An Interview with Nolan Lem

0:00 Nolan Lem we actually do have an anechoic chamber at the department but

0:01 Luke F. Walton Cool.

0:02 Nolan Lem it's

0:02 Luke F. Walton Wow.

0:02 Nolan Lem just too

0:02 Luke F. Walton I've never gotten

0:03 Nolan Lem bad

0:03 Luke F. Walton out

0:03 Nolan Lem of yeah

0:03 Luke F. Walton those.

0:04 Nolan Lem it's oh you've never gone

0:05 Luke F. Walton No,

0:05 Nolan Lem in there oh

0:06 Luke F. Walton I've never gone in an echo chamber. It's for the listeners.

0:08 Nolan Lem yeah

0:08 Luke F. Walton Yeah, it's like the craziest spaces in the universe. Can you talk about what that is? You probably actually even know how the math works. I don't know how the math works. It's just a bunch of little.

0:17 Nolan Lem i don't know if i think that designing them is probably like yeah it's really complex but i mean the general idea is that you just it's a room where there's no acoustic reflections ideally

0:26 Nolan Lem Oh

0:33 Luke F. Walton Good, everybody. Scoobert Doobert here about to have a great conversation with Nolan Lem. So Nolan's work is honestly super hard to describe because it is this combination of engineering, technology, and music. It's immersive. It's large scale. It's interactive. It's all about the networks of sonic machinery, which if that sounds nebulous, you got to listen to the whole podcast because it's so dope.

0:58 Luke F. Walton He's premiered his work and research at a number of different spaces. including the Museum of Modern Art Buenos Aires, and the Danish National Museum of Music. He's got residencies all over the world. He holds degrees in saxophone performance and electrical engineering, and he received his MFA at Columbia University, where he studied at the Computer Music Center.

1:21 Luke F. Walton He received his PhD at Stanford, where he studied at the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics, which is like one of... One of the spots for just like thinking about the way that the brain and music and acoustics all intersect and intertwine. And he's coming to us on this conversation from Copenhagen. Is that even how you say it? That's how uncultured I am. Copenhagen, Denmark.

1:44 Luke F. Walton Nolan is not. Nolan is cultured. Nolan is actually really, he's actually super down to earth and really a great conduit for this kind of conversation about something that is very, you know, high minded and artistic, but also very visceral and human and of this world and able to, you know, kind of sink your teeth into. And so having a foot in both of those worlds as a person.

2:07 Luke F. Walton as a musician as an artist is just so fascinating so i love the conversation i think it opened up new avenues as to what music can even be in my mind before we get to that conversation though i would like to introduce our title sponsor distro kid distro kid makes music distribution fun and easy it actually does with unlimited uploads and artists get to keep 100 of royalties and earnings i use it and you can too if you go to distro kid.com slash vip

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3:02 Nolan Lem there too. And yeah, join the party. So I hope you enjoyed this conversation with Nolan.

3:09 Luke F. Walton What's good, everybody? Welcome back to Love Music More. I'm Scoobert Doobert and I am joined with Nolan Lem. Nolan, welcome to the show.

3:16 Nolan Lem Yeah, thanks so much for having me. Yeah, it's a pleasure to be here and chat with you.

3:20 Luke F. Walton I'm so excited to chat and I mean, you have such an incredibly diverse background of everything that you've done within music, within art and your studies and I just can't wait to kind of dig into your journey and tell the people what you've been up to.

3:35 Nolan Lem Yeah, sounds great. yeah wonderful so

3:37 Luke F. Walton awesome so my first question is so do you started with with jazz was it and then was that like how did you get your your foot in the door just because i want i want to paint the picture of this entire career arc to you know get to where you are today how did it all begin cool

3:50 Nolan Lem i mean i've always been like a huge jazz fan i mean i still am i actually still play it's always been a huge passion so i went to jazz school um university of miami

3:58 Luke F. Walton what sparked the interest what got what caught you at a young age because i think there are still some people that might even be listening to this show that love music but still haven't like understood jazz or have like taken that first step to be like i get it what was what was the thing at a younger age that like hooked you into that world

4:15 Nolan Lem Yeah, I mean, that's a good question. I mean, to be honest, I can't remember a time in my life when I didn't like it.

4:20 Luke F. Walton Okay.

4:21 Nolan Lem I think even from a young age, it was something I was just drawn to and I really loved the sound of saxophone and drums. So at like a really young age, I really wanted to play saxophone or drums. Yeah, I chose saxophone. And yeah,

4:34 Luke F. Walton You started in

4:35 Nolan Lem and alto I was

4:35 Luke F. Walton or tenor? How did you start with saxophone?

4:38 Nolan Lem starting, yeah, an alto,

4:39 Luke F. Walton Cool.

4:39 Nolan Lem as one does,

4:41 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

4:41 Nolan Lem and my mom had to beg. the like one of the local music teachers to take a student that was like much younger than they normally take

4:49 Luke F. Walton Sure.

4:49 Nolan Lem for saxophone so she went in and like really kind of like harassed him to like I think I was I think I was nine nine or ten and I think normally they he take people 12 or older so but I'm really glad she did so then I got like an early start I guess but I played piano since five so I I play a lot of piano as well improvised music in general and I played like rock you know I played other things

5:12 Nolan Lem other things too i played classical piano jazz was really what was doing it for me and yeah that's kind of what led me to go to music school so

5:21 Luke F. Walton Awesome. Great answer. And I love the focus on improvisation. So from the beginning, you were always drawn to that improvisation and writing live and all that kind of stuff. Yes.

5:31 Nolan Lem yeah absolutely i mean i i think maybe i get bored easily or i just add or whatever it is and improvisation is kind of a natural way that i find stimulating and engaging and in a way that uh other music i mean i find engaging as well but just in different ways so yeah

5:47 Luke F. Walton No, I totally appreciate that. So you go to music school, focus on jazz, and then do you go from there to touring and touring in Europe and stuff like that? Or when do you start kind of taking that jump into professional saxophone player?

6:04 Nolan Lem So I stayed in Miami for a year after and was just playing gigs, you know, there's a scene down there for especially for performing musicians and for gigging and whatnot. And then

6:15 Nolan Lem Let's see, you know, I met a lot of people I still collaborate with now when I was down there. And so I'd met some people at the university that I kind of kept in contact with. And then I had actually moved back to Kansas. I'm from Kansas City.

6:28 Luke F. Walton Cool

6:29 Nolan Lem So I moved back there, started going to Italy to play with a group with Joe Raymer, who was at UM as well. And he had moved out there. And just because it was really healthy seen in Italy for jazz, you know, they love jazz.

6:43 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

6:43 Nolan Lem There's all these festivals

6:44 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

6:44 Nolan Lem and stuff and it's just really respected and they and it's like a wonderful culture and everything. So that was really a big part in establishing kind of, I guess, early on an interest in doing stuff abroad.

6:55 Luke F. Walton Cool. Yep.

6:57 Nolan Lem And then we, yeah, we did festivals and then we got signed to Cam Jazz, which is a Italian jazz label. So we made a couple of records with them. But yeah, anyways, in the interim, I had moved back to Kansas. I had actually started going to back to school for electrical engineering because

7:12 Luke F. Walton Cool.

7:12 Nolan Lem I'd kind of started getting into around that same time, I guess more like experimental music, experimental improvised music kind of composition

7:21 Luke F. Walton Yes.

7:21 Nolan Lem with electronics. And then I felt like it was kind of a nice balance between just exploring kind of intellectual curiosities, academic curiosities with kind of things that I could maybe relate to a future in music in some way through things like audio engineering or kind of creative programming in general.

7:40 Luke F. Walton Yes.

7:40 Nolan Lem So, yeah, that's that's kind of what provoked that.

7:44 Luke F. Walton When you go back to school for electrical engineering. And you have that kind of clarity of like, this is what I want out of it. How did you approach your classes? How did you approach kind of like the way you were building your own educational experience for the outcome you were looking for?

7:57 Nolan Lem Yeah, that's a really good question. To be honest, I think there's a component of doing

8:02 Nolan Lem a degree in engineering that's almost like a safety thing because it's it's it is a good degree to have and you know that if you know you need to have a day job or you want to do something that's um you know outside of just making creative work for a living then you have that

8:15 Luke F. Walton Yes.

