Galen Koch: [0:00:00] She’s on. So, first things first, just tell me who you are, where you’re coming from, and what you do outside of the Haystack Labs world.

Christopher Taylor: [0:00:11] I’m Christopher Taylor, and I’m a concert pianist. I teach piano performance at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. In addition to my performing and teaching career, I also have lots of technological interests, and over the years, I’ve become interested in creating new musical instruments. Probably the biggest project I ever undertook was to build a new, electronically controlled double keyboard piano. Here at Haystack, I’m pursuing related ideas and learning a bunch of stuff from the real pros since I’m kind of self-taught with all of this making and electronics crafting.

GK: [0:01:08] How did you end up at Haystack Labs?

CT: [0:01:12] I was invited by Neil Gershenfeld, who I met actually after one of my concerts. He attended a series of recitals I was giving in Boston. Anyway, I met Neil and Laura when I was performing at the Gardner Museum in Boston. He read up on my biography and read about my interests and thought I might be an interesting person to have on campus for the week.

GK: [0:01:58] When you were doing that, you said it was a double keyboard and electronically controlled?

CT: [0:02:03] Yes.

GK: [0:02:04] How did you know what you were doing without any sort of formal education in that?

CT: [0:02:12] Right. Right. Well, as I said, I’ve always been sort of technologically inclined, and computer programming has always been my main hobby, apart from music and mathematics, which was actually my undergraduate major. So the coding part of it, I was very comfortable with. For the rest, I mean, learning to control CNC machines and things like that, yeah, I had to teach myself, and obviously, my programming experience was helpful. I knew the right ways to think, and then I had to learn about circuit boards and something about how to design them and how to test them. Obviously, I got some help there, too, from some of my colleagues in electrical engineering. It was a lengthy process, but it was a tremendous amount of fun as well as a tremendous amount of work.

GK: [0:03:20] And so what are you building here at Haystack Labs?

CT: [0:03:24] Well, in a way, it’s kind of the one-week version of the same idea. It is a remote-controlled instrument. In this case, you sit at a keyboard, that’s a MIDI [Musical Instrument Digital Interface] Keyboard, which, of course, you can buy at the store for, I don’t know, fifty bucks or something. With lots of help from Jake and from Quentin and MIT [Massachusetts Institute of Technology], they’ve wired it up in such a way that we’ve got a whole network of devices that’s able to interpret the MIDI codes that the little keyboard emits. From there, we’re able to activate a bunch of little music-making devices. In particular, we’ve got a bunch of solenoids which are striking against little metal plates. So we’re getting all sorts of interesting-sounding clangs and bangs, all controlled by this MIDI keyboard that’s located a couple of feet away. There are other devices we’re attaching as well, various vibrating devices so we can get weird resonances. And so yeah, it’s going to be quite a fun Rube Goldberg contraption where you play music – if you play a normal piano piece on it, you’re going to get all sorts of unexpected bangs and clanks.

GK: [0:05:26] That’s great. Do you still hear the melody, or is it just the bangs and clanks?

CT: [0:05:34] Well, we’ll see. We’ll see. It’s not a hundred percent assembled yet. So, finding out exactly what the musical experience is going to be like, we can’t a hundred percent predict. But roughly speaking, I think I’ve got it – I did a lot of the software development here for deciding which key does which things. So, roughly speaking, my intention is that as you move up the keyboard, you’re going to get higher pitches like you do on a normal piano, but there will probably be some exceptions to that pattern.

GK: [0:06:18] Am I right that you are a composer?

CT: [0:06:20] Not really. I did a little when I was young, but for the most part, I devote my time to mastering pieces written by other people.

GK: [0:06:31] So, does this feel a bit like composition?

CT: [0:06:37] Well, I think it’s going to feel sort of like improvisation. I won’t have time between now and tomorrow, when the session ends, to actually write a perfectly crafted piece that takes advantage of all of this instrument’s sonorities. The idea is people will be able to play around on it and get some amusing effects.

GK: [0:07:03] I was down there just briefly, but it looks like you have a whole team of people doing all sorts of different things.

CT: [0:07:10] That’s right. That’s right. There’s lots of different tasks that have to be done in a situation like this [such as] soldering circuit boards and programming the little microcontrollers. That’s what I spent most of the week doing was the programming side of things because I had to do a lot of that with my instrument. Then, crafting a little length of cable and plugging it all in, of course, lots of things can go wrong at any one of those steps, so then you’ve got to debug and troubleshoot.

GK: [0:07:57] Was the experience of Haystack Labs what you expected or different than expected?

CT: [0:08:04] I didn’t have a hundred percent clear expectations, but I knew we were going to do something like this, and I knew it was going to be in an idyllic setting. That much I’d figured out. It wasn’t a complete shock when I got here. But it’s certainly been tremendously educational for me, and it’s great to be working with all these brilliant people and younger people who are just starting out but who have really studied it professionally.

