Amy, welcome to the podcast.
Hello!
Thanks for joining me.
Yeah, thanks for having me.
I'm pretty excited about this podcast because you sent me some information about Sonic Pi.
And so I jumped in this morning and downloaded Sonic Pi and started playing around with it.
I found it really cool because I've never really had the patience to do any kind of coding.
I took a coding class in high school.
It was a C++ class.
I'm like, wow, this is really boring.
You have to do all of this work to get one little output and do one little equation or algorithm.
And I'm just like, man, this is a lot of work for not... this isn't that cool.
But I'm really into music.
You can see I got a guitar behind me.
I like playing around with music.
I'm in this band.
And so being able to... and what Sonic Pi is, and I'll let you explain it a little bit more, but basically it's using a coding language to make music, essentially.
And so playing around with that was fun because now I'm experimenting with the different numbers and making different sounds and stuff like that.
Totally.
So thanks for putting that on my radar, and I'm really excited to dig into it.
Yeah, absolutely.
Tell me, how did you come across Sonic Pi, and what has it done for you?
Yeah, so Sonic Pi is... when you open it up, it says Sonic Pi, the live coding synth for everyone.
And I think it really is for everyone because of what you just said.
You get instant feedback.
As soon as you type stuff in and run it, you hear it back right away, which is pretty cool.
I stumbled across Sonic Pi last fall when I had just started working as an AV engineer at MSOE and found out that I was actually going to have to start doing some of the symbol-based coding for configuring audio-visual equipment in classrooms and stuff.
Did you say symbol-based?
Symbol, yeah.
You don't type the language.
It's not like Sonic Pi or other coding languages.
I guess, I don't know, I probably don't need to define symbol-based coding.
But yeah, for room configurations and stuff like that, that's what I had to start getting into.
But without a background on how coding works at all or the structures of that, I wasn't sure where to start other than resources through the specific things that I had to learn.
And like you mentioned, I had a very similar experience with that language as you did with C++ where it was like, wow, this is boring and it takes me all day to find out that the code that I'm running that turns one light on, it doesn't work.
So I needed to find a way to learn how the logic works.
Because I think that unless you already have some experience knowing how the syntax of these different languages comes into play, it's kind of hard to know where to start.
So I actually, I'm not, I don't remember exactly how I came across it.
I think I saw an article or maybe somebody posted about it on Reddit or something.
And I downloaded it on a whim and I was like, within the first day, I was coding songs.
I'm like, oh, this all makes sense.
And it actually, you know, I can apply the same, you know, trains of thought and logic and stuff to the coding that I have to use at work.
And I kind of used it as an educational tool for myself first.
And then started to realize the kind of the creative potential behind using Sonic Pi as an actual instrument, rather than just a way to learn how to code.
Yeah, that's cool.
And I started to look up Sam Aaron, who invented this software.
And he does these live coding DJ things.
And I don't know, have you experienced any of these?
Those are so cool.
I'm working my way up to being good enough or perceiving myself to be good enough to do that kind of thing.
I love what he does, though, with his live streams.
He's a big influence on me creatively, as well as, you know, being the creator of this awesome platform.
Cool.
And so how has Sonic Pi, once digging into it from a musical mindset...
I see that you have a few guitars in the background here.
For those that are listening to the audio, we do have the video version.
And you can go to podcast.cyphercon.com.
Podcast.cyphercon.com.
And you can check out the... there'll be a link to the video if you want to check out what we're talking about.
We'll use Sonic Pi as an example.
So we'll kind of go through, like, the code and look at a little bit of what it's doing in a minute here.
But tell me a little bit about, you know, approaching it from a musician standpoint and then how you learned and how that applied to some of the, you know, the symbol-based coding that you had to do for your AV position at MSOE.
Totally.
So, man, I have a background as, like, a DIY musician, playing in lots of, you know, small punk bands, tiny venues, health shows, stuff like that.
And I think that I kind of approach almost everything in my life with that same mentality.
That hacker mentality.
Exactly.
It kind of... I was thinking about that this morning, how... I'm like, do I consider myself a hacker?
Maybe.
I don't know.
But then, you know, like, the DIY music culture is... has, you know, the same approach as, like, the maker culture and the hacker culture and all of that.
And it's like, are we just hacking the music industry and DIY?
You know, is that the... that's kind of a way of looking at it.
Yeah, well, I totally look at, you know, hacking as, like, a way to creatively solve problems, right?
Totally.
So I want this goal, like, how do I get there?
You know, you try the front door, the back door, the side door, the window, and you eventually get there through this creative process, you know.
And some people have, like, no, I have to take this route.
