Links
- Email:koanesce@gmail.com
- Website: www.koanesce.com
- https://www.instagram.com/koanesce/
- https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61559973981206
- https://artists.spotify.com/c/artist/3OGRV08cDpc5mTY4pAITB6/profile/overview
- https://www.tiktok.com/@koanesce
- https://www.youtube.com/@koanesce
Interview Details
Date: Saturday, November 8th 2025
Location: Burlington – BIG HEAVY WORLD
Length: 58:16
Episode Number: 60
Show Notes Link: vermonttalks.com/michael-nault-koanesce
Short Link: vermonttalks.com/60
Transcript
Becca: What’s New 802? I’m Becca Hammond and you’re listening to Vermont Talks. Vermont Talks may include graphic or explicit content. Listener discretion is advised. Welcome to Vermont Talks. It is the 8th of November already. Saturday the 8th of November. I am at Big Heavy World Studios with Michael Nalt. Welcome Michael. Thank you.
And you are a singer, songwriter, producer, composer, pianist, and you are putting together Koanesce, a vibrant collection of musicians with a new approach to live music. And we were just talking about how cool your website is. Thank you. And there’s this iconic photo of a piano fire pit that is just… Piano on fire. What of the coolest things? So please tell me about Koanesce and what was going on with the piano fire.
Michael: Okay, so we’ll sort of start logistically with the piano fire. This has nothing to do with any of my career. What I want to do with this is how it happened. My brother had a house in Lincoln, Vermont, and had a bunch of kids and wanted them to learn piano. And found a piano on Facebook marketplace sort of thing. And free piano. You can always find a free piano.
You just got to find six people to take it away. Yes. And this one was in a container. So it was baked and frozen and baked and frozen. So we got it to the house and we tuned it up and it lasts for a half an hour and it goes away.
So everything I look at, I look like how it could be, oh, this project or that. And what I saw was like, one, the easy way to keep this piano is just get a little $100 cassio, slide it in the body of the thing, take the action out, and replace it with that. And it was beautiful. And then I was like, oh, what am I going to do with this action? And I put it in his yard and I have photographs of it aging as the sort of plants and grass and everything are growing through it. And then we eventually had to burn that because of he ended up moving. And when he finally did move, all they had was this, you know, like nobody wanted this piano in the house. Right.
It was not an actual piano. I’m like, I know exactly what I want to do. And I invited a few friends over for a party of, you know, like, what are we doing? We’re just moving.
We’re moving the piano from here to out there. And we filled it with some wood. And I filmed the entire thing. And I was so crazy.
I filled it with, you know, the cell phone sort of thing. And as soon as like one of the people is like, oh, we’re going to leave. Like, okay, let me turn around and I’m shaking hands.
Have a good night. As soon as I said that, that’s when it collapsed to the ground. And I’m like, shit. But there’s still so much footage of it. And it’s so great. And I’ve got pictures of me, you know, playing imaginary on the thing.
Yeah. But the idea of co-in-ness is like, and a different approach to live music is, you know, I’ve been around a good long time. But it’s, the next step has to be where the audience drives it.
The audience doesn’t appreciate it. They drive it. And it could be small D democratic.
They drive it. And by that, I mean like one of the ideas I have is co-in-ness can be anything from a one man band to 12 people on stage. And the meaning of co-in-ness would that, you know, to be more basic about it or more expository words.
I used to have a lot more of them. But the gist of it is what a Zen co-in is is like, what’s the sound of one hand clapping? That makes no sense. That makes no sense at all. You know, and the point of a co-in is the fact is it makes no sense and it makes you realize that things don’t always make sense.
And you have to kind of accept that. And then the co-in-ness part is to combine it with to coalesce, you know, where people come together and to co-in-ness means to unite in a common understanding that we don’t know anything. You know, and that’s what brings us together.
You know, our shared ignorance or just the fact that, you know, it’s that more you know, the less you know, the less you understand kind of thing. So the idea for the audience, you know, at the end of it would be you would come to a show and you would have say, for instance, a nap. That’s particular to my group. And you can kind of lean whatever which way you like. You know, you want to hear Latin sort of leaning country sort of leaning anything. And what I’m playing, be it a cover or an original, it’s going to be in a particular beats per minute and in a particular key, which means you, the audience member can quantize it. And what quantize means it’s the, it’s how you know it sounds like a Latin song because it has this rhythmic pattern to it. It’s how you know it sounds like a Celtic song because it’s missing the third all the time.
