By John Moxey
John: First, thanks to agreeing to be interviewed for Songstuff readers!
Steve: You're very welcome! It's my pleasure.
John: It's great to see you have a new album out. A lot more electronica than I had expected initially. Has it turned out the way you expected from your initial plans and concept?
Steve: There weren't any initial plans, really. At some point, I recognized that I wanted to collect some of the pieces I had recorded over the last six years. So for the last six months or so, I've been trying to figure out what songs to include and then remix them so that they felt more "of a piece."
John: They are quite complementary pieces. Do you see electronica as being a major direction for your work?
Steve: That's a very interesting question. I initially approached electronica as a means of self-expression, a way of starting with what I could afford and using the tools at my disposal. With the advent of DAWs and virtual instruments and such, I recognized very early on that this form of music was wide open in terms of approach; too, there were constraints such as having to write and record mostly at night, usually between 10 PM and 3 AM. I had spent the bulk of my life writing, recording and performing progressive metal and really wanted to do something different. I saw this as a chance to sort of reinvent myself, to let the music define itself as a natural extension of myself, my curiosity. I don't see myself being confined to a genre, so to speak; I do want to start expanding more and hybridizing different forms, but I will always do electronica in some form or another. Perhaps, a more accurate statement might be that electronica will always be an informing component of whatever I do.
John: So is this album merely a set of electronica experiments?
Steve: No, not at all. In fact, there is only one true experiment on it -- "Hello Cruel World" (the final track). Having said that, each song began, in some form or another, with a sense of curiosity. Each song is an exploration, whether it be theme, rhythm, musical motif, or whatever. I guess you could say that the songs began in experiment, which probably explains why I have so much unfinished material. But once I feel that it is starting to become "a song," I'm very much interested in having it feel like a song. I do this by repeating patterns, altering patterns, expanding on certain elements, setting elements against themselves and so on.
John: What/who would you say were your primary influences?
Steve: Wow, this is a difficult question for a number of reasons; for the sake of simplicity, I'll just say that I am moved by the structure and sound of artists like Keith Hillebrandt (who was a sound designer for NIN). I also love the playfulness of jazz electronica artist Greg Pagel. Others include General Elektriks, Aphex Twin, Harold Budd, Mouse on Mars, the list could go on and on. One of the things I love about electronica is the variety and scope of sound.
John: What was most challenging for you? What was the biggest challenge in producing this album. New technology, writing, production....
Steve: I didn't really have much difficulty in the actual production of the album, that is, the pragmatic aspect of readying for mastering, designing the cover, getting it manufactured, etc. I did experiment for awhile doing my own mastering, which led me to conclude that that particular process was best left to a professional.
I'm going to take the weenie approach to an answer because I think it is more illustrative of struggles I encounter as an artist. Each song really presents its own set of difficulties. Some were far more complicated in terms of approach. With "Hydra (Donnginger's Machine)," for example, I started out by seeing what I could do with a repeating rhythm that spans three measures and then superimposing instrumental passages that have a 4/4 feel to them. It ended up taking me nearly six months; I created hundreds of loops and variations, processed them, chopped them up and retriggered them in Kontakt. I create all my own loops, so it was a lot of trial and error. About halfway through the piece, I read an essay about Dr. Donninger's chess program Hydra and became intrigued by some of the difficulties he had in trying to program "versatility" in its thinking algorithms. So it was a combination of what I was doing technically informed by the curiosity and exploration of that particular problem. Others began as explorations of multi-tap delays; still others pursued a way to develop a mood or emotion that I felt. Usually, though, it begins with a short motif or sound that I feel compelled to explore.
John: Did you find the technology learning curve interfered with your creative flow?
If so how did you deal with that?
