Question and Answer

Pat, RE:Sessions broadcast, I noticed that you seemed to be playing in tandem with Steve during the Roots of Coincidence at the point when the song becomes very RAVELish, where Steve starts bowing the bass cello. Are you triggering orchestral instrument samples with your guitar at this point on the Synclavier or other synths? or are those sounds in the sequence at that point and you are still producing your normal guitar sound? To me, your normal guitar sound disappears at this point in that song. I'm sure that you do something similar in one of the Secret Story compositions but I forget which one right now....maybe Cathedral in a Suitcase or Finding and Believing? I believe that you are controlling those sounds in realtime while the sequencer is also playing. I'm just curious about this type of thing because I have a synthesizer which supposedly lets the user assign entire sequences to individual keys but I haven't been able to figure this out as yet. Lyle seems to be triggering set sequences at the beginning of TROC and in the middle where he reaches up to the synth on his piano and he plays a few "horn" notes....he takes his hand away but the notes keep playing for a short while. This fascinates me. We are fortunate to see and hear the magic that you create. You are the orchestra as well as the soloist but most of all you are an incredible composer. Your compositions are so interesting with so much nuance in them. It also amazes me that there are other good musicians out there but they don't seem to have anything "really" interesting to play.

we do alot of weird things with all the technology that we feel we can use to make musical sounds with that we like. included in that would be some of the things you are talking about - triggering nested sequences, using proprietory midi and audio software that we develop ourselves, etc. basically, i don't care what it takes to get a certain musical effect to happen, as long as it advances the story that we are trying to tell at that particular moment in time. there are amazing possibilities right now for us as musicians that are unique to this point in history and musical instrument technology development. we like to try to take advantage of them. here's a simple tip that almost everyone overlooks it seems. read the manuals carefully - they give you a lot of cool musical ideas of things to try that you might not normally think of doing....it can inspire you to get to a zone that you might not otherwise.