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Name: Massimo Discepoli
Nationality: Italian
Occupation: Drummer, electronic composer, teacher, producer
Recent Release: Massimo Discepoli's An Unusual Way to Disappear is out via DOF.
Recommendations: Steve Reich - Music for 18 Musicians (one of the most incredible pieces of music ever made. Transcendental)
David Foster Wallace - Infinite Jest (not just a book, but an experience)

If you enjoyed this interview with Massimo Discepoli and would like to find out more about his work, visit his official website. He is also on Instagram, Facebook, and twitter.



When did you start writing / producing / playing music and what or who were your early passions and influences? What was it about music and / or sound that drew you to it?

I started around the early 90s, my cousin played guitar and I started playing drums. We were around 12-13 years old, I had self-built drums and didn't know much about what I was doing, but we were trying to play songs ranging from the Beatles to Metallica (laughs). However, the drums had always been my favorite instrument from an early age, becoming my profession (playing and teaching) over the years.

Later, in addition to the rhythmic element of music, I began to be attracted more strongly by the melodic, harmonic and compositional ones; I began playing other instruments (mostly piano and bass) and around 2006 I started composing my first songs, probably also as an outlet in a period when I was very busy as a drummer, playing many gigs.

When I listen to music, I see shapes, objects and colors. What happens in your body when you're listening and how does it influence your approach to creativity?

When I listen to or create music I tend to see images.

This is probably related to my hobby as landscape and nature photographer, since I often prefer to listen and create music with expanded and vast atmospheres, just like in front of a large landscape.

How would you describe your development as an artist in terms of interests and challenges, searching for a personal voice, as well as breakthroughs?

I would say that I went from a rather technical approach towards music (a common thing among many drummers) in my first years in which I was playing, to then gradually come to appreciate more simple melodies, refined harmonies and the search for particular sounds.

So I started listening to ambient, electronic, songwriting and in general music where often the drums are not even present.

Tell me a bit about your sense of identity and how it influences both your preferences as a listener and your creativity as an artist, please.

I am a rather reserved person and I love to have my spaces of tranquility, so my music (both the one I listen to and the one I create) most of the time has the characteristic of bringing me to other (often abstracts) places, to favor the imagination, to create suggestions and atmospheres.

However this is not true 100% of the time, there are times when I like to let myself go to something more direct and strong, both as listening and as compositions.

What, would you say, are the key ideas behind your approach to music and art?

In everything I create I always try to insert an element of communication, something that speaks to the listener; at the same time I want there to be something recognizable, original: this is why I like to experiment, in order to obtain something new that I might never have reached if I had limited myself to taking the first path I found myself in front of.

To me experimentation is, however, always a first step to then create something communicative anyway.

How would you describe your views on topics like originality and innovation versus perfection and timelessness in music? Are you interested in a "music of the future" or "continuing a tradition"?

Well, I don't know if I'm ambitious enough to create timeless music (laughs).

At the same time, I am not interested in carrying on a tradition, since I do not feel as belonging to a specific musical genre: I listen to the most diverse things, often in a chaotic way, and when I create my music everything merges in unexpected ways, even if I then try however to frame everything in a roughly defined genre, so that everything is coherent.

Let's say I try to create the music that represents myself in this moment, while keeping it open and abstract enough so that it is not too tied to that moment.

Over the course of your development, what have been your most important instruments and tools - and what are the most promising strategies for working with them?

Drums have been (and still are) my main instrument, influencing (probably more than I can think of) my approach to music. Next to it I would add instruments such as bass and piano, but used in a much less technical and strictly functional way.

But what really allowed me to become independent and to be able to make music autonomously was the technology: the computer, with samplers, synths, algorithmic generators etc ... gave me the freedom to work independently on my music. Even in this case, however, I would speak of a more functional than technical approach, given that I use these means in a simple way, relying a lot on chance and experimentation, trying to get unexpected ideas to be developed then more thoroughly.

It is rare that I start with the goal to get a certain sound or a certain pattern, I like vice versa to move for a while without direction and then see what begins to define itself.

Take us through a day in your life, from a possible morning routine through to your work, please.

I go to my studio every morning, and the time is divided between practicing the instruments and working on new pieces, according to the priority of the period; I’m often jotting some new ideas, which could end up on a new record or abandoned and taken up again long after (or even never (laughs)). In the afternoons I usually teach drums, if I don't teach I keep working on new music or I prepare myself if I have some gigs.

But there are also days where I don't go to the studio, and instead I go out for a run or taking pictures, or simply because I feel the need to disconnect from music and dedicate myself to something else.

Usually then I come back more inspired.

Could you describe your creative process on the basis of a piece, live performance or album that's particularly dear to you, please?