Steve: Yes and no. I work very slowly and methodically at whatever I do. Sometimes I can get caught up in minutia, but I find that I'm actually inspired to try new things because of technology. I don't think I'll ever have an "overhead view" of what is possible, but I learn more and more each day; now I'm finding that when I have ideas, I know what sets of tools I can achieve a particular sound. Often, sounds are combinations of many different things. And there are times, of course, when I think I know how to achieve a sound I imagine and then find out that I'm wrong. Sometimes that means going back to the drawing board, as it were; other times I run with what I have. I try not to let it overwhelm me, but there are many nights I go back to bed after being in the studio for four hours and think, "My god, I suck." In all fairness, though, what I lack in speed and genuine musical skill I make up for in process and curiosity. I'm not a virtuoso (someone who as reached the apotheosis of skill on any particular instrument), but I do feel that what I do has intrinsic artist value and that my talent (whatever that means) is the creative application of curiosity and desire in a musical environment.
John: How do you cope with those moments of self doubt? Producing an album takes drive and motivation for a prolonged period and working on your own certainly amplifies the musical feeling of isolation.
Steve: My wife has been very helpful in this regard. She insists that I call time in my studio "play" instead of "work". I'm sort of a weird amalgam of idealist and pragmatist. The pragmatic side of me insists on production (that idea of always moving forward); the idealistic side says "everything you do in here can apply to something at some point" (which I find to be true more often than not -- a "failed" piece often reveals a process or sound that I can later apply to something else). The danger is in letting the critic win over the artist, or to get so caught up in exploration that I don't think about practical application. I have to be very mindful not to destroy what I work on, to let it sit for a different mood, or whatever. It's about forcing a sense of balance and fairness. And to be honest, I'm not always successful.
John: That i guess is true of us all. Many discoveries are borne on the back of mistakes and failure I think its all part of the creative process. If there weren't difficulties there'd be less reason to be invested in it.
Did you have any big discoveries while making this album?
Steve: No, not really, once I decided to make a CD it became more of a pragmatic series of steps. "How do I make it happen?" Most of the discoveries came during the creative process, when it was just me in my studio and no idea where I wanted to take the music, when it was still just something I did in private, in the dark, away from the world. The CD, really, represents about 5% of my output.
John: What happens to the rest?
Steve: If you were to magically transport yourself to my studio, you'd hear and see mostly abandoned ideas, half-finished songs, experiments, etc. I mean, literally, hundreds and hundreds of sketches, ideas, most between fifteen seconds and a minute and a half.
John: How does it feel naked, in the light on the world's stage then?
Steve: Honestly, I don't feel that I'm on the world's stage. I've done my best to represent fully realized work to the public, but what happens to it is completely out of my hands. The important thing, for me, is that I push myself to be the best I can be. There are more talented people out there. I just have to trust that I can connect with those listeners who believe I have something unique to offer.
John: Is there anything that you would hope listeners would take from your album?
Steve: Oh, absolutely. I like to think of the work as "aural painting." I'd like to believe that it is a conduit for creativity. Each song has a theme and a mood, and hopefully is a catalyst to open the mind up for a sense of personal adventure. I hope that listeners can each interpret the instrumental sounds according to what is in their minds, imaginations, and personal histories. In that sense I'd like to think that the music becomes personal. At least, that's what I hope. That's what it is designed for.
John: Do you have a favorite track?
Steve: My favorite is "Points Between". The common favorites for people that have written to me seems to be either "Rain Dogs" or "Synchronicities".
I think they prefer those because of the simpler structure. In "Points Between" there is a lot of stuff going on spatially and musically. It was the first time I really started exploring the concept of three dimensions in music. So, in one sense, it is a historical marker for me.
John: A line in the sand?
Steve: Yes, but more in the sense of showing me what's possible. Before that song, I was mostly concerned with just the music and the orchestration of it--that is, the sound of instruments and whether they were clear and placed well in the aural spectrum.
John: What were the main things you learned going through this process?
