EQ Magazine - November 2008 - (Page 12) PUNCH IN JANE GRANT John Matthias. MUSICAL MIND John Matthias Dissects His “Brain” BY GREG REYNOLDS Pop quiz: When was the last time you were listening to an album, heard a vaguely familiar sound pattern that you couldn’t quite place, and said to yourself, “Aha! Neurogranular synthesis! I knew it”? The answer, of course, is never. That is, unless you’ve given English multi-instrumentalist John Matthias’ Stories from the Water Cooler a listen. Why? Because Matthias, along with co-conspirator Nick Ryan, is responsible for developing and recording a new musical instrument, dubbed “The Brain.” Based on a model of spiking neurons, this experimental instrument was prototyped just in time to introduce it on Matthias’ latest collection of droney folk-pop observations. What was the basic premise behind Stories from the Water Cooler? The idea was to create music with very simple song structures, overlaid with very simple ideas, but so that when they all came together they formed a rather complicated sound. I have a PhD in physics, and I have always been interested in quantum fluids, and the fact that individual atoms don’t really have any meaning. It’s the whole collection of behavior that has meaning, and what makes it flow in such an amazing way. The same thing is true to a certain extent with traffic flow, the flow of people through cities, economies, stars, and loads and loads of systems if you look at them in their entirety—even music. Tell us about The Brain. We wanted to build something that had correlated rhythms that weren’t completely correlated like a drummer or musician. We started looking at models of the cortex of the brain, and we found that neurons firing are unpredictable, but they have interesting rhythms that aren’t necessarily random. 12 EQ NOVEMBER 2008 www.eqmag.com http://www.eqmag.com
Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of EQ Magazine - November 2008 EQ Magazine - November 2008 Contents Talk Box Sounding Board Punch In Brian Wilson Guitar Trax Bass Management Key Issues Drum Heads Vocal Cords Mix Bus Cheat Sheet Sony Acid 6 Abelton Live 7 Controller World New Controllers Analysis Room with a Vu EQ Magazine - November 2008 EQ Magazine - November 2008 - EQ Magazine - November 2008 (Page Cover1) EQ Magazine - November 2008 - EQ Magazine - November 2008 (Page Cover2) EQ Magazine - November 2008 - EQ Magazine - November 2008 (Page 1) EQ Magazine - November 2008 - Contents (Page 2) EQ Magazine - November 2008 - Contents (Page 3) EQ Magazine - November 2008 - Talk Box (Page 4) EQ Magazine - November 2008 - Talk Box (Page Blowin1) EQ Magazine - November 2008 - Talk Box (Page Blowin2) EQ Magazine - November 2008 - Talk Box (Page 5) EQ Magazine - November 2008 - Sounding Board (Page 6) EQ Magazine - November 2008 - Sounding Board (Page 7) EQ Magazine - November 2008 - Punch In (Page 8) EQ Magazine - November 2008 - Punch In (Page 9) EQ Magazine - November 2008 - Punch In (Page 10) EQ Magazine - November 2008 - Punch In (Page 11) EQ Magazine - November 2008 - Punch In (Page 12) EQ Magazine - November 2008 - Punch In (Page 13) EQ Magazine - November 2008 - Punch In (Page 14) EQ Magazine - November 2008 - Punch In (Page 15) EQ Magazine - November 2008 - Brian Wilson (Page 16) EQ Magazine - November 2008 - Brian Wilson (Page 17) EQ Magazine - November 2008 - Brian Wilson (Page 18) EQ Magazine - November 2008 - Brian Wilson (Page 19) EQ Magazine - November 2008 - Brian Wilson (Page 20) EQ Magazine - November 2008 - Brian Wilson (Page 21) EQ Magazine - November 2008 - Brian Wilson (Page 22) EQ Magazine - November 2008 - Brian Wilson (Page 23) EQ Magazine - November 2008 - Brian Wilson (Page 24) EQ Magazine - November 2008 - Brian Wilson (Page 25) EQ Magazine - November 2008 - Brian Wilson (Page 26) EQ Magazine - November 2008 - Brian Wilson (Page 27) EQ Magazine - November 2008 - Guitar Trax (Page 28) EQ Magazine - November 2008 - Guitar Trax (Page 29) EQ Magazine - November 2008 - Bass Management (Page 30) EQ Magazine - November 2008 - Bass Management (Page 31) EQ Magazine - November 2008 - Bass Management (Page 32) EQ Magazine - November 2008 - Bass Management (Page 33) EQ Magazine - November 2008 - Key Issues (Page 34) EQ Magazine - November 2008 - Key Issues (Page 35) EQ Magazine - November 2008 - Key Issues (Page 36) EQ Magazine - November 2008 - Key Issues (Page 37) EQ Magazine - November 2008 - Drum Heads (Page 38) EQ Magazine - November 2008 - Drum Heads (Page 39) EQ Magazine - November 2008 - Drum Heads (Page 40) EQ Magazine - November 2008 - Drum Heads (Page 41) EQ Magazine - November 2008 - Vocal Cords (Page 42) EQ Magazine - November 2008 - Vocal Cords (Page 43) EQ Magazine - November 2008 - Vocal Cords (Page 44) EQ Magazine - November 2008 - Vocal Cords (Page 45) EQ Magazine - November 2008 - Mix Bus (Page 46) EQ Magazine - November 2008 - Mix Bus (Page 47) EQ Magazine - November 2008 - Mix Bus (Page 48) EQ Magazine - November 2008 - Mix Bus (Page 49) EQ Magazine - November 2008 - Mix Bus (Page 50) EQ Magazine - November 2008 - Mix Bus (Page 51) EQ Magazine - November 2008 - Cheat Sheet (Page 52) EQ Magazine - November 2008 - Cheat Sheet (Page 53) EQ Magazine - November 2008 - Sony Acid 6 (Page 54) EQ Magazine - November 2008 - Sony Acid 6 (Page 55) EQ Magazine - November 2008 - Abelton Live 7 (Page 56) EQ Magazine - November 2008 - Abelton Live 7 (Page 57) EQ Magazine - November 2008 - New Controllers (Page 58) EQ Magazine - November 2008 - New Controllers (Page 59) EQ Magazine - November 2008 - New Controllers (Page 60) EQ Magazine - November 2008 - New Controllers (Page 61) EQ Magazine - November 2008 - New Controllers (Page 62) EQ Magazine - November 2008 - New Controllers (Page 63) EQ Magazine - November 2008 - New Controllers (Page 64) EQ Magazine - November 2008 - New Controllers (Page 65) EQ Magazine - November 2008 - New Controllers (Page 66) EQ Magazine - November 2008 - New Controllers (Page 67) EQ Magazine - November 2008 - New Controllers (Page 68) EQ Magazine - November 2008 - New Controllers (Page 69) EQ Magazine - November 2008 - New Controllers (Page 70) EQ Magazine - November 2008 - New Controllers (Page 71) EQ Magazine - November 2008 - Analysis (Page 72) EQ Magazine - November 2008 - Analysis (Page 73) EQ Magazine - November 2008 - Analysis (Page 74) EQ Magazine - November 2008 - Analysis (Page 75) EQ Magazine - November 2008 - Analysis (Page 76) EQ Magazine - November 2008 - Analysis (Page 77) EQ Magazine - November 2008 - Analysis (Page 78) EQ Magazine - November 2008 - Analysis (Page 79) EQ Magazine - November 2008 - Room with a Vu (Page 80) EQ Magazine - November 2008 - Room with a Vu (Page Cover3) EQ Magazine - November 2008 - Room with a Vu (Page Cover4)
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