Ben Bracken

What were your first experiences with electronic music?

I went to undergrad at Mills College where I was exposed to making music with electronic instruments, studying with Maggie Payne, taking her moog class. From that, I learned the basics of making electronic music. Learning on the moog gave me a good understanding of signal flow, which I could apply to Max.

When you started at Mills, I know you had already been aware of the general landscape of electronic music, but what were your first exposures as a listener?

In undergrad, when I was studying visual art at the San Francisco Art Institute, and later, Art History at Mills, I was mainly focused on new media and video art, and a lot of that intertwined with electronic music. So, artists like Steina Vasulka, early Jordan Belson, Vibeke Sorensen, and others. To some degree, contemporary film/video art and video synth experimenters introduced me to the world of electronic music.

Were you seeing a lot of live electronic music at this time?

In the early 2000's I went to a lot of noise music shows. Artists like John Wiese, Mick Barr, 16 Bitch Pile-Up, and Matmos come to mind. I was also really into Kevin Drumm. I got into the idea of making electronic music through seeing those noise shows.

So back to Mills, you got access to the moog, and you clearly took a liking to it. How did that lead to using Max?

After Maggie's moog class, I took a class with John Bischoff, Intro to Computer Music. I didn't actually know what I was signing up for, I just enrolled in the class because of the title…I really had no idea what we were going to learn! Then, during the first class, I found out it was focused on Max, which I had already known about, because some friends had used it, but I had never used it before myself.

In Bischoff's class, this was kind of an intro to Max, the basics?

Yeah, mostly how to generate synthesized sound using oscillators. Very basics of filtering, amplitude modulation, importing and looping sounds, etc.  

Personally, I didn't have a lot of exposure to modular synths before Max, it was only after I knew Max pretty well that I was able to play with modular synthesizers. I could see how this could potentially really help, just in terms of understanding signal flow.

Yeah, I felt like I understood the basics of that through using the moog, and I could translate that to Max. In John's class, the sounds that I ended up using were moog sounds, so right away I was combining the two worlds.

So, you were create sounds with the analog synth, and then you would manipulate it further in Max? Did you find that way of working interesting?

I really liked the sound of the moog, and I didn't know how to make those kinds of sounds in any other way. I felt like I could further transform those sounds in Max. I remember trying to make different kinds of sounds, harsh sounds, on the moog, and it was rather difficult. By combining Max and the moog I could get more variation.

During this time, were there other hardware instruments that you were using?

I played around with some other synths. I used the Arp 2600 and the Buchla system at Mills. I also purchased an Oberheim 6-R (which I still have), and a Dave Smith Evolver, and used some of those sounds in Max as well.

You went to Mills for undergrad, and then had a break in-between, but then ended up back at Mills for graduate school. What was your music practice like at that time?

I actually graduated undergrad with a degree in Art History, but near the end, I was mainly just taking music classes. So, when I graduated, that's basically what I was spending my spare time doing, making electronic music. In the 2 1/2 years between undergraduate and graduate school, I continued to make music, but very slowly. I played a few shows at this time, but was more interested in fixed media and diffusion pieces. I played at the San Francisco Tape Music Festival, and a few other odd shows here and there, but playing live wasn't really a priority.

Fast forward to grad school, what were the reasons for going back to school?

Maggie Payne, who I kept in contact with, encouraged me to apply to the grad program at Mills. I actually wasn't sure I wanted to study music. I was thinking about anthropology or musicology, but I decided to apply, just to see what happened. Mills ended up giving me a full ride so I took that! 

How did you find going back to Mills for grad school? Was it a very different experience, as opposed to undergrad?

It was. I wasn't really involved in the music scene in undergrad, as the music department is fairly insular. So even though I was taking music classes in undergrad, I felt separate from the Music students. When I went back, I was much more more directly involved in the department. I was a TA for several classes, and worked at the Center For Contemporary Music. But, it was also nice coming in with some familiarity of the department. I knew what I was getting into!

When I went to Mills, aside from everything that the incredible staff bring, there was a lot of interaction and inspiration taken from other students that were there. Every year is very different of course, but while you were there, you ended up finding some kindred spirits.

Yeah, there were many new friends and collaborators that I worked with. Sarah Davachi, Monisola Ghadibo, William Ryan Fritch, and others.  