And that's the only way that I can go.
And hackers are like, no, we're trying everything.
Totally.
Yeah.
And that's awesome.
And I think that that totally, like, plays into kind of the experiences that I've had in DIY.
But yeah, as a musician approaching Sonic Pi, I guess kind of another reason I was interested in it was because I was trying to get into, you know, drum machines and more synth-based music and stuff like that.
And, you know, a big reason why Sonic Pi came before I started diving into, like, you know, modular synths or different kinds of drum machines or even different, like, production platforms.
Sonic Pi is free and modular synths are extremely expensive and drum machines are very expensive.
But in this one little window on your computer, you can make many different kinds of genres, tons of different song structures with, like, this crazy level of flexibility and accessibility that is really hard to find in even, you know, hardware, which is cool.
So I think the fact that it, you know, was free was a huge reason why I was able to start making music with it right away and see how much creative potential exists on that platform.
So, I mean, other than, like, accessibility, the way it kind of changed the way that I approached writing songs when I write songs in Sonic Pi, I'm always very melodically driven and I'm always about, you know, the lyrics and what the song is about.
And, you know, in the past, that's how I have approached writing songs.
Usually I write the melody and words in my head before I start even thinking about instrumentation.
But on this platform, it kind of forced me to think more about, like, the layers of sound and, like, the synthesis.
And I learned the word synthesis from learning about Sonic Pi, you know.
And it kind of opened my mind to the fact that any sound that you make is... you are able to completely specify all of the parameters.
And while it can be, you know, a little bit more slow moving, it's...
I think that it's... working with Sonic Pi has kind of shifted my creative focus a little bit away from how I used to approach songwriting and pushed it much further down more of a sound designer route.
Sure.
So you're looking more at, like, the structure of the sounds themselves versus, you know, having a melody, having some lyrics, having a tune in your head that you're putting out there.
Yeah.
And, like, kind of how can you construct, like, this soundscape and what is a soundscape and, like, what is... it kind of allows you to expand the scope of your music from just the song that you're listening to and what your song is about and what you're talking about.
And it allows you to kind of expand things into a whole world of what the sounds that you're making can be.
Sure.
And one of the things that got me excited about it is right now I'm working on this project.
It's like a VR project where it's kind of like a meditation type thing.
And I wanted to have some kind of ambient music in the background.
One of my friends has a synth, so I was like, maybe I'll get my buddy to let me use a synth to make some weird sounds and stuff.
And I saw this.
I'm like, oh, I can use this.
Yep, exactly.
I'm going to use this to make these crazy weird sounds as we're, like, doing this, like, VR meditation thing.
Oh, that's so cool.
So, yeah, so I was getting really excited about it.
I'm like, oh, this is going to be great because, like you said, synths and drum kits and, like, you know, these drum machines and all this stuff are super expensive.
And this is a free program.
And it's pretty simple to use.
And there's, like, I like the tutorial.
They kind of take you through, like, this is, you know, play around with these things, play around with this.
And then you kind of get a sense for what different things do.
And then also, I like the elements that you can kind of get a sense for what different elements bring into the space and, like, what kind of feel these different sounds have, you know.
Totally, totally.
And so I like that a lot.
So I totally, I know what you're talking about.
So, cool.
Well, should we, so you sent me, so we were trying, just before this, we were trying to figure out if we could play it, you know, we're doing this through Zoom.
And so we can, you sent me some code for something that you made, and I'm able to play it through my computer and it picks up on my mic and it sounds decent enough so that we can kind of give you guys a sense of what this sounds like live.
So I'm going to just go ahead and share my screen and pull up the code.
All right, so here's the code that you sent me.
And so this is Sonic Pi.
And for those of you, again, if you're listening and you want to see this, you can go and find this on YouTube if you go to the website and find the show notes.
So yeah, so this is Sonic Pi, and I'll just run through what you made, and then let's talk about it.
How's that sound?
That sounds great.
All right, here we go.
Cool.
Yeah, so that clip is a part of a song that I'm working on called Participation Trophy.
And I guess, do you want me to talk about the...
So maybe let's start here.
How do you approach a song like this?
Totally.
Let's start there.
Yeah, you know, usually I have a few different... depending on what I'm working on, I approach writing in Sonic Pi in different ways.
In this song specifically, this is a part of a song that I also play other instruments along to in the recording.
And this is just a part of that section.
So when I go into a song like this, where I already have a bigger structure in mind for it, I know what I want it to sound like, and I know what I'm going for.
So when I approach it more intentionally like this, I usually start with the backbeat, which is the top line, the BB.
And that's, you know, just my kick drum and my snare sound that I use throughout.