You know, there’s all these, you know, and it’s not worth going into the whole thing, but quantization means translating that song into your genre. Right. And now you have a group of people that we have a mix of genres in the room, right? There’s all sorts of mix and how many combinations could there possibly be?
And now instead of, you know, I like mine you like yours, what if we combine the two? And that’s the beauty of AI right now that it does that so quickly and so easily. But to do it in real time with human, what’s the word I’m looking for? And I don’t want to say intervention or inclusion. A human expression to it, you know.
Becca: Right, art skill sets, not just the math. A human perspective to it. A human perspective to it.
Michael: And every show would be different. Every single show would be different from the last and the good shows would be good because the audience was great. Right. Right. So that’s the idea. So this is an open invitation to anybody who ever might want to play, get involved.
I would play with anybody anytime and it’s, that’s the beautiful thing about music is it’s so small, the democratic. Before we go any further, I have a question for you. Big heavy world. Yep. Where does that come from?
Becca: Oh, that’s a great question. And I actually had an interview that explained that a really long time ago. So big heavy. I think, honestly, I think the initial name came from just the type of music that was going on in the 90s. This has been around for quite a while. So I interviewed. I get it. We got the right name here.
Gosh, it’s been so long. So Jim of Jim’s Basement. I don’t know if you ever heard of Jim’s Basement, which was a DIY spot. So Jim Lockridge was his name and he’s moved away now. So Jim kind of founded this place back in the 90s and the radiator is where local bands come on and play. And Abby helps run the radiator now. So I think that’s honestly where it came from. Just the name was just being kind of grungy for being the mid 90s.
Michael: As soon as you said grunge, it didn’t make perfect sense.
Becca: I think that’s where it came from. It made perfect sense. Matt, I have a lot of love for big heavy world. Because that’s it. There are a collaboration of musicians and just bringing people together in this really cool way. So I want to a little more of an explanation though about Coeness. So are you putting on, I know you said that you’re starting, which we should mention, you’re starting a YouTube live series, which is kind of like what the radiator is doing every week. How is that tying into Coeness and how are you seeing this concept of this collaboration growing over time? And also, where is this based? Because I think you said you’re in the islands. Are you doing things locally in the islands or what’s the plan?
Michael: This is really still super embryonic. And the thing that I’ve fought with this project is I’ve had a history of having the show of my life every five years. And I’ve had some great ones, but I don’t do much in between. And I really want to get to a point where I’m doing more regular stuff.
And toward that end, I’m on the island. I play with some people here. I have not played much in the way locally. Anybody who would love to hear me, I would love to come and play. But the two most recent shows I did, I did one while here was like back, shoot, or way back in February.
That was a really great show. And to give you an idea of like what the Coeness part means, like it isn’t a band. The bass player was New York City based. The drummer and the singer were in LA. Myself, the violinist were from Vermont and Abby was supposed to be part of that, but she got sick and it was so sad. But so it was like that group’s not going to play together in that configuration again.
It might, but it probably won’t. And it was such a great night because of all the different flavors of music we had. What the show tries to be, which is what I think it’s hard to get shows, like if I said I’m just going to do nothing but covers and there’s nothing bad about doing covers, is everything good about it? It’s like a musician who doesn’t do covers is like an author who says, I don’t read other books.
What the hell is that? But at the same time, you can get really painted into a corner if you get really good at those covers. And it’s easy to get good at covers you enjoy.
Becca: Yes, I struggle with this. Yeah, if you enjoy the cover and you interpret it, it’s a wonder. The most satisfying songs I’ve ever sung and played aren’t mine. But so what the show would be is at any given time, it would be 50% originals of, and I’ve maybe got maybe 100 different to choose from that I have. And the other 50% covers and the covers should always be different. So like in February, the show we did, it was 50% covers and the rest was Prague rock sort of stuff and disco.
Michael: This last one that I did in Rhode Island, it was 50% covers and the rest of the other 50% was like Johnny Cash sort of country, Almond Brothers and 80s, Lucent stuff. Nice. So it’s like, and if you can find a way to that, again, coalescing part of it with the audiences there, if there was some form of an app that said, you know, who’s wearing a smart watch? Oh, I don’t know, 75% of us. Okay, you got the app, you got the app.
Great. Now your app is telling my rig that has MIDI that, you know, the average heart rate in this place just went up. More people are standing up than they were five minutes ago.
More of this, more of this. Yeah, that’s interesting. And then they go down and now you can modulate the show to the audience. And this is independence of the audience choosing what sort of genre they want to hear. Right. You know, there’s so many moving parts to the, and this is so, I know I’m not unique in this idea, but who’s going to get to this finish line first is going to be the thing.