When I began at Mills, I was making work in much the same way as I always had, using hardware and then processing it in Max. But as I went on, I started to prefer acoustic instruments over electronic. I ended using harmoniums and string instruments more. I found that I could get more subtle variations through acoustic instruments. It is of course possible to get incredibly subtle with electronics, I just found it easier to work with these acoustic sources to find the subtlety that I was looking for. In general I’d say that my work at this time became more focused on the subtleties of sound. And, at the same time, I got into making my own instruments through a class with the master instrument builder Daniel Schmidt. In that class, I ended up building a glass armonica, which falls in line with my interest in instruments that have a droning quality. I guess I was, in a way, trying to make instruments that made sounds similar to a synth. Basically trying to make oscillators, but with more natural subtleties. I also made some experiments with installation-based sound instruments, like aeolian harps, which, again, could make those continuous, sustained sounds.

So when you started working with acoustic instruments, was there something that was appealing to them besides the sound?

I liked the physicality of them, especially with hand making my own instruments. It wasn’t until I started doing this that I connected the dots to when I was a teenager I built a few dundun drums, which are double-headed African drums. I do really like working with my hands.

But, I returned to Max because it lets me focus on minute details like nothing else can, and I can be very specific about things, but within that specificity, I can tell it to be more or less random. I find that it lets me alter sounds in ways that I haven’t been able to do with hardware or acoustic instruments.

Fast-forward a handful of years, and now you find yourself working at an elementary school teaching wood shop. Can you talk about that?

I teach kindergarten and first grade kids basic wood shop skills. How to use saws, hammers, screwdrivers. How to sand things, the very basics.

So, you are probably keeping them away from the power tools!

Yeah! They do get to lower the arm of the drill press, but that is as close as they get to a power tool. We make very basic things, like boxes, name tags for their doors, but I want to move on to more musical projects, like rattles, simple string instruments, and other things.

Backing up, you ended up working at some pretty interesting places after grad school. What were they?

I was teaching at the Art Institute of San Francisco, teaching basic sound design classes, and experimental sound classes, where we got into some instrument building and sound installation. I also ended up working for Don Buchla as his assistant, helping out with research and development. Which meant widely different tasks every day, some of them having nothing to do with electronic music hardware. Like, trimming the bushes, eating bagels, or learning about 3d modeling and printing. It varied greatly, depending on his mood that day!

After that, I went on to work at Dave Smith Instruments, working as a repair and support technician. It is a very small company, and when I was there, everyone was involved in designing new instruments.

When you left Buchla and started at Dave Smith, I remember thinking that the two experiences couldn’t be any more different, just in terms of how the companies were organized.

They were very different. Dave is very organized, and knows how to run a business. He knows how to design his instruments so that they appeal to a wide variety of people. Don, by contrast, was extremely unorganized, the work space was in constant disarray, and he didn’t ever really care about what other people thought, so he made new designs just based on what he wanted to use in his next project.

Don always struck me as a dreamer, and there was really no concern for a marketplace.

I never got the feeling that he ever thought about the marketplace and what people will buy. It was always just his personal ideas, that also happened to usually be one or two steps ahead of everyone else. The companies (Dave Smith and Buchla) are different in many, many ways, but both make incredible instruments. After moving on from Dave Smith, I traveled a bit, and did some residencies, one at EMS, actually working with a Buchla system the whole time, and then one in Oregon at Sitka.

I’m now also working at Intersection for the Arts, and teaching a Max programming class at SFAI, where I began my undergrad.

What have your experiences been teaching Max in that setting?

At first, I realized that I had been using Max too long, and had to take a step back to see that it really was another language to people. After I taught the first course, I realized I needed to slow down. People respond really well to the visual aspect of it. These students are mainly young visual artists, some of them never having used computers for creative projects before. It is challenging to teach, and challenging to learn, but students get really excited when they complete their first patch. There is an instant gratification when something obvious happens, people love that. And, as they developed a bit more as Max programmers, they could get excited about the little things. It was gratifying for me as a teacher to see that development. Also, with Max 7, I find it’s easier for students to find the objects that they are looking for. You know, when an expert isn’t sitting next to you, you may have no idea how to find something. But, now it’s so much easier to find what you are looking for, and explore other options that are available to you.

Getting back to your solo work, this past month saw the release of your first solo album called Ballads on Drawing Room records. I know that this release was a long time coming. The album itself consists of two side-long pieces, and is on LP and digital. When did you start working on the album?

Yeah, actually the track Hummen was started at Mills in 2012. A long time ago! Hummen is the B side, and the A side is Bourdon. The first iteration of Bourdon was made for a performance I gave at the San Francisco Electronic Music Festival in 2013. That version was a bit different than what ended up on the record.

Did “Hummen” change that much in the years between the initial composition and what ended up on the record?

