Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith is an experimental electronic musician known for her use of modular synthesizers and colorful live shows. In 2016 I interviewed Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith for Ableton’s blog to talk about her process and tools. Here’s a bit of our conversation along with some photos that I took.
Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith creates collages of sound that burst like colors from a canvas. Her cinematic music is inspired by minimalist composers like Terry Riley and from visual artists such as Moebius and Hayao Miyazaki. While the sound could be classified as neo-classical or ambient, there is a definitive texture and palette that is unique to Smith’s sound.
Smith is a Berklee-trained musician who found modular synthesis almost by accident through a neighbor who “happened to have a bunch of Buchla synthesizers that he had bought in the 1970s.” She deftly combines her knowledge of composition with a natural knack for sound design to create a series of releases that are defined more by sonic texture than by structure or genre templates.
A series of releases on Austin imprint Western Vinyl have led to her latest outing EARS. To promote the album Smith is touring with Battles in Europe and will support Animal Collective on their tour this summer.
We caught up with Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith at her Los Angeles studio to talk about her journey through synthesizers, composition, and creative process.
Michael Walsh in conversation with Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith
How do you go about assembling the tones of your sound palette?
I try and blend in as many different tones / timbres as possible and like to think a lot about texture. I guess I like to mix senses. I like to imagine what that sound would feel like if I were to touch it and vice versa – if I have a textural feel that I like – like a tennis racquet – what would that sound like?
I’ve read that some of your inspiration for EARS came from visual works by Moebius and Miyazaki. Can you elaborate on how this visual influence finds its way into your sound creations?
These visual works inspired environments that I wanted to create with sound – Color tones, hues, and sensations I feel when I see their images. I wanted to create a futuristic jungle.
When composing these sprawling jungles that you are creating, how do you know when the piece is complete?
On EARS that is where my voice and the bass line come in. Those two elements are the grounding source for the compositions on EARS. I wonder how I know when a piece is complete all the time. I think intuition. And also when I can take enough breaks and listen back and not want to add anything more.
It’s kind of like when you’re speaking. You’re not really thinking about where your sentence is going to end. It’s a more intuitive thing. You’re just letting communication happen. At the same time you’ve put a lot of time into learning the language and how to best express yourself but you’re not thinking about those things in the moment.
I also feel like creatively I relate to the way that Michelangelo would go about his creative process where he’d start with a big block of stone and carve until it revealed itself. I sometimes start the other way, from the bottom up. But I feel like I find more creativity in creating a wall of sounds and then carving it out.
How do you keep the repetitive parts of the composition interesting?
I’m always trying to keep the listener in mind and ask myself “at what point am I bored?” I don’t want to fatigue someone. This is one of the things that keeps me from doing purely modular performances because it’s really easy for electronic music to have repetition. When you have all those quantized clocks it’s sometimes hard to get that human element out of a modular. That’s something that’s really intriguing to me.
So how do you get that human element when working with machines?
By playing it like an instrument and by movement in the filter that is unpredictable. And a lot of rearranging of notes so that if you have a repetitive line, you don’t go beyond three times without adding in a new element or changing the timing.
How did you find this technology initially?
I came across modular synths from a neighbor who I was talking to about Terry Riley, one of my biggest influences for composition. And my neighbor happened to have a bunch of Buchla synthesizers that he had bought in the 1970s and he let me borrow them for about a year. I had no idea what a Buchla was at that time.. no idea what a modular synth was at that time. But I figured it out from there.
How does Live integrate into your workflow?
I perform with Ableton. I use it as my main mixer and processor. I process my vocals through it and mix the output volume ahead of time all of my different Buchla Music Easel channels. I also send MIDI from the easel to trigger other sounds.
When you are doing a live performance, are most of the sounds coming from hardware synths or are some coming from inside the box?
I do a lot of preparation in the box. I pre-mix all my signals and get things at the level I want them to be for the mix. And I set up software synths to trigger as well. For this album / show, a lot of the sounds are hardware. And then little accents from my voice (sampled) and the soft synths come from Ableton. And then I sing in real-time and process my vocals live as well. That’s actually my main use for Live – as the brain and as a processor for my voice.
Read more of my interview with Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith at Ableton’s blog.
