tUnE-yArDs

Emma Warren

Please, a very, very big welcome to announce Merrill Garbus.

(applause)

tUnE-yArDs

Thank you.

Emma Warren

I believe you’ve been locked away for the last 10 days or so, is that working on a new record?

tUnE-yArDs

Mm-hmm. Locked. Yep.

Emma Warren

What sort of phase are you in. Are you in a collecting phase, or a writing phase, or a recording phase?

tUnE-yArDs

We do it all right now at the same time. We started spending money on equipment of our own so that we don’t have to be in a recording studio all the time and pay for that time. I got really nervous about money and always have. In fact, this is really incredible to be here. I used to live here and I had no money when I lived here. It’s really weird to be here and have money. Have money like literally to go to the dépanneur and buy groceries, instead of a grocery.

That is all to say that I find something that’s hard about being in a recording studio is that I know what I need to get done there usually, or I know that I need to get a lot done and I’m watching the minutes tick down. I find that that’s not conducive to creativity. My partner and I, we started investing in... you know we got an Apollo converter. We have a UA pre-amp, we have our little rack, and we brought that rack to a cottage by the ocean in California. (laughs) That’s where I find my inspiration, by the sea. It felt really luxurious, but that’s what we did. I would wake up in the morning and do what is now my practice of Qigong meditation and I go to do that outside. I live in Oakland, California so usually there are many floors and much concrete beneath me. It was like grass underneath my feet. Take audio samples of the ocean and realize a lot about white noise. We had a Prophet-6 synthesizer with us so it would be like just looking out at the ocean making oceanic type white noise as we were listening also to... It was just crazy. That’s what we did. Also, we composed songs and wrote lyrics and all of those things. I’m finding that a lot of it feels better to me if it’s not like, “OK, I’m about to make an album.”

I’m going to start by finding things and then whittle them down into songs. Then the songs get mixed down and then become a record. If I’m just making music all the time, hearing Pauline Oliveros just now was so inspiring. Listening. Just listening and listening and listening. And listening to what I’m producing and then listening around and listening. Just endlessly listening and creating in a way that feels not hurried and, hopefully, sustainable.

Emma Warren

It seems like over your record, some instruments have kind of come in and out of your sound. At the beginning, it was just you, your loop pedal and ukulele. Then you kind of added bass guitar and various other things. Are there certain instruments that are back in the mix or out of the mix in the music you’re making at the moment?

tUnE-yArDs

Yeah. The ukulele got old, I guess, in a way. Or it got confining. The first tUnE-yArDs record wasn’t looping pedal, it was Audacity, that freeware. It was like pre-GarageBand. Because I’m old. It was looping that way. It was looping in a real, almost Word document, cut and paste way. It was interesting then using looping pedals as a way to create music, write music, but then also to recreate what I was recording that way live. I think for a long time... My voice is absolutely my primary instrument and for a long time I felt pretty... I don’t want to say embarrassed, but that wasn’t a legitimate instrument. Compared with, I don’t know, studying drums or guitar or piano. I didn’t feel like I had a fluency, or I had an ability to be a legitimate musician based on the fact that I had been singing my whole life. That’s kind of what come through. Ukulele was a way. I think that was my first... one of the first instruments that really drew songs out of me, that really felt like the songs could come through. I think it was less about the ukulele and more about a framework for songs. If that makes sense.

Emma Warren

You just mentioned starting out in Montréal, and living in a tiny apartment, and recording BiRd-BrAiNs. I just wondered what kind of support you had from the people around here. You’ve talked about the scene being very supportive and that being the only reason that tUnE-yArDs came into existence. Can you give a bit of a sense about what that was and what you had to do to make that happen?

tUnE-yArDs

Friends. Friend. Some of whom, one of whom, especially, is in the audience now. Patrick Gregoire, who’s a big part of this town. The hugest part of my town, of Montréal. Patrick and I started playing music when we met teaching at a summer camp. I started coming up to Montréal, we were playing gigs together, and then I was introduced to this whole world of people just playing music and doing that as a thing. I came from a background of puppeteering. Very different from the bohemian scene of indie rockers that I found here in Montréal. That people were putting on their own shows and were living in an urban environment that was also hospitable to creativity, that, to me... I was living in Vermont in a very isolated and insular community. To be in a city and have all... I mean, this city, Montréal, there’s something about it that’s still really alive to me and really moving to me as a city. I think that was very clear. I guess, the support, you’re here collaborating with each other.

I was saying to Emma before that when you say the word collaboration to me, I instantaneously am like, “Ah!” Because I love being by myself and creating music personally. There’s something about that, that is the reason why I started, or continue to play music: was being alone with music and listening to records at my parent’s house with these huge ’70s style headphones as a kid and losing myself in music. I find that I have a tendency to just want that. I want the numbing quality almost of music and losing myself. I think in Montréal, first of all, people are supportive of, or were when I was here, innovation, that people were doing weird shit. Can I swear? And applauding each other for it. There was also this history of Arcade Fire and Wolf Parade and these bands that the ambitious person in me, of which she is a huge, you don’t see that ambitious huge person, but she’s in there. That part of me, and I think that part of us when we had a band was like, “We can do this? We can make money playing music? We can make a living, we can tour the world, we can ...”

It was a dream. It’s dreamy. I mean, come on, we’re all sitting here. There’s a glorious buffet of the best food on earth in there. I got a cappuccino for free. This is living the frigging dream. I think that that... but also, living in a way that doesn’t seem... It seemed organic and sustainable. I didn’t need a lot to be... I was so happy here and I lived in a utility closet with a boiler, you know?

Emma Warren

What do you have to give in an environment like that? Some of you might have been lucky enough to have experienced that, either as a music fan or as an artist, where you’re part of something that’s happening and you’re there as it’s happening, as it’s developing. I would say, in those things, you kind of gain your status by doing, by contributing. Did you have that experience of a moment where you felt like, “I can see this thing happening. It’s something I can do,” and wanting to contribute from that point, or suddenly feeling that you had the stuff you were doing on the side that suddenly could fit into something that was occurring?

tUnE-yArDs

That’s a good question. I think I felt that something happened with tUnE-yArDs that specifically hit a cultural nerve I guess, and it hit a nerve at a specific moment in music and music... I don’t know, wherever we’re at or wherever we were at ten years ago. Now tUnE-yArDs has existed for a decade, which is insane and also makes me feel terrified a lot of the time because I think that can happen to musicians where you hit a nerve and then everyone’s all up in your stuff for a hot second. The idea, because I think we’re all ravenous for new music and new ideas, there’s a sense that, 'oh and then what happens?'

I felt like absolutely I hit a nerve and then from then on what do you do with that? Everyone expects and I expect of myself better, the same so that you don’t lose your audience, and bigger. Something more, you know, instead of what I’m finding now that I get to have my musical practice and that cultural nerve, it can be there and I can hit it or not, but if I don’t have my practice then I’m kind of floating in this wind of other people’s perception of me or other people’s desires of me, versus centering myself in my artist’s practice, which is totally new for me as a concept.