My latest album An unusual way to disappear is an emblematic example of my creative process in recent times: it is based on the use of melodic and rhythmic loops, even very long ones. These loops, however, are of different lengths, which therefore, repeating together, never move in sync (or they do only after a long time), thus creating a continuous and always variable sound flow, generating different melodic fragments each time.

The drums move freely in this sound flow, with grooves that, rather than respecting the almost non-existent time signatures, try to highlight some of the various reference points (e.g. accents, rhythms or melodies) that are created continuously. The complexity that is created with the loops of different lengths means that, when I record the drums, I find myself having to play in a context of almost improvised music, never knowing exactly where the next accent or phrase will fall.

It is a way of composing that is very much based on chance, as I said before: once the various loops have been put together, a lot of time is spent listening to the result, until a meaning emerges in the sound flow. At that point I’m tweaking the single loops, adding, removing or changing notes, using effects etc ... in order to bring out even more the sense of the song

Listening can be both a solitary and a communal activity. Likewise, creating music can be private or collaborative. Can you talk about your preferences in this regard and how these constellations influence creative results?

When someone asks me to collaborate, if I believe there may be a common vision, I gladly accept.

It is not very frequent that I actively seek collaborations, as I’m very involved in my own music. Also, it seems to me that the habit of collaborating, very widespread in this type of music, sometimes leads to somewhat generic results, where quantity is preferred over to quality, just to have "one more record" to promote. This often results in improvisations without much direction, which even the musicians involved after a while forget they have done (laughs).

But if the musicians already have previous common experiences (or there is that "something" that makes everything work perfectly right away) the results can be excellent, giving birth to something totally new for all musicians involved (I’m thinking about my album with double bassist Daniel Barbiero).

[Read our interview with Daniel Barbiero]

How do your work and your creativity relate to the world and what is the role of music in society?

I think that music can have many roles in society, ranging from the extremes of total evasion up to maximum social / political commitment.

Personally, I don't think I have ever awarded a particularly important message to my music; on the contrary I have always sought abstraction and the creation of images in the listener, as well as trying to stimulate the intellectual side and convey some sense of  "beauty", also avoiding to insert, at least voluntarily, specific references to a certain period, place or situation.

But it is always possible that someone interprets what I do differently, and if by doing so they can improve themselves or what is around them, I can only be happy.

Art can be a way of dealing with the big topics in life: Life, loss, death, love, pain, and many more. In which way and on which occasions has music - both your own or that of others - contributed to your understanding of these questions?

Well, I don't know if music can really contribute to “understanding” those great themes you mentioned, to which the greatest thinkers throughout the history of mankind have dedicated themselves without ever reaching a definitive answer! (laughs).

Obviously music has the great power to influence the mood of those who listen to it, and for me too, as for many others, it is useful not so much to understand, but to better deal with difficult periods.

Above all I like the evocative power of music to bring you back to specific moments in your life, when in a certain period you often listened to that specific song, and therefore to create that bittersweet melancholy: I think it is one of the most personal experiences you can have with music

How do you see the connection between music and science and what can these two fields reveal about each other?  

Obviously music is based on mathematics and physics, especially when it comes to electronic instruments, processing etc ...

From my point of view, however, I prefer to use these tools without asking myself too many questions about what's under the hood (laugh), preferring a more intuitive and less theoretical approach, indeed very often taking advantage of “happy accidents” to get new ideas.

Creativity can reach many different corners of our lives. 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?

By now, for any human activity, even the most trivial, we can find someone who has taken it to incredible levels, from a technical and / or creative point of view. We try to make a decent coffee in the morning at home, but there are baristas who, in addition to making you a great coffee, can draw beautiful images on it with milk (laugh).

So it is always about talent, there are those who express it with music and those who express it with coffee or other means; each medium, however, in addition to expressing the talent and creativity of the artist, has its own specificities when there is an audience or a user.

Personally I think that music is one of the most direct and immediate means to create inner sensations and images; I said "create" and not "transmit" because music (at least the instrumental variety) is abstract, and therefore it is difficult for an author to convey his vision, in a precise way, to the listener.

It is much more likely that the listener himself will create his own image and meaning from your music.

Music is vibration in the air, captured by our ear drums. From your perspective as a creator and listener, do you have an explanation how it able to transmit such diverse and potentially deep messages?

I think that music moves on still mysterious paths in our brain; maybe one day science will come to the point of being able to create a complete map of correspondences between frequencies, intervals, rhythms etc ... and the areas of the brain and the sensations respectively activated

But for now I like to think that every person who listens to a new a piece of music will create its meanings and feelings based on their listening experience throughout their life up to that point. For example by recognizing in a specific song a melodic fragment, a sound or anything else that is present in some other piece they listened to years before, thus evoking the sensations they felt at the time.