Steve: My first four songs or so (not in the order on the CD), I was just playing around, seeing what was possible. But I was mostly thinking in terms of instrumentation -- getting a sound, how that sound interacted with others, etc. In the old days, I wrote music for and played gigs with progressive metal bands. I was used to writing for specific instruments. I left the music scene for a long time, played acoustic guitar exclusively for fifteen years, mostly as a way of staying connected with my spirit. So as I built my home studio and started exploring electronica, my inclination was to write for instruments -- that is, to develop a pallet of sounds and write parts for those sounds. When I started thinking in terms of space, all sorts of things opened up: placement, rhythms that move around, more isoteric transitions (for example the use of whole tones as a "bed" and a way to link keys). From this I started to think more about the song in terms of depth, emotion, progression. For example, right after Points Between, I wrote Duende. It started with the idea of a radio station that would broadcast spirits from another world. So my initial concept was a sound that would come through clear, then distort, with melodies that would be eerie and other worldly, but as it developed, I started thinking a lot about Lorca's concept of the Duende. And the song moved more in a direction that explored that spirit of darkness that also "enlivens". So it became an amalgam of ideas about possession, will, artistic integrity, inspiration, along with the overarching concept of the supernatural and the repulsion, horror, and fascination such an event would entail.
John: Where do you find inspiration for the concepts for your songs? Is there a fertile ground?
Steve: Life, I guess. I read a lot of essays, and I read and write poetry. I love paintings, go to a lot of art galleries and such. The key, for me, is to approach all creativity with the kind of "concentration" that Jane Hirshfield writes about in Nine Gates. That aside from the craft elements, an artist is constantly listening for things that inform his or her art. I think of it as a kind of completely honest and open creativity. Remaining open-minded about the world and its ability to change you.
John: So where does this road lead for you? What next for Steve Mueske?
Steve: I don't know, really. I have four more electronica pieces I hope to finish in the next six months. (note: since this interview took place, one additional piece, "The Long Goodbye," which is an emotional response to the passing of my father-in-law, who suffered from Lewey Body Disease, has been added to the master and will be included in future releases of Hello Cruel World). I'm also working on a few metal pieces, a few more experimental pieces, and a few short orchestral pieces. I just want to be open, and hopefully that openness will manifest itself in my music. I do hope to incorporate more audio into more work. That is, guitar, voices, and such. I really want to find a way to hybridize many different forms of music and incorporate them into my personal style.
John: Can you take us through your writing/recording process?
Steve: I have an exploratory time where I load various instruments, plug-ins and such and just play around with sounds. I usually record snippets of these explorations as a kind of mental shorthand. Sometimes I'll use these audio files whole, but usually I'll chop up parts of them to use, whether triggered by a sampler or short segments to layer with other sounds. Other times, I just get a sound or an idea and start working with MIDI. Once I get more than 30 seconds or so I know it's more than just a kind of “what if I did this?" The impetus to start on an actual song usually starts with a line of melody or a rhythm - sometimes it's just a cool sound. But I try to write music the way I write poetry, by letting the object define itself -- in this case, the song. I have some rules, such as, if a sound is used once it must be used again somewhere in the piece. If a motif appears again later in a song, it's usually in a different key, or the same motif in a different mode. I think of composition more like elements of art more than verse, chorus, etc. Foreground, background, colors, shapes, repetitive elements, etc.
At some point, I get stuck. Then I try to figure out how to get unstuck -- this usually means working forward and backward from a spot, trying different things. I have a real firm belief in composing with equal parts intention and happy accident. As the song gets longer and longer, I have anywhere from ten to twenty project files that I use to render files, cut, resequence, etc. Sort of like branches on a tree. Each song is radically different in terms of actual approach, but these things are pretty similar in all my songs. They're done in different hosts -- ranging from Sonar to Renoise to Reaper to Reason. Sometimes I port them from host to host. Usually, though, when the song is just about done, I export all of the tracks and mix them in Reaper. Reaper has the most sophisticated abilities for routing and mixing, I think, in a DAW.
John: So your writing and recording processes are completely integrated. Songs evolve from sounds and the introduction of melody. I know this album is instrumental, do lyrics figure anywher in your plans? If so how do you see that fitting with your process?
