, it's also very like you try to tune it to the sound system in a way, to the club.
So it's also very different.
People only listen to it on like headphones and small speakers and others who are maybe out DJing in the weekend.
Like I remember the producer Fortet, he always talks about how he's always testing his mixes when he's DJing.
Because then it's like, and now he has done it for so many years, so he really knows how it should be.
But there is this like physical aspect of it that is like hard to, like it actually, it only kind of becomes real when it comes out of the speakers in a way.
Sometimes it's almost like the waveform on the screen and so on.
That's almost like the score in a way.
And then the speaker and the sound system is the musician that is actually realizing it.
And when you use a different player, a different speaker, sounds different and it feels different.
So taking these things into consideration can be very important depending on the genre and so on.
Music and sound, really.
Sound is, I don't forget who said this to me, but I never thought of it the same way.
It's really kind of a very sensitive form of the sense of touch.
Cause it's moving air and what our ears are picking up on is that movement and our body feels it.
You feel the bass and it's moving at a certain pace depending on the frequencies and all.
So when you are in your headphones, it's a nice experience too, but there is really something about feeling it through a speaker and even playing guitar where I can have an
amp sim that sounds like a huge Marshall stack in the Grand Canyon.
It's cool sounding, but there's nothing like standing in front of it in that chord and just like, you know, it's exciting.
I mean, I guess that's why they have like some of those sub pack type things that you can wear that I guess I've never tried it, but I guess it vibrates so you can simulate those
feelings.
yeah, anyone that's been to a concert and just felt the movement of the air that's happening when the speakers are sending out those frequencies, it's exhilarating.
There's also vibrations through the floor from the tap dance.
can be sometimes if I'm on the same level as the audience then they will also feel it through their own feet, especially if they're sitting.
That can be a really nice part of the experience too.
Hmm.
Yeah, that's cool.
I didn't think of that.
But you're right.
Yeah, sending that.
And that's so one to one like you guys are talking about too.
There's that feedback that somebody gets.
That's cool.
And it's interesting because these are like, in one sense, we're in very different worlds.
Like, Janne has an acoustic sound and my sound doesn't exist before it comes out of a speaker.
And then we're trying to blend these two things.
And we're playing in many different venues with different sound systems.
They have different acoustics, different floors that have different sound.
And it's an interesting challenge.
It's not...
always so easy.
Like sometimes we have to scratch our head a little bit during sound check but it usually works out very well.
really interesting stuff and I want to get, let people know where they can find it.
And this also, think brings up something I wanted to ask you about too.
so a, that's how we say it.
Right.
Cause so for, okay.
I'm sorry for.
mess in with it.
don't even know what the first letter is called, but it's like a zero with a line through it, the diagonal line, and then Y, and you say it, how do you say it?
A.
good.
Hey, hey.
I feel like I'm pulling out my New York accent.
hey, what are you doing?
pretty close.
We didn't think about this when we chose band name.
Well, it was easy to find once I figured out how to type that letter and the search bar came right up.
But I know it's on all the streaming services people can find.
I'll put the links in the show notes too.
But I wanted to ask you about this be your own platform thing you have going on, which I never heard of before.
Hashtag be your own platform.
And that's two T's in platform.
And you reference MySpace, which I remember doing MySpace with my last band, and that was kind how we judged our popularity.
How many plays do we get on our MySpace player, like this back in the 2000s?
And then one day, no one was on MySpace anymore.
Yeah, and you know, now the we're experiencing like a real sort of internet capture in a way with the this was his name, Cory Doctorow, who coined the word and shitification,
which was the word of the year in the previous year or something.
And it's about now.
and shitification.
So the concept is that there comes a new platform and it gives you all these benefits to reach new people and all of this.
So let's say going from MySpace to Facebook.
So Facebook comes along, you make your Facebook band page instead of your MySpace profile.
And all of a sudden you reach all these new people.
And then first they cut off like the regular people.
So now you have to have to pay for the reach.
now it's just exactly.
So now it's just the corporations that get the benefit.
And slowly now also the corporation gets no benefit and it's all going to shit.
But everyone is like super locked in.
That's like that's their power move.
So this whole concept of be your own platform is that you make your own platform.
So you're just locked into your own platform and you decide if you want to change it.
Because we have seen a few rounds now.
So we had Myspace and then we had Facebook and Facebook is really not working anymore.
And people are still using Instagram.
Instagram is kind of still okay.
But still now there's coming a lot of ads there and all of this stuff.
But the one thing that doesn't go away is like your own place.
