https://roberthenke.com/interviews/ableton.html

One adds and the other subtracts
Gerhard Behles and Robert Henke on Ableton
[GB_RH_2016]

The following interview was conducted by Maya-Roisin Slater [link]
for Thump magazine during the Ableton Loop conference in November
2016 in Berlin. It was the first interview ever with Gerhard Behles
and Robert Henke about the history of Ableton. The version published
at Thump was only a short excerpt of the complete session. Here is
the complete interview. Some slight additions and corrections have
been applied for clarity and precision. They are in italics in
brackets. Photos on this page: Maya-Roisin Slater, Ulf Bueschleb, ?

Maya-Roisin Slater: So who are you and what do you do?

Gerhard Behles: I'm Gerhard, I used to make music a long time ago
with this guy [ points to Robert ] and then somehow got diverted into
running this [ Ableton ] business.

Robert Henke: Well I used to make music with that guy [ points to
Gerhard ], and at a quite historical moment I had to make up my mind
if I would want continue doing that [ making music instead of joining
Ableton 100% ], and I decided to continue doing music. But I'm also
still involved with Ableton - and I do music! And since a few years
also more and more visual- and audiovisual installations.

So you met at the university in Munich, is that true?

RH: Before university. We had a common friend who played a very
essential role because he was running a shop that sold electronic
music instruments. [ The Munich branch of the legendary 'Synthesizer
Studio Bonn' ]. And this shop turned out to become a hub for
electronic musicians and there we both met.

So from the moment you met, did you know you wanted to work together
and make music?

GB: No! We hated each other!

You hated each other?

RH: Yes! Absolutely.

*laughter*

GB: We really didn't get along at all in the beginning. But then we
lost sight of each other because I moved to Holland, and he moved to
Berlin. Then I moved to Berlin too, and I was sitting one day in the
university...

RH: At the introduction lecture!

GB: At the introduction lecture. And the professor says how it's all
going to work and asks what are our questions and I hear this voice
behind me, someone asking a question and I go "Ugh! No! That's
Robert! He's here!!!?"

What did you not like about each other in the beginning?

GB: This is getting too personal.

*laughter*

RH: We came from a very different background and, actually it's a
good question because later we figured out we have a lot of things in
common. But on first sight we only saw the differences.

What are those different backgrounds? Where you were brought up or
your just your ethos?

RH: To paint a totally cliche picture, I was at that time the kind of
totally lost goth punk person. And Gerhard pretty much looked the
same as he did now...

*laughter*

... nice white scarf and a very stable demeanor. Like the type of
people I hated at school.

So you didn't even really have to get into it, you just saw him and
you were like, that's not my people?

RH: Pretty much, yeah.

You meet again in university, and how do you reconnect from there?
How did that work?

RH: Right after noticing that the other was there too, we ran up the
auditorium to the exit and said: "What the fuck are you doing here?"
And well the next thing you do is you decide you need to have some
coffee to discuss that problem.

GB: It was the beginning of a wonderful friendship.

RH: Absolutely.

So what were you studying in university at the time?

RH + GB: Computer science.

Ok, so that's basically where everything stems from. You became
friends through mutual hatred of each other, and how did that become
music? Like were you making electronic music already?

RH: Yes.

GB: I think something you have to know is Robert was always much more
hands on than me. He had all kinds of gear collected and I always
somehow lost my gear on the way. I think it was really through
noodling with his synthesizers basically, we started to explore
things together.

The key game changer somehow in hindsight: through more or less
random connections we got in touch with and inspired by the Basic
Channel people. And it wasn't so much like: Now here's your record
deal! It was more that we were all just very inspired by what the
other people did and it all came together.

RH: Also the technical university has a studio for electronic music,
which was at this time one of those hubs for serious academic music.
And we both owe a lot to this place, because we got introduced to a
lot of electronic music that was outside the realm of club music. And
also we had to do works there, we did installation works together and
sound design and things like that. And I guess along the way we
noticed it's actually fun to work together. Which I believe in part
has to do with the fact that we're different. Because we have
different skill sets which very much matched with each other. So
where I was always a bit too abundant, Gerhard was always a good
person to get a certain order to things. And I think the beauty of
our collaboration came from the fact that these two poles naturally
work together. So we didn't even talk much when we were making music,
it just happened that we found a way to communicate via the
instruments.