Emma Warren

I’m interested in this idea of particular... if you’re the sort of artist who has a very singular practice, how do you manage when more people get involved? You started as one, you became two. Suddenly there’s a whole load of people involved in tUnE-yArDs. How do you manage that?

tUnE-yArDs

I don’t, because then I hired a manager and that was a really good thing because I don’t manage things well.

Emma Warren

Less on a practical level and more on a creative level. Suddenly there’s different inputs. It’s not just you in a room doing what you want, there are other people with other ideas or suggestions, input, musical or other types of input.

tUnE-yArDs

I think right now, the first thing is that even though I say I love making music by myself, it was always very clear to me from a very early point that making music with other people is far more rewarding. That was singing with other people. I sang in choirs and a capella groups for all of my youth, and that was where I had those moments of next level musical experience. I think as much as I hate... When it comes down to it, I’m pretty afraid of other humans because let’s be real, we’re pretty crazy, we all have our own shit. Meeting somebody else, you’re instantaneously being exposed to their stuff. Especially in a musical context, when we are at our most open I believe, if we’re doing it well or we’re doing it honestly, that’s a scary place to be. I also believe in it so much that I’m willing to do that.

Now my primary collaborator is my husband, which is nice because we get along pretty well. We have formed a real trust with each other and a real back and forth so I feel like I’m putting out stuff and it feels safe to engage in this collaboration. Then we broaden it out from there. What has happened is, as tUnE-yArDs has gone through these different albums and cycles we’ll start with a core of the two of us and then grow that out to... we took two saxophone players on the road, or last time we took two vocalists and a percussionist on the road.

I know that I have trouble answering questions. I hope I’m answering the question. To answer the question, I think having the central core of what I know to be the honest part of the music; if that’s there and I can keep that intact, I can sense really clearly when that’s not there. That person’s not working or I need to talk to them about groove or I need to talk to them about, “I know that you’re feeling this on top of the beat, but I really need you to sit back into it.” I’ve grown my confidence over these years to be able to really sense when it’s not working and have the confidence and the wherewithal to communicate that.

Emma Warren

Another thing you’ve been doing around collaboration is bringing together other female artists for the C.L.A.W. radio show that you’ve been doing for RBMA Radio. How have you found kind of instigating other people’s collaborations as opposed to your own?

tUnE-yArDs

It’s tough. It’s tough. It’s really ... It’s tough from a logistical point of view. I don’t see the collaborators. I think they’re really excited. In fact, the whole premise was that I wanted to pair women rappers with women beat makers because a lot of the women rappers that I was hearing and discovering, when I asked them, “Have you collaborated with women beat makers?” they were kind of like, “No, not yet, but that would be cool,” and kind of vice versa. It’s been so thrilling.

I say it’s difficult because it’s trying to coordinate women around the world and being like, “I love your music and I think that this woman is doing stuff that you might...” That kind of logistics part of it, which Julian has been incredible at helping me with that, but it’s been tough to corral people, again, because I think we’re all into our own thing. I’m doing my thing right now, and to kind of feel the value of spending time in that kind of collaboration, it’s been tough for me to ask, actually, because I understand what that means for other musicians, but the collaborators have been so eager. I think there’s been so much... Really, every track that comes through feels really well done and really brilliant to me.

Emma Warren

This is part of the radio show you’re doing monthly. We get to talk a bit about that and what you’re doing with it, but with the collaborations, who’s collaborated with who, and maybe give us a sense about who you’re asking to work with each other.

tUnE-yArDs

I think one that we’ll play is Suzi Analogue, who’s a rapper from the Bay Area, with Suzi Analogue... Wait, Queens D. Light. Sorry, Suzi Analogue’s from New York. Queens D. Light, a rapper from the Bay Area. Suzi Analogue, a producer in New York. Suzi Analogue was someone that I... There were a few producers that really stuck out when I first started listening. This is also... C.L.A.W. became... C.L.A.W. stands for Collaborative Legions of Artful Women. It was just this concept that I wanted to work on to familiarize myself with women producers because a lot of times we’re asked or are interested in working with other producers, and it was very rare that there would be any woman’s name on that list of producers. I wanted to know why. Sure enough, it’s not because there aren’t women producers, as we know. There were a lot of people that you all at RBMA introduced me to that... I’m sorry I lost the question. Who else are they ...

Emma Warren

Other people who you’ve discovered through the radio show.

tUnE-yArDs

There are rappers like Latasha Alcindor, LA, is a rapper out of New York and she was one of the first that I started listening to her stuff and being like, “How did I not know that this woman existed?” She collaborated with Asma Maroof, DJ MA from Nguzunguzu and that was the first collaboration. Asma and I met speaking on a panel about women producers. I think her work, and the Future Brown work, and the Nguzunguzu work is so creative. I learned so much from her about DJing, really. I had just started to DJ and what she was doing as a DJ was really fascinating to me. Those were the first two. From there it was just a whole lot of names. We have a whole spreadsheet of a bazillion producers and rappers now.

Emma Warren

Is it important on the shows that you’re celebrating women from across time and space? There are shows where you’re playing music by people, extremely influential women from the past like Daphne Oram and then Kelela records. You wanted to dig deep in both directions.

tUnE-yArDs

Yeah, mostly because I know so little and there’s so much that I wanted to know. I think the difficult part is how do you frame it? I think we’ve done two women rap episodes, one was more MC Lyte, I don’t think we played Queen Latifah but you know the women rappers that I grew up with and know. Then I wanted one that was a bit more contemporary. The episodes are something I was also experimenting with was how to be a DJ. I was trying to mix and do the edits live, which is far more time consuming than just having a playlist of songs. However, I’ve learned a lot about it and learned a lot from mixing and from... there’s so much to talk about, Emma. (laughs)

Emma Warren

Before we veer off into a whole other... we’ll wheel back a tiny bit and have a look at the video that was made for the collaboration.

tUnE-yArDs

Please.

Emma Warren

Let’s have a look at that, please.

(video: Suzi Analogue x Queens D. Light – “Multiplyyy” / applause)

The tag line of the show is that it’s music by women and women-identifying producers, why was it important to open it up like that?

tUnE-yArDs

Just because it’s all about inclusion and people. I think a lot of times I remember posting something, just a quote from I think one of The Raincoats’ members and it was like, “This music could only be made by woman.” There was a lot of feedback that I got, not a lot but there was a whole discussion that came up on the Facebook feed that was like, “Why does it all have to be male versus female?” I thought, “No, it’s not.” It’s who’s not being heard. That’s what we need to just be hearing, people who are not heard, whose voices we don’t tend to hear. It’s never about being exclusionary, it’s about being inclusive and like Pauline was talking about, listening and then listening with wider ears and bigger ears and listening some more.

I think there’s a strong community of musicians that come together in different... how do I be articulate about this? You know, for instance, queer DJ collectives I think are making some of the most innovative music that I’m hearing right now. What I think is that there are these spaces for people to feel safe in who they are and how they identify. I just think from now on that’s what needs to happen. We just need to be more inclusive.

