We celebrate sonic geeks like The Apples in Stereo’s Robert Schneider whenever possible. It’s hard not to when he pounds out punchy pop albums like Travellers in Space and Time, out Tuesday.
In the following e-mail interview, the math-smart singer and musical tinkerer changed our mind (slightly) about Auto-Tune’s lameness, while geeking out over The Beach Boys’ concept albums, Elijah Wood, Elephant 6, his new non-Pythagorean music scale and much more.
Wired.com: Travellers in Space and Time is a spacey blast of digital pop. But is it Auto-Tuned? I hear the kids are crazy for that these days.
Robert Schneider: Actually, the robot voice is a vintage Roland vocoder synth, owned by Bryce Goggin at Trout Studio, doubling the lead vocals at times. And also doubling the backing vocals on most of the record. But not Auto-Tune.
Wired.com: That’s a relief.
Schneider: However, we have always used a lot of analog synths in The Apples in Stereo, and the tuning is often insane on those things. I don’t just mean that they drift out of tune with the other instruments, although they do. But some of them, like this old Korg synth John Ferguson owns that we used on almost every song, aren’t even in relative tune from key to key.
Wired.com I don’t like where this is going.
Schneider: Auto-Tune is amazing for correcting things like that, and we used it a lot on the electronics on Travellers in Space and Time. And Auto-Tune is great for keeping bass guitar, which might have intonation issues or pitch that depends on how hard you pluck or press the string in tune with other more precise instruments that double up the bass line like bass piano or synthesizer, which are on every song. Undesired tuning issues in the bass range make me feel physically agitated.
Wired.com: So how did you hook up with the illustrious Dr. Elijah Wood, Dr. Schneider?
Schneider: Elijah is superfun, a really nice, gentle person. And he’s also hilarious, smart and passionate about music, with an encyclopedic knowledge of obscure shit.
Wired.com: Your chemistry, pardon the pun, was kickass on that fake science show Exploring the Universe (viewable above), and its companion video for “Dance Floor” (viewable below).
Schneider: I loved working with him on that. It was a blast. We just tried to be weird, and laughed through the whole thing. I am not used to having to remember lines, but it happened easily once we got into it, having fun playing make-believe.
Wired.com: Word on the street is you’ve invented a non-Pythagorean musical scale.
Schneider:: The theory is based on logarithms, and it’s something that I am very excited about. I have a lot of new ideas about it, and understand it so much better than I did when I wrote it. Playing with a scale tuned to logarithms reveals different mathematical relationships to the ear, than are revealed in the usual chromatic scale. There is the possibility, due to the special way logarithms add together, of composing purposefully with the beat frequencies and overtones. They are often also notes in the scale, which just is a beautiful and very futuristic idea to me, to have this extra layer of meaning and information in the music to play with. That’s just unavailable in the chromatic scale.
Wired.com: How has the experiment turned out so far?
Schneider: I’ve just scratched the surface of its potential. Most of the theory is only in my imagination. I really want to follow up more on it in the future, when I am older and I don’t have so much hustle-bustle going on. But there’s a song on Travellers called “CPU,” where instrumental passages are in the non-Pythagorean scale. But the singing is still chromatic. That turned out both raw and futuristic.
Wired.com: Did you conceive of it in another dimension? The tones sound irrational and alien.
Schneider: I delight in catchy, familiar pop, but I also love the idea of unusual harmonies and melodies. Noise, sound effects, musique concrète and the like. They tickle my ears and make my brain feel good.
Wired.com: Wait, are you an alien?
Schneider: I shouldn’t reveal too much, aside from noting that I seriously do own multiple space suits. And the whole band will be wearing futuristic uniforms by Rebecca Turbow on our tour. We totally look like a spaceship crew from the future.
Wired.com: Has sci-fi and tech played a major role in The Apples in Stereo’s work?
Schneider: Our records have been really driven by technology, and by a rejection of studio technology. I’ve recorded on 4-track cassette and reel-to-reel, 8-track reel-to-reel and a 16-track 2-inch machine, disgusted with contemporary studio sounds and doing it all myself. Now I’m using computers and tape machines in sympathy, in love with the portability and malleability of the digital format. But also with the warmth and fuzz of antique gear.
Wired.com: You swing both ways, is what you’re saying.
Schneider: I love to record, when it comes down to it. And I want to be as free from conscious thought and technical struggle as possible, and computers can be way better than tape machines for that. On the other hand, recording to tape gets a good sound almost automatically, with much less work.
Wired.com: How do you think digital has changed the music industry? Do you see a migration away from discs and vinyl?
Schneider: Our world changes constantly. The question in 20 years might be whether biochemical brain signals sound better than electrical ones or something. And maybe it will all be free. But I think it isn’t important how the music gets from the mind of the artist into the mind of the listener, just that the artists are creating and people are supporting them. I would hate to see the physical artifacts disappear, especially vinyl records that can be listened to even without electricity, by just dropping the needle and turning the thing with your finger. That might be the way people of the future hear music from our era, if their energy sources are depleted in some post-apocalyptic Dark Age.