8:15 Nolan Lem um i felt like it was a nice balance because i think i had known people that were able to kind of get into things in tech you know doing research and development in audio that i felt like was interesting and kind of like a nice balance between the two so

8:28 Luke F. Walton Yes.

8:28 Nolan Lem so

8:28 Luke F. Walton Oh, yes.

8:29 Nolan Lem I just knew going in that if I could finish engineering school that it would just open up a ton of opportunities and

8:34 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

8:34 Nolan Lem especially as someone that has kind of like a music background I think it especially back then it kind of differentiated you from other people that normally have those sorts of roles and

8:43 Luke F. Walton Was it

8:43 Nolan Lem it's in a good way yeah

8:44 Luke F. Walton hard to go from such a right brain to a left brain kind of approach to study in academics?

8:52 Nolan Lem yeah yeah it was hard I mean I think I was always pretty decent at math

8:56 Luke F. Walton but Yeah,

8:57 Nolan Lem just like you haven't been doing

8:59 Luke F. Walton totally.

8:59 Nolan Lem that for a long time like it really takes some time to get back into it and yeah it was like a struggle because I think when you have this natural trajectory when you're doing it from like you know like a lot of people do straight out of high school

9:11 Luke F. Walton Right.

9:11 Nolan Lem like

9:11 Luke F. Walton It's very

9:11 Nolan Lem the much

9:11 Luke F. Walton sequential

9:12 Nolan Lem more yeah

9:12 Luke F. Walton and yeah, exactly. Yeah.

9:14 Nolan Lem so i had to like yeah it was it was a challenge yeah a lot of just doing problem sets and boring stuff not always boring well i mean you know it was personally challenging and and rewarding in different ways so yeah

9:27 Luke F. Walton I feel like this happens to a lot of musicians as well, where you start to feel like, okay, I want to add in this other skill set as my backup or as my fail safe. And then that ends up creeping into your music and then setting you on a path that you never would have imagined before. It was only a glint in your eye.

9:45 Luke F. Walton So you graduate, you graduate from this, and then how do you start to establish kind of your next steps in your career, like where you want to go now that you have this new skill set of electrical engineering, in addition to your touring experience, recording experience, experience in Italy,

9:58 Luke F. Walton and all of that starting to bundle up and become the person that you are. Where do you go from there in that moment in time? What were you feeling and how did you kind of take the next step?

10:09 Nolan Lem So when I was in engineering school, I was also still getting into more experimental forms of music, I guess, new music and 20th century music composition, which was a lot of like, you know, very technical and very sometimes very mathy, let's say.

10:23 Luke F. Walton any any composers or or figures that you would you'd recommend for somebody that might be interested in kind of getting into that that world i know i know it's like it's like so scary i think to a lot of people or prickly because they see it and they're like like mathy or new age or not easy listening so to speak you

10:40 Nolan Lem Right.

10:40 Luke F. Walton know

10:41 Nolan Lem I think I was always into the forms of music back then that was technical, but that the technical approaches actually had perceptual outcomes that were interesting.

10:53 Nolan Lem So like, I was always drawn to someone like you know, Ligeti or Lars Anakis, because I felt like the things that they're doing were not just technical in a purely theoretical way, but they had actually really cool outcomes that were perceivable and meaningful and as opposed to something that's more just like strict serialism. And

11:12 Luke F. Walton Right.

11:12 Nolan Lem so yeah, I was always drawn to their kind of work in the mid 20th century. um and then and then that like kind of initiating a lot of computer music and electronic music so yeah i mean i i guess i was kind of getting into that stuff i also got into analog circuit design so

11:26 Luke F. Walton Cool.

11:26 Nolan Lem i was building analog circuits that made audio and kind of designing modular synths and that was like a huge kind of game changer for me working with physical computing and in a way and designing things that make sound and interacting with them and then it was kind of just like a slippery slope before i wanted to i mean

11:43 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

11:44 Nolan Lem it's way but it felt like it just a slippery slope before i kind of wanted to make let's say stuff that is considered more sound art um installation based work or stuff that wasn't necessarily like performance oriented then yeah it just kind of concurrent with that i was i was interested in

12:02 Nolan Lem a lot of like outgrowths of computer music mixed with improvisation so yeah i wanted to go to master's programs and i was looking at a few and then i went to columbia because it was kind of a nice mixture between the things that i wanted to do

12:13 Luke F. Walton And I mean, you have the computer music center too. um

12:16 Nolan Lem Right.

12:16 Luke F. Walton could you speak on kind of what that is a little bit of its history i know it dates back to like the 50s kind of i don't know the role that it might have had in shaping kind of your career arc as well cool

12:26 Nolan Lem Yeah, it's like a really historic place because it started out as the, what was it, Columbia, Princeton Computer Music Center because they have like this RCA mark too, I think, and it's like the first analog synth in the northern hemisphere and it's all actually no transistors, it's all tube amps. of the

12:45 Luke F. Walton Wow.

12:45 Nolan Lem i mean it's gigantic and it's still there but really worked i guess like at one point it kind of worked but it's just like when you go in the room it feels like this alien i mean it feels like almost out of a movie but it's a real piece

12:55 Luke F. Walton I love

12:56 Nolan Lem of work

12:56 Luke F. Walton it.

12:56 Nolan Lem it's

12:56 Luke F. Walton Dude, I love that like space age just aesthetic. I just I want more of that back in

13:01 Nolan Lem totally

13:01 Luke F. Walton in the modern era, right? Yeah.

13:03 Nolan Lem it's it's also like become the most instagrammable like thing to as a computer like guy to like go and stand in front of it and take a photo

13:12 Luke F. Walton Yeah, totally.

13:13 Nolan Lem Yeah, they just have, you know, they have an amazing composition program. So some of the like really, really good composers from around the world go to study there. The Computer Music Center is a part of the School of Music, but it's situated at the School of the Arts building. So you're actually interacting in that building with a lot of visual artists.

13:31 Luke F. Walton Cool.

13:32 Nolan Lem And so when I did the Sound Arts program there, it was the first year it started. And I think it's like a really visual arts oriented kind of program, even though people are dealing with sound in some capacity.

13:43 Luke F. Walton Mm hmm.

13:43 Nolan Lem So I think I did start branching out and started making more physical things there.

13:49 Luke F. Walton Yes.

13:49 Nolan Lem I learned a lot more about fabrication, kind of like computer aided design. And I just I had an amazing teacher named Douglas Rapeto who was teaching there when I was there and he was just really into kinetic work and got me interested in working with motors.

14:04 Luke F. Walton Yeah. Yeah,

14:04 Nolan Lem designing

14:04 Luke F. Walton that

14:05 Nolan Lem things that move and that was a big turning point for me was working in that department for sure.

14:10 Luke F. Walton makes a ton of sense. I'm also I'm really curious about your perspective on kind of like digital versus analog, you know, people set them up as these like

14:18 Luke F. Walton opposite poles or something like that but it seems like in a lot of your work you were thinking of it just holistically like how can I use the best of both worlds how can I yeah use fabrication in the digital realm to be able to create an analog thing could you speak on kind of the philosophy of that a little bit and maybe help break down kind of those walls in people's minds between digital analog yes

14:37 Nolan Lem To be honest, most of my work that I make now that deals with sound almost all the time its sound is being produced purely just mechanically so

14:45 Luke F. Walton Cool.

14:46 Nolan Lem like an acoustic sound so

14:47 Luke F. Walton Yes.

14:47 Nolan Lem and i'm using mostly like digital means to carry out the control of things that make sound

14:53 Luke F. Walton Okay.

14:54 Nolan Lem like in my mind just the work that I'm making it's it's never been like a huge distinction like oh this is like a digitally like a digital synthesizer versus like an analog one I know people that are really into that sort of thing and actually now I'm getting more into kind of doing mixed media work where I'm incorporating both but I just kind of treat them like I would any other sound and any other tool I guess I don't do a ton of stuff with just pure analog synthesis

15:18 Nolan Lem this anymore

15:18 Luke F. Walton Yeah,

15:18 Nolan Lem i

15:18 Luke F. Walton yeah.

15:19 Nolan Lem guess probably if i ever interact with sound it's usually through like a coding language like super lighter or max ms p and so that that would all be you know like a digital type of sound output yeah i guess i just don't have a huge stake in the whole the divide absolutely

15:36 Luke F. Walton Yeah, no, and I appreciate that. And I also I like that, you know, it's like, use the tool for the goal that you're going for, like, you're talking so much about outputs. And I really appreciate that because I feel the same way as recording engineer and stuff. It's like, I don't really care. It's like, I know what I'm trying to get to whatever I need to do to get there, I'm gonna do. Yeah.