GB: That actually goes quite organically, and I would assume there
are more couples like this where it works this way. Like you go to a
[ musician ] friend's house to hang out and get high or something and
then you talk about what's happening, what's running on the
sequencer.

Then you say I think that's great but.... And then you do something
and that intervention triggers something new and then you kind of end
up to getting music done, not even by intent and I think this is how
we morphed into it. And I think I really like generally our dynamic
of augmenting as your role, and reducing as my role. And I've also
heard that happens with other people too. That's one classic dynamic.
There are a few classic dynamics between music creation couples, and
that's one. One adds and the other subtracts.

RH: What's also important is that this collaboration became
technically possible by a system we developed, a system of
sequencers, a studio set up as an instrument which allowed us to find
a very playful approach to composition, which is also one of the key
elements of what later became the Ableton Live software. Because when
you do things like that [ treating the studio as a real time
sequencing instrument ] there are some specific limitations which we
couldn't overcome. In a way Ableton Live was the answer to our own
problems. And I believe what made the software such a success, was
the fact that it's entire design was driven by a deep understanding
of a certain need.

[RH_GB_4] Gerhard Behles and Robert Henke in Berlin 1999

So in the beginning what equipment were you guys using to make music,
like just synthesizers basically?

RH: Drum machines, synthesizers.

GB: And early on I think also [Cycling '74 / IRCAM's music coding
environment] Max, like programming Max patches. I mean it helps if
you know your way with tech, we were programmers, so...

So right from the get go, you were involving your computer science
education with...

RH: Yeah I'd say so, that really helped.

GB: I think somehow the Max part outgrew the hardware at a point.
Very much also for live shows. Because in the early nineties you
could get away with playing one song over a whole night [ using just
a drum computer, one or two synths and effects ], but that kind of
working method got a little limited over time. So you ask how we can
expand on this and create a little more variety and you quickly end
up with somehow canning some [ pre-recorded loops of existing ]
material and then [ the question is ] how do you deliver that? There
you are, that didn't exist and that's how Ableton Live happened.

RH: I think of course all these developments can only happen at
specific moments in time and there was just this historic coincidence
that right at this point when we both became on a very local scale
famous enough to be asked to perform live, laptops started to be
powerful enough to actually do audio processing.

That was the Apple Powerbook G3, the first laptop with an acceptable
sound card and enough CPU power to do at least a little bit of audio
processing inside the computer. And this also lead to the development
of an extension of the Max software we were using to program. [ The
extension was the 'Max Signal Processing' package, which turned Max
into MaxMSP ]. All these things just came together and suddenly it
was possible to perform an interesting live set on stage with a
laptop and nothing else. And that of course changed everything in a
dramatic way, because as Gerhard said, we could do much more variety,
much more radical means of expression without carrying around heavy
racks of equipment.

Ok, so can you tell me about starting with Basic Channel and how you
got involved with that and how it affected your music?

GB: I think we got in touch with Moritz [ von Oswald ]. I met him the
same way as I got in touch with Robert, via the guy who owned the
synthesizer shop in Munich.[ Wieland Samolak, see also here for more
about him ] It's like connecting the weirdest dots but that's how it
went. So I knew him through this, and somehow we got reconnected in
Berlin.

RH: I mean one thing which is a bit hard to understand now if you
look at it from an outside perspective, some twenty years later: the
scene was very small. Which means you went to a club like Tresor, WMF
or Elektro or whatever places were there...

..there are historic photos of the early nineties where at the same
place, the same night you see several Berlin locals, plus Aphex Twin,
and Richie Hawtin, and Jeff Mills, just hanging out there.

Because the scene was so small you eventually ran into everyone. And
the other very, very essential part of Basic Channel, Mark Ernestus,
ran the Hard Wax record store, and that influential place, which is
still existing, was also a hub for a lot of other artists who were
working with Basic Channel and Chain Reaction later.

So it became quite natural to be in touch with those people. And as
another side development the Basic Channel guys also decided to build
their own mastering studio [ Dubplates & Mastering ] and they were
hiring engineers for the studio. And since I have a strong
engineering background, I ended up being a mastering engineer in the
very beginning. So there were just multiple ties.