So this be your own platform thing.
It came out of the Bandcamp drama actually when Bandcamp were sold two times.
And it's basically just a movement where
People are exploring the alternatives and trying to do things themselves.
So it's a lot about making your own website, having a newsletter that people can subscribe to.
So even though actually Google are also destroying email a little bit now because they are so monopolistic with the Gmail and all of a sudden your email goes into a different tab
and people don't read it.
But it's still pretty good with email and then you can make a RSS feed and so on.
But anyways, the website itself, people can't destroy that.
So that's kind of the concept about doing things yourself.
And like for example, a year ago I stopped paying for SoundCloud premium because I thought the service was getting really bad.
Like it was so great when it started, but every...
capitalistic platform, they have to grow all the time and then they just have to make more money.
And then you get ads.
then I think now with SoundCloud, if you open a SoundCloud link and you're not logged in and a real user or whatever, first, of course, you say, hey, do you want to be a user?
It's like, no, no, no, click away all the things.
And then you press play and it's working.
And then it's like,
yeah, I actually, I need to skip to the middle part.
Then it's like, no, no, no, you can't skip in the track unless you're paying customers.
So this is happening like everywhere.
And this be your own platform thing is basically trying to explore the alternatives.
And a lot of it is going back to how the internet used to be.
Like when you're talking about the open web, this same guy, Corey Doctrow,
He describes it now as the internet for most people are like four websites filled with screenshots of the other ones.
So it's like you go on Instagram and it's like, here's a, here's a tweet.
And then you go on anyways.
that's the, that's the concept.
So it's a lot about people trying to be, independent.
And especially for, for more like underground artists and niche stuff and so on.
We.
actually are not trying to go as wide as possible.
We're trying to go as deep as possible.
And this doesn't really work when you are in the same feed competing for people's attention together with like McDonald's and Beyonce, you know.
So it's much better to have like a more direct connection.
And if you see the parallel to like the physical world, it's like...
You go to, you play in these small bars and then maybe you play in a bigger space here and so on.
But actually you are in all these small spaces and you're connecting with people.
You're not trying to go fill the stadium, but that's kind of what we're doing when everything is on the same feed.
Yeah.
Could have a whole podcast about this, but it's quite interesting actually to question some of these things.
And okay, I'll do a quick example more.
that's now I publish on my website, I have a blog and I publish, I still put some videos on YouTube, but I also put them just directly on the blog.
Just a HTML player.
Very easy.
Like people did in the nineties, except now everyone have fast internet so you can have high definition.
But so there, there is no view counter and
just this difference is like a huge difference because if you go on YouTube, it's like filled with thumbnails of people trying to pull out their craziest expression and
clickbait title and it's like, this one have 200,000 views.
This must be a good one.
This one has 50 views.
I won't bother.
And maybe that's the, that's the good one, you know, or the one that you would enjoy.
Yeah, it's interesting how those numbers even just subconsciously make us think, good, bad, not good.
No one cares about this, but this is good.
And most of us are looking for those things that are very specific to us and that we want something that's kind of different, but those numbers are a lot.
But what you're saying about
Controlling your own platform having your website your your email list I agree with wholeheartedly because like you I've Seen the internet change now and watched platforms go
away and what some of them I've invested a lot of work into and sometimes it's just a little change in the dial and how they
put their information out, how you reach your followers, if you even reach your followers.
All that can change so fast, but when you have your own control, you can at least ensure you'll still be there tomorrow.
Yeah, because they like some of these platforms are still valuable.
Like we got booked to one of the, if not the biggest jazz festival in Norway based on like Instagram clips.
But then that's kind of like going on the street and giving out flyers, you know, then maybe some people see it, maybe they check it out.
So this kind of like advertisement, but then what is the next level?
Like when people have found your stuff.
and they're like, this is something maybe I would be interested in, then it's about having the place to invite them to.
Because if not, you're gonna get lost in this stream.
Yeah.
Well, when I go on my social medias, even my YouTube, I'm not necessarily getting the stuff I've subscribed to.
It's the stuff that they think I'm going to want to see.
That's going to somehow bait me in because it's, it's really about just keeping you on the platform and who could blame them really?
mean, that's, that's what they're trying to do.
That's if you understand their goal, it makes sense.
Exactly.
So then but then we're trying to...
Not true!
expect them to do anything else?
It's not a charity act that it's out there.
But I've been also now been talking about this movement a lot and I made like a rant video on YouTube where I was talking about this and I was saying that used to YouTube used to be
so great because you would see all this independent people putting out their videos that couldn't go on TV, you know, and now it's kind of.
being removed because you only see the already popular stuff on the big or on the algorithmic feed and so on.