15:54 Luke F. Walton I'm really curious on ideation. And because I feel like a lot of people will see immersive works or like

16:01 Luke F. Walton or like go to a space and experience you know art like yours but a lot of times they're so removed from process and from idea they're just seeing yeah outcome how do you get your ideas or how do you kind of like workshop things do you have a backlog of ideas like how how does that kind of process work so that people when they go and they physically you know experience the medium they can get a little bit of insight into like the process and the and the flow

16:25 Nolan Lem Yeah.

16:26 Luke F. Walton of how it even came to be

16:28 Nolan Lem yeah no it's a great question i guess i'm often inspired by just how something might sound so

16:33 Luke F. Walton Okay.

16:33 Nolan Lem it's kind of an inquiry into what's a sound's potential that i might encounter in the real world i think a lot of my work uses just natural sounds that we don't usually associate with being like musical but

16:44 Luke F. Walton Yes.

16:44 Nolan Lem then so like i'll just be outside walking around and like i'll see like i don't know like

16:50 Nolan Lem a branch swing and hit the surface in a certain way or I don't know what it is or just like an object that makes a sound and then I'm like oh like I wonder what that would sound like if they were in this rhythm and we made like a bunch of them and then and then I think it kind of marinates for a little while

17:03 Luke F. Walton Okay.

17:03 Nolan Lem and then there's a period where I'm not sure if it's actually a good idea or if it's feasible and but i i think i've always like there are things where i'm like oh that's a great idea and i want to try it and then there is a backlog and i'm like okay well to carry out this idea i need like this funding

17:18 Luke F. Walton Right.

17:18 Nolan Lem or like i need i need to have this lined up in a way and other things i can kind of just prototype and figure out much earlier but i do kind of find there to be like a year long period where from like

17:31 Nolan Lem an immediate just like first notion of what something might be to actually like starting to even carry it out and I think it has to do with a lot of things a lot of the time it's just purely like logistic but having access to a studio and I mean a lot of my work requires a lot of building facilities Yes.

17:45 Nolan Lem and stuff that's not easily accommodated by just like going to a residency and whatnot so like having my own studio and developing that has been really important I really have been trying to work on the idea of like oh well I get this idea and then like the time it takes shouldn't be a year I like I really wish It was like formulated and carry it out.

18:02 Nolan Lem Like even this piece I'm working on now, it's like I remember thinking about it like a year and a half ago knowing I wanted to do it But it's just taking this long to like start realizing it and whatnot. So it's a long process usually for me

18:12 Luke F. Walton Yeah, that makes sense. And I also like the value of rumination and kind of like sitting on the idea because those ideas they tend to shift and they tend to change and evolve just even if you haven't, you know, maybe it's sketching it out on a page or it's just in your head over time, you sleep on it a few times and that idea starts. just to take on a life of its own yes

18:31 Nolan Lem absolutely i i also think a lot of the stuff that i want to do when i test it out or i the initial idea doesn't always just physically logistically work like when you're because i deal with a lot of stuff that's kinetic and moving it's

18:44 Luke F. Walton okay

18:45 Nolan Lem not all going to just work in the way that i think like i've always wanted to do a piece with like a bunch of the sounds of scissors when you when

18:52 Luke F. Walton yeah yeah

18:53 Nolan Lem you and um just like creating that sort of motion is actually really hard and like

18:58 Nolan Lem you controlled manner so you know that's something where I'm like oh well you know I would probably need all these resources to do and like it's maybe not worth it in the end or just like I have to think a little bit differently but then like going through that process of figuring out how to make this motion with the resources that I have sometimes I'll change the work changes and it's kind of like the work adapts to what I have available and access to

19:17 Luke F. Walton Cool.

19:17 Nolan Lem and that's kind of a nice constraint in some ways so i don't know i think people could apply that in in more like traditional music production settings too is just not feeling like oh you have to create the perfect thing and that i based off of what i i would have available if everything were ideal but just kind of allowing the constraints to shape something in a way that still allows it to you know allows it to change but in a way that's actually maybe sometimes cooler yeah

19:42 Luke F. Walton Great advice. yeah and i think ideas can splinter as well right like you can some

19:48 Nolan Lem Absolutely.

19:48 Luke F. Walton of my favorite songs end up like birthing two songs and i really like that because it's like they're like sisters you know they kind of came from the same family tree but uh split off somewhere yeah

19:58 Nolan Lem Usually due to constraints, yeah.

20:01 Luke F. Walton I've got some big news everybody my vinyl record is out we didn't make a ton of these these guys are gonna sell out and I'd love for you to get your hands on one of them because they're so dope they're so dope and it comes with a whole bunch of like liner notes and pictures and you know special stuff the things that really went into making this record and I want you to get your hands on it so go to scoobertdoobert.pizza you

20:24 Luke F. Walton Or check out my Instagram for a link or click the link in the show notes or the bio or wherever you're watching this to pick up your copy. You know, they're going to sell out. We really did not make very many of these and I want you to have it. It's like a collector's item. So thank you. Thank you for supporting my music and I can't wait for you to hear it actually on physical vinyl. Enjoy the rest of the episode.

20:46 Luke F. Walton Yeah, I totally, I totally hear it. I would love to talk about, yeah, your flow from there in Stanford, right? Following Computer Music Center in Columbia, then you make the move over to Stanford. Can you talk a little bit about kind of that transition and the goal set and what you were looking to achieve there?

21:04 Nolan Lem At that point, I was living in New York, and I actually really loved New York and living there. And I was,

21:09 Luke F. Walton Yes.

21:09 Nolan Lem you know, I wanted to keep making work, but I also at some point thought that being in academia would be a good position to be in. I question whether or not that's true now, but at the time, it seemed like the right thing. And, you know, you pretty much need a PhD. And I mean, it wasn't just solely based off of the fact if you want a tenure track position, you have to have the PhD, but it was.

21:30 Nolan Lem Also that I started doing a bit more with kind of programming and signal processing to a certain extent and Stanford there's a department there called the Center for Computer Research and Music and Acoustics but everyone calls it CCRMA so

21:42 Luke F. Walton CCRMA.

21:43 Nolan Lem I did my PhD there and it's just like a you know really interesting interdisciplinary department where people are doing yeah everything from DSP to music cognition you know software engineering human computer interface like physical computing so just like it's really interesting mix.

21:59 Nolan Lem really anyone from Stanford can kind of go there and use it and you know just has this amazing history as well so I mean it's a really really like amazing place for computer music in particular yeah

22:11 Luke F. Walton Very cool. And for the listeners, we could give kind of like a brief overview of DSP, but like the idea of you have a sound wave, you can transform that sound wave. There are a bunch of different ways to transform that sound wave, like Fourier transformation.

22:28 Luke F. Walton But like the manipulation of that is so fluid and incredible, especially with, you know, the digital realm where basically like you can add in mathematically different shapes onto other shapes. I don't know. I'm trying my best to try and like help people visualize like what we do, I guess. But, you know.

22:49 Nolan Lem I mean, it forms the basis of any type of plug-in or

22:52 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

22:52 Nolan Lem any type of effect that you work with in the studio. So at some point, someone figured out how to make a filter with just moving around ones and zeros

23:01 Luke F. Walton Yes.

23:01 Nolan Lem and, you know, from that, from code. Yeah, it's like a whole big branch of signals and systems. And, you know, I think it's interesting to you because it's kind of a creative division of what's broader, like just a purely engineering sort

23:12 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

23:12 Nolan Lem of field.

23:13 Luke F. Walton Yeah. And I also I think there's a there's like an interesting quasi metaphor. The metaphysical kind of aspect of this of like manipulating waves, it's like every, you know, some people think everything's waves or you got like gravitational waves, you've got light waves, you got sound

23:27 Nolan Lem True.

23:27 Luke F. Walton waves, and the sound ones are the ones that we can most easily manipulate and have fun with. The interdisciplinary thing is really cool because it provides access to music to some that might never really interact with music in a way that they would understand or a way that they could manipulate and have fun with it yeah

23:45 Nolan Lem Absolutely. Yeah, I totally agree.