Steve: This question comes up quite a bit. I'm torn about this. I started out doing all instrumental tracks because a.) the bulk of creative time is, of necessity, between 10 PM and 3 AM. and b.) because I like the way instrumental songs open up my imagination. But, as a practicing poet, I love words and the sounds of words. I definitely see integrating not only vocals and lyrics but spoken word, vocalizations, and more "acoustic" and natural instruments. I'm really interested in exploring these in ways that aren't commonly done. But I also don't want to work myself into a box or corner. I keep telling myself "No rules." But that's more a working paradigm than a practicality.
So, I guess what I need to say is "it's a ride and I plan on seeing where it takes me."
John: What is your current recording set up?
Steve: I have two audio cards, an EWS88MT and an EMU 1212M. My monitors were recently upgraded to Adam A7s. I have a 77 key Korg MIDI controller and a Behringer B2000 (which I use primarily for recording parameter automation). I also have a Korg D1200 MKII harddisc recorder. All of my synth sounds are generated from virtual plug-ins. I have a number of samplers, including Kontakt 2, Halion 3, and of course the samplers in Reason. I have several hundred synthesizer plugins as well as DSP effects that cover all the bases - compressors, limiters, modulation effects, signal destruction effects, etc. For hosts I have Sonar, Cubase, Reaper, Renoise, Project 5, and a few others. I use Wavelab for a lot of independent wav manipulation. I also started using a wonderful wav editor in the form of a VST plug-in called Edison. I have 2 7-string guitars, one of which I am currently converting to fretless, a 5-string bass, and 2 acoustics. I also use a variety of Line 6 products, including X3 live and a 2 x12 combo which was a precursor of the Vetta series.
John: You released your record on your own. That's a massive challenge and a lot to learn about. What would you say have been your biggest challenges?
Steve: The physical production of it was pretty straightforward. I knew what I needed to do on my end, so as I prepared my songs for final rendering, I shopped around for a good mastering engineer and a manufacturing operation that would allow me to do all the design work so that my only expenses were the mastering and the physical production of the CDs.
The hard part, the thing I don't know anything about, really, is trying to get it out there so that people know that it is available. The whole "self-promotion" thing, which at best is distasteful to me and at worst time-intensive and distracting.
John: Ah marketing. The black art. What have you found the most successful promotion so far?
Steve: I haven't. I wrote targeted PRs to places I thought would be most interested -- my hometown newspaper, local radio stations, the same in places where I grew up.
Not a peep. I followed up with phone calls that weren't returned. I sent copies of the CD to CDBaby, and it's now listed there as well as digital downloads from iTunes, Amazon and a few others. My next goal is to get it into the hands of music supervisors, talent agencies and so forth. I have a few contacts that I'm following up with. Right now, I'm sort of just moving on musically, and trying to figure out what I can do to get music people to listen to what I have to offer. I believe that I have a good CD and I have a lot to offer, but it's sort of a one man against the world kind of thing. And I'd rather just make music.
John: How do you see yourself developing as an artist? Do you have a clear vision? Goals?
Steve: It's sort of a mixed bag. I think every artist that's serious about their music has to believe that they have something special, something different, unique. I'm no exception. I mean I don't have a big head about it, but I do invest every part of me in the music. I do the best job I can, and I'm very serious about it. As far as a "long-range" goal. No, not really. I have no desire to become a star. Pragmatically, I'd like to do game soundtracks, independent films -- that sort of thing. On a personal level, I hope to continue to grow and learn more about digital sound manipulation and keep improving, making the textures more interesting, and hopefully develop enough interest that I can continue to do this for the rest of my life.
John: Is there room for live performance?
Steve: That's a great question. I used to gig a lot twenty years ago. Now that I've been doing the one-man thing for the past six years or so, I've actually had promoters asking me to play some pretty major clubs. In each case, I've had to say that I was humbled and flattered by the attention but the way I work and the resources I have available makes live performance impossible. There may come a time when I'll have to seriously consider doing this, but I just don't think that with the level of complexity in the music that it would be possible as a solo artist. However, I have been talking about collaborating on a few performance-specific pieces with others. I have a playwright friend and we are discussing doing a fifteen to twenty minute performance piece for a major electronica festival.
John: Would you collaborate with other writers/musicians on the internet?
