Psykers
Prince Charming
What if, when you hit a drum, you didn’t just get one note, but a sequence of them? My friends and ex-band mates demonstrated the power of this simple idea with their band, Gum Takes Tooth. Their secret? An ancient drum machine, tweaked in ways that might have surprised its previous owner – 80’s new wave band Adam and the Ants!
Adam Ant
Drum machine donor
Bill TribbleMy Role
I have taken this personal project from initial concepts and sketching, through to programming and interface design in Max for Live, songwriting, synthesiser programming, and physical instrument mapping. The interfaces have changed in line with feedback and collaboration on ideas, as I tested and built tracks with friends and collaborators.
ROSTER
Bill Tribble
Designer & Programmer
Bill Tribble
Paul Parker
Drummer & Designer
Bill Tribble
Cae Rale
Collaborator
Bill Tribble
Sara Segel
Songwriter, Singer
Bill Tribble
Jordan Draper
Drummer
Bill Tribble
Steph Horak
Vocals, Synths
Bill Tribble
Francesco Cavallaro
Drummer
Bill TribbleProcess
Developing this augmented instrument has been a constant back-and-forth of ideas, design and practice. The designs have changed the possibilities, and tests have fed back into the designs. Ideas develop over time, then sometimes find their way into paper diagrams and eventually working code and user interfaces (physical and digital). Keeping things highly organised has been essential, as the project is often developed in spare hours over the weekend or after a working day.
Timeline
2009
My friends and ex-bandmates, Jussi Brightmore and Thomas Fuglesang, start Gum Takes Tooth (GTT). I’m blown away by the possibilities of live-triggering electronic music.
2011
After witnessing GTT in action several times, I start thinking “that can’t be too hard!” – perhaps I can make my own version. Little did I know! Meantime, I become a proud father of a baby boy, Luca.
Late 2011
Amazingly, my first experiments in Max for Live work. I’m on a roll! Start testing the system with a friend, Francesco, only to discover the electronic musician’s worst nightmare – latency.
Timeline
Early 2012
Now working with my friend Paul Parker, the system evolves into a many-headed hydra to get round the latency problem and inherent limitations in Ableton Live. It’s very difficult to upgrade and maintain, but it just about works – only problem is, it’s absolutely straining the limits of what my laptop can do, resulting in frequent crashes.
Late 2012
We create video demos of our work in progress, and release a batch to YouTube. Vlogger Anthony Fantano picks up and the videos and shares them with his followers, resulting in a busy couple of weeks racking up over 20,000 views of the project.
2012 – 2015
Life gets in the way. I go through a change of careers, we move house, we’re busy raising a child, and too many other things slow down development. Paul Parker also gets real busy with work and is off touring the world way too much.
2016
With a move to Japan on the cards, we work on some marathon recording sessions, getting down a good EP / mini-album’s worth of recording. Then me and my family move to Japan, putting a damper on finishing the work.
2017
I re-write the entire interface in Native Instruments’ Reaktor – a much more flexible environment. I manage some initial testing of the system with Cae and Jordan, and do some songwriting with Sara.
2018
And we’re back in London! Development begins again with Paul Parker, and we have high hopes for the new system.
Learnings
Test Your Assumptions
My biggest learning while working on Psykers is that you just can’t assume how an interface will be used. Now matter how neatly you envision a system in your head, on paper, or on a screen – everything will change once it’s put into use.
Mental Model is Key
Your mental model of the system is not the same as the users. This has sometimes led to some wonderful mistakes and new, unexpected features, as misunderstood feature requests became new, exciting features that added to the possibilities of the instrument. It has also lead to some dead-end work, where I ploughed hours of work into features that actually weren’t what was asked for, and were basically never used.
The Roadmap is not the ‘use-map’
It’s happened a few times that I’ve thought of some cool new idea, and worked hard to make it a reality, only to find that in practice, it just didn’t work, or wasn’t really necessary
User control over remote-control
It was initially tempting to view a drummer playing as an ongoing stream of events, that I could use to ‘play’ patterns that I was controlling (say for instance, switching between parts of a song) — what actually made the most sense in the end was to hand all control over to the drummer, the real ‘user’ of the system. I’ve learnt that the closer you can get the system to being a real, ‘interactive’ instrument, the better – this opens up more creative possibilities, more room for improvisation, and more room to actually ‘play’, and interact with other musicians. Which is after all, the whole point really of doing music live in the first place!
Collaboration over Ego
I’ve learnt that the project always produces the best results when there is a fair and balanced collaboration between me and my creative partners. That the more I was able to see Psykers as ‘our system’, ‘our instrument’ – the more I was able to get exciting, amazing results. As I was able to progressively drop my guard, and drop my ego, I was able to work more closely with other musicians to produce something that was much better than I was able to plan for. It really is true that 1+1=3 in creative work.
Results
20,000+
YouTube Views
4
Creative Partnerships
London & Tokyo
3
Remote collaborations
Ohio, Cape Town & Prague
Beyond the Youtube views – the connections I’ve made with other musicians and fans around the world have been amazing. They’ve lead into collaboration on other projects (my solo electronic project, Spudboy) – and have really opened my eyes up to the incredible amount of talent round the world in places you might not expect it. I have high hopes for the future of the project and believe that we will, one day, take it out live on tour.
Video Demo Playlist