(applause)

Emma Warren

Who would you be speaking about there when you talk about queer DJ collectives that you’re really rating?

tUnE-yArDs:

I don’t know how you say, K-U-N-Q, I don’t know how they say that, but it’s a DJ collective that FXWRK is the DJ that I’ve been particularly... she was one of the collaborators. She just, she was really... I’m just learning a lot. I think through the whole C.L.A.W. thing I just wanted to absorb information and wisdom from people. Really hearing: what do you need, how do you need to be heard and who are you hearing that the world isn’t hearing? Those women are... it’s incredible to see that video to me. Partially because it’s so cool to see my neighborhood in Oakland, California and then also to know that the women in Brooklyn had their community being part of the video. To hear Queens D. Light say, “Power to high power,” and speaking to women, it makes me so happy just to facilitate that.

I had no part, I didn’t do any of that work. I just did the work of putting those women together and filtering the funding from RBMA Radio to them so that they could create that together. Other than that... I’ll just say, I wanted to listen and understand. FXWRK was like, “Hey I have all these female identifying artist women who I’m working with, who I’m working with, who I’m connected with.” I was like, “Really? That’s what I’m really interested in right now.” It’s all this information being shared. What I also wanted to do with C.L.A.W., Collaborative Legions of Artful Women. Artful because... at first it was artistic women. I was like, “Oh, sounds really lame.” Artful is a little tricky. Having to navigate, and I think that felt like a good aspect to add to the whole thing, that we are, but also we’re finding this collaboration instead of pitting each other against one another, against each other: that we’re all sharing with each other, information. I hope that’s what’s happening here and I can assume that it is that, there’s a healthy competition where you kind of go, like, “Oh, oh you think that beat is really dope? Well, let me show what I...” You know, like, there has to be that thing where we egg each other on, for sure, but all in the spirit of coming together and having these relationships with each other. I think that’s really the love part of it, and the open heart part of it, is something that I definitely wanted. Therefore, it’s not like, oh, here are my women producers that I am discovering and showing to the world. It’s not about that. It’s about, how do we connect with each other?

Emma Warren

It’s really great to hear about the platforming you’re doing for other people and the stuff that you’re really enthusiastic about, but I’d like to bring it back to you for a minute, if I may, and talk about your voice, and to talk about how you get such a lot of dynamic range and tonal range in a voice, from very, very big, and quite angry, to extremely soft, and how hard you have to work to get a voice to do that kind of thing.

tUnE-yArDs

(whispering) It’s so hard. I’m only, I mean, I kind of say that jokingly, but it has been kind of hard lately, in that I don’t think it’s... One thing that’s not hard is opening my mouth and making noise. That has felt pretty intuitive for a lot of my life. I started to have vocal troubles because we started to play... we used to play opening sets, so that would be 35 minutes, and I would just, like, wail for 35 minutes and that would be fine. Then we started headlining shows, and then we had about 55 minutes of music and I could do that. And then this last tour, it was more like, you’re headlining a show and people are paying money to see you, and so it’s like an hour and 15 minutes or 90 minutes or whatever. Show after show after show. My voice just didn’t want to do that, and my voice...

I had been told for a long time that there was a way... I had been told in not so nice ways that I was using my voice wrong. And as a singer, especially as a singer who’s actively singing as a career, that’s a terrifying thing to be told that you’re doing this wrong and that you might not have a voice left when you are however old. I went to a vocal doctor and they put the camera down, and I didn’t have anything wrong other than a little swelling, but I did take speech therapy lessons and, again, all of this is because I could finally pay for it. It’s all progress. A progression that is of being willing to understand my voice better.

Now I take classical voice lessons, which is something that I wanted to talk about, because I think that for a long time I just wanted to use my voice the way that I heard it and the way that I felt it, and not abide by a technique, and certainly not classical technique which I felt like was going to turn my voice into something that it was not. I tend to use way more chest and belty vocal technique rather than (singing) all that range. I was willing to do it, so now it is this really hard work. Hard for me because when people ask me to sing, I think what they’re asking me is, “Give it to us. Give it all.” They want to hear this loud, powerful voice, and my teacher started me on (singing) like that voice. So it’s shrinking my voice down to the pinhole of it. So that’s been really hard to trust that process, and I feel grateful to have the patience now to know how to practice, actually, which I haven’t for most of my life.

Emma Warren

Can you just tell us what is wrong, what is 'wrong singing', if you’re using your voice... I mean obviously there’s lots to be said about doing things wrong. It’s often the best way to do things. But what are the things that damage your voice if you’re using it a lot, every night?

tUnE-yArDs

I hesitate to use the word wrong. I think that there are so many things in speech, particularly, that get in the way of the voice naturally being produced. So what I’m learning, and I know but a little, what I’m learning is that it’s mostly... for me it was a lot of the larynx coming up and this... a grabbing in order to push up from the bottom to create, to move up a scale, say. Versus, really, the way that I am now finding resonance is just that, it’s finding resonance, that there is whole cavity of space, sinuses, there’s a lot of, I don’t know, it’s very mystical actually, that sound isn’t what I thought. I thought sound was, like, you push air up, here, this way, and you push it out and the sound is me pushing air through my vocal cords and pushing it out to you, but really that’s not how we are hearing anyway.

So I’m trying to wrap my brain around, I think, a more sustainable way to create, to sing, is to get out of the way of the voice. To just get out of the way. That’s all of my jaw tension, and the tension in my neck, and the back of the neck, and then also all the tension in your body. I’m going to stand up, is that okay? (stands up) Lately I sing like this, where my teacher’s like, "OK, you have to just circle your hips. If you try it..." Everyone should stand up right now, I’m serious. Try it. If you’re just standing and just breathe, and put your hand on your belly button and make sure that when you inhale that you breathe into your hand and your stomach’s expanding, and then when you exhale, your stomach goes in towards your spine. And then if you just gently, as if your hips are going around a clock face. If you’re really... you can pretty much zone out on it.

But it’s, all these little muscles get released around your hips and the sense that your diaphragm has this room to expand and then contract and you’re not resisting in any part of it. Then you can go in the other direction. It’s relaxing, right? (laughs) Yeah, OK, you can sit now. That’s the kind of stuff I’m doing that feels like slow... it feels so slow. Really, these fine... How many of you are sitting at computers making music most of the time? Yeah. That’s, I think, really hard, because you have this, you have the headphones or you have speakers, you have a certain sense, but to have a sense of internalizing rhythm especially, of how people are going to dance to your music, of how people are going to absorb your music in their bodies. Yeah. I think we need new, innovative work stations where you’re, at the very least, standing, which I know that they have, but that you’re just more ready somehow, physically.

Emma Warren

It would be nice to hear something, including your voice, although now it feels like you’re... Maybe you should just play a little bit of “Real Thing,” even if it’s from a vocal period which is now ...

tUnE-yArDs

Oh yeah. It’s wrong. It was wrong.

Emma Warren

Let’s hear you singing a little bit wrong. Just a little taste so we’re remembering who we’re listening to.