And I build on that.
For this song, I had the chord progression in mind, so I already knew the chords that I wanted to incorporate.
And if you scroll down a little bit, you can see...
Oh, I guess those are the... that's the hi-hat.
So that's all the beat stuff at the top.
Usually I do drums first and come up with the beat that I want, and then add the melodic and harmonic stuff later.
The way that this is structured all together is it's just one big loop, so everything is a live loop that loops through.
You can get a lot more fancy than this, and you can have threads that, you know, play certain sections at some points and kind of do different things with it at different points in the song.
You said BB is backbeat, so I see...
Yeah.
Here we have, for example, sync BB.
Exactly.
What does the sync one mean?
So sync, that just syncs everything to that first line of code.
Gotcha .
So yeah, so basically this entire clip is just a loop that I created in Sonic Pi.
And then how does that... so how does it work for, like, the measures?
This is something I was trying to figure out.
So you have a live loop here, you have a live loop here, and so you hit run, and so that's like time zero.
And then how does it know that, like... I noticed that I think sleep had something to do with it when I was messing around with it.
Yeah, so the timing in that, I think it's based off of, like, seconds.
So 0.5 would be like a half a second.
Okay.
Within the... up at the top, I defined the BPM for this.
Okay.
I think it's the seconds relative to the BPM.
You don't have to do it twice.
That's a typo, but you should only need to have used BPM once, but...
Gotcha.
So that's your beats per minute, and so then this is, like, how many seconds?
Or I should say...
Yeah.
Relative to that, the sleep time is kind of putting in those intervals, I guess?
Yes.
Yeah.
Yep.
Interesting.
Okay.
If you don't define this, does it have a default one?
I think the default is 120.
Gotcha.
Cool.
So that's a little bit about, I guess, the times.
But yeah, this is... I mean, this is a really... so what does AY mean?
I just... you can name your loops whatever you want them to be.
So I, like, typed out ABC.
I gotcha.
Okay.
Sometimes... so the one labeled prog is chord progression.
The bow synth is that bow synth that you heard.
Little D.
Is there a library in here of, like, all of the sounds that they have?
Yes.
If you go down in the lower left-hand corner where it says Lang, it gives...
Oh, down here.
Synth effects and Lang all define everything that you need to know.
Dang, there's a lot of stuff in here.
Yeah.
Lots of stuff.
And I'm definitely still at the... in the beginner's phase of it all.
So there's so much logic in here that I think you can do a lot of really cool stuff with that I'm still tapping into myself.
Cool.
And actually, in examples, you can see some pretty cool... they have examples of different levels of code.
Gotcha.
This is so cool.
I love this.
It is.
And gosh, that example section makes it so easy to figure out, like, okay, like, I get that these words are defined as this in this language, but so what?
What do you do with it?
I have been able to get unstuck from a lot of things in that example section.
Cool, cool.
So if someone wanted to start doing this, is there any kind of tips that you would say about, you know, how to jump in and do this?
Yeah.
I know for me, it was pretty simple to just start and go through the... I mean, the tutorial right here in the bottom is pretty great.
And so I was just like, oh, this is kind of cool.
And then it just tells you, like, right in here, like, here's what to do.
It's so well designed.
It's so cool.
Definitely go through the tutorial first.
It has everything you need to know to get started and beyond.
But once you do make your way through the tutorial, MeHackIt is actually... there's a thing called MeHackIt, and some of the tutorials are embedded in this tutorial, but there's more on their website.
What's MeHackIt?
I think it's a coding organization that they just put together a bunch of really, really well designed training tools for this program.
I think it's kind of geared towards a younger audience, but yeah.
So that's a website that has some more tutorials on this?
Yeah.
And all of the resources, as well as a really cool community of educators, musicians, coders, hackers, anybody that uses Sonic Pi and loves it.
There's a Discord group for it.
It's formatted a little bit weird.
If you just send it to me, I'll put it in the show notes.
Cool.
So then if you want to find it, go to the website and you can find it in the show notes to find where that Discord server is.
Cool.
Awesome.
So it's a pretty good community of folks in there helping each other out.
Absolutely .
Totally.
And literally anytime I post about Sonic Pi or use it, or I'm like, I put a new song out with this, you get tons of people from around the world that are so supportive, and it's really cool.
Cool.
Awesome.
All right.
Anything else you want to say about this?
What does pan mean?
Now I'm just looking at this stuff because now that I have you on here, I'm like, tell me some stuff.
Pan is just like the left, right stereo stuff.
So zero is in the middle, negative is left, and positive numbers are right.
Okay.
And mix, that's one that I just figured out.
