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KING OF THE LAPTOPS
Interview with Vytear, US Laptop Champion

By Christopher M. Wright
© 2007 Christopher M. Wright
All Rights Reserved

An entirely new musical activity and social scene has sprung up while you weren't looking. High-energy laptop computer musicians have been playing to sold-out crowds in local nightspots in major US cities for the last couple of years. Performers have appeared on stage dressed in everything from rags to bunny suits. The more dramatic ones become whirling dervishes, dancing here, twisting knobs there, or waving their arms to lead audiences in chant.

Some of the performers don't even know how to play a regular musical instrument. No matter - the laptop opens up a whole new world of musical possibilities where the sound of a zooming camera lens or a paper crinkling is fair game for the compositional process. Welcome to the future of music where already some major performers would not be caught dead onstage without their laptops.

At the top of the heap is Vytear ('vie-tare'), who hails from Philadelphia, winner of the US National Laptop Battle held in Seattle in December 2006. Regional winners from eight cities were given three minutes to wow the judges with just a laptop, software, and one MIDI controller. There were no limits placed on the results. What came forth could have been rock'n'roll, reggae, processed vocal samples from the audience, filtered bug sounds bearing no resemblance to what has been considered 'music' up to this point, or anything else a laptop can cook up.

AIM: The Battle was open to all types of music and sounds. How far out did it get?

Vytear: There was an electro-gabber-hardcore-hoe down at one point.

AIM: What does your name mean?

Vytear: The literal translation is: any tough sounding electronic musical identifier using unlikely combinations of consonants and vowels as to come up 'highly-Googleable'. My runner up was Vapor Viper.

AIM: Is there such a thing as 'laptop music'?

Vytear: I think the label 'laptop music' only describes the means, not the art itself. To me, it's like saying 'paintbrush painting'. I write my music with the tools I have at my disposal, those being mainly electronic. In actuality I have no idea what 'laptop music' sounds like nor could I describe it.

AIM: How did you get started using laptops in your music?

Vytear: Somewhere in college I became interested in electronics and started taking classes in the communications and music school - stuff like electro-acoustic lab courses, jazz improvisation, music theory, multi-track recording, computer music, etc. I slowly started amassing a collection of gear and gadgets to do multi-track recording of my own songs on a borrowed 4-track and ADAT machine. I suppose the 'Vytear' material started around '98 or so. I actually didn't get a laptop until 2002.

AIM: How was your performance in Seattle different from what it might have been in Philly?

Vytear: The contest had rules about what you could use, so it was a slimmed down set-up for me in Seattle. Usually I have a bit more things to carry around. Lots of MIDI control boxes and lately a baritone guitar outfitted with a MIDI pick-up.

AIM: What software do you use?

Vytear: I play my audio material via a patch I made in Max/MSP. It is an ever changing process and rarely works well.

AIM: Does the software induce sameness in everyone's music?

Vytear: Just as much as a guitar or violin might. I've heard boring music coming out of both guitars and laptops.

AIM: Where do you find your sounds?

Vytear: Could be anything. I use synthesis to make sounds, I record on mini-disc, I play guitar into a sampler, anything goes and usually does. I rarely use sample CDs but, if I do, I usually mangle the sound significantly. Sample CDs are good for finding sounds that you might not think of or have the resources to make on your own. I might like the richness or harmonic content of a certain sample CD for use as base material for processing because I don't have a big Synthi 100 system or a collection of Chinese percussion instruments at my disposal. I think all instruments electronic or otherwise have different character.

I do spend a lot of time making sounds in my synthesizers; both hardware and software. Sound creation as a process is so fun for me. One of my greatest pleasures is auditioning samples and running across one that I have no idea how I made.

I have also been making some circuit bent sound machines recently that have been great in the studio [AIM - reconfiguring the circuitry inside consumer electronics devices to generate new sounds].

AIM: There's a great story about a famous rock'n'roll band in the 1970s, I forget which one, but the main guy wanted the keyboardist to use a sound the keyboardist made when the band was fooling around with a Moog synthesizer a few days earlier. But the sound was lost forever. The keyboardist couldn't duplicate it because there was no way to save patches on the first Moogs and the keyboardist didn't make any notes about which way all the wires went, which is how you made patches in those early days.

Have you been influenced by earlier forms of electronic music?

Vytear: I enjoy listening to all sorts of electronic music, and I like to imagine my musical output as being influenced by people like Luc Ferrari, Morton Subotnick, and Stockhausen at this particular point in my career, but it could just as easily be John Coltrane, Bix Beiderbecke, and the Beach Boys.

AIM: I'm trying to put my finger on what is truly 'new' in the laptop music phenomenon. Is it because you're using only what's on a computer hard drive?

Vytear: Nothing new, but it can be really fast.

AIM: I've heard laptop music criticized for repetitiveness and not saying enough in the time taken.

Vytear: I think that any and all music can have those properties. The interesting thing is that peoples' perceptions differ. One person might perceive Coltrane as a giant wash of unchanging noise and become bored while another might perceive it as highly organized structures and become overwhelmed.

AIM: Where's all this headed, either musically, commercially, or as a social phenomenon?

Vytear: I have no idea. I feel comfort in that.

AIM: What's the best question you haven't been asked in an interview yet?

Vytear: I suppose it would have something to do with the imaginative process of this music and how the existing rules and formulas of other musics play into the writing process in both helpful and detrimental ways.

AIM: OK, I'll bite. Tell me about the imaginative process.

Vytear: The aesthetic that I hear in my head is amazing. I am not sure I am getting it to tape yet though! ha!

AIM: Pat Metheny says the same thing. Give me an example of how existing rules help and hurt.

Vytear: From my standpoint, I experience both sides of that coin. To a degree, this is the old 'knowing the rules to break them' or 'don't learn the rules' argument of which I find being able to do either is rewarding for my work. There are days when I spend many frustrating hours trying to make non-note sounds sound harmonic and consonant or I try to make the song flow in sections like ABABB or I worry about melodies and basslines. Conversely there are days when I feel liberated from that and I work on the textures, the kinetics of the sound, completely linear song structure etc. Lately I think the best results come when I manage to fuse the two.

AIM: Thanks for giving us a window on your world.

Vytear: My pleasure. Thank you Chris.

Visit Vytear on MySpace - www.myspace.com/vytear

For more information - www.laptopbattle.org

Vytear on laptops and assorted other gear

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