Part 2

Sound, song, and rhythm are all around us, from animal noises to the waves of the ocean. What, if any, are some of the most moving experiences you've had with these non-human-made sounds? In how far would you describe them as “musical”?

Here in Seattle I hear the sound of crows’ wings beating nearly every day, it is extremely nourishing. Birds are musical creatures even apart from their singing, the air is their medium.

Totally wonderful that we share our love of song with so many species. Favorites are ravens, frogs, red wing blackbirds, seals, purple finches, wrens, and barking deer. I’m also a big fan of insects.
Once I camped near a river that ran so furiously that you could hear rocks tumbling around in it.

From very deep/high/loud/quiet sounds to very long/short/simple/complex compositions - are there extremes in music you feel drawn to and what response do they elicit?

The first tour I did as a member of Earth was with Wolves in the Throne Room. A friend came who was unfamiliar with black metal and I loved her observation: “it’s so fast that it’s slow”. Or when the lightest things are very heavy, for instance music for traditional Japanese theater often has few notes are played but can feel denser than the sludgiest doom metal. That kind of full circle is thrilling.

My attraction to expansive timbral and dynamic palettes shows up in both my acoustic and amplified sounds. I had conventional music training, which I loved, but I’m an explorer and the idea of a binary right-and-wrong was instruments “should” sound, or how music “should” be constructed didn’t work for me. I like the broadest possible sweep.

From symphonies and traditional verse/chorus-songs to linear techno tracks and free jazz, there are myriads ways to structure a piece of music. Which approaches work best for you – and why?

I love getting a sense of different ideas of structure. It’s a true cliche about music cultivating empathy, I think that kind of decoding is one of the deepest ways it happens. Ideas are transmitted in ways that defy expectation, we can shut them out or make the effort to decode and understand them. Over time we sometimes decode them in spite of ourselves.

I’m happiest when I’m challenged, learning and scrambling desperately to figure out what I’m doing. As a result, I’ve lived a broad and adventurous musical life.

Could you describe your creative process on the basis of one of your pieces, live performances or albums that's particularly dear to you, please?

Often music pops into my head fully realized. A lot of the music on my album “High and Low” was recorded at a concert I did as a memorial for my friend Geneviève Castrée. While I was playing a show in Toulouse the sound and feeling of that show came to me very clearly as a sudden epiphany.

The memorial concert also included a duo set with my guitarist friend Dylan Carlson (also part of that same original vision) part of which I released as an album, “Feral Angel”. Both sets were improvised with clarity of focus about the feel and sound, although I don’t think Dylan and I ever discussed what we were going to do.

Sometimes, science and art converge in unexpected ways. Do you conduct “experiments” or make use of scientific insights when you're making music?

I’ve read a lot of books about acoustics and that’s been extremely useful, although I don’t think about that information consciously while I’m playing. Having a sense of what sounds are made of and how they move informs my work constantly.

How does the way you make music reflect the way you live your life? Can we learn lessons about life by understanding music on a deeper level?

Absolutely. It’s hard to know where to begin with describing this, I would be an entirely different person without my immersive involvement with music.
The strongest lessons for me have to do with improvisation, collaboration, openness to information, curiosity, invention, wit, and creation and acceptance of chaos along with a willingness to work with it playfully.

Do you feel as though writing or performing a piece of music is inherently different from something like making a great cup of coffee? What do you express through music that you couldn't or wouldn't in more 'mundane' tasks?

The analogy with making food and drink runs deep, I often think of taste in terms of timbre, density, overtones, etc. Coffee making in particular is something that I don’t think of as mundane. Cooking and music have skill, inventiveness, responsiveness, generosity and spiritual connection in common, among many other things.

Everyone’s got their preferred medium, I don’t think music’s particularly elevated vs. other forms of craft or expression. I think you could pack the same kind of intention, focus and discipline into nearly any kind of generative work.

Every time I listen to "Albedo 0.39" by Vangelis, I choke up. But the lyrics are made up of nothing but numbers and values. Do you, too, have a song or piece of music that affects you in a way that you can't explain?

Oh yes, for sure there are a lot of them. One or two Bob Dylan songs land like that for me, of course he is a great song writer but there are couple that render me helpless in a way that doesn’t make sense.

If you could make a wish for the future – what are developments in music you would like to see and hear?

My wish for myself and everyone else learning music is to find a good balance between working to get better and refine skills while treating ourselves with loving acceptance. It’s one of the infinite number of excellent lessons/practices of music making.

I play and go to and enjoy a lot of amplified and/or electronic shows and love them but would be happy if there were also more totally acoustic shows. Amplified music’s great but it’s nice to experience the full dynamic range, and we all could use more opportunities for nervous system cooldown. As I mentioned earlier: it’s nice to get the full dynamic sweep.