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Chad Eby
US based
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Interview: 10 questions
1. When did you start making music, what is/was your motivation to do it?
I studied violin from the end of elementary school through high
school…I was a mediocre player on a good day; no talent at all,
really, but I continued because I enjoyed it. I thought maybe I
wanted to get into composition in college, but a disastrous music
theory class pretty well took care of that. I didn’t think about
sound again after that for many years until working on my MFA I got
exposed to artists using audio in various ways. Suddenly, I got
pretty excited about sound again–but not necessarily music.
2. Tell me something about your living environment and the musical education.
My parents had a copy of Walter/Wendy Carlos’ “Switched-on Bach” when
I was a kid; growing up in the plains of Oklahoma, that was some
pretty exotic stuff. I played it over and over.
3.Is making music your profession? What is the context in which you
practice music nowadays?
These days I teach art and design in the visual arts department at
Florida State University. Sound work is not necessarily well
understood in a visual arts context, but I feel that there is room in
a studio art practice for sound.
4. How do you compose or create music or sound? Have you certain
principles, use certain styles etc?
??
5. Tell me something about the instruments, technical equipment or tools you use?
I both record sounds from the environment and also use (mostly
digital) sound synthesis techniques. I am getting more and more
interested in building objects that make sound in a more direct way.
6. What are the chances of New Media for the music production in
general and you personally?
Who knows what “new media” is? I think the limitations of the digital
will become more and more apparent as artists realize that all
digitization is lossy and that many decisions are being made for them
before they even sit doen to a digital tool set.
7. How about producing and financing your musical productions?
So far, I am mostly self-financed, though I did manage to add a couple
of nice mics to my setup through a grant.
8. Do you work individually as a musician/soundartist or in a group or
collaborative? If you have experience in both, what is the difference,
what do you prefer?
I have worked mostly individually, although I had
a great experience working with other folks in a dance/performance
context. If the chemistry is right, collaboration can be wonderful.
9. Is there any group, composer, style or movement which has a lasting
influence on making music?
I have always been a great admirer of Laurie Anderson and, more
recently, Paul DeMarinas. Hard to say about lasting influences, but
I’ve also just heard the work of Yukio Fujimoto (plus/minus) and read
one of his lectures–I am humbled and inspired.
10. What are your future plans or dreams as a soundartist or musician?
I want to establish myself as a studio artist who works with sound as
a material. Sound is such a strange phenomenon when you think about
it–always already inside you, impossible to freeze in time,
impossible to experience apart from space. It’s exciting, it’s
tedious, and it it touches our emotions with an immediacy second only
to smell. I want to collect it, create it, understand it a little,
and unleash it on the unsuspecting.
Can works of yours experienced online besides on
SoundLAB? Where?
http://chadeby.org/work