23:47 Luke F. Walton um what do you what do you think in terms of uh you know how they've got these things where it's like hear the black hole or hear the earthquake or hear the seizure where they like pitch up like these super low frequencies what do you think about that kind of stuff

24:02 Nolan Lem Yeah, like the whole sonification field.

24:03 Luke F. Walton Yes. Right.

24:05 Nolan Lem I think it can be really cool. I've done some stuff related to that.

24:09 Luke F. Walton Cool.

24:09 Nolan Lem Like I worked at a sonification lab where we did, when I was at Columbia, we sonified seismic data.

24:15 Luke F. Walton Awesome.

24:16 Nolan Lem uh and it was part of the seismology department so yeah

24:19 Luke F. Walton Is it pitch shifting? Is it frequency shifting? How are you actually converting that in a way that feels satisfying?

24:26 Nolan Lem i can explain well yeah it's it's i mean it's i mean the basic idea is that you're taking some sort of data set that has some frequency content into it and then shifting it into a range that's perceivable to humans so seismic data is all like super low frequency you never really hear it if you just put that signal straight through speakers but then

24:42 Nolan Lem you like upsample it and then you do a bunch of effects then you can really make it ideally representative of maybe how earthquakes feel and so i think the art just kind of lies in filtering that data which is sometimes not very perceptually interesting into a way that makes it more engaging to humans i mean i think some people have this intention but the i think the idea is to make some phenomenon audible and audible specifically to humans so some people take like

25:10 Nolan Lem like bat uh uh

25:11 Luke F. Walton Oh, cool.

25:12 Nolan Lem bat like a really weird

25:13 Luke F. Walton Like

25:13 Nolan Lem high frequency

25:14 Luke F. Walton supersonic.

25:14 Nolan Lem supersonic

25:14 Luke F. Walton Yeah, sure.

25:15 Nolan Lem to like like echolocate where their position and then so they take that and then they shift it down so i think it'd be really cool i mean i find it to be more interesting stuff when it also pairs other kind of perceptual modalities with it so like if you have this kind of experiential thing where you're like we used to do these um shows in the planetarium cool

25:36 Luke F. Walton Cool. Yes.

25:37 Nolan Lem like you know all these visualizations on the dome and then like crazy spatial audio so that was really cool but it was people understand how earthquakes kind of spread and i yeah i i like that i like that sort

25:48 Luke F. Walton Yeah,

25:48 Nolan Lem of stuff

25:49 Luke F. Walton I find it really fascinating. And I like the way you're putting it too, because it almost feels like translating between two very distinct languages where, you know, the translator has to end up doing a lot of work to get from one to the next. It's not a direct thing. And it seems like Things like that. There's like a lot of trust and a lot of art to the sonification.

26:10 Nolan Lem right right yeah i mean i think it really yeah especially for producers and whatnot there it's it is a yeah and i like the idea of being like a like a literary translation from one language to another yeah that's a cool idea

26:22 Luke F. Walton Yeah, that resonates, pun intended. So how'd you end up in Copenhagen?

26:29 Nolan Lem interesting question because I well it's not really a question but yeah I ended up here just I mean it's not somewhere where I ever was like oh yeah like I knew for sure I was going to be here 10 years ago I was finishing my PhD and I was done teaching and whatnot and I was pretty much just had to write my dissertation and

26:44 Luke F. Walton Mm-hmm.

26:45 Nolan Lem I was going to France a lot because I kept having opportunities to do research residencies in France

26:50 Luke F. Walton Okay.

26:50 Nolan Lem so eventually I had kind of moved over there I was going to Paris I kind of lived in Paris half time for a year and then I got like kind of a permanent research position in Lyon and I was in Lyon for two years but all pretty much all during COVID as well and then during that time my PhD kind of got extended because of the pandemic like

27:10 Luke F. Walton Mm

27:10 Nolan Lem and

27:10 Luke F. Walton hmm.

27:10 Nolan Lem I did like an arts kind of research residency in Copenhagen one summer and I met some of the folks at the one of the universities here and I did a show at a museum here as part of that and then it's a department called sound and music computing at Old Bell University Copenhagen for anyone that wants

27:25 Luke F. Walton Oh,

27:25 Nolan Lem to

27:25 Luke F. Walton yeah.

27:26 Nolan Lem check it

27:26 Luke F. Walton Yeah,

27:26 Nolan Lem out because

27:26 Luke F. Walton for sure.

27:26 Nolan Lem they're

27:27 Luke F. Walton Sure,

27:27 Nolan Lem really people great

27:27 Luke F. Walton will.

27:27 Nolan Lem really great people they have a lab called the multi-sensory perception lab and they do all kinds of audio and AR VR stuff but one of the the director department was like hey why don't you apply for a Fulbright

27:37 Nolan Lem um grant Fulbright's kind of this uh grant the U.S. has with almost every a lot of countries in the world where they'll grant you a year per um of research funding so I I applied for a Danish Fulbright grant and I got that for a year so I got to like got an extra year and

27:53 Luke F. Walton Yes.

27:53 Nolan Lem then I yeah and then I generally liked it here and I had finished my PhD and then I got a postdoc so

27:59 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

28:00 Nolan Lem now I'm postdoc actually in Sweden um in in Gothenburg so but I've been here three years years now of actually three and a half so yeah quite a bit of quite a long time

28:10 Luke F. Walton So how does that work with Postdoc? I actually am really unfamiliar with that world. What are you like contributing? Like how does your professor that you're working with, are you able to do a lot of this remote? Is it kind of like you're focusing on your work and contributing to their research or contributing to exhibits in Sweden? Like what are the mechanics of your Postdoc?

28:31 Nolan Lem Yeah, so my postdoc's not technically like an arts related postdoc.

28:35 Luke F. Walton Okay.

28:36 Nolan Lem So it's at the division of acoustics.

28:38 Luke F. Walton Hmm.

28:39 Nolan Lem So

28:39 Luke F. Walton Interesting.

28:39 Nolan Lem it was actually a postdoc set up to do, I didn't really talk about this, but half of my PhD research was about conducting kind of behavioral studies and the music perception specifically rhythmic production.

28:51 Luke F. Walton Cool.

28:51 Nolan Lem So I kind of got into doing this human perception research and sound and kind of related to music cognition. And so, yeah, this was a postdoc looking at how we perceive sound in space.

29:02 Luke F. Walton Yes.

29:02 Nolan Lem So in immersive spaces, so they do a lot of stuff with spatial audio. And so this was set up. So we're looking at different aspects of how we synchronize to sound in space,

29:10 Luke F. Walton Okay.

29:10 Nolan Lem how Being in a spatial environment affects our perception of rhythm, how we form different auditory textures or like different kind of immersive soundscapes from combining lots of different elements. So these

29:22 Luke F. Walton Okay.

29:22 Nolan Lem sorts of things, but, you know, that kind of overlaps with a lot of my artistic work

29:25 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

29:26 Nolan Lem because I think that like trade is very soundscape oriented.

29:28 Luke F. Walton Yes.

29:28 Nolan Lem So I think it's a nice way to do more technical research that allows me to talk about my work and contextualize it on that front.

29:36 Luke F. Walton That's really fascinating. And I'd love to dig in a little deeper into that if you're down. on

29:40 Nolan Lem Yep.

29:50 Luke F. Walton um yes your rhythmic perception very much changes and there's there's a thing in david burn's book on music that i really love and it talks about venue informing genre and how like the concerto is the concerto in part because of the place early renaissance or early church music sounds the way it does because early churches sound the way they do and go all the way to cbgb and like the music out of cbgb sounds like that because cbgb sounds like that you know um

30:16 Luke F. Walton Curious, does that latch on in any way to do some of that work that you're doing?

30:21 Nolan Lem yeah yeah absolutely yeah the kind of one of the headers for this postdoc research wise when they applied for funding was under the domain of what's called audible architecture and

30:30 Luke F. Walton Okay.

30:31 Nolan Lem acoustics in general you know one concern when you design a space is the acoustics and like what materials you use and that's not my research but a lot of people study that sort of thing so yeah of course like the design of a space and you know it's like

30:45 Nolan Lem it doesn't have a reverb it has Yeah. the materials they use is going to affect your perception and so yeah so absolutely and i think like with in more of an arts context or probably the way that david burn was thinking about it it's kind of like or i don't want to speak for him of course but like yeah just just the idea that like the space in general is going to inform kind of the aesthetics of how you hear it so even probably just like the smell of cbgb being like kind of like dirty and gross will probably like also play a role in your perceiving of that

31:11 Nolan Lem experience. So it's kind of maybe a more holistic way to understand how we perceive sound outside of just listening to.