Becca: Right, right. That’s a really interesting concept because I remember, I love music, I’m very musical and I love playing music, but the way human beings are something indescribable about the energy at concerts. And I’ve been obsessed with this concept my whole life and it’s so hard to find people who want to talk about that in a concrete way. Like this is an actual entity that we can’t really define. And one of the things I always thought was interesting is the 60 beats per minute is a very specific, like that’s like the resting heart rate human beings really get bound to.
Michael: In 120s where you get bopping, man.
Becca: Exactly. And there’s this really interesting thing in a lot of these really like soulful love songs and relaxing beautiful songs end up falling near the 60 beats per minute. Totally. Just this concept of like how do you pull the audience, that entity that is the audience experiencing music into… That’s really cool. This is really cool to me.
Michael: I don’t quite know where I was going with that. But… And again, like with the show, with the small D democracy part, think of it less as a band and more of a DJ with a bigger palette to use. Like a lot of DJs have a singer with them. They have a flute player with them. They have a piano player with them.
I would love to have a DJ with me. And like the original impetus for this entire project, it was Leonard Cohen, which we did. And that was last night’s show. It was like a show, strong word. But it was all Leonard Cohen covers that I did mostly.
And my idea is like when I heard him for the first time in a different way, and it was when I heard his last album, not as earlier stuff, I was kind of familiar with his earlier stuff. But I was walking in New York in the rain, 80 blocks, and it was raining enough that it was raining, but not to be a real bother. You know, not even umbrella raining, just a little drizzle. So it was like perfect. Oh, let’s listen to 80 blocks of Leonard Cohen. And every song after song was like, my God, that lyric. How did he come up with that? And it was one after another. But then you start and you think, well, I guess what? It’s pretty much a one, four, five blues percussion on all of the songs. You know, they’re all sort of the same. How could you bring these really incredible lyrics to people that would otherwise never listen to them?
You know, put them in an EDM format, put them in a Latin format, put them in another language. So that’s where it all started. And then you take, there’s this thing called Camelot. Have you heard of that? It’s for DJs. Yes.
Becca: Yeah. The beats per minute. Yes. It’s the circle of fifths. If we all want to go that inside with it, it’s the circle of fifths for DJs. It tells them what songs go well together. So every, not everyone, but probably 70% of the Coen ones I did from the electronic point of view all match that.
So regardless of what style I’m playing, if you want to plop the original in and just pull mine out or modulate up and down, it’ll fit. Interesting. Yeah, really cool.
Yeah. That piece of software is really fascinating. It makes a lot of sense. It’s just when you can mathematically quantify the sounds in that sort of way, it’s interesting to think about blending different genre flavors. And I love eclectic music anyway. I have a hard time. Genres kind of drive me nuts a little bit because I feel like they’re so restrictive and people, you get in this mind space of like, I like what I like and I don’t like other things.
And I won’t go to these concerts, but I’ll go to these concerts. But I don’t know. It’s just a weird thing that doesn’t make sense to me that we get so rigid and people get really, like really into the specificity of like this genre is this slight like underground thing and like, it’s just music, you know. It’s like the connection of different people listening, the audience. Totally.
Michael: Totally. And it’s the more, you know, A, the more you like music, the more music you like and sort of B, if you’re into a music, you’ll see the 300 categories in it. If you’re not into it, it’s just electronic. It’s not, oh, that’s EDM and that’s trap and that’s, then I’m going to know that. That’s, I don’t like, that’s electronic crap. I don’t like that, you know. But if you do know it, you know, classical music, oh, that’s Baroque. That’s this.
Or it’s classical music. It’s how close you want to look at it. And that’s the mathematical part of it that you bring up.
That’s, that’s what I love. And that’s where I think we could really lean on AI where I can’t make, I can conceptualize those transitions. I’m not going to let stick that landing ever, you know, but it could show me how to, what works with what. And I just, I wonder how we’re going to tell stories, real stories. Because I mean, I don’t want to say long form doesn’t work anymore, but you really have to put yourself in a place to be ready for it and enjoy it.
Where it’s short form is what is your day to day intake. Yes. How do you tell that story? And that’s, I don’t get it. That’s the whole point of the thing. I don’t get it. Maybe you don’t get it either. Maybe we can do a figure it out.
