Q+A: Composer Tristan Perich, Creator of the Amazing, Self-Playing 1-Bit Symphony

“It’s more about focusing on the basic elements of computation itself, beyond the capabilities of pen-on-paper, but without the excess of gigahertz computing.

Tristan Perich’s 1-Bit Symphony project is as simple as it is boggling. It is an individual microchip coded by Perich, and glued into a CD jewel case. Accompanying it is a tiny off and on switch, an amplifier, a skip button, and a headphone jack. And in case you’re confused about what this is, that you might consider it just another form of a recording, also included in the liner notes are lines and lines and lines of computer code. In a very real sense, when you flip the on switch you are receiving a musical performance in real-time.

Beyond concept, 1-Bit Symphony also happens to be quite pretty and resonates far deeper than you might ever expect from lines of code in a Chiclet-sized piece of silicon. It’s available in late August, but preorders are available now at the Bang On A Can store. Earlier this week I talked to Perich about the project:

Motherboard: First, as someone not familiar with coding and the inner workings of computer chips, I don’t really understand the process of getting all those lines of code in the liner notes actually onto the chip. Can you shed some light?
Tristan Perich: Programming microchips is an interesting process that is perhaps like synching your iPod but a lot more hardcore. There is generally a kind of physical interface, where one side plugs into the microchip and the other into my computer, and some software puts the chip into programming mode and downloads the code onto it. During this time the entire chip is rewritten in a low-level process with new software instead of just transferring music from one operating system to another. At that point, whenever the chip is powered on, it executes the software from the first line of code.

MB: Can you explain how this was composed? Do you actually take notation in code? Or is it transposed from “normal” notation?
TP: With my first album, 1-Bit Music, I kept the code as direct and simple as possible, so pitches were represented in terms of multiples of the base sample rate. The pitch system was in pure intonation, with no easy translation to my familiar way of writing music. Composing for that album was more a form of continual experimentation and refinement.

When I began composing for classical instruments accompanied by the 1-bit electronics, I adapted the electronic pitch system to match the musicians (this felt more natural than the other way around), and so I was able to write in standard equal temperament. With 1-Bit Symphony, I took this approach so I could put more focus on the compositional aspects of writing music and less on the artifacts of the system itself.

MB: After doing this, I wonder if it’s changed how you listen to music. That is, when you hear a song on the radio or are out at a show or whatever and hear a melody, do you think of the computer code?
TP: There is a very old relationship between mathematics and music, which these days we can reinterpret in terms of code. Unlike math, which is traditionally done by hand, code is essentially a computer-oriented way of thinking, employing fast hardware, so we hear its effects at the level of sound itself (synthesizers) instead of just the aspects of the higher-level composition (melodies).

I personally am less interested in the complexity of sound that can result from code. The old adage about computer music is that any conceivable sound is possible. I’d rather hear sounds that accentuate the idea of computation, of process, which make me think about the simple algorithms behind them. Then I really thinking about auditory processes and the structural organization of them as music.

MB: For most of us, chiptuning, gamer music, bit-pop etc is generally taken as the whole of the lo-fi electronic music. This is none of that. I wonder if 1-Bit Symphony is something you at all consider in that context, or what context you even put it in?
TP: Unfortunately, it’s been difficult for chip-musicians to rebrand themselves as artists outside that arena. Nullsleep recent noise work is a great example of how lo-fi doesn’t only mean fist pumping (though that’s exactly what was originally appealing about chiptunes to me). My first album was written while I partially overlapped that world, the Providence noise field, the New York electro scene, and the circuit-bending people.

With 1-Bit Symphony, I wanted to return to the basic principles of why I work with microchips, which had a lot more to do with physics and the foundations of mathematics than retro tendencies. For instance, working with chips that are only capable of running at 8mhz isn’t about nostalgia for antique hardware. . . it’s more about focusing on the basic elements of computation itself, beyond the capabilities of pen-on-paper, but without the excess of gigahertz computing.

MB: When you make music not “like this,” what software/hardware do you use?
TP: It’s hard to separate “like this” from not “like this.” I grew up listening to minimalism and going to see minimalist art, so these ideas of process-as-content have always been with me. I write my own software for the final product, but these days I combine my compositional process with regular desktop audio software to test out musical ideas that will ultimately be coded in Assembly.

I try not to get totally lost in the concepts and tied up in the hardware, because ultimately I’m just creating a piece of music, which should hold up artistically without any of the packaging. I think I’m rather traditional in that sense. I like old media. Words in a book will always be poetry. When I write a string quartet with electronics, the scores I give my musicians are old fashioned notes on sheets of paper.

MB: It is strange to say, but for composition/recording/delivery this unusual, I naturally think in terms of ideology, that there is a lesson in this for the listener. In your mind, what would you like us to take from this?
TP: The physical delivery of these albums is about a lot of things. Artistically it is about linking the content with the medium. Generating 1-bit audio with a 16-bit sound card on a laptop isn’t as meaningful as having it come directly from code via output pins on a microchip that are only capable of turning on and off. Likewise, with its infinite last track, it escapes being a recording, which ultimately can only be an archive of something that happened in the past, with a beginning and an end.

But socially, it’s also about the importance of the old chain of the music industry. Record labels are curators, and music stores are our local outlets. Both are extremely valuable. Giving them something that can’t just be reproduced as a downloadable mp3 is a way of saying they’re special.

MB: Say you were offered some very large sum of money to perform this piece, which I assume you don’t already do in some way, how would you do it?
TP: Hahaa, well, I’m doing it for no money at the release party in August. But then, it’s more of a listening session than a performance. But in the long term, I have plans to go on tour with 1-Bit Symphony and a bunch of cathode-ray televisions, which display 1-bit video synthesis. So while the music would be static, I would perform the televisions as a visual counterpoint to the music. I think of this a little like a piece of choreography since the older televisions have such a physical method of creating light with electricity.

Reach this writer at michaelb@motherboard.tv.