
Engineer and musician Tristan Shone conceives and machines instruments that look more at home in a factory than a rock venue and extrude deep, dark sounds rich with texture and emotion. We chatted with him about engineering versus art, the trials of fabrication, and industrial fetishes.
Goli Mohammadi: You started out as a one-man heavy metal band. Tell us how you transitioned to making your own instruments.
Tristan Shone: I had gotten rid of my previous band and went on my own, so I wrote sequence pieces that were basically for me playing guitar with all the bass and synth sequenced behind me. I would go and play live with that setup with a giant sound system, [but] it seemed like I needed to be more involved with the whole setup, like I needed to be basically in charge. It just felt kind of Milli Vanilli to me.
GM: How did you go from being a mechanical engineer to deciding to go to art school?
TS: I had been working for artists building installations while I was at RPI [Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute]. I met this guy Chris Csikszentmihรกlyi, who is now at the MIT Media Lab. He was the art professor but he was very technically oriented โ he knew how to program. He introduced me to microcontrollers, and he knew how to use CNC machines. He was also very interested in music, so I helped him with a couple of installations and traveled with him to a big festival. That kind of opened up this other world that was creative and technical yet kind of wacky, and the people were a little more fun to be around.
GM: When youโre creating an instrument, does the sound dictate the design or vice versa?
TS: The whole time Iโve made music Iโve been interested in this certain type of rhythm and a certain drone-y sound, and Iโm always chasing it.
Thereโs also certain elements of industry that Iโve come across that I really like, like when things snap-fit, or how thereโs a certain resistance you have on a wheel in a manual mill. It has a certain resistance that you canโt really fake, so you have to actually make [the instrument] out of those materials. Sometimes Iโll just feel one of these things and think, โThat would be a great way to feel the sound and really have that natural force feedback.โ
Or something snaps and [I think], โThat would be a really good drum sound if you had a lever that you move linearly and it just went chnk chnk.โ Itโs really simple โ itโs not dynamic like a violin, itโs just like Iโm moving this thing from there to there โ but itโs totally satisfying. I think itโs the combination of the sound coupled with that industrial fetish.
GM: Your instruments require significant force from the performer. Does your experience playing them translate to the audience?
TS: With the older instruments [Drone Machines], youโre really used to sweating. My favorite combination is [moving] the wheel [Rotary Encoder] with the right hand and the Linear Actuator with the left hand. And sometimes you have to stand on the table to really rotate [the wheel] and get it up to the pitch that you need. If itโs spinning at full speed and then I have to stop it, it kind of torques my body to actually stop it. I think people see that and they appreciate it.
GM: What tools do you use to design?
TS: Iโll sit and sketch and eventually come up with a general design in SolidWorks, which is like a look and a feel, and then start getting really detailed, figuring out if itโs affordable, and how much of it can I make myself. And then from SolidWorks on to Mastercam for each part, if Iโm gonna do it on a CNC. Some of the parts are on CNC and some are on a water jet.
GM: How do you choose your materials?
TS: Thereโs a sculptor named Matt Hope, and he and I built some speakers together. He was
a big proponent of stainless steel because it was a material that you donโt have to paint, donโt have to coat, it never rusts, and itโs super strong, and so I bought into that because aluminum bends. But after building some stuff out of steel on the last machines, itโs just not feasible to tour with. You cannot carry stainless steel stuff around.
GM: How heavy are your instruments?
TS: The wheel is like 300 or 400 pounds. The first tour I went on, I went up to Portland, and my friend and I carried that up some stairs, along with all the speakers. When you first start playing, youโre like, โNo, I want to show everything.โ And as you go on, youโre like, โActually, Iโm gonna start making things out of aluminum.โ
The newer devices are basically a reaction to traveling. I wanted to make smaller dynamic things that are within these limits. Itโs really nice to have limits like that. Itโs like, OK, I have a size restriction, I have a weight restriction. If you donโt have any limits, it takes you forever โ you can never make any decisions.
GM: Whatโs going on in your laptop?
TS: Well, itโs kind of sad, but everything. In my final [thesis] project, in front of all the professors, I kicked out the USB cable and it crashed my computer and I couldnโt perform. I couldnโt restart my computer and it was the most embarrassing thing. It was the first performance I ever did for the faculty. You have all this stuff and people expect it to do something and actually itโs all communicating over the laptop.
Theyโre essentially MIDI controllers โ these things control software synthesizer sounds or samples. So like the Headgear, although I am using my voice through it, I can trigger whatever sample I want. And the wheel, I can record a whistle and control it with the wheel and that totally would work. Itโs just a serial command off the Arduino through the MIDI and then to Ableton or Reason or whatever, so without that thereโs no sound. I just decided at some point that I like electronic music. Iโm not an acoustic person. I like drum and bass, and dub, and this is my world and those are the sounds I want to create.
Read the full interview and hear Author and Punisher: makezine.com/22/tristanshone
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