GK: [0:08:41] Are there experiences you will take into your career and future?

CT: [0:08:48] Well, I expect so. My big double manual instrument – I worked on it feverishly for several years, and then I got it to the point where it was working, and I gave a demonstration concert on it. But after that, I decided I really needed a break, and so it’s been a couple of years since I’ve worked on it. This definitely inspires me. There are things I can do to refine it and keep perfecting it.

GK: [0:09:28] Have you learned any specific skills while you were here, or is it more just like, as you said, refining the skills you already had there? Is there anything you’re taking away?

CT: [0:09:41] I suppose it’s mostly a matter of refining it and just getting a sense of how the pros do it. I’ve certainly picked up some ideas on how to – for instance, Neil Gershenfeld has shown me some different possible systems for sensing the motion of piano keys, which is something that was very important in my invention. I did it one way, but he has interesting ideas for other ways to do it.

GK: [0:11:15] Neil was talking about the –

CT: [0:11:20] Sensing the motion of the piano keys to get my device to work, you have to be able to measure the motion of the keys very precisely. He has an arrangement in mind that’s very compact and elegant, so it’s definitely something I’d be interested in incorporating into my design.

GK: [0:11:45 So when you say these are like electronically controlled, does that mean – if we’re looking at this working, would the keys be depressing on their own?

CT: [0:11:58] Well, so in my particular instrument, the pianist is sitting in the middle of the stage playing this special console that actually has not one complete keyboard but two complete keyboards and playing away at a device that itself actually doesn’t produce any music directly, but instead has electronic sensors that analyze what the pianist is doing and then relay information about that across the stage to two other instruments that then respond to what the pianist back in the middle of the stage is doing. So it’s quite a setup when it’s up and running.

GK: [0:12:57] And so here, you call it the “Clanging and Banging.”

CT: [0:13:02] Right, Right. “The Clanging and Banging Project,” we’re calling it.

GK: [0:13:07] So that is controlled – there’s someone who is on the MIDI keyboard.

CT: [0:13:11] Right.

GK: [0:13:12] So, where the software comes in is in the conversation between the two?

CT: [0:13:19] Correct. Between the keyboard and the little strikers, the solenoids and the transducers, the vibrating devices that make all sorts of weird and wonderful noises.

GK: [0:13:34] It’s interesting because it feels like some folks have already talked about AI [artificial intelligence] here while I’ve been doing these interviews. Just thinking of the way that the humans – you are so engaged with this computer software. You’re controlling something, and there’s this real creative process. Can you maybe speak to just –? It feels like there’s something about collaboration with machines happening. Can you speak about that a little?

CT: [0:14:13] Yeah. I mean, although there’s a pretty wide variety of interests here at Haystack, it seems like the common denominator is this interaction between human and machine, and in particular, artistic humans and machines and viewing technology not as a rival, but as an ally and a way to make our human activities even more memorable and vivid and distinctive.

GK: [0:14:59] Has that been part of your philosophy as an artist, or has that changed over the course –? I’m sure it’s changed over the course of your career.

CT: [0:15:10] Yeah. For me, these two parts of my brain, the artistic and technological, have always coexisted, and so this is a continuation of something that’s been the case for many years.

GK: [0:15:10] … [RECORDING PAUSED] I think we may have covered most things, although I want to just pick up where we were on this conversation between using machines in creativity [and] artistry. Can you, to that end, just talk about a little bit of what you’ve seen in the other studios or any of the work that’s going on here that’s been inspiring or has felt like something –?

CT: [0:16:20] Yeah, it’s wonderful to watch other kinds of artists at work and using technology in their own ways. Of course, not everyone here is an artist; some are more practical or are building shelters for people and recyclable materials and all sorts of things like this. Most of them are in fields that I know very little about, but seeing the analogies between what they’re doing and the sorts of things I do is very inspiring and certainly opens my mind to the way the different types of human endeavors interact and that cross-communication and cross-feeding that you have between these fields.

GK: [0:17:30] Do you have aspirations for building another something with some sort of electronic device when you get out of Haystack Labs or just in the future?

CT: [0:17:45] Yeah, I mean, certainly refining and improving my existing instrument is something I want to get back to in due course, and I have other types of projects going also – software things. I’m currently working on my own customized music notation software and things like that. But seeing the people here who are professional-grade software engineers has also been inspiring and interesting for me. The memory of my week here, I know, will provide me with plenty of inspiration in years to come.

GK: [0:18:35] Yeah. Is there anything that I haven’t asked you about, about either the machine or what you’ve done, because I didn’t know enough to ask?

CT: [0:18:45] I don’t think so. I don’t think so. You picked right up on everything.

GK: [0:18:49] Great. Great. Thank you so much –

CT: [0:18:51] Yeah, pleasure.

GK: [0:18:52] – for sitting with me for a moment for this.

CT: [0:18:54] Yeah.