And at some point, I think in 1995, Mark and Moritz decided they
would be interested in creating a deliberate sub-label of Basic
Channel to collect all the interesting people in this environment,
basically all the friends they knew whose work they they found
interesting, and really more or less by accident we got our first
record contract. [ The label was called Chain Reaction, the first
Monolake 12", Cyan, came out as CR-04 ]

GB: Really also in hindsight a very impressive move on their part. I
mean they really wanted to foster the community, they helped a lot of
people...

RH: Absolutely.

GB: ..who otherwise would've never released stuff. They were really
so supportive, and I mean cute about it, too. I mean we played them
our early trance acid crap, and were joking: "who would like to put
that on a record???!" and I remember Moritz said "I would have done
it differently, but ok." And it got released.

RH: I remember that situation. And sometimes you know retrospectively
you would say maybe it would have been a good idea to not release
that record...

*laughter*

[RH_GB_2] Robert Henke and Gerhard Behles in Berlin during Loop 2016

MR: You probably wouldn't be where you are without it.

RH: No, no, this specific record is forgotten and that's good...

Somebody is going to find it now for sure. So you're talking a bit
about the scene in Berlin in the nineties, can you paint a more
detailed picture of what was going on with electronic music when you
guys were there?

RH: I mean there's vivid colours and pictures of all kinds of things
in my memory. One of the anecdotes which I find remarkable is, we
used to go to a club which was run by an artist collective, the
'Electro Music Department (EMD)'. A project consisting mainly of two
music producers and a visual artist. It was a very very small place
but it became quite influential. Panasonic played there for instance
very early on. And I believe that even their name came from the fact
that at the entrance of this place was a big Panasonic sign because
it was a former radio shop. And this was one of the places where you
went to listen to music and to talk about it.

Because the distance between you and the DJ was just the bar. The DJ
was standing right behind the bar, so ordering your beer and talking
to the guy behind the turntables was one thing. And that always led
to situations like me saying: "What is this?", and him or her handing
over the record cover and and I go "Oh, interesting!" And I was
living maybe 10 minutes by bike from that place. One Friday night I
just finished a piece of music [ this] and I really wanted to
understand how this sounds in a volume which is louder than what I
can do at 11 o'clock at night in my apartment. So I just grabbed my
tape recorder and recorded the tape and ran with it back in the club.
And Klaus Kotai from EMD who was DJing that night, I asked if he
could put this on, and he just did. Because there was no risk
involved. There were not 500 or 5000 people expecting the latest
house tune, it was just an audience of 20 people, if that, interested
in what's happening.

GB: Maybe you could say on a more large scale I think the key
difference was the whole realm of money didn't exist...

RB: Actually not at all.

GB: In nobody's mind [ at least in our closer community ] was there
even a thought about it. And I think it was more driven by the
seemingly infinite opportunity. Also in squatting, like basically
half of the town deserted, and ready to be used for something like a
club to be set up and then forgotten and moved on. There were so many
years where that was the only thing that drove the whole scene and
nobody had any advanced interest in earning money.

Which is so interesting, it's very strange for me to think of
electronic music as a DIY scene. I feel like usually you associate
DIY scenes with punk music or rock music or stuff like that. Whereas
now it's so commercial, I mean it's quite recent, but it's so
intensely commercial it's hard to imagine it was ever something
small. Now you go to a club and the DJs...

RH: ...like a god. There were lots of discussions in the early techno
community about exactly that. How do you perceive yourself as a DJ,
what is your role. And it was not only about: we are not interested
in pop music as a format, it was not only about we don't want a three
minute track, we want something that is an endless continuum that we
can get lost in. That was very essential, sure.

But it was also the idea that you get lost in music and the DJ is the
person enabling that, but is not important. So in many of the early
clubs there was no stage for the DJ, at Tresor, the early Tresor, the
DJ was just separated by actually some metal bars, but played on the
same level. At the Panasonic Bar, same level. At WMF Club same level.
It was never the idea that the DJ was someone you would look up to.
And as an interesting detail people were also not dancing facing
towards the DJ, they were facing towards each other. You were looking
at other people when you were dancing and trying to get some sort of
social interaction either because you liked the music or because you
like the person or both. But it was not that everyone was polarised
towards the DJ. And this only happened at the later stage when clubs
raised their entrance fees and invested in fancy light shows and big
big parties came up, and suddenly you had the big stage again.