It's kind of like the percentage that it actually mixes with.
Yep, exactly.
It's kind of like volume.
Yeah.
What's release?
Release is how long it takes for the sound to end, basically.
So longer release, the sound is longer.
Gotcha.
And then sleep, when it says sleep eight, does that mean it's like eight measures or something like that?
It's like the seconds.
Okay, the seconds.
Yep.
Gotcha.
Huh.
Cool.
Well, yeah, anything else you want to say about this?
Otherwise, I think I'll stop the share and we can dig into some other stuff.
Sure, yeah.
I mean, other than the fact that it's super fun, it's literally so easy to get started with.
So if you're into music and you want to learn coding, or you're just into music, or you're a coder and you want to experiment with making some different things with what you know, try it out, because it's awesome.
Sweet.
Cool.
And so you were going to, you actually programmed a bunch of music that was going to be at CypherCon, right?
Yes, yes, I did.
Yeah, so yeah, tell me a little bit about like, because you're going to do a talk at CypherCon too, right?
Yep, yeah.
So the talk was more geared towards like, talking about what Sonic Pi is, how you can use it.
I think it's such a great educational tool.
So I really hope that people that are educators that are either music educators or computer science educators find this and use it in their classes and stuff.
But yeah, so the talk was going to be more of a demonstration, kind of how we went through it today.
But the songs that I wrote for CypherCon, it's a collection of like, 10 different songs that are more ambient.
They're not released yet.
Maybe we'll do it next year.
Yeah!
Yeah, I think we will.
But yeah, so with those, I took a much less structured approach to the actual writing, which was so much fun.
Because I'm not like that as a person.
I'm a to-do list kind of person.
But being able to approach the songwriting without having a clear idea of what I wanted the end product to sound like when I started.
You know, you can go into the code and start typing things and then hear it and be like, okay, okay, this is really cool.
And I think this would sound cool with this.
And then all of a sudden, you've built this really cool sonic landscape, you know?
Awesome.
Yeah, I can't wait to hear it next CypherCon.
Let's get that music out there.
Cool.
So, and then I also just kind of, I checked out your blog a little bit.
And you have like a whole field guide for audio engineering and stuff like that.
I'm like, oh, this is cool.
This is something that I've been looking for, because I'm doing this podcast.
Yeah.
I'm slowly like getting a little better.
I got, you know, I got this microphone.
It's nothing fancy, but...
There you go.
That's awesome.
Awesome, awesome.
So that, you know, now my voice isn't as crappy as it was.
You know, so tell me a little bit about, you know, the, the audio engineering stuff that you've been up to and kind of your journey there.
Yeah, totally.
So, um, I, I'm an audio engineer and recording engineer.
I, you know, went to school to do that.
That's always been my passion.
Has never been my full time job, but has always been my passion.
But I, I currently do work out of the Wire and Vice recording studio in Tosa, which is just a beautiful place.
Lots of really, really great Milwaukee music has been created there and beyond Milwaukee too.
And I, before that, worked out of a studio called The Workshop, which is unfortunately no longer a studio, but it was such a, such a great place.
Now it's called Stillwave Recordings and it's, it's still awesome, but it's different people running it.
And yeah, I mean, I, I love recording bands.
I love recording any, any kind of music.
That's actually kind of how I got into making music was through needing something to record, you know?
Oh, sure.
Sure.
Yeah.
Cool.
Awesome.
So how, so you said like needing something, like, you're like, okay, we have this song, we want to record it.
How do I do that?
Is that what you mean?
Like, that's how it came about?
I mean, more, more so like when I was in college, you know, you have free total access to, you know, a super nice recording studio.
But if you don't have any music to record, what are you doing?
So I, part of the reason why I started getting into bands, it's kind of a, it's kind of one of those things where I, part of the reason I got into playing in bands was so that I would have content to actually record, to learn how to record and to kind of hone it in a little bit.
But then I also kind of got into recording so I could record my own music.
Gotcha.
Yeah, cool.
Awesome.
So it was kind of, it's like a chicken or the egg situation.
Exactly.
Both at the same time.
Yep , for sure.
Like I want this and I want this.
Yep.
Okay, cool.
Cool.
And, and so, and I think before we started recording, you mentioned that you do like the audio engineering for a podcast.
Yeah.
It's a podcast called Interning 101 with Emily White is the, the host.
She's an awesome music and entertainment and like sports manager who wrote a book by the same name, Interning 101 and did a great podcast about that.
That podcast wrapped, but we're, we're in pre-production for a podcast based on her new book, which is about how musicians can create, how musicians can collect all revenue streams and basically actually sustain themselves as musicians professionally.