(music: tUnE-yArDs – “Real Thing” / applause)

Emma Warren

You’ve talked in the past about wanting to free your voice from western traditions. What does that mean to you?

tUnE-yArDs

It means the opposite of what I’m doing now, taking western classical voice lessons. (laughs) No, I think it’s just that, as with everything I think globally, we are understanding that the, being centered in this understanding of the correct way is western, is European. That that has to be a center, versus, well that’s one reference point to any other cultural reference point for what their ideal is perhaps, of what singing is going to be totally different. And that it doesn’t need to be exoticized or, isn’t it funny how the pygmies used yodeling technique? It doesn’t need to be said in this quaint exoticizing kind of way. It really is that we can see these different centers for people’s understanding of what’s natural. I think because I was told that I was singing wrong so much of the time, or felt like it was wrong, that I sought out different centers. Well, what does this culture think is correct singing or beautiful? It’s endlessly fascinating, I mean I would love to just travel the world and be studying local techniques from around the world because it’s so essential. I mean it says... I would love to get a doctorate degree and just what it says about culture and one sense of humanness, to figure how people sing and what the texture of their voice is, how that comes about. What it represents is just really interesting.

Emma Warren

At the moment you’re learning this Italian classical technique but you’ve brought some other vocal techniques to a vocal group that you’ve been working with haven’t you? Roomful of Teeth?

tUnE-yArDs

Yeah, Roomful of Teeth, actually they, that’s what they do. They study techniques from around the world, they’re really incredible. They are western classical singers, but then I think one of the first things that they studied was yodeling technique and also throat singing. I think it’s tuvan throat singing that they studied, which is really unusual to get classical singers to use their voices in that way because I think there is the sense of that’s wrong, that’s going to hurt your voice. Versus learning how to do these things really correctly so that it doesn’t need to injure your voice. I think one of the examples we were talking about is Korean pansori, I think it’s pronounced, I don’t know. But that was the technique they were learning when I started working with them. The idea is that the composer comes in, I being the composer. That was probably the first time that I called myself a composer, and I was using Finale to try to like enter in the notes and figure out if I was notating it right and stuff.

But I came in and they were studying pansori, and pansori is what, at least what I heard first about it was it’s this technique where the masters of it study and they make this sound until their voice literally bleeds. They’re bleeding out of their vocal chords and I was like... and that kind of felt like the mythology around that style of singing.

Emma Warren

I’m sorry, how do you make your vocal chords bleed?

tUnE-yArDs

Well it’s all just tissue, right? I don’t know, I’ve never done it before. Thank God. But that it’s the... I think the spiritual idea around it was like, this is what I remember, probably incorrectly but, shouting into a waterfall I think it was, that’s something so loud that you, and can you imagine the physical experience of making so much noise for so long that the tissue... that there’s blood. I’m sorry, this is kind of a dark subject matter and I know so little about this style of music.

Emma Warren

You sent me a clip of a kind of master of this singing technique and that doesn’t square with what I saw from this singer who was this incredibly composed singer, using her voice. We should see this, we’ve got a little clip of it, we should have a look at it and then you can tell us a bit more about the composition you made afterwards. Can we have the Sang-Ah Lee clip, please.

(video: Sang-Ah-Lee singing / applause)

That’s the kind of last minute or so of a 10 minute performance. What do you get from her, what she’s doing with her voice?

tUnE-yArDs

I mean, I realize how ignorant I am about this style of music. What I’m remembering is also now that the relationship between the drum and the singer, that that’s probably such an enormous part of that. But you know, just that, if you see an Italian opera singer come, (singing) you imagine a certain style of singing. That people revere as beautiful singing and that I hear in that much more guttural or belt or chest or whatever you want to call that. It sounds different and it feels different and that when different cultures go to see beautiful... I mean just as we in our whatever, all of our cultures that are represented here. What do we expect to hear from singers and what is considered beautiful. What I consider beautiful is often considered very ugly to some people, and it’s been interesting singing through the years and hearing people say, "she sounds like...I thought it was a man.” Or what people identify with what beautiful singing is or what a woman’s voice is supposed to sound like or what we attach to voice.

Emma Warren

Can we just go back to this composition a tiny minute. So you were given almost ingredients, source material and then you created a piece for them based on the styles of these?

tUnE-yArDs

Yeah. They said, so what we’ve covered so far is yodeling, throat singing, Pansori. I’m forgetting, kind of Broadway belting, which was interesting to really get a lesson about... from classical voice students on how to healthily do a belt style, so they asked me to use those techniques in a composition for them.

Emma Warren

Should we quickly listen to it?

tUnE-yArDs

Sure.

(music: Roomful of Teeth – ”Quizassa” / applause)

Thanks.

Emma Warren

I want to ask you about beats.

tUnE-yArDs

I was just going to say, can we talk about rhythm. (laughs)

Emma Warren

We’re there. Rhythms, beats, how do you develop them? How do beats come to you, how do you develop them, and can you give us an example of how it works for you?

tUnE-yArDs

Sure. I also want to say that listening to that piece... because it made me think about rhythm, because I think that people, working with classical singers and rhythm is really interesting because there’s... When people are used to classical conducting, it’s very different to me than the way that I understand rhythm, which is kind of hearing this really strong groove because groove isn’t primary in a lot of that music, so hearing that composition is really interesting to remember how I heard it in my head and then how it was interpreted by classical singers is actually really different.

Emma Warren

What’s the gap? What were the differences?

tUnE-yArDs

Well, and again, not to say that anything was wrong. It’s that... How do I describe it? It’s just a precision with rhythm. I guess I would assume that most of us in this room are... I don’t know who you are, but that we’re fluent in beat making. I mean that that is something that is... You know when you are working in computers and synthesizers and drum machines and growing up in the ’80s and ’90s, I am used to a machine making a beat for me. That’s not the focus in western classical music. There’s a lot of other focuses, and especially for singers there’s a kind of fluidity of rhythm. The composer is going like this and the down beat isn’t like, dun dun dun dun dun. It’s like somewhat, I don’t where it is. I couldn’t follow it if I was being conducted that way versus being used to the click track in the studio or being used to singing to a drum beat.

That has always been super fascinating to me is the perception of rhythm and the traditions of rhythm that are, as I was talking about before, the more laid back... which is what I tend to be more attracted to than playing on top of the beat where you’re almost, you’re playing on or almost ahead of the metronome. To answer the question about how I... I mean beats are everywhere and so I tend to pick them up in ways, how... Like a garage door coming down. I was walking down the street near our studio and there was just like, it was like, (makes garage door noise), or whatever and I’m just hearing it that way so a lot of it is from walking and having a pace of walking interact with some other kind of rhythmic elements. Then I’ve been taking Haitian drum lessons and so there’s a lot of those kind of essential beats underneath those Haitian rhythms that are now really internalized, so especially like if the downbeat’s here, duh-duh, duh-duh, duh-duh, duh-duh, duh-duh, duh-duh, that kind of 6/8 but never emphasizing the downbeat. The downbeat is implied, so now that has been coming out a lot in what I do.