31:19 Nolan Lem but yeah this the stuff the stuff i've been doing has been related to trading swarms so a lot of my work is about you know like i take one sound object and then i multiply it a bunch of times

31:29 Luke F. Walton Uh

31:29 Nolan Lem and then

31:29 Luke F. Walton -huh.

31:29 Nolan Lem apply different types of control or interaction and then they create sound or they interact they synchronize they desynchronize so we've been looking at how that kind of operates in physical space um

31:39 Luke F. Walton Okay.

31:39 Nolan Lem even if you just took like a bunch of snare drums and that you put them right in front of you and then you started playing a rhythm or something you got a ton of them playing a rhythm and we were trying to synchronize to that it would change based on like the distance you are from them the way it's spatialized around you so we're kind of looking at those sorts of things um

31:55 Luke F. Walton Cool.

31:55 Nolan Lem and then also just at what point we form auditory textures so if you take a single sound like a raindrop how many raindrops do you have to have in a space before it sounds like what we consider rainfall so

32:09 Luke F. Walton Yeah, cool.

32:10 Nolan Lem you can lose that perception of discrete elements and then it kind of have is subsumed into this larger thing that we call an auditory texture so like hail rain winds like running water these sorts of atmospheric sounds all kind of fall under this notion of the auditory texture so

32:27 Luke F. Walton That's really cool. And then also, I understand the practical implications of that because everything is resource constrained. And if you're making a video game or something, I watched a really great glitch video of Super Mario 64.

32:40 Luke F. Walton and um how like if you did something this little uh ghost would get bigger and bigger and bigger um until it finally reversed and then it went outside of the map and the game crashed because it hit the you know integer float value and just blew up the game um just awesome

32:55 Nolan Lem Okay.

32:55 Luke F. Walton like little things like that but like the the same idea of how many raindrops do i need to put in if i'm you know doing ghost of tsushima or something like like an immersive game with a lot of rain um You don't want to do infinite because your game will explode you got to find the ideal value and yeah spatial audio makes sense

33:14 Nolan Lem absolutely yeah and we and we have a mode of hearing like we start to hear sounds differently when there is a certain number of complexity so we

33:21 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

33:21 Nolan Lem actually like a lot of people that look into this from a more neurophysiological level have found like our brain switches modes it's

33:26 Luke F. Walton Cool.

33:27 Nolan Lem too complex for us to actually have to listen into every single raindrop

33:31 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

33:31 Nolan Lem it makes more computationally efficient from like neurological level just to think of that signal as a kind of like a stationary signal so

33:39 Luke F. Walton Interesting.

33:40 Nolan Lem we're I've extracted certain features that just give it this quality of sounding like a

33:44 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

33:44 Nolan Lem soundscape as opposed to sounding like a million different raindrops falling in front of you.

33:49 Luke F. Walton Yes. So the like taking it from like a series to like a cloud, like it turns

33:54 Nolan Lem Yeah,

33:54 Luke F. Walton into this

33:55 Nolan Lem yeah,

33:55 Luke F. Walton object.

33:55 Nolan Lem exactly.

33:55 Luke F. Walton Yeah. Very interesting. I think that sound is so fascinating and there's so much that goes into it, especially like if you think of like a live festival where in your snare drum example made me think of this, where sound is not that.

34:09 Luke F. Walton that fast and so if you're too far away from the other musician there will be latency and so if the stage is too big you guys like people might not be playing the same song anymore if the crowd is too big people might not be listening at the same rate anymore the latency effect i think is so fascinating and interesting to to think about that in the case of the snare drum example you were giving

34:31 Nolan Lem yeah absolutely yeah and there's i remember reading a paper and it was like looking at synchronization in some of the berlin in clubs and

34:38 Luke F. Walton Cool. Okay.

34:39 Nolan Lem like how they handled that aspect because yeah we have multiple rooms multiple speakers and i mean it's it's kind of like an acoustics nightmare in some ways but there

34:47 Luke F. Walton was Yes.

34:48 Nolan Lem kind of like a decreased amount of like synchronization performance when speakers were further apart and more spatially arranged there

34:54 Luke F. Walton Okay.

34:54 Nolan Lem are some yeah some noticeable effects when when you have uh you know spatial audio at play

35:00 Luke F. Walton That's really, that's fascinating. I didn't know that. Yeah,

35:03 Nolan Lem Yeah,

35:03 Luke F. Walton I could actually. I mean, even some of my friends that have set up, you know, at most studios and stuff like that. Yeah, the synchronization has always been an interesting, you know, puzzle and place like the placement of the listener in the room, all of these things. It compounds when you have more speakers pointed at you.

35:19 Nolan Lem absolutely, yeah.

35:20 Luke F. Walton Some of your work, especially on kind of the acoustic side, are you looking into like binaural like headphone effects as well? Because I'm sure that the implications for. Instruments for personal entertainment gaming are really high. I've liked some of the stuff that I've done with spatial audio. Just curious on kind of like where science and acoustics are advancing in the binaural aspect, the headphone aspect.

35:41 Nolan Lem Yeah, so some of the experiments that we're working with now, actually almost all of them have used this. Like binaural render that my advisor actually created where

35:51 Luke F. Walton Cool.

35:51 Nolan Lem you can just virtually position any number of sources in this program and then assign different sounds to them and then you can move them in real time and blah, blah, blah and use different like HRIRs to create reverbs and whatever, it's...

36:06 Nolan Lem a really good way to test yeah because we're trading perceptual studies so we're often having people listen to stimuli and then respond to them and

36:12 Luke F. Walton Okay.

36:12 Nolan Lem then we actually do have an anechoic chamber at the department but yeah

36:15 Luke F. Walton Cool. Wow.

36:15 Nolan Lem it's just too

36:16 Luke F. Walton I've never gone bad in out of of this.

36:17 Nolan Lem the way yeah it's oh you've never gone in there No, oh

36:19 Luke F. Walton never gone in an echo chamber. It's for the listeners.

36:21 Nolan Lem gotta go in

36:21 Luke F. Walton Yeah,

36:21 Nolan Lem well

36:22 Luke F. Walton it's like the craziest faces in the universe. Can you talk about what that is? You probably actually even know how the math works. I don't know how the math works. It's just a bunch of little.

36:30 Nolan Lem i don't know if the i think designing them is probably like yeah it's really complex but i mean the general idea is that you just it's a room where there's no acoustic reflections ideally i mean so they have all these really weird kind of long triangular like foam absorbent

36:44 Nolan Lem cone things that are supposed to just take away any reflection but then also ideally it's on a wire mesh so then you're actually about two meters up from the

36:53 Luke F. Walton Oh,

36:53 Nolan Lem ground so

36:53 Luke F. Walton I didn't know that. So it's like a room within a room, but with a wire mesh. I didn't know that. That's cool.

36:57 Nolan Lem and then on below because you normally you'd get reflections from the ground too so

37:01 Luke F. Walton Naturally.

37:01 Nolan Lem that so you look down and you're kind of like in the middle and it's it's kind of creepy and um and then if you're really serious they mechanically isolate the room so they the entire room is itself on springs this so you don't even get any like external noise being a factor into the room but anyways yeah the reasoning for this is it's the best way to test any sort of acoustic device because

37:20 Luke F. Walton Totally.

37:21 Nolan Lem when you don't have reflections and you get more kind of it's a better way to analyze a lot of signals so yeah if we wanted to do a lot of our studies in that sort of room would be easier but it's such a hard thing to to set up and

37:32 Luke F. Walton Yes.

37:32 Nolan Lem and run so we kind of use this like binaural renderer to to do more or less the same but and but it's

37:38 Luke F. Walton yeah that's

37:38 Nolan Lem not in a physical space yeah exactly

37:39 Luke F. Walton really cool yeah and i guess another analogy is it's kind of like you know people talk about we tested this in a vacuum or like the vacuum of space like the anechoic chamber is like our audio vacuum you know it's so cool it's so cool i want to go in there for sure i feel like i'll freak out panic attack

37:55 Nolan Lem yeah it

37:56 Luke F. Walton mode

37:56 Nolan Lem is it's it's it's scary yeah you know it's like the yeah but you actually hear you know like john yeah the the whole john cage thing where he went in and he's like oh it's not actually silent because i still feel the high pitch of my nervous system and then like the low rumbling of like my blood circulation and it's true you really sense like how internal sound is to just your being when

38:15 Luke F. Walton Yes.