But you know, in that video or under the video, like in the comment section, there was also a person who wrote to me that, yeah, I really connect with all the stuff you're
saying and so on and blah, blah.
And then they wrote, now I realized that
You are the person that I watched a video of 10 years ago where you used this one guitar that I was considering buying.
I watched the video and then I saw you used this Monom grid.
And then I got so inspired that this actually started this whole journey for me.
And now 10 years later, now I'm making all these sounds that I've always dreamt about.
making.
And like this comment is like super touching, you know, and this wouldn't happen unless I put my video on this now pretty shitty platform in a way.
So it's it's it's very nuanced in a way.
But I think it's it's important to to ask some of these questions.
Yeah, it's amazing, but we're so lucky to have this stuff at all, right?
And on one level, it is like almost crazy that we would complain about it.
But if you want that control of your own work, keep it in your control.
Don't sign it off to something else because anything could happen at any moment.
Yeah, at least not put all your eggs in that basket.
Right.
Yeah.
I think, yeah, take advantage of it.
Use it.
I mean, like you said, you've, you've reached people, you've changed lives.
So there's something cool about it.
But.
wasn't reflected in the numbers.
Like this was reflected in someone telling me, you know.
So that's also a very interesting observation.
it's not like that video made crazy numbers.
I thought it was a cool video, so was happy about it.
But when someone tells me 10 years after that, it literally changed their life a little bit.
That's very valuable.
But that only comes from someone reaching out and having a conversation.
Yeah.
Which I guess is the reason why we should do that to the people we admire and the work we appreciate, you know?
It's a conversation and that is a cool thing that we can get involved too.
It's not just that we can put it out, but we can interact with all the people we enjoy the work of.
But you to make sure to kind of do it because what's so easy in this, just these systems is that the humans disappear.
It's just left with this systematic, almost AI in a way.
Mm-hmm, right.
Weird times.
definitely.
So a good trick is to a tap dancer on stage.
Very human.
And it's different and it's eye catching and ear catching, right?
You guys are doing awesome stuff.
I'm really happy to just on my own level of the last time I spoke with you, Christopher, this idea was just starting and here we are now to see it start to come to fruition and
see the energy.
by now all of the...
The chemistry that the two of you have musically is amazing.
It's inspiring for me to see and it just goes to show that your visions can come to life and I'm sure it's even taken on dimensions you never imagined five years ago.
Definitely.
right back to you, for sticking around, you know, and keep on producing this podcast and all the great things you do.
It's like, it's really nice stuff.
Thanks.
Well, thanks for being an early adopter coming on the show in the way back days.
I forget what number I got it open here, but the first time you were on was number 41, which was probably the first year I was doing it.
So yeah, that was no, wasn't.
Yeah.
And was really funny actually when I asked you to do this one I checked like what was the previous episodes now and what's his name is Francis Preve?
Yeah, he was on I think the episode before me last time and he was quite recently on.
Yeah.
Yeah, he's...
Yeah, I've had a few people that want to talk to me again, which is great.
This has been a very human thing.
to do with for me with like this technology and with the work because it can get lonely, you know, making your music in your home.
And even if you are putting it out there, like you said, you don't always hear back from people.
So it's really nice to talk.
And it's it's been a lot of fun for the people I have reconnected with on the show or even in real life occasionally to just see how they've developed and changed and what they're
up to.
I think that's really.
A big part of everything we do is this connection, even releasing music.
If you're releasing it, you're trying to connect on some level.
Otherwise you just keep it to yourself.
like, no, it's mine.
So this has been a fun, fun road to be on and I'm glad to have you on it.
And I'm glad that you're now on the road too and doing really awesome stuff together.
Yeah, awesome.
All right.
So I think so.
Yeah.
So we'll put the links in the show notes.
Do you want to just say, I know we've got your website.
This would be so Christopher Lesligard is going to be K R I S T O F F E R L I S L E G A A R D dot com.
That might be.
is that.
just lisleg.com.
Then it links to the other one.
very good.
L-I-S-L-E-G dot com.
Nice.
And then we have a website.
So it's O, not O, but O, the normal letter for you people.
OYduo.com.
Okay, O-Y-D-U-O.com.
Okay, cool.
And then there is links to everywhere.
Nice.
And I'll put it all in the show notes too, if that was too much for anybody.
Well, thank you both very much and thank you for listening.
Alrighty, we did it.