Compositionally, it didn’t change that much. I think that my ears have gotten a lot better since then, as far as being able to mix the piece. The track instrumentation is two harmoniums, two guitars played with e-bows, glass armonica which I built, aluminum rods, and Max. Max conceptually ties all of the different sounds together. Each harmonium note has two reeds, and since those two reeds are out of tune with each other on my instrument, it produces beating patterns. The piece came about because of these imperfections. I used Max to get to these rhythms, and isolate these patterns, record them, and play them back. With the glass harmonica, it was taking the sound of the instrument, changing it’s pitch very slightly, then playing it back with the original sound. So, these minor differences in pitch would also create these “beating” patterns. So, I was using Max to basically bring rhythms out of seemingly static sounds.

The patches itself, for both Hummen and Bourdon, are somewhat similar. But, the inner workings are slightly different. The patch used with Bourdon focuses on more low tones, so the beating patterns captured are in the lower register. In the Bourdon patch, there is an 8-voice synthesized rhythmic component that creates short phasing patterns. The envelope on the pulses are dynamically changing, so their textures also change somewhat. Bourdon has a more intentional rhythmic component.

Here's a small portion of the Bourdon Max patch:

When you first started making electronic, it sounds like it was fairly solitary. Since then, you’ve been involved in more collaborative projects, or working on pieces that require instrumentalists. What changed for you, and how do you find working with people as opposed to working alone?

I think I got a little bored with knowing what to expect from myself. I kind of know what I’m going to do, and I wanted to be surprised by things. So, when working with other people, even if they are just playing what I’ve asked them to do, there is an uncertainty that can be inspiring. I remember when rehearsing Hummen for the first time, I had a friend, Noah Phillips, play guitar on it. I was having a lot of trouble getting the right sound from his guitar. It wasn’t smooth enough. But, then there was this one sound he made that ended up inspiring the whole ending of the song. It wasn’t a sound that I could have told him how to play. It is moments like this that make me want to work with other people. There is something amazing about the certainty of software and hardware, it’s very reliable. But, in the composing process, I prefer to be surprised.

For the album, you had Teddy Rankin-Parker play cello on the album. What was it like working with him?

At first I felt embarrassed that I was just asking him to play seemingly simple gestures. But he was so sensitive to sound, and a very good musician. He understood what I was trying to go for, and that I was going for the subtleties in his bow strokes. He got really into it, and it was surprisingly easy to communicate with him.

As a lapsing instrumentalist myself, it is sometimes the most difficult thing to do, play something very simply.

Yeah, I think that is why I was a little nervous, because I wasn’t sure if he would brush it off as “easy” and not approach it the way I was hoping, but he did. It is hard to find people that will be focused on something that seems to be simple initially, only to realize that it’s not that simple. He went into it knowing that it wasn’t going to be simple, and looked at it as a challenge.

The new album is titled, “Ballads.” We probably all have a musical association with the word, but what does it mean to you?

To me, the word “ballads” means a story, or a journey, and I’ve always looked at the music I make like that. I also enjoy using terms that people might not associate with the type of music it is, re-appropriating a word for a different purpose. To me, the pieces are ballads, just not with words.

There’s almost a romantic connotation to the word.

I think there is emotion in the tracks on the album. There is a lot of tension and release, and I can see how they can be viewed as having romantic connotations, but to me, they are just stories told with sound that unfold over time.

 and read more about Ashley Bellouin’s work on her website: 

I was teaching  at the Art Institute of San Francisco, teaching basic sound design classes, and experimental sound classes, where we got into some instrument building and sound installation. I also ended up working for Don Buchla as his assistant, helping out with research and development. Which meant widely different tasks every day, some of them having nothing to do with electronic music hardware. Like, trimming the bushes, eating bagels, or learning about 3d modeling and printing. It varied greatly, depending on his mood that day!

At first, I realized that I had been using Max too long, and had to take a step back to see that it really was another language to people. After I taught the first course, I realized I needed to slow down. People respond really well to the visual aspect of it. These students are mainly young visual artists, some of them never having used computers for creative projects before. It is challenging to teach, and challenging to learn, but  students get really excited when they complete their first patch. There is an instant gratification when something obvious happens, people love that. And, as they developed a bit more as Max programmers, they could get excited about the little things. It was gratifying for me as a teacher to see that development. Also, with Max 7, I find it’s easier for students to find the objects that they are looking for. You know, when an expert isn’t sitting next to you, you may have no idea how to find something. But, now it’s so much easier to find what you are looking for, and explore other options that are available to you.

You can listen to excerpts of Ballads and read more about Ashley Bellouin’s work on her website: ashleybellouin.com


Artist Focus: Ashley Bellouin