38:15 Nolan Lem you go into one absolutely

38:16 Luke F. Walton Yes. I even feel that going into just a well-treated recording studio. I can only imagine the, yeah.

38:22 Nolan Lem it's very crisp there's like this weird or i don't it's crisp and dry so i don't know i don't really like I, uh, it's fun to yell into the anechoic chamber.

38:32 Luke F. Walton Cool.

38:33 Nolan Lem It's a good way to take out your anger,

38:34 Luke F. Walton The

38:34 Nolan Lem I think.

38:35 Luke F. Walton true void. The true void.

38:36 Nolan Lem Yeah, exactly.

38:37 Luke F. Walton I like that. The primal scream into the anechoic chamber. Yeah,

38:41 Nolan Lem Yeah,

38:41 Luke F. Walton that sounds like

38:42 Nolan Lem that's

38:42 Luke F. Walton the

38:42 Nolan Lem kind of required.

38:43 Luke F. Walton name of my next album.

38:45 Nolan Lem Oh, okay. Yeah, good.

38:49 Luke F. Walton Sorry to interrupt this very important broadcast, but it's time for one more advertisement for myself for this podcast. What I'm asking for is for you to rate it five stars. five stars to share with your friends. This is like the most important thing for this podcast to grow. So if you want to do this, you go into the podcast screen, right? You click on the dot dot dot on Spotify.

39:08 Luke F. Walton Under there it says rate show and you go and you click it five stars. If you could do that for me, that's the best way for the algorithms and all this stuff to share it out with the world. I know that it's a lot to ask, but if you could please, please, please, just please just hit those three dots and a five star. It'd really help us out and helps us, you know, get the Get the word out and spread the love of music.

39:26 Luke F. Walton So thank you. If you're listening on YouTube, you know what to do. Like, subscribe, all that good stuff. Thank you so much. And here's the rest of the episode. I love that we live in a time that we can create things that no one has ever heard before. Like that just...

39:40 Luke F. Walton entirely artificial new modalities of sound like how cool is that just as a fundamental artistic thing is like first that's the first time anybody's ever experienced that that's crazy it's

39:52 Nolan Lem that's

39:53 Luke F. Walton amazing yeah

39:53 Nolan Lem my favorite yeah I think that you know to be honest that's really what drives like a lot of my work is like you know I want to know what like this sound sounds like because I think maybe it's it's never you never hear like this many gun triggers in a room

40:06 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

40:07 Nolan Lem you know or an author you know or something just like just curious to create something that might never have been experienced before

40:12 Luke F. Walton Yeah. And I love the emotional audience perspective of those kind of things too, because like every sound has an emotional memory or something attached to it, and then you amplify that through scale or change it through the conversation of these different things. And I just, it's so fascinating to see how, what. kind of a motion at a distance from your no your audience yeah

40:34 Nolan Lem Yeah, absolutely. Anything that makes sound has some cultural connection

40:39 Luke F. Walton that's

40:40 Nolan Lem to it, especially if it's just a daily object that we use or not. So I think just kind of subverting those expectations or reconfiguring them in some way allows us just to look at the world differently through that object and through sound specifically.

40:55 Luke F. Walton very cool how do you you know how do you feel kind of unveiling a new project or kind of like watching the audience experience it for the first time like what what does that feel like as the creator yeah

41:06 Nolan Lem yeah what no it's it's honestly the most rewarding thing it's my favorite thing when someone's looking at one of my pieces and you know they don't know that I made it and they're like talking about it and then

41:16 Luke F. Walton totally

41:16 Nolan Lem you get to it's like a really I guess it's harder to experience that when you're performing music because you're always like on side you know but I guess if you could hear a song on the radio and you hear people like

41:26 Luke F. Walton Yeah,

41:26 Nolan Lem listening and like

41:26 Luke F. Walton okay.

41:27 Nolan Lem talking about that would be like similar.

41:28 Luke F. Walton Great.

41:30 Nolan Lem but no it's great i mean like it's you never know what people are going to think and the associations they have and i'm always so nervous because all my stuff moves so like things could break and then it's like game over i can't be like fixing a set screw on the floor like the opening day so i'm always so nervous but if nothing breaks i'm always feel like it's kind of a success because i have a good track record so far of i just had this insulation come down in stockholm and

41:54 Nolan Lem it was all these like window blinds you can see it on my instagram um

41:56 Luke F. Walton Yeah, let's see that.

41:57 Nolan Lem that are moving and and i was so scared that they were gonna fall and there was nobody like they were gone for a month in the gallery and it was just in the window in the front and i was like oh no it's gonna fall and create a fire and i'm like it's just gonna be like i'm gonna burn down like stockholm center and it's gonna be terrible

42:14 Luke F. Walton yeah

42:14 Nolan Lem um but it's it's it's stood the test of time so i was really happy about that and yeah i just have to be really kind of ocd about i need it in a way so that there's lots of fail safes and whatnot yeah

42:25 Luke F. Walton that's a good point that's a good point i mean you almost have to be like an aerospace engineer or something to be like this needs to survive the entire run

42:35 Nolan Lem I don't know, you know, everything that moves eventually will wear down and break. It's just part

42:39 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

42:39 Nolan Lem of part of life.

42:41 Luke F. Walton So yeah, entropy.

42:42 Nolan Lem entropy. Yeah, for sure.

42:44 Luke F. Walton So what are some of the things that you're kind of excited in this space? How about some other artists that you're really into or things that you might want to share so people could kind of dig deeper into the world as you see it, art as you see it, kind of your influences, your friends?

42:59 Nolan Lem Yeah, that's a good, that's a good question. I mean, you know, to be honest, like the music I actually listened to. listen to

43:04 Luke F. Walton Yeah,

43:04 Nolan Lem now is

43:05 Luke F. Walton please.

43:05 Nolan Lem like i i feel like i i am not the best at like discovering tons of really cool new music stuff i mean i listen to a lot of like bach and

43:14 Luke F. Walton Cool.

43:15 Nolan Lem jazz

43:15 Luke F. Walton Yes.

43:15 Nolan Lem that i like have since for like 25 years Yeah. you know and Yeah. kind of like an old man in that respect

43:22 Luke F. Walton That's

43:23 Nolan Lem and

43:23 Luke F. Walton that's perfectly valid

43:25 Nolan Lem sorry

43:25 Luke F. Walton and worth worth shouting out, too, because I think there are plenty of people that have not kept their point with Bach.

43:32 Nolan Lem I feel bad. I feel a little bad because I should be a lot more like up to date with that sort of thing. But I see a lot of interesting stuff, you know, and

43:40 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

43:40 Nolan Lem like, I think when I see concerts, I always see interesting things, but I just don't necessarily like dedicated listening to a lot of more contemporary stuff,

43:46 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

43:46 Nolan Lem but I want to, I want to get better at that because I'm just at a period of my life where that's not happening. And I've been working on this show for, it's supposed to open in Gothenburg in about a month.

43:56 Luke F. Walton Cool.

43:57 Nolan Lem So. just listen a lot to it sounds really trite and and like cliche but I really do just like listen to the world when I'm walking around like

44:06 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

44:06 Nolan Lem I think just reminding yourself that there's inspiration and interesting things to be heard or just even to put yourself in that frame of listening and remind yourself to put yourself in that frame is

44:16 Luke F. Walton Yes.

44:17 Nolan Lem really important and I find myself getting really bogged down in the way I think I can recenter or kind of refocus on the present is just by listening to what's around me and even now there's like I'm in my studio and there's someone drilling I mean the other room

44:31 Luke F. Walton Uh-huh.

44:32 Nolan Lem Yeah, I guess I would say that's kind of what was on my mind

44:37 Luke F. Walton and i like i like that advice too and i've been trying to take that of just i got a little um little like zoom recorder and then a binaural microphone that i stick in like basically into my ears so it's it's really only truly binaural for me but i'm making it for me anyway it's been fun because it opens me up i always carry it around in my backpack i've got it right here um and then these this little and so like every time i go to the

45:00 Luke F. Walton the nature backpacking or whatever they're really funny you know it's like it's like 150

45:04 Nolan Lem Oh yeah.