Becca: I think that’s what we’re all struggling with. Because I have mentioned this in other shows. There’s a lot of really interesting information about dopamine addiction and what this is actually doing to our brains, like this short form content where you can’t even finish a minute long video. Like that’s how short our attention span is getting. Totally. So we can’t, and you can’t like expect it of people because they’re so addicted that they’re not going to sit and listen to a five minute song anymore.
No. Unless there’s something really, it has to be visual. That’s the other thing is that song itself doesn’t actually land. You need the visuals and like it has to be extremely cinematic to get, to get people to engage with it now. It’s just this whole other can of worms, but as songwriters and as musicians, like how do you approach this concept?
Michael: I think, I mean, you can look at this and run a parallel to stuff like the printing press or whatever. Yep. You know, this is how it works now. You want to use the schlocky, clunky version of it? Or do you want to polish the hell out of it, figure out how to just really, you know, again, like, it is that short form thing, but maybe if my story to you is that 90 seconds at 8.03 every morning on the bus, but I get to give you my story, that’s how you find it. And there is, I mean, I’m not going to say just, oh, this is new, so this is right. I do, you know, long form stuff is very rewarding.
You know, if you invest your stuff in it, that’s the thing with this is, this is instantly kind of fun. And if it’s not, you know, I’m out. Right.
It’s, I don’t know, there’s, I feel like as long as there have been older people and younger people, the older people have been saying, you know, it’s, it’s different now. You don’t understand. Right. And I find myself like, oh my God, it is different. You don’t get it. And then, you know, I think, you know, you think of somebody that you go back to say, you know, somebody in 2026 who graduated in the 80s, you know, imagine somebody in 1926 talking to somebody who graduated high school in 1880, something, what the hell was that conversation like? Right.
And I feel like this is a much better conversation today. But we’re just, we’re our own greatest promise and we’re our own biggest enemies. This, this, this things could go so well, but I’m afraid they’re going to go so sideways before they go so well. Yeah.
Becca: There is always good things. That’s a, I’m, I’m a software engineer by trade.
Michael: Oh, so I love, like I love technology, but I often recognize. Yeah, exactly. I also hate it. It’s a very weird dichotomy to be, to recognize the things like what you’re talking about. Like, oh, this is a really interesting application of not only like wearable watches. Wow. What a blend of really, you know, beautiful human culture, right? Music.
There’s nothing more beautiful than humans experiencing music and loving that in that moment, right? Because it’s something that you can’t record. We’ve all tried. We’ve all tried to record it analog, whatever. You can claim you hear it more in analog, but there’s nothing like being at a concert, right? For sure.
Wow. If you can blend something like, wow, everyone’s in this exact vibe together. How can we talk to them through music in a way that’s really going to speak to them more? How do we listen to them?
Becca: Right. Right. How do you bring it all together?
Michael: But you say software engineer technology. Here’s, here’s my hurdle. You know, I have a boss, 505 Mark II Looper, whatever the hell that is. I have a Kronos LE 88 key keyboard, whatever the hell that is, a Korg N364, a boss, VT4. I got all this stuff that I all kind of know how to use. And I conceptualize, I can conceptualize how to use it all. But the problem comes in where, and this is what I’m wrestling with now, is who is the MIDI clock that’s the main one?
Who do they all follow? How do my effects work globally, you know, easily with my feet? And I want to get into the camera stuff. Like I have this little show that I did last night. I have the power supply where I can go and set up anywhere.
And that’s what I want to start doing, some shows in some crazy places. Yes. Yeah, cool. But I don’t have the wherewithal for that kind of MIDI programming with all that messaging that goes in.
Here’s an open call to anybody who might be interested in this. How do you make all of that work really well? Right. Because ideally in the end, the way the show is, I’ve now done enough of these. This show varied from that one, from that one, that I have a database of, oh, I have, oh, you want your 80s stuff when you spin the wheel or the crowd wants 80s? Okay, we have some of that. You know, you want your Prog Rock, we have some of that.
And that would pull up, okay, playlists, that would be, the playlist would be generated by the audience as points on a graph. Yeah. Okay. So now the playlist comes in and all the band members who are not going to know what you’re going to play. So we all have to accept the fact we’re playing with iPads in front of us. Yeah.
And the, but the sheet music, cheat sheet comes up immediately. Audience starts to change their mind. All of a sudden we see a timer that’s going down that we’re about to change in 30 seconds because people have had enough of this.
They want something new in 10, 9, 8. Reggae, go. You know, and it’s, and the MIDI aspect of it, the software aspect of it can actually give us the reggae underpinning.