I just got an MPC for the first time and I can’t believe that I’ve never used an MPC before... I don’t know. I think that rhythm, there are lots of rhythms that I just want to hear that are stored from our memories, right? Memories, yeah. I think rhythm is pretty much everywhere so I just listen for it.

Emma Warren

What’s your relationship with your drum teacher, Daniel Brevil, because he’s the guy that got you involved in Haitian drumming, right?

tUnE-yArDs

Yeah. Well I live in the Bay area and so I knew a lot of people who had come out of Mills College. Sam Ospovat is a drummer that came out of Mills and he was taking lessons with Daniel. Daniel had also taught Jeff Smith, another drummer, and there was this... I was just part of... I feel part of a lineage of drummers who have taken lessons with Daniel and continue to, and study with him. As with any teacher that you find your teacher and then you realize how much... I will never learn in my lifetime all that there is to be learned about that drumming. I’ve learned a lot about how music affects me spiritually and how it needs to affect me spiritually in order to continue doing it, and that because the Haitian drumming is part of Vodou ritual, and at least to me, a pretty basic understanding, an elementary understanding of the association with rhythms to the spirits that they represent and are associated with.

That’s been a pretty incredible experience to have. Also, just the fact that he’s a master drummer and has been playing since he was a kid. To see someone... to study with a master, that’s what I’m doing. And very infrequently and very... I have to say, “OK, I’m putting my lessons on pause to go tour for 2 years. Sorry. Can I come back and try to ...” You know, it’s feels very inconsistent and I do the best I can and we laugh. I laugh at myself about how little I really know, but it’s been an incredible education in rhythm because when we learn from a master... but also from a tradition that we’re unfamiliar with, it suddenly opens up all these different neural pathways.

Emma Warren

What did you learn through that? Through the relationship between drums and the dancer?

tUnE-yArDs

It’s been really cool. I dance in a Haitian class usually on Sundays and then drum for the same class. That was a real education for me about that you really need one to know the other, truly. I guess the same way that if you’re a DJ you need to know what a room wants. Listening to a room and listening to the rhythm of an evening. Listening to what people’s bodies are wanting to do. Listening to what works and doesn’t work. In Haitian Vodou there’s this intricately connected, the dancer and the drummer, and just as an example there’s a thing called a cassé, a break in the rhythm where the dancer... The beat goes haywire for a second and all of a sudden it rips open this... To me it’s like ripping open this huge possibility in rhythm. The drummer has to read the dancer, the dancer has to read the drummer, whatever’s going on and I, again, know so little about how that gets communicated.

All the dances have different variations that the drums either guide or are guided by the dancers. Everything is a relationship between the dancer and the drummer. So closely related. They just can’t be divorced. I usually learn the rhythm a half measure off because when Daniel plays a rhythm he starts it... I think he usually starts it on the three beat, so I hear it as the one. I’ll learn a beat backwards, basically, and have to translate it in my mind to know where the pulse is, but if I’ve done the dance I know where the pulse is because I know how I’ve needed to dance to it.

Emma Warren

How do you think this relationship between drums, music, and dancing translates into your music and the need to see what’s happening, how people are responding to it, and to feed that back into the music?

tUnE-yArDs

You know, I’ve been wanting to do it maybe the old way of doing it, which is to put music in front of people before it’s put on record and given to people, because that’s the only way. If you put it in front of people and you see how their bodies respond to it or how they in general respond to it and then in a kind of improvisatory way, which is possible with looping pedals, listen to what the room is wanting and then go do that. That didn’t happen I think on our last record because it was kind of made cerebrally, honestly. It was made before it got put in front of people and that was kind of difficult. I think all the other tUnE-yArDs music I’ve generally been able to put it in front of people, see how people respond, and then use that to inform the recordings.

I don’t know. I think I struggle with that, and I think for those of us who spend a lot of time, again, in front of computers or creating music, unless you’re doing something where you’re... That’s why I think DJing is so great, because you’re actively being... You’re in the hot seat when you’re a DJ. You need to make the room move. That’s your job, or you disappoint. To have that instantaneous response is really useful, perhaps. Perhaps mandatory.

Emma Warren

Do you think about music like footwork that’s developed in conjunction with dancers and with dancers in mind? Can you maybe imagine yourself testing out some of the new music down the dance studio?

tUnE-yArDs

Sure. Thanks for the idea.

Emma Warren

One quick thing I wanted to ask you about was the practicalities of singing and drumming and maybe also playing keyboards at the same time, something that you do live and I guess when you’re making music as well, sometimes. Does your voice have to become another limb? Does it have to become autonomic in the way that limbs do when you’re drumming? What happens?

tUnE-yArDs

I’m trying to think of... I think it’s again getting out of the way of the voice. I think it actually really helps me. I think something that I don’t appreciate about music performance is I don’t appreciate when people seem to be emotionally involved in the music. I don’t ... This is hard to describe. It’s not that I’m not emotionally connected, but it’s very practical when I’m performing because of that. Usually I have a floor tom here, a snare here, and I’m singing, and I have looping pedals. Every limb of my body is involved. I have to be getting out of the way of my voice and relaxing my voice and thinking about breathing. That’s where my focus is, and then letting the music kind of emote for itself.

Trusting that the emotion was there in the composition of the music, that I don’t need to give it an... I don’t need to go (singing) “Uuuhhh, I’m a real thing.” Even that, it feels like everything’s just super tight, but I think that’s what we’re used to in a lot of performance is seeing people be into it or whatever. I find that that ... it was so, again, interesting to hear Pauline talk about that. If you’re so invested in your own story of yourself and what the music means and everything, you can’t be listening. It’s like you’re living in a different time zone. You’re living in the past of when you created it, versus what’s happening now. I think that’s... That was a long way to answer that question. It wasn’t answering the question at all, again.

Emma Warren

Fortunately, it did answer the question, but also we have a little master drummer type person who has some thoughts on this. Can we have the Levon Helm clip, please?

(video: Levon Helm drumming and singing)

tUnE-yArDs

Wow. That was super informative. That’s true, that I do memorize which words are supposed to hit. Yeah, you got to match them up.

Emma Warren

You concur.

tUnE-yArDs

Yes. Thank you, Levon.

Emma Warren

A couple more things from me before we pass it out to you guys. I just wanted to ask you about your favorite drums and also your favorite drum machines, the kind of things you are working with at the moment.

tUnE-yArDs

Favorite drums, like companies?

Emma Warren

More like particular instruments that you have that you’ve always carried with you or new drums you’ve got.

tUnE-yArDs

I always love a super dead floor tom. It’s key. That’s mostly because with looping, looping live drums the drums really need to be not so resonant so that you don’t get feedback and you don’t get tones ringing that you don’t want there. Lately, we’ve been using the Tempest a lot. The Tempest drum machine, Dave Smith. That is because it’s an analog drum machine and has sounds that you can really get in and mess with. Oscillators and filtering and be very specific about the sounds. We just got a TR-8 so that we have a super standard 808 and 909 sound. That was something I learned from working with other producers is just... you need an 808 or a 909 kick sound, a lot of the sound. At least I’m finding that I do, in order to get power from a kick drum, it’s really useful to have those at least in the mix. We got that as a very easily programmable drum machine. Drum machines are very new for me. Yeah, that’s what we’ve been working with lately.