45:05 Luke F. Walton bucks or something like that you know so

45:07 Nolan Lem Very cool.

45:07 Luke F. Walton i don't feel bad about it taking it into the middle of nowhere and it's some dusty wilderness uh

45:11 Nolan Lem Right,

45:12 Luke F. Walton but

45:12 Nolan Lem right.

45:12 Luke F. Walton even just the mentality shift when i bought it i don't even need to use it as much it's just that that like opening up putting the antenna up you hear the birds more you hear verticality of trees that was something that i'd never perceived before you

45:26 Nolan Lem Oh my gosh.

45:27 Luke F. Walton know yeah

45:29 Nolan Lem I love that.

45:29 Luke F. Walton Like, I don't know. I know that you know this super well, but for the listeners, the spatial audio thing has been really interesting because it made me kind of more aware of.

45:40 Luke F. Walton what the power spots are in hearing like the things that are easiest to perceive and verticality above your head is not super easy to spoof or super easy to so but when you do experience it when you're like underneath a 60 foot tree with the bird that's really loud way up above you it's that feeling of like okay that's what the goal is that's if i wanted to you know do that thing that's the mark that i need to hit of

46:05 Nolan Lem Absolutely.

46:05 Luke F. Walton verticality yeah

46:07 Nolan Lem yeah i like the idea of like augmented listening you know

46:10 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

46:10 Nolan Lem it's like kind of think of ourselves as our auditory system as just being like oh it's like so perfect the way it is or like we're always trying to like recreate an experience but i think the people or maybe people and like designers that are trying to

46:24 Nolan Lem like enhanced modes of listening that aren't just like oh let's recreate the concert hall in this way but let's create an experience that's like not necessarily how you'd experience it in the concert hall but it's like a weirder more dynamic experience than that

46:36 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

46:36 Nolan Lem yeah there's this yeah i was just at this conference in this and uh they were kind of talking about this this style of designing sounds that's not just about reproduction of you know an acoustic signal as we would experience in real life but it kind of augmented reality version of that

46:50 Luke F. Walton Yes.

46:50 Nolan Lem And I do think that is a cool idea and probably there's a lot of interesting stuff that will happen in the future because of it.

46:55 Luke F. Walton I'm excited. I'm excited as a creator to use those tools wherever they go because it's super fun. I think a big thing that I've been noticing too is, and it goes back to your point of like swarms and like clouds of objects rather than individual objects, it's harder to localize things when there's too much going on. Like

47:14 Nolan Lem Right.

47:14 Luke F. Walton if there's a full mix and I'm like I'm gonna throw this behind your head I don't know if the listener will ever notice that there's something behind their head

47:22 Nolan Lem Absolutely, 100%.

47:22 Luke F. Walton yeah it's like the we only have we only have so much processing power and you can but like if you put the spotlight and i think that's what the the moment was for me with that super tall tree and the bird there was very little going on there was like a stream to my left a little bit of wind through the trees and then a bird really really high that was it that was the only sound and that's why i was able to be like there's a bird really high above me right now it's i don't know

47:47 Nolan Lem yeah no it is it's all about i think like little just differences and

47:50 Luke F. Walton Yes.

47:50 Nolan Lem so if you have too many differences you nothing is like that different because everything is like so different i don't know if that makes sense

47:56 Luke F. Walton That

47:56 Nolan Lem but like

47:56 Luke F. Walton makes sense.

47:57 Nolan Lem yeah

47:57 Luke F. Walton No, I get it.

47:58 Nolan Lem even with spatial audio like with these types of sounds i was talking about these auditory textures you literally only need like four channels just like kind of a quadraphonic setup and that's more or less indistinguishable from having like 40 around you

48:10 Luke F. Walton Really?

48:10 Nolan Lem so talking about these really dense large swarm like sounds that just immediately give us the presence of it being immersive or enveloping

48:17 Luke F. Walton Mm hmm.

48:18 Nolan Lem and so yeah I mean it's something to keep in mind I guess when you're when you are having like a lot of things in a mix because it our spatial acuity is going to be compromised when there's a lot more stuff going on so

48:30 Luke F. Walton That makes a lot of sense. And I think that's also part of my, it's not really disappointment, but at least like the limitations of Dolby Atmos for music where it's cool. There's like good stuff. I like using it. I like mixing with it.

48:42 Luke F. Walton that but um game audio or like yeah the textural audio hits harder because it's just like it's sparser or it's more i don't know like the music music thing of it you you're in the center of the stage and there's stuff all around you it still kind of sounds like a mix though you know like like it still is kind of stereo really like i don't know there's stuff flying over my head and that's neat um it feels like a pink floyd concert that's cool but like

49:08 Nolan Lem there's

49:08 Luke F. Walton still like a lot of bass and guitar and low mids that are all pretty much being beamed in the top of my head it's center so i don't know you know what i mean like

49:18 Nolan Lem yeah i do yeah there's something like disorient yeah i don't know just like something very psychologically uh interesting i think about sounds that aren't um yeah when there isn't that that pressure to make things in that specific format too so

49:33 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

49:34 Nolan Lem like i think you're like all the like weird procedural audio stuff they do or like you know generative audio gaming that stuff's really cool because it's also just not always super physical

49:42 Luke F. Walton Yes.

49:42 Nolan Lem i mean it's like the engine is it's supposed to be physical but like it's kind of not how it would sound like but that actually makes it more interesting because it's more of like a psychological effect

49:49 Luke F. Walton Yes.

49:49 Nolan Lem kind of how i think of it at least like it's something we're not used to hearing so then it changes our we're kind of like not used to that and It allows us to maybe, I don't know, hear it in a different way.

50:00 Luke F. Walton That's cool. That's cool. And I like the way you're thinking of it too, where it's almost like deltas, right? Like you got a zero value and then you got everything around you and then like how are these things changing from that zero value?

50:10 Luke F. Walton And it's the same way that we were talking about transforming audio and changing one thing to another or sonification changing something imperceivable to something perceivable. That type of mentality in creation I think is kind of rare and that is a... very fundamental and freeing kind of way, I think, of looking at just audio generation.

50:28 Nolan Lem Yeah, I totally agree. And like, I don't come from a strong audio engineer doing mastering and recording,

50:34 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

50:34 Nolan Lem you know, so much so I can't really comment too much on that sort of thing. But I do think there are there are really interesting things to come from. I mean, there's so many tools available to people and, you know, just more and more. And yeah, with AI and Yeah. with like everything happening, it's just a pretty exciting time, I think, for. For production.

50:52 Luke F. Walton I agree. And I mean, and that's, that's like, that's my world. And so my, the stuff that I'm using are the aha moment for me really was during the pandemic, stopping thinking about notes and thinking about frequencies. And that opened everything up where now, you know, you have a, you have a bass guitar.

51:13 Luke F. Walton There are harmonics extending above that root note and there are sub harmonics extending below. You can manipulate those things in a million different ways in the digital space where you can add in a whole bunch of sub harmonics and you can change the fundamental nature of what a bass is. Or like on one of my songs, I, you know, Melodyne, which is usually used for pitch correction.

51:31 Luke F. Walton It also has a crazy powerful harmonic manipulator within it. And so I can change the formant as in the mouth shape of. like my background vocals but i can also change the harmonic structure of my vocals which is crazy to be like oh my second order harmonic is just gone now it doesn't sound like me anymore it sounds like an alien but it's like

51:53 Nolan Lem yeah

51:53 Luke F. Walton yeah

51:53 Nolan Lem and that's all it takes is just taking off taking out like a single a component of that spectrum and it will change our perception of that as sounding human yeah and that's a really powerful thing to be able to do and and in the past that was so out So, um,

52:06 Luke F. Walton so hard to pull off like how do you i don't know how you do it maybe there's a way with analog filters i don't know maybe yeah

52:13 Nolan Lem yeah, there probably was they did have a lot of weird stuff that would just happen and I think even still just like by accident So I a lot of it is just some of the coolest outcomes are just from the happy accidents sort of thing

52:24 Luke F. Walton right totally and i mean and that's that's how a lot of synthesis uh it's like using the same tools that a lot of synthesis is built on of like

52:32 Luke F. Walton like you have a sine wave you change the harmonics and now it sounds a little bit more like a flute because it's like mimicking the harmonic structure and series of a flute it's like taking that same principle and then putting it to the human voice just feels so foreign and bizarre and cool and it's just like there's a sound that not a sound that people have heard before

52:50 Nolan Lem Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the founder of CCRMA, John Chowning, who like developed FM synthesis, he's

52:56 Luke F. Walton yeah cool

52:57 Nolan Lem actually still around and like amazing

52:59 Luke F. Walton i

52:59 Nolan Lem person.