I don’t have to be with reggae musicians and I don’t have to be one because God knows I’m not, you know, but I can play along to reggae. Right. You know. So that’s where you give the audience the control. Yeah.
Becca: This is really interesting. I feel like there’s aspects of this concept, like pieces already exist. Totally. Like the heart rate thing, that’s really out there. I’ve never heard of that idea. But just the idea of like an app where people are voting together or even just the input on that, like the way people could express how they’re feeling. Like, because I feel like music itself is one of those things that almost can translate into color. Color and emotion can all be just this interesting representation.
Michael: Don’t get me started on music and color.
Becca: Like, you know what I mean? I do. Like a rainbow almost. I absolutely do. They can put in, you know, I’m feeling, I want happier.
Michael: You know, I want like, I
Becca: want the ups, you know, people are putting that in on their phones and you can almost see the colors change, right? Because everyone’s on their phone anyway. You can look out in the audience and see their colors all turning blue or yellow or green or these different colors that could kind of guide what’s coming next. Right. Oh, that’s really cool. I love this idea.
Michael: Yeah. I mean, there’s not a song you could hear that you could ask anybody that they wouldn’t be able to assign a color to it. And you would have a majority of people that would assign a particular color to that.
You know, you’d have your outliers, but there would be a majority that would be a particular color or at least a vein. And like you go even deeper into music and color. Like you have primary colors and you have shades. A base is a primary color. It’s just, you know, simple, simple.
I don’t want to say simple. I couldn’t name the primary colors, which is why I just said that in that way. And then you have a singer, also a primary color. A piano is shades of colors. And this is why pianos and guitars have a real hard time together. Because like a piano and a bass, a piano and a singer, you know, it’s one note and a shade. So that can kind of work, but shades can clash really easily.
Becca: Yes, yes. You have to have two people who know music theory well to have a piece.
Michael: Or just, yeah. Or have, they just, you know, they recognize it, you know, music. And that’s the great thing about having different people in this band is, and it’s not a band, it’s a project.
Music’s always a conversation. You have, you know, the person who never shuts up, the person who hardly says anything. And as soon as they do, it’s like, my God, where did that come from? You know, in the argumentative one. And it’s a different conversation every time.
I’m the one who can’t shut up. And that’s why I have so much respect for like horn players. Because nothing takes a song from 100 to 200% like horns. Yeah, yeah, definitely. But if you’re hearing horns from the beginning of the song to the end of the song, you’re not making it to the end of the song. Right.
Becca: You know, but. Yeah, I know, yeah. They’re almost like an exclamation instrument, right? Exactly. Oh, and they hit, they hit so hard. They take it somewhere else. Yeah, they really do. That’s a funny way to put it.
Michael: Yeah, it really is something.
Becca: Yeah, you’re right. If it was just trumpet, the whole song, you lose, you lose all of the rest of it.
Michael: Yeah, I guess unless it’s a horn driven song, because like I’m immediately thinking of a musical hero, Miles Davis, like the thing that made him so great is, you know, and here’s the thing where you have like virtuosity versus authenticity. There was a guy I’ll mention that you probably, you know, I don’t know how old you are, but most people listening wouldn’t even know Doc Severanson. He was like the trumpet player for the Johnny Carson show.
Yeah, okay. This guy could mop the floor with Miles Davis as far as scales and stuff like that. You don’t know who Doc Severanson is. Right.
You know who Miles Davis is and people for the next 100 years will still know who Miles Davis is because he played the silence. It’s virtuosity for its own sake is horrible. Just because you can doesn’t mean you should.
Becca: Yes, yes. I’m a bass player. I love bass. Oh my God, the people that the world has decided are the greatest bass players. They like, you know, I’m impressed, but I don’t like listening to them and I can’t even name their names because I’d make people mad at me. But it’s so true though, like technically wow, right? But I don’t want to listen to them. It’s just kind of the attitude I get.
Michael: A lot of that music is like golf. Yeah. Love to play it. Can’t stand watching it. You know, like jam bands are that for me. I can do a jam for days, you know, but watching a jam band doesn’t grab me. Go ahead, ask me my favorite bass player.
Becca: Who’s your favorite bass player? Mark Sandman. Who do I know? I don’t think I know that name. It’s a band called Morphine. Okay, yeah, I’ve heard that name.