Another interesting perspective. Because DJs are pretty horrible to
watch. Not always but most of the time, if you actually sit and stare
at a DJ playing, it doesn't make any sense. Like they don't want to
be looked at. If you're a DJ playing I can't imagine you want 1000
people staring at you, like you're trying to press buttons. It's not
a great performance art. But I guess the expectation now is you watch
a DJ like you watch a band. You're watching them, and they're
watching their laptop.

GB: I don't know how it happened...

[namm_1] Robert Henke and Bernd Roggendorf at NAMM 2004(?)

Well let's fast forward now to the official founding of Ableton. You
involved another person, how did the real official founding date
happen?

GB: I ran into a guy called Bernd Roggendorf, and he was a music
enthusiast but not a musician, he was a straight up software engineer
and that was his career. He was like way more solid than us combined
at that. And he just said let's do it! We can do this, this is not
too hard, it's possible. Because he's like a natural born optimist.

RH: Absolutely.

GB: He said let's run a business we can do this, much more stupid
people run businesses than we, we can do this. And somehow he got us
to do it.

So when you were making Ableton originally, before it was Ableton,
was there always a thought in the back of your mind that you wanted
it to be a product that you wanted to sell?

GB: I would say the turning point was really through Bernd. Because
really what we did was only for our purposes, and sometimes only for
one gig, or one piece. A program for a piece. I think the idea that
this could somehow be generalised or be packaged more as a product
that's accessible to other people too became much more prominent with
Bernd entering the conversation.

Also the technology was totally different at that point. [ There was
nothing even close to Ableton Live out there. It was all based on the
pardigm of using computers as replacement for tape recorders ] So
that was a start. And also I think we lucked out in that Bernd pushed
very hard that we need financing, we need an investor, otherwise this
is going to be dragging along forever and it would be painful. And
that also means you have to write a business plan, you have to
fantasise at least about what it could become. Even if in the
beginning you really don't believe in it, you have to project a
theory to success. Having to force yourself into that kind of
thinking actually paves a ground for it to actually happen.

But I would say in the year 2000 I would not have believed this [ the
incredible success of Ableton Live ] could happen.

RH: Certainly not. I think the feeling we had was, that there are
enough like-minded people in our closer community who could
appreciate a product like this that it could work commercially. Just
a feeling: you look at how many people make electronic music at this
time, what are they struggling with, how much would they benefit from
a product with a specific feature set. And that gave us confidence to
believe that a small company could actually survive on the market.

No one thought of the thing exploding, we just thought we could
survive. I remember when we went to the first trade show [ NAMM in
Anaheim, LA, the worlds biggest music instrument trade show ] with
the first version of Live, we felt very much like we were small
innovators with a niche product, and actually we felt very
comfortable there because we had other friends of small niche
companies with a similar mind set and we also literally stayed in the
same corner of the exhibition space.

So there were other big companies like Steinberg, Roland, whatever,
and then in one corner there were the freaks and we were just part of
the freaks and that was a comfortable position.

What happened during the first NAMM show, [ 2001, with a beta version
of Live ] on the second day or so, that moment where I really thought
for me, there is something going on here: I was demoing the software
to people. You know an unknown company with a strange product, a few
people came by, but it was not already the world noticed the
revolution was going to happen. At some point, a guy came by, just a
typical LA music producer person, dark suit and kind of longish
slightly greyish hair followed by maybe ten people in their early
twenties who also looked like the classic cliche of the hollywood
composer. And I showed him the product and he had a german accent but
I didn't take care of that because at a trade show you meet all kinds
of people and everyone has a badge, but I was so busy explaining to
him what the product was all about, and he had a lot of intelligent
questions. And at some point he asks, so you can just put in a drum
loop here and change the tempo continuously from let's say 110 bpm to
140 bpm and it doesn't change the pitch? And I said yeah, sure I can
show you this. But I did it from 30 bpm to 999 bpm. And after that
demo he just said: 'do you have a card?' So I handed him my material
and only then did I get to read his name tag and it was Hans Zimmer.
Then he left and all the other guys behind him left too, and half an
hour later, people showed up: 'Hans told us you have something
interesting to show here..', and I really believe he was the first
one who understood this piece of software could actually work in a
completely different area than what we were assuming. And Ableton
Live, already in the initial version had one very lucky property: At
this time the workstation of choice for all the really professional
studios was [ Digidesign's ] Protools, and there's a specific
protocol where you can connect different applications to Protools and
link these different softwares together, and this was called ReWire.
And we were smart enough to implement ReWire in our little product
and that made it possible for the big guys in Hollywood to actually
use the crazy software from Berlin and incorporate it in their work.
So that was the moment where I thought ok, perhaps we are completely
looking at a too small segment of what could actually be done. And as
you can see nowadays, I would say the people making techno with it,
that's probably a very small sub segment of the user base.