Neutral Milk Hotel's In the Aeroplane Over the Sea. Snubbed by Wired.com!
Image courtesy Merge RecordsWired.com: You’re scaring me, so let’s talk about the past. The Elephant 6 collective, which you co-founded, has made many brilliant albums. Any thoughts on where the collective stands, or sits, in the history books?
Schneider: Elephant 6 is my circle of best friends, and my social scene going back to being a little kid. But it’s hard to think of a legacy. We’re all still pretty young, and I definitely see potential for brilliant new art, better than what has been done so far. For my part, I feel that I’m only just becoming competent at most of the things I want to do in my life, like singing, playing piano and guitar, composing and mathematics.
Wired.com: I mentioned it because we put together our list of favorite concept albums, and got hazed because we didn’t include Neutral Milk Hotel’s In the Aeroplane Over the Sea. We had to put together a reader-generated concept-album list to make up for it.
Schneider: Well, as for The Apples in stereo, I mean, they are all concept albums to a large degree. Not story-line concept albums like Smile or Tommy, except for our first album Wallpaper Reverie and the new record. I like albums with a cohesion in flow and sound, like Sgt. Pepper’s or Pet Sounds, with songs that flow together through a sense of motion carrying you from one song to the next. As opposed to a pause between every song, unless that is part of the concept.
Wired.com: What’s the concept behind Travellers in Space and Time?
Schneider: That we’re making music for our audience in the future. It took us into sci-fi territory. ‘Is it futuristic?’ was our main criterion in the studio. But other Elephant 6 bands like The Olivia Tremor Control, Neutral Milk Hotel and Elf Power are more overtly conceptual, and have pulled it off excellently. But we’re all pretty obscure bands.
Wired.com: That’s OK, we also got hazed for snubbing big shots like The Beach Boys. Is Pet Sounds the greatest concept album ever made?
Schneider: I would say the finished version of Smile , not Pet Sounds, would take first place if I was allowed to revise the list. That’s based on the godlike beauty of the interwoven musical parts, which is unlike anything else in pop music, and far beyond Pet Sounds from a conceptual standpoint. It is so psychedelic. The thematic continuity of the music and lyrics blows my mind, and makes me believe in something: Brian Wilson.
Wired.com: I could be wrong, but I’m not sure Generation Xbox even knows who he is.
Schneider: Smile ‘s story deeply inspired me when I was younger. I really can’t describe how much Smile had to do with starting The Apples in Stereo, and Elephant 6. The Beach Boys, and especially the myth of Smile, was very much my religion back then. Yet it was a tragic story, like the myth of Icarus: It’s impossible to reach that height. Which is pretty discouraging; I mean, if Brian Wilson couldn’t do it, and it destroyed him, then who could pull it off?
Wired.com: Wilson’s Smile eventually came back. Just 37 years later. The lesson?
Schneider: He rewired himself. He picked up this inspired music from his youth that was just left there, hanging in time. The best songs of his most productive period. Everyone wrote it off as lost and destroyed, but apparently Brian still considered it a work-in-progress, and he rewired. He got Van Dyke Parks on board and they finished what is by far the most elegant, perfect, psychedelic composition released in my lifetime. Nothing I’ve ever heard compares to the climax of “Surf’s Up.” Nothing. The most inspiring fucking thing in the world.
Jethro Tull's record-long song Thick as a Brick was a concept-album hit with Schneider and Wired.com's faithful.
Image courtesy Capitol RecordsWired.com: Any other must-have concept albums?
Schneider: Song Cycle by Van Dyke Parks would probably be my second-place choice. It’s a perfect concept album in every conceivable way, and really did pull off what Smile set out to do, minus the pop songs and plus massive amounts of orchestral weirdness. Jethro Tull’s Thick as a Brick is also pretty amazing; it’s one long song on both sides of the LP that twists with flutes and fuzz guitars. There is musical continuity throughout, and a story line, although I can’t remember what it is any more. Jethro Tull’s Aqualung is also really good, and inspired me to write and record my first real song, “The Greatest Passion Play,” on 4-track when I was 15. Which was eight minutes long with all sorts of thematic changes, that took on life, death and religion; it was very pretentious and cute.
Wired.com: That’s usually how haters knock concept albums.
Schneider: I did another concept song when I was 16 called the “Barbeque Suite,” after I got into Sgt. Pepper’s. It was a flowing, four-part song that was catchy and quite psychedelic, with backwards rhythms and fuzz guitar. I would stand by it to this day. But I don’t really love story-line concept albums usually, like rock operas and such, just on principle. It seems a little forced, like writing a musical or a TV jingle. How can a truly perfect, meaningful pop song come out of such a rigid framework?
Wired.com: You tell us.
Schneider: It should come in a dream, unconnected to anything else.