I'm going to check that out.
That sounds cool.
You should, definitely.
The book is already out.
So if you want a link, I can send it to you.
Yeah, please do.
Please do.
That's, that's one of my goals is to become a paid musician.
Cool.
And so in doing, and I'm asking this selfishly, cause I have a podcast and I edit it and record it and like do all this stuff for it.
And I've been, I've been doing things in audacity.
That's kind of like, I'll take this and then put it into audacity and I'll add like, you know, an intro.
I got like an intro song, an outro song, stuff like that.
How do you do the recording?
What, what kind of technology do you use?
Yeah.
So I, I work completely remote.
Emily's in New York, so she does the physical recording.
But we, we set her up with just, you know, the standard blue USB Yeti mic.
And I think it depends on what she's actually recording because she's also an, like a, not a professor, but an instructor and uses, like sometimes she'll use her, her talks or, you know, recordings from class and stuff like that and incorporate that into the,
into the podcast.
So the way that the production happens kind of depends on the environment that she's recording in, but usually it's a blue Yeti mic into audacity.
And then she sends me those files and I edit it all down.
I use Pro Tools just because that's what I am most familiar with.
Pro Tools?
Okay.
Yep.
I like Pro Tools for, for like spoken word audio editing and I like Ableton for, for music editing.
So what about, so does she have guests on the podcast or is it just her talking?
Yep.
Nope.
She has guests.
I can't, I actually am drawing a blank on the, the program that she uses to record the phone interviews though.
Okay.
Yeah.
I've been, I just started doing the Zoom thing because I wanna, I've been taking the videos and putting them up on YouTube too.
Nice.
Cause you know, sometimes it's fun to show, like today we showed some of the, you know, the code from Sonic Pi, which is kind of cool to do some of that stuff.
But yeah, the, you know, I'm always looking for, for new things.
Totally .
I've been doing, I've tried Zencaster.
That's one that I've been using.
Okay.
That, that seems to work pretty well.
Yeah.
Unless sometimes there's like a thing where it won't want to up, cause the nice thing about it is it'll upload from both your side and the interviewer's side so that you can, you know, you can dial up or dial down someone's voice if you need to.
Totally.
You know, with Zoom, it's all one and you know, I can apply compression and stuff to it and it makes it, it's pretty good, but you know, there's always room for improvement.
Right?
Yeah.
I think we started with Zencaster and ended up having some of those upload issues.
Yeah.
Cool.
Awesome.
So what, what projects are you working on now?
Where can people find your work?
Yeah.
So, um, I am currently working, uh, I released music right now under a name, uh, under June Gloom, uh, and you can find me on Bandcamp under, uh, June Gloom WI, um, for, for music and stuff, uh, for recording and, uh, any kind of audio engineering and the,
the, the field guide for the sound mind, uh, audio zine, uh, all that can be found on my website, which is just amyupthegrove at just amyupthegrove.com.
Cool.
Awesome.
And, uh, if people want to get in touch with you, are you like on Twitter or anything like that?
Yep.
Uh, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, all just amyupthegrove.
Amyupthegrove.
All right, cool.
And, um, so you said June Gloom.
Now what's the, um, what's the significance of June Gloom?
Why'd you choose that name?
Um, I, a long time ago, I went to California and I learned about the weather pattern, uh, called June Gloom, uh, which is in June, it gets really gloomy on the West Coast.
Uh, so, um, I, I've always thought that would be a great band name.
Uh, and the kind of music I make is, it tends to be kind of, uh, bright and sunshiny sounding, but also very sad.
So I, uh, yeah, so that's cool.
Yeah, that's it.
I used to live in Oregon and that's, um, I remembered it was gloomy all year, except for like July to September and like, then it was just beautiful, you know, it was just gorgeous.
But yeah, it was like, I'm like, I, I don't know.
I couldn't, and I just had a bike, so I just, I got sick of riding my bike in the rain all the time too.
Everything is just wet most of the, most of the year.
Um, but then it's just beautiful in the summertime, so.
Totally, totally.
Yeah.
Cool.
Awesome.
Well, um, thank you so much for taking the time, Amy.
Uh, any, any, any last thoughts, any, uh, final wisdom you want to impart on our audience?
Oh man, I get, just keep trying cool things.
Yeah.
Make cool stuff.
Yeah.
Make cool stuff.
All right.
I love it.
All right.
Awesome, Amy.
Well, uh, again, thank you so much for taking the time.
You bet.
Thanks so much for having me.
I look forward to listening to your music.
Thanks.
You too.
All right.
Oh, wait.
That's not what I wanted.