[GB_RH_3] Robert Henke and Gerhard Behles in Berlin during Loop 2016

Gerhard, you eventually left the musical group. So I'm just trying to
figure out chronologically in order what happened. So you're happy
together, you start this company, and then are you still making music
when you start Ableton?

GB: I think the idea was we do this on top of everything and I think
we upheld this illusion until it fell over.

RH: Maybe one month...

*laughter*

GB: I mean at some point you just go to the studio and, you just want
to drink a can of beer [ and not make music anymore ]. And you
realize, you don't have the power to do both.

But you [ Robert ] continued on with it?

RH: It was a decision of mine which caused me a lot of struggle for
quite a long period of my life. Because I've always felt torn between
those two ideas. On one side I tremendously enjoy software
development. I tremendously enjoy thinking about such things and
creating something that has its own beauty. Because I perceive
software development as an extremely satisfying and also artistic
endeavour. You can apply concepts of elegance, of beauty, of
simplicity to software development. That's unseen from the outside,
but I believe it shapes the results you see. And I love that. But on
the other side I wanted to make music, but the day only has a certain
amount of hours.

GB: I think it was easier for me because...I mean we're both somehow
hybrid between the musical and the technical. But for me it was
always clear that I would be more useful on the technical side, on
the engineering side. And I think for you [ Robert ] it was just not
so clear.

RH: I would say at this time I kind of felt 60/40, nowadays I would
probably put it at 50/50. Because sometimes I get much more
satisfaction out of solving a programming task than of the artistic
side.

GB: I guess you've also found a different way of combining it because
your work now is intensity technical. The difference is it doesn't
make a product for many people to use on their own it's an art piece.
I think the uniqueness of it in many ways is, that there are not so
many people who can cover that ground between aesthetics and
technicalities like Robert can.

So how did creating Ableton as a company change your relationship?
Because you've gone from hating each other to a beautiful friendship
and now you're starting a business with someone else in the picture.
So how did things change??

GB: It's complicated. These become complicated relationships in all
ways, in all directions, on all levels. I mean even when it comes to
agreeing on the product and its many details of course you have a
debate. I think the start of a company generally is misconceived as a
happy place. The start-up is a shit place. It's full of conflict.
Heated conflict.

*laughter*

RH: Absolutely!

GB: Sometimes people pull it off and they find the third way, like:
hey that decision here is not mine or yours, but better than what
either thought. But not always. It often can also end up in a grind
of compromise.

Also because you don't go in it with a totally clear hierarchy. It's
not like you form a company with three people and it's equal footing,
it isn't like: this is how we're going to make that decision X...,
it's not the way it works. You just have to somehow figure it out.
And you figure out so many things at the same time, how are we going
to do this process [ managing the company ], and what's that button [
on the interface ] going to look like, it's all in one. I remember it
as entirely stressful, I mean exciting, but super stressful.

RH: Also, it's not just having two people making decisions, it's a
whole group of people. And some people are chosen because of their
specific merits, but you wouldn't choose them as your friends. But
you work together on something that is so deeply touching the core of
your interest and so much of yourself, you can't separate your
personal desires and visions from the product.

And then you have to accept that someone else has a different idea,
and you have to negotiate that in an environment with no stable
hierarchy. That can cause all sorts of difficulties. The funny thing
is, if you read books about different companies, you have this in
every single company. It's really funny! Every single story you read
about the big companies: you look at how people founded this place
and how did they get along. Let this be Apple, let this be Microsoft,
whatever company. You read always the same stories and you can always
recognise yourself in those stories.

GB: Well I think it is ultimately not different from a family. These
two people come together, they're have great sex, and now there's a
kid. Now what? The whole dynamic changes. They have to figure it out
and they don't maybe know each other so well. They have to figure it
out like so many things at the same time under high pressure... I
mean it's the same situation really.