Emma Warren

And iPad apps?

tUnE-yArDs

Yep. I’d used FunkBox a lot of the time. Anyone use that? Yeah? It’s really fun. FunkBox is one of the first apps where I got into on the touring road being able to make beats that way. iPad GarageBand. I was super ashamed to be like, “Really? This is what I’m using to write music?” I don’t know why I was ashamed. I think you get indie cred from writing on a tape recorder from 1982, battery powered in your knapsack. It was the iPad and being able to, on a plane, have my headpiece from my phone and be recording onto GarageBand on an airplane some vocal idea that I had and then getting the (sound effects) and the screaming baby in the background and having all that be part of the composition. It was really wild.

I think all of these things, especially the things that if I’m going to spend money on an iPad, I’m going to use the free or $7.99 application to do what I can with it. It is, as we all know, really incredible what we can do with our phones and things.

Emma Warren

Are there any nostalgic instruments or pieces of kit you have that you’ve brought with you all the way through?

tUnE-yArDs

Sure, yeah. The first album, tUnE-yArDs album BiRd BrAiNs was made on this little handheld voice recorder, so I have that still. I think it’s a little messed up over the years. It has a really super crazy shrill high end now that I don’t think it used to. Maybe it did used to and maybe I’ve just become more perceptive, but I think the sense of super compressed sound in any way, coming in super compressed, and definitely these “lo-fi” machines or elements where you get... For instance, listening to Pauline’s tape work, there’s that ever present hiss of tape that I just am really attached to: the ambient, the deeper listening sounds, the other layers that are there.

I’m finding that with the MPC too that it has this natural color to it that you can sample something and then being processed through the MPC and out through whatever outboard we’re using. The sounds have their own world, and that is far more interesting to me. I think in this day and age too that to find original sounds, to find sounds that are actually “Oh, I don’t think I’ve heard that before,” you really need to layer or process organic matter, organic source material. I’m hearing a lot of producers talk about that, especially with voice, processing voice. In the studio, I produced this album for Thao & the Get Down Stay Down, and in that I was working with Beau Sorenson, a really amazing engineer, and we were talking about how many layers do you need to create an innovative hand clap sound?

Emma Warren

How many do you need?

tUnE-yArDs

I think 10, probably. Not 10. We probably used six. How many layers do you need to stack before you’re like, “Oh my God, that’s the best hand clap I’ve ever heard, man.” Because at this point, it’s fine. A lot of these sounds are nostalgic. The 808 and 909 sounds are like “Oh yeah, I know what that... Yep, there it is,” or you associate those drum machines with very specific hip-hop albums. You know where these things come from. Source material is all around us. I don’t use Ableton. I would love to learn it and I feel like I’m one of the few people who don’t use Ableton. There’s this ability now to just go, OK, bam bam bam bam bam, I’ve got this stack of things that together, if I know what frequencies are not going to cancel each other out, if I know how to make the layer cake just right, it can really add up to this amazing new palette.

Emma Warren

It‘s all about the palettes. Do we have the microphones ready for some questions? Yeah, OK. We have a question here at the front to start with, and then we will move around.

Audience Member

Thank you so much.

tUnE-yArDs

Thank you.

Audience Member

Big fan. Two questions, if I may. One’s a little more technical. Looping live drums, which I feel pretty attached to. I feel it’s very important to keep the live drum there, if anything, just for the energy of it and the quality of the sound. It’s inevitably a challenge to, once you hit the drum and once it goes into the looping pedal it changes. As you’re playing bigger audiences and want to be playing festivals and things of that nature, without giving up the live drum, how do you doctor the loop’s drum so that once you solve all of the problems of feedback to make it equal to the initial live strike and to let it be the big thing it needs to be?

tUnE-yArDs

Sub-harmonic synthesizer.

Audience Member

What’s that mean?

tUnE-yArDs

Thank you for that question. I say that as if there’s one answer. There’s not one answer. I was joking with a woman musician friend of mine about how many times I’ve been told by engineers who were like “Hey, why don’t you do it this way?” How many times I’m like, “Gosh, really?” It’s because a lot of it just needs sorting out. A lot of it’s the room too. Eli Cruz, the engineer that worked with us on Whokill and the last album here, he was our front of house engineer. He was like, “What if we use the Peavey Kosmos sub-harmonic synthesizer?” I release a gate when I hit the floor tom and it triggers that synth so that you’re getting the impact. That was one way.

There’s a lot of trial. I think looping pedals are getting better and all of the capacity of machines to handle and understand sound and what we want from sound is getting much better, but I’m always seeking and learning. I totally agree that the strike is so important and the energy of that is so important. For me, really, at this point, because we’re playing venues that are sometimes cavernous... We’re not playing for millions of people, but we opened for Arcade Fire and that was in arenas. How do you get this pretty crappy floor tom that has been deadened? I have this sock taped on the bottom. It’s completely tuned down. There’s hardly any resonance on that drum, and that’s because I need just enough tension so that I’m not hurting myself and that I’m getting enough play from the drum, but it really needs to go through a subharmonic synth at that point to get that punch to it. The snare part is, for me, about tuning and making sure, again, that you’re not getting the ring that’s going to cause you trouble after a number of loops, but the floor tom, that was thank God for Eli and that solution, because that was really tough.

Audience Member

Then if I could do another one. Working with the looping pedal, I feel like you sort of lock yourself in a room in a labyrinth and it’s become my personal rebellious solitary system of writing and making music, so being here has been quite challenging, because I really don’t know how to communicate with this little Wizard of Oz thing that I’ve built for myself. Any advice that you have on working with these people here? I mean, or anybody.

Audience Member

These people here.

Audience Member

How to play nice with others.

tUnE-yArDs

Yeah. For sure. Understood. It’s hard. It meant so much to me because I had an inferiority complex for a long time about what I was capable of as a musician. It meant a lot for me to be like, “Look at me. I’m a one woman band. Look what I can do all by myself.” I think that’s valid and it was tough for me to give that up. I don’t think I have given that up, but I would say patience was a huge thing, but also what you said, communicating. I think we often, because what do you talk about when you talk about music? How do we talk about music? How do we talk about sound without always getting lost in terminology and processing, and, “This is what I meant,” “This is what I meant.” How do you do that?

I think just finding terms and being flexible, and also being settled enough in what you know about yourself as a musician. “This is what I know I can bring, but this is also what I know I can’t bring. This is what I don’t know.” I mean, also, finding out what you’re curious about and what you don’t know is a great doorway to open. “What I’m looking for is someone who really knows Ableton so that I can sample this drum and blah, blah, blah.” You know, whatever it is, if I let myself agree with myself that I don’t know everything, that there’s stuff that I don’t know, I think that’s a really powerful phrase, “I don’t know.” “I don’t know. Teach me. I don’t know. Share with me.”