53:00 Luke F. Walton think i recently just watched a video of him talking

53:02 Nolan Lem Oh,

53:02 Luke F. Walton about did fm

53:03 Nolan Lem you?

53:03 Luke F. Walton synthesis i

53:03 Nolan Lem Yeah,

53:04 Luke F. Walton would make

53:04 Nolan Lem did you

53:04 Luke F. Walton it

53:04 Nolan Lem around see the one he was saying how it was like an ear discovery?

53:07 Luke F. Walton yes yeah yeah i watched that video

53:08 Nolan Lem Yeah,

53:08 Luke F. Walton yep exactly. i was right yep cool

53:10 Nolan Lem I mean, I've seen him, I just saw him in Copenhagen actually a few months ago. He did like a retrospective concert here,

53:15 Luke F. Walton awesome

53:15 Nolan Lem but

53:15 Luke F. Walton small world

53:16 Nolan Lem he's like a yeah really great mentor and person at who's just made that program at Stanford amazing but uh he gives his talk all the time and he presents the way he came across this stuff and

53:26 Luke F. Walton Okay.

53:26 Nolan Lem you know FM existed before it was applied in the audio realm of course but then like hearing the way in which you know you've seen the like the vibrato effect like the where you you have the right um kind of harmonic structure and then you apply the the vibrato and then it starts immediately just sounds like a human voice

53:43 Luke F. Walton Yeah. Yeah.

53:44 Nolan Lem uh so yeah all those things that was like just done from kind of like somewhat heuristically and just trying it and then hearing it and then trying and trying out and of course there's a math to it but yeah i know i like that approach of just

53:55 Luke F. Walton Me

53:55 Nolan Lem trying

53:55 Luke F. Walton too.

53:56 Nolan Lem things just accidentally stumbling on something and it ends up being a very very significant development in the future

54:03 Luke F. Walton Human

54:03 Nolan Lem oddly

54:03 Luke F. Walton history. Yeah.

54:04 Nolan Lem yeah human history yeah

54:05 Luke F. Walton Yeah. And I like that too, because I think it makes a little more approachable where, you know. If you have to approach everything like we were talking serialism or, you know, from a very theoretical mathematical way rather than just being like, what sounds cool? And then you can backfill, you know, both are good. Both are certainly good.

54:21 Luke F. Walton But I think the one hand of it being an ear discovery allows for more people to enter into that frame of thinking, enter into discovery synthesis and, you know, just sound creation.

54:35 Nolan Lem definitely definitely and it's really rewarding i think too because you're like do this thing and it takes a long time and

54:39 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

54:39 Nolan Lem then or you're like working and then it's like not working out and then you just like do one little thing and it's like oh wow like how did i get there it's like yeah

54:48 Luke F. Walton Totally.

54:48 Nolan Lem so it's uh it feels like it's it feels like it's worth it but then you don't always figure out something that's cool sometimes you mess around for hours and hours and weeks or whatever and then like nothing comes out and you're like well All right,

54:58 Luke F. Walton yep

54:58 Nolan Lem I guess I'll keep going or

54:59 Luke F. Walton yep exactly

55:00 Nolan Lem not

55:00 Luke F. Walton exactly i mean that that's how i feel with most of my music creation and mixing as well of just you know where you're trying to get to you're gonna apply a bunch of things along the way you will make some wrong turns um and then sometimes it will be like mixing also kind of became an aha thing of it's not just the one track it's not just the bus track it's the combination of everything down the chain

55:24 Luke F. Walton all working a little bit together that creates something that sounds good and

55:29 Nolan Lem 100% yeah

55:30 Luke F. Walton it's like before i was thinking like liberal application of cool vibe onto kick drum it's like no the way that the kick drum hits everybody else and interacts with everybody else is really where the magic sauce is and so it's in that that requires a more flexible way of thinking and more like inductive learning rather than

55:50 Nolan Lem yeah

55:50 Luke F. Walton deductive

55:50 Nolan Lem right

55:51 Luke F. Walton you know it's it's

55:52 Nolan Lem right absolutely

55:52 Luke F. Walton less procedural it is more holistic yeah yeah

55:56 Nolan Lem yeah i love that idea it's really interesting to hear people that like do what you do talk about this stuff because i feel like it really does apply to anyone in

56:03 Luke F. Walton yes

56:04 Nolan Lem the creative process with sound you know it's like similar ways in which you instantiate chains you know i guess in your sense like a you know like literal signal chain but you know just like an idea and then you add another idea and then it has to flow in some direction and

56:17 Nolan Lem and the the earlier idea you have is going to affect the ones down the line or vice versa and so it yeah i think it's just interesting way to to talk about it so yeah

56:27 Luke F. Walton Cool. I'm glad. And that's part of the reason why I like doing the show is that it's.

56:31 Luke F. Walton It's fun pointing at because you can never like exactly say what it is. Music is so nebulous. Audio is so nebulous. You can kind of like draw a circle around the bullseye sort of. And I think

56:43 Nolan Lem Yeah.

56:43 Luke F. Walton in all of these different conversations, we kind of all are indicating towards a thing that we cannot really speak about. It's like looking at the sun. But it's fun because it's cross-functional and cross-medium.

56:57 Nolan Lem yeah definitely definitely

56:58 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

56:58 Nolan Lem wow

56:59 Luke F. Walton So on that note, I have one last question for you, Nolan. This is what I ask all my guests. Why do you love music? What is it about it?

57:06 Nolan Lem yeah oh my gosh why do i love music i think i would say that maybe like to distill it into which is really hard but to distill into like one

57:17 Nolan Lem maybe like core idea just up just what i i don't know off the top of my head but i think it goes back to this idea of remaining present so there is something about music that

57:28 Nolan Lem immediately puts you into the present moment you know makes you kind of mindful and you know i again that sounds pretty trite and whatnot but i i do think it allows us access to a kind of like bodily or kind of just like a um a way of engaging with the world that's just focused in the present and whether that be like sound or just like a random sound or bach or whatever it is i i

57:48 Luke F. Walton Yeah

57:48 Nolan Lem do find myself listening to both of those things in a similar way this kind of really focused in the moment focused on the body focus on listening and maybe that's that's the core thing for me

57:59 Luke F. Walton That's a great answer. It's a great answer. I really like that. And I agree. I agree. And I also like that too, because that's a surprising one. A lot of people have focused on opportunities that it's given them or emotions that it gives them. But I feel like that even cuts a little bit deeper of just, it makes you feel more alive and human and connected to the universe. And I think that's always a good thing.

58:20 Nolan Lem it's a good especially in today's today's world and you know with uh everyone being on the phones

58:26 Luke F. Walton yeah

58:26 Nolan Lem and everything like that so and i'm in no way like not doing that myself

58:30 Luke F. Walton same same no i mean like i was talking about going to the wilderness like the first day of backpacking was like phone withdrawal syndrome you know it's like i'm so like i need to be more stimulated if you walk far enough

58:45 Nolan Lem you walk far enough yeah yeah we need yeah it's probably good to do that um i've been wanting to do that more to be honest to

58:52 Luke F. Walton did it's

58:53 Nolan Lem yeah

58:53 Luke F. Walton really good it's really good and i mean you've got you got great forests and stuff you could go check out or you could go to germany and just have a

58:59 Nolan Lem not great weather all the time but

59:01 Luke F. Walton yeah sir sir i got california yeah fair so

59:04 Nolan Lem yeah that's true go

59:05 Luke F. Walton where where can people uh learn more about you reach out to you see your work

59:09 Nolan Lem on my website it's just nolanlem.com or my instagram i post a lot of stuff there too that's probably the two best two best ways Perfect.

59:18 Luke F. Walton Well, be sure to do that everybody and thank you Nolan really appreciated this super fun conversation

59:23 Nolan Lem Yeah, thank you as well. Yeah. And take care.