[namm_2] Gerhard Behles in front of motel in Anaheim, LA, during NAMM
2001

So as the company has grown and gotten bigger have you both stayed
involved in programming the software yourself, or are you less hands
on?

RH: I officially left the company five years ago to focus more on
music. It's just that there's a certain persistence in my personality
that keeps me from letting go. That means I'm still involved in an
in-official level of talking to people, putting ideas in the pool and
hoping that the ripples in the ocean do not disappear. Or just having
drinks and dinner with Gerhard to get an idea of what's going on and
discuss things. When I was still at the office, I saw myself
responsible for certain aspects of the software, and I took great
care that they develop as much according to my ideas of quality or
whatever you want to apply. [ Robert's involvement with the company
became actually a bit more formal again in 2017 ] One of the reasons
why this software became so good was because Gerhard for a very long
time was deeply deeply involved even in detail decisions. Some of our
greatest fights and struggles were about certain details and in
retrospect you would not think of that as essential. But then again
we made sure that there was a certain consistency to this product and
one thing which I owe Gerhard and all the other smart people at
Ableton, is the openness and understanding for different concepts,
different perspectives. And despite all the struggles and despite all
the arguments, the legacy of being able to create such a piece of
software together that's an incredible gift to be part of. Even, or
actually because of the struggle and the need to defend ideas. I
think this is a part of the beauty of this whole process: you believe
you have a great idea, and then you talk to someone else who believes
your idea is completely stupid, but at the same time you know this
person isn't stupid at all. Then things start getting really
interesting.

I feel like with writing, I wish there was more of that. Especially
if you're freelancing from home. If you don't have a good editor then
things can really go wrong. Because it's all your ideas, that's the
horror of working in a creative business: your entire career is just
your ideas. And if no one is there to screen your ideas then you can
easily justify things to yourself. So what are your hopes for the
company going forward and the software that you're making. What do
you hope for Ableton to become?

GB: It's like we've been metaphorically speaking buried in a computer
screen for about 10 years now and not looked much above it. I think
this was good, because it needed a lot of focus and very much
attention to detail to get a stable core of what it is. And it's also
interesting maybe in hindsight that it developed rather slow
actually. I mean it's still not as feature bloated as a lot of the
other programs out there, and I think that helped it catch on,
because people need to take the time to learn it and teach it and I
think that all helped. So we were entirely focused on this sort of
'in the box' experience. And at some point we woke up more to the
reality that this is changing the world, and well what do you do with
that? And I feel a tremendous responsibility [ about the impact the
software could have for music making in general but also for instance
in education ] so that we can move on in a good direction. Because as
this conference [ Loop 2016, a conference lead by Ableton to bring
music makers, instrument builders, educators etc. together ] shows,
there's a big impact of the product and the brand and what we do, on
a lot of people's lives. I guess creativity and that stuff has deep
influences on people's development, and we're trying to look at it in
a much more holistic way now, this is how things like Loop come
together. You're thinking ok let's assume we can do everything, let's
assume we can write software as well as put on conferences. Which is
an entirely different beast and a set of challenges, but it occurred
to us, that we need to do this, this is really important. And also
hardware came into play in is a similar situation, it's like you can
only get to a certain point with what you're trying to achieve inside
a computer and eventually it has to materialise [ e.g. as a hardware
interface like Ableton's Push ] and that became an important new leg
of the business. And I'm now much more interested in looking at the
impact this has on people and what's the maximum impact this can have
on people that's positive.

So you touched on it a little bit, but how do you think Ableton has
changed electronic music?

RH: It has changed it quite dramatically, i'm very certain about
that. But the question that is extremely difficult to answer is:
imagine how it would have been without, because we have no clue.
Maybe a competitor would have done the same thing or something very
similar. Or electronic music culture would have developed
differently, we just don't know. What became very obvious is that the
[ Ableton Live ] software enabled a lot more people to leave their
home studios, bedrooms, and go on stage. And that fuelled the whole
culture, that fuelled the whole festival culture. I don't think we
would have the same amount of electronic music festivals these days
without this software. Because suddenly everyone who's producing
electronic music had a clear path how to bring this on stage. I mean
it became quite normal to go onto any festival stage and just accept
the fact that almost 90% of all laptops are running our software. I
remember clearly for years this did strike me as something completely
mad. That I'm here and that everyone is using this software, and
occasionally people would come to me and say: Hey Robert, do you know
how I do this or that? Well there were two phases. The first phase
was the people would say 'hey Robert can you help me?' The second
stage was that there were all these kinds of people playing before
and after me who didn't have a clue that it was actually my
instrument they were using. Which actually showed how much it spread.
At the beginning I always had the urge to say: that's mine! I did
that !!!!! But I eventually gave up on that.