Audience Member

Thank you.

tUnE-yArDs

Thank you.

Audience Member

Sorry. (coughs) That keeps happening.

tUnE-yArDs

(coughs) You too.

Audience Member

I’m really sorry. You mentioned at the beginning of the lecture about establishing your own practice and centering yourself as to not be swayed by the other voices, by other people’s opinions of you, and I was just wondering, how?

tUnE-yArDs

Exactly. I don’t know. It’s hard. I mean, really hard. I think especially when... I guess, what I’ve learned is, what I’m learning, is to be protective of my creative space, which means creative space and time. One thing I’ve been doing, first of all, I’ve been meditating in the morning. It really changes things, because it is this time to turn it off as best I can practice. It’s really helped me to have a practice, as in I now have a vocal practice. I have warm ups that I do. I have drum rudiments that I do. Those things that, I guess, they keep me on this humble level of what I know and what I don’t know and just starting there. I don’t need to be a hero today. I don’t need to do anything, actually. All I need to do is show up for the practice.

The other thing is technology, which is really hard when you’re working on a computer, and your email is right there, and the internet is right there, and all your critics are right there. It’s the same interface. You’re watching the same screen. I have started to set up absolute boundaries. The best day is when my phone’s on airplane mode until 4 PM. I wake up. I do my thing, I walk to my studio. Again, I feel like this is a privileged life that I’m leading that this is what I get to do. I walk to my studio. I do my practices, so I’m centered in all these things, and then I lie down on the floor and cry, because what that next step is of going from all the things that feel like are in my general control to the abyss of the unknown of what’s going to happen in the studio today is terrifying, but I give myself time and space for that.

I really don’t know. Those are all the things I do now, but I think that, for me, I have enough of this self sabotaging voice, “That’s not good enough. That sounds like so-and-so. You’re just copying that from blah, blah, blah. Someone’s going to say you just appropriated three countries’ worth of African music.” You know what I mean? That stuff is in my head all the time.

Oh, and writing. I’ve been writing a lot in the morning. All those things to filter that stuff out and then kind of worship the creative process. I mean, literally put my offerings out on the table, say my prayers to the creative gods who are going to help me today. Getting spiritual about this shit, because performing, especially I’ve been blessed to perform in front of so many people and that can really get to you super fast, that all of a sudden you’re in front of people. I mean, right now, why am I up here talking? What do I have to say? What are you getting from this? Why would you sit here for so fricking long listening to me talk? Those are the things that I need to put down in order to just be of service to whatever this is.

Lastly, there’s this book called The Artist’s Way, which I had been told about for years and I was always like, “Uh, that’s for other people who need to know about how to be an artist. I am an artist.” I have been humbled by many a thing, including all the numbing devices, including using... There’s a lot of addictive tendency that I’ve uncovered in my life that I’ve needed to deal with. I would much rather do anything else than be with myself in a room creating. I would much rather be any number of things. I’d much rather be tuning out instead of tuning in. That book, The Artist’s Way, has been really helpful lately in terms of equalizing us. This is really special that we get to do this. It’s really special that we get to be involved in creative process and involved so much in honoring creative process as something that’s valuable, not something that’s for the freaks who don’t have to get real jobs, but that is part of being a human. Music is my way of understanding what it is to be on this planet and, without that sounding too grandiose or whatever, that’s what I attach to it. That’s how I feel about it.

I hope that was helpful.

Audience Member

It was so good.

Audience Member

Hey. Thank you for being here.

tUnE-yArDs

Thank you.

Audience Member

I have one comment and a question. You were speaking earlier about listening to female voices and I just think it’s a really refreshing start, to get two female lectures today, as opposed to last week. Second of all, I was just interested in you elaborating on how you approach melodies and harmonies. How much do you think about chords and stuff like that, and how you think of that?

tUnE-yArDs

Thanks for that. I think melody comes pretty naturally, being a singer. That feels like a blessing just to have, again, a vocal practice where I might be practicing scales and feeling where different notes sound, resonate in my body, and that is a great source for melody. A kind of endless source for melody. I don’t know how many of you consider yourself singers, but I always hope that musicians who don’t consider themselves singers are singing anyway, because I think that it’s our first instrument, I guess.

Chords and theory and harmonization, because I never studied music formally, that is a by-ear thing for me, what I want to hear, but also Nate Brenner who I work with in tUnE-yArDs, my husband, is a bass player and is trained in jazz theory and so he will offer this great counterpoint. I will do a song and it just is pretty much a drone in G or something, and he’ll be like, “Well, what if the bass line does this,” and it’s basically re-harmonizing everything that I’m doing? That has been one of those gifts of collaboration where I struck really close to “I don’t want. You’re changing my whole piece.” My piece is this drone and you’re changing it, but it’s brought out so many different... I think I would be bored with myself. I would be bored with my drone or my general tendency to do a 1-4-5 progression or just 1-4, 1-4, 1-4, 1-4. I could probably be happy with that for a long time, but to learn the universe of possibilities with chords, and then to hear. To do these deep listening exercises and hear what tuning to each other’s voices as a group brings. That harmony is bringing out all these microtones. There’s just so much possible and so much that doesn’t need to be confined to keyboards and to instruments that are in tune. I feel very lucky that the voice was my entryway into music because of all the in between tones that it allows for. Does that answer your question?

Audience Member

Yes. Thank you very much.

Audience Member

Hi.

tUnE-yArDs

Hi.

Audience Member

I can relate to so many things that you said. Thank you. Not only the morning pitches. I was wondering can you work with your old way of singing wrong and both the new things that you learn now with the classical training? Because my background is that I had a lot of singing education, but I think I was always lucky enough to ignore my teachers enough so I could just keep my natural voice because it was always very important. I was wondering if you can combine, maybe, the two of them because I think both of them, those can have a lot of valuable things.

tUnE-yArDs

Absolutely, yeah. I say wrong because that was a wrong that was a word that was used with me, but I would never use that. I don’t think that there is a way that’s wrong. I think there’s a way that’s more sustainable than not. My teacher, Deborah Benedict is her name, she’s so great at assuring me that I’m gaining voice, I’m not losing a voice. A real thing, I was already using different (singing). That was a part of it. I used to go (singing) or whatever. Even that’s not wrong. I can’t sing wrong. It’s just different. There’s these different, yeah... that I gained possibility with my voice and I gained flexibility, and that that is exciting versus limiting. Good for you, ignoring what needed to be ignored.

Audience Member

May I ask do you know Les Voix Bulgares? They’re amazing, aren’t they?

tUnE-yArDs

Yeah. I was always like, I will never be able to sing like that because I thought I would definitely hurt myself because I don’t know that technique. I think it’s a very specific technique, but it’s not taught by a school, but by culture. Or from people who sang it before. I don’t know. I just wanted to mention it. Can I ask another thing? Sorry. Just one more thing. Have you heard of this screaming school in LA? I heard about somebody who would teach screaming, but because I can sing loud and I can scream in a nice way, beautifully, a female voice, beautiful thingy, blah blah, but I would like to have more dirt in my screaming, but I cannot do it without hurting myself. Have you heard of something like that before?

