Ben Neill is using a schizophrenic trumpet to create art music for the people.
A regular face in New York's experimental music scene, trumpeter Ben Neill has worked with sound sculptors of the past and future, including John Cage, Robert Moog, DJ Spooky, and minimalist La Monte Young. As music curator of The Kitchen performance space, Neill has also brought international luminaries such as Jaron Lanier, Jorge Reyes, and FSOL to the Big Apple. But Neill is foremost a musician, and his recent Triptycal CD topped many critics' polls with its smooth blend of trippy ambience and groovy jazz - a '90s update of Miles Davis cool. After launching his solo career, classically trained Neill designed the mutantrumpet, an instrument that looks like the spawn of another musical world.
Wired: So what is a mutantrumpet?
Neill:
It's an electro-acoustic instrument I developed that has two sets of valves and three bells, one of which is attached to a trombone slide for a glissando effect.
It also has an interface to a computer program that uses the notes of the trumpet to trigger different sounds and sequences, and allows me to modify the sounds using controllers. I use different mutes in the bells to shift between open and muted sounds to provide a middle ground between electronic and acoustic music. The instrument enables me to play in between all these different sounds.
And you do all this in real time?
Some elements of the music are preprogrammed, but I'm always manipulating a few elements live. Different notes trigger musical sequences I can manipulate as they're playing. The instrument is also tied in to a MIDI-controlled slide-projection system so that triggering a sound sequence also controls the playing of the projectors.
What inspired you to create this thing?
I wanted an instrument that gave me the capability to project multiple voices. I got started by sticking trumpet parts together and then worked with some instrument builders to come up with a custom-fabricated design. It's schizophrenic, but adding an electronic component expands a conventional wind instrument into a more multifaceted thing.
What role can technology play in traditionally nontechnological instruments?
With my system, I was trying to use the computer as a kind of mediator. It adds a level of imperfection. When I'm activating sounds from the trumpet, or controlling elements set off by my playing dynamic, there's a random element involved. It's different every time. That's something I get from art music: the idea that you don't just hear a melody in your head and say, OK, this is what I want. Rather, you set something in motion, and you can't foresee all the details. Taking computer music beyond the realm of a strictly quantized beat is what makes it swing.
Those imperfections are what create style!
Right. It's akin to what happens in nature: chaotic behavior occurs within a system of regular patterns. That's the interplay I'm working with. I'm introducing the irrational into something that tends to work very rationally. I'm trying to get the thing to breathe more.
So much "art music" seems ostracizing, as if it were designed to be inaccessible.
No question about it. Classical music is dead. Even The New York Times has pronounced it! [Laughs.] But I think we're at a turning point. If you look at musical traditions outside of Western culture, you see that art music is often integrated into people's daily lives. During the 20th century, art music in the West became something that was primarily about research and development - an experimental branch that only a few specialized people can understand.
What about the idea that we're supposed to have art as a part of our everyday lives?
Well, a lot of older models of spiritual enlightenment - like organized religion - seem to be playing themselves out. Yet people still need some kind of outlet for meditating on the mysterious or unexplainable aspects of life. We're still in the dark, even with our new machines. I think that we're going to see more people delving into alternate tunings and getting beyond the Western equal-tempered scale. I like the idea that art can serve as a model for how things can work in society.
What do you imagine 21st-century music will sound like?
I think it's going to be more Dionysian - more geared toward visceral experience. If you look back at 20th-century art, for the most part, it's pretty Apollonian. That has to do with the rise of science and the backlash against the expressive ideas of the 19th century. I think we're going to see things turn more experiential and physical while remaining informed by the scientific, rational framework that developed during this century.
What will be avant-garde?
Music that manipulates people's means of perception to create some kind of different reality, like in raga, where different modes influence the association of feelings that go along with the music. That's what I imagine will be on the edge: music that integrates many different musical ideas. Not a narrative of one specific style - like jazz or alternative rock - but music that can speak on a broader, more universal level. With the integration of world music traditions, we're going to see everybody using an expanded musical vocabulary.
And the mutantrumpet allows you better access to that?
Oh, absolutely. It's like an expanded state of consciousness. It's as if the trumpet's tripping. It's mutated and grown these different appendages, and it gives me different areas to explore. If I were still playing a conventional trumpet, none of that would be available to me.
I imagine a distinct path emerging between pure acoustic instrumentation and pure electronic gadgetry.
The software and the interface I'm working with are really sophisticated, but I'm trying to keep the music at an experiential level so that people can get into it. I'm not interested in being in a temple for computer experimentation. I want art music to have more of a connection to the street and the physical side of things. I'm very consciously trying to keep it funky.