*laughter*

GB: I think it's true the first frontier of impact was actually live
shows. That was huge. And I think the second was producer's, more
people doing it at all because I mean it is more accessible
proposition than the others at that point. I think the third one I
would say is education, again it's a finding more than something that
happened by design or intention, seeing what people do with this in
education. Nobody sits down and says we're going to change that, it's
the educators that change it, because they find this is a tool which
allows them to find a new kind of music education.

Ok so last question and then I'll let you guys go. So you started the
company to solve a problem, so now that you've helped with that
problem, what do you think is the biggest problem or challenge that
faces electronic music whether cultural or technical?

RH: In my opinion the problem is arbitrariness. Which means
everything is possible, everything is actually quite easy possible.
Everyone is doing it and at the same time I feel to a certain degree
it lost its value. And that might be a pessimistic old guy's view
driven by a wrong perspective. But for instance if you go to an
electronic music festival, it's expected that it's an audiovisual
project these days. And if you go to a concert it's even more than
ever the expectation that you're overwhelmed by large scale LED
screens, lasers, lights, dancers. And what this means is, if you take
all these additional elements out of the game and just listen to the
music, very often I find it surprisingly generic and uninspired. For
me this is a bit strange given that the technology allows for so
much. So in theory you could do all sorts of really really advanced
things, but at the same time that's at least for a larger audience
obviously not desirable. So I'm a bit lost there for myself. I
personally found my niche by doing my own audiovisual projects which
made sense to me, but i just noticed that the impact music, just
music without anything else around it, to me became smaller. And I
feel that if I observe listening habits of people these days that
might be the case not only in my personal perspective. But I'm
careful with this statement because I'm not sure how much this is my
personal mirror, my personal filter there, I don't know.

Yeah, I was interviewing Tarik Barri yesterday and that's something
we were talking about, how i think in the future there will be no
electronic music without a [ potentially interactive ] visual
element. I think the two are becoming the same thing. So it's
interesting. And I was saying that with Versum [ Tarik Barri's own
audiovisual software ], with interactive software like this, it
forces people to remember that they're actually listening to
something. I think many people forget they're consuming art at all. I
was saying maybe having an interactive element will put people back
in it. Will force people to start participating in something that's
actually happening as opposed to seeing it as background noise.

GB: I would think the biggest challenge is that you have to get
better at so many things at the same time. Like if your theory holds
you're also going to have to be excellent at making interactive video
happen. And what more? Now in the last couple years if you think of
what came into the mix: you had to be really great at managing your
social media, you had to be entertaining 24/7, and be responsive to
fans. I mean hey, the people I looked up to, that inspire me
musically, played behind a curtain because they were so elusive and
so not excited about projecting anything as a person, they wanted to
project through the music. That was hard enough, but all this stuff
compounds, the difficulty. And I just wonder what kind of personality
and kind of education and mindset remains as this qualifies for your
success in this field, it becomes impossible.

RH: Well what you notice is, that to successful create a career in
this multimedia music business you actually have to build a sort of
company. Because that's what the successful artists are these days.
This idea of there's the artist that is doing it, that doesn't hold
anymore. It's either teams, you know the agency booking the concerts
and making the press dates, and the production company producing the
event, the guys doing the video clips, the unknown visual artist team
providing the visual content,... every successful electronic artist on
a large scale basically has to have this network of people working
for them to deliver that quality.

GB: Hmmm. But I guess the least common denominator of that whole
conversation is that the single biggest challenge is collaboration.
We have gone so far into unifying roles, and now we have to go back
and see ok how can you split that work, how can you build meaningful
collectives that do something together that still is one thing. I
think that is the biggest challenge actually. And it requires people
to well develop the skill of collaboration, which, as we have talked
before is not always easy, but I think it's all about that.

[namm_3] Robert at the Ableton booth, NAMM 2001, and Gerhard and
Robert after removing it...
[namm_over]