Tune-Yards

No. Is it for metal singing? That kind of screaming?

Audience Member

You mean like grinding and the (makes noise) thing?

Tune-Yards

Yeah.

Audience Member

No, I think it’s more like Steven Tyler kind of screaming.

tUnE-yArDs

No, I haven’t heard of it. First of all, there’s got to be teachers who are singing Bulgarian or Eastern European singing. I say that because I know that... I’ve had instruction in that somehow of where that resonance comes from. I also think a study of any... If I can afford lessons, I couldn’t always afford lessons, but even just taking... I remember I did a puppet opera and that was my first opera lesson. I’m sure I paid the woman very little money, but she gave me another perspective on the voice. I’ve become a real proponent of taking lessons, even if I’m supposed to be an expert now. I always want to be training because we always are learning. Otherwise what’s the point? Boring. Thanks. I’ll look up the scream school.

Audience Member

Thank you.

Audience Member

Hi. I wonder if maybe you could share something. You were talking about your warm up. You also said that you find a bit of tension and stuff like that. Do you have any exercises you do for your warm up that helps you not to get into that tense head space with singing?

tUnE-yArDs

I usually start with (singing). Down the scale and then up the scale. Then I have a tape worth of about 30 minutes of these vocal warm ups that I do. I took a workshop a long time ago by the Roy Hart Theatre group because I came from a theater background, so I was studying voice for theater mostly in the beginning. I find that a lot of those, there’s an exercise, which I will not demonstrate now. Basically, you’re lying on your back and your knees are up. Your feet are on the ground. It’s called spinal rocking. I find that just anything to let my body find the natural gravity of things and the weight of things: to be grounded. That is a really imperative place to start. In any kind of meditative practice or instrument practice, there’s a sense of, it’s not how many muscles do I have to use? It’s how few muscles do I have to use? What can I let go of? How much can I possibly relax?

I’m trying to think of the warm ups I do on the road. (singing) I do a lot of (singing), like humming and getting into a nasality part of my voice, because I think that’s where I found that I need to direct a lot of the power of my voice is through there. It’s definitely making a fool of myself. If we’re on tour in a city, you can find me walking down any sidewalk going (singing). A willingness to look like a fool.

Audience Member

Thanks. Thank you.

Audience Member

Hi. Big fan also. I’d like to ask you to talk a little bit more about how feminism has intersected with your work. You’ve said a little bit about it. I also have an observation about this. Playing by yourself, being a woman, playing on your own, how did you get to that conclusion? Was it because of some things that have happened or did you just realize it afterwards? was it a natural process? How does the fact that being a woman in the music and all that stuff you have to deal with, has it influenced you in getting to the conclusion that you needed to play on your own?

tUnE-yArDs

Thanks for that question. I think playing on my own was really important just from an artist’s perspective to know what I was. Where what I was bringing to the table... because I’ve always been playing with people. tUnE-yArDs started as me defining what I wanted to hear, and I guess that, for me, was from: I am a woman, and I grew up as a woman, and I think I internalized a lot of things as a woman that I wanted to test out. What do I know how to do? What am I capable of? I think feminism is, first of all, so wonderfully open to men and women and that to believe in equality of the sexes and to believe in the equality of humans is feminism. It’s been really important for me to have tUnE-yArDs as something that’s my own. Sorry. It’s so huge. How do I talk about it?

I would say that these things such as being told by specifically... because when you’re on tour, I’m wearing this t-shirt that says WAM, Women’s Audio Mission, which is in San Francisco. Women’s Audio Mission is a place where only women are allowed to touch the equipment. They lose their funding if a man touches the sound board. For real. I’m forgetting what the percentage is, but it’s a terribly small, I wish I knew the figure, percentage of women who are out there in the technical fields of music. We have this wonderful opportunity now where so many of us have our laptops and have access to being able to experiment with the technical side of making music.

For me, for a long time, that was a really big obstacle. I didn’t think I could do that. I had to go to a studio and work with probably a male engineer who, as we know, anyone involved in the sound making is having some kind of influence on the sound. tUnE-yArDs was this first way and the only way I knew how was for, OK, this voice recorder, it records sound. Then I can mini-input, eighth-inch input from there into my computer real time, record it real time, and then multi-track it that way. That was my way of having my hands on every single aspect of it. Yes, it was empowering. I appreciate that I think all of these things, with the advent of technology and with such a clear accessibility that everybody has now to these tools for making music. I think this is all going through massive change, as is our whole world. Does that answer your question? It’s a big one.

Audience Member

Yeah.

Tune-Yards

Yes and no.

Audience Member

Thank you.

Emma Warren

Do we have any more? Or is it now just time? We have one more?

Audience Member

I will if it’s okay.

Emma Warren

Of course it’s okay. Of course it’s okay.

Deradoorian

Just actually to add on to what you’re talking about, as a woman, I feel like I just want to be a person. I don’t really want to be viewed that way, especially when you’re working in a male-dominated industry. I realized I was a woman in my ’20s, but before that I was just like “I’m a musician.” I’m really happy with how, in the industry, women are becoming more magnified or being made aware of. I was having a conversation with another woman about this. When there’s all this focus on women specifically, there’s riding a line sometimes of “Is this kitschy or something?” Do we really have to take it to this level for people to understand? Is the goal, in the end, to just magnify it and make it almost extreme in its awareness so we can balance it back out so it’s a social norm? Is that that goal? Or is that how you feel?

tUnE-yArDs

It’s really confusing. I’m constantly confused by it. We were talking before. I have this radio show that is specifically highlighting women producers because I feel it’s missing. I think this is also that we can make sure that we are heard. Everybody can be heard. We were talking. I think Steve Reich and Terry Riley’s names... I knew about their names before I heard of Pauline Oliveros. Why? why is that? It was troubling to me. I just want to be like “Can I not be a woman musician? Can I be a musician?” But there is a gap. There is room to fill. I think, like technology, it’s going to go (makes noise). I hope that all of these things that become... Women being so under-represented in the industry... That in a few years it’s just like “And now we don’t talk about that anymore.”

I do think that we live in a patriarchal society in general and that we have this opportunity, again, to be hearing everybody. I do think there’s a danger of an exoticism of amplifying voices. Amplifying voices is different than exoticising voices. I feel like I’m a woman, but I often don’t feel very feminine. I’ve thought a lot in my life about my sexuality and how my sexuality defines who I am and being very afraid of sexuality in general. There are all these nuances that don’t get talked about when we just talk about categories. Instead of listening to each other’s stories and listening in this very intimate way. How does it feel? How does it feel to be a man who feels a great amount of femininity? There’s just this whole, especially in the social media-centric world where everything is a bite instead of these very fluid definitions of things and fluid definitions of ourselves.

I just want to listen more. I think that’s such a great way to start the day by hearing a lecture on deep listening, because it’s listening in so many different ways with so many parts of ourselves.

Emma Warren

I think we can all agree we’ve really enjoyed listening to you. Thank you very much.

tUnE-yArDs

Thank you guys.