Steve: I would love to, but they'd have to realize that it would involve a dialectic and a serious time commitment. Another friend of mine, who currently scores for Anime and TV commercials, have been discussing collaborating on a few metal pieces. That's nostalgia, mostly, but I know some frighteningly talented musicians and I would love to get into a situation where there is genuine give and take. In the past, I wrote every part for every musician, so I've never been in a true collaborative situation.
John: How does the internet feature in your plans?
Steve: I'm not sure. I don't feel that I have the savvy, or money, to really take advantage of what's available. Plus there's the whole "I hate self-promotion" aspect. I try to participate in a number of forums -- build community, make friends, get and give advice. All I really want, to be honest, is to create an environment where I can make a living doing this. I don't need riches or fame. Just the ability to pay the bills so that I can spend more time in the studio.
John: What was the first record you bought?
Steve: This is going to be scary, but I can't remember the first actual record. I started back when 8-tracks were the thing. My first 8-track was Kiss Alive. I spent all my allowance on music. My parents had this old Zenith portable, and I played every record we had until there were grooves scratched into the disc. Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Tchaichovsky, Brahms.
John: What was the last album you bought?
Steve: I assume, now, you mean CD? The last CD I bought was Angelic Repercussions, a series of improvs by Trey Gunn, Robert Fripp and Bill Seifert. I subscribe to music services like Napster, so my MP3 player is always full. I have everything from Mouse on Mars to Symohony X to Danger Doom.
John: What was your worst fashion disaster?
Steve: I'm the worst person to ask that. I'm a blue jeans and T-shirt kind of guy. In the winter I also wear a three-quarter length black leather jacket and black leather ascot. Pretty simple guy, really. But when I was a kid, my mother used to make my clothes from fabrics she'd by at fabric outlets. I love her, but she made some really outrageous things and I was laughed at a lot in school. I suppose this is why I dress so plain now.
John: What is your proudest musical achievement?
Steve: Right now, it's my CD. It's the first time in my life where I can say I tried my best and was happy with the results. I was pretty excited when my first full-length collection of poems came out, but now I hate that book. Maybe in a year I'll feel the same way about the CD. The most fun I've had, though, was playing in the Waukesha Expo Center in Wisconsin (USA). Four bands, a coliseum, Halloween. Hard to go wrong. I also played a guitar festival in Chicago and a few other memorable gigs that I'll cherish forever. You know, it's difficult for me, but I'm gradually learning to take some pride in accompishments. My family was very protestant, and I guess some of that -- although I'd characterize myself as agnostic -- is ingrained. Pride being a sin, etc. I used to see this as hubris. But taking some pleasure in accomplishing things is actually an emotionally healthy thing to do.
John: What was your first band?
Steve: My first serious band was Raven Bitch.
John: How do you keep in contact with your fans?
Steve: You know, I don't really like that nomenclature. I'm not fond of the distance and the relationship that implies. I have a facebook group to keep friends and people who are interested in my music informed about what I do. I have sites on Virb and MySpace. In the future, I'll probably have an opt-in list or somesuch on my website. But right now, people can go to my website (http://stevemueske.com). I have a blog there. I always respond to emails and board PMs.
John: Thanks for agreeing to be interviewed!
Steve: Thank you very much, John, for this opportunity. Thanks also for a wonderful forum. Songstuff is an amazing resource for musicians and songwriters.
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About John Moxey
John Moxey started Songstuff in 2000 and is an active songwriter and musician as well as a regular Songstuff author of music and music technology related articles and member of the site crew.
John started playing his first instrument (piano) in 1971, and has been writing songs since 1979. He began playing his now main instrument, the guitar, in 1982. In 1986 he finished training as a studio engineer and in 1997 obtained an Honours Degree in Electronics and Music from the University of Glasgow.
John now plays several other instruments including mandolin, violin, bagpipes, didgeridoo, bodhran, and vocals.
John has a broad range of performance experience from choirs and orchestras to pipe bands. He has sung for, played in and written for various bands, and produced songs across a number of genres.
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