Michael: And he played a two string fretless bass. Oh, cool. And his motto was less is best. Yeah. And the band configuration was him, bass and single. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Becca: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah You don’t need to overdo it too much, especially in one song. It’s so easy to overdo it in one song. And it’s funny, because I love Prog Rock. Like, there’s a certain type of Prog Rock where I’m like, damn, that was great from beginning to end. A lot of Prog Rock, you’re like, that was terrible from beginning to end.
Michael: Yes, yes. It gets to earnest, is the word.
Becca: Right. I get what you’re doing, like technically. And if I was a composer, I’d probably be like, wow, just, there’s a lot going on. Look at all of this. So impressive. But just listening to it, it’s not, it’s not landing for me. I don’t appreciate it the way they want me to.
Michael: The song you sing to yourself going down the street is a three chord song. Yes.
Becca: Yes. Humans really like three chord songs, at least currently. That’s where we’re at.
Michael: We’re pretty, well, it’s. It’ll be interesting to see what’s going to happen musically, because you just mentioned the basic chords, which I think you’re right, that that’s what we stick to in one way, because you don’t have to get much further than that to say everything you want to say.
Yep. But again, getting back to the AI thing, where time’s going to come where I won’t need the physical aspect of my digits and my lungs. I just need to think about what it is I want to hear and I’ll create it. And then what’s going to happen? You know, and it’s. I mean, it’s as cyclical as anything else. It gets more complicated.
It gets simple. It’s, you know, I think it’s like music and fashion are very much the same, you know, and that’s where I think people, it’s one of the few places people shouldn’t have to worry about AI, because if AI was in charge of fashion, our fashion would never change because it knows what we like and it will give us more of what we like. Same is true in music. You need somebody, you know, like if AI was around, you know, in the 90s and Nirvana showed up, you wouldn’t have heard Nirvana. You would have continued to hear, oh my God, Iron Maiden, whatever, you know, people would have listened.
You would have heard more of that. Right. But these guys came out and said, you know, we’re going to do the opposite of that. Let me see what you think, you know, and it’s. Right.
Becca: The innovative piece is going to be there. But yeah, that’s right. Exactly. That’s kind of, I just had that thought about how disturbed people were when I was at Bakker Bay Tovan. I think it was Bak. They were just disturbed by the whole concept of what he was doing because it was new and outlandish and, you know.
Michael: It’s classical music is such a thing. Like I grew up playing it. Like I’m not, I’m classically trained. I had a guy who taught me classical piano for 10 years.
I did not have Berkeley or whatever, anything like that. Yeah. Yeah. But like again with like the math thing, anything you can do in music, you can say in math and Bak was sort of like addition and subtraction. And then Mozart came along and it was division and multiplication. And then most Beethoven came along and now it’s calculus and quantum physics and whatnot. But it, my feeling with that period in music is why it’s so great.
It isn’t because they were greater people then. They were just the first to get it. They got it.
It showed up. And I strongly believe that if things like Ableton Live and Logic Pro X existed then, Beethoven would have made it to symphony number two at best because he would have spent his whole life perfecting the first one. You know, because that’s the problem with what we have technologically now. It’s so easy to fix that you spend an inordinate amount of time trying to fix it where it’s done.
It might have been done so many incarnations ago. For the same reason, you never used to take too many pictures because it was so expensive. Now, you don’t want to take too many pictures because it’s so overwhelming.
Becca: It’s so overwhelming to go back through and edit them. Oh my gosh.
Michael: I mean, we’re all going to reach that point in our lives where if we wanted to spend the rest of our life watching every video we ever recorded, we won’t have enough time left to do it. And how do you tell your story to somebody quickly? That’s because I know myself. Like I, you mentioned the six minute song.
Becca: Which some of the greatest songs ever written are really long. They are. And they just wouldn’t get listened to. Like if someone wrote, don’t fear the Reaper today. No, listen to it.
Michael: For sure. For sure. But it’s such a good song. I find with the Cohen stuff that I do, I cut out verses. And it’s not that they’re bad verses. They’re all spectacular. And I try to do different verses different times. But it’s like I, people want to turn the page to the next thing, to the next thing.
Becca: Yeah. This is a, this is an aside, but I’m just fascinated by this, that one of the actresses who is in the show, The Good Place.
Michael: Which I’ve actually seen some of that show.
Becca: Perfect. Of course I’m really excited. You don’t know how, very tall woman, beautiful woman. Anyway, she was on a podcast recently and she was talking about how all of the studios in Hollywood have been told to dumb it down. To dumb it down and to repeat the plot often and simply. Which is why these characters keep like stating, we’re going to the lawyer for this very specific reason. You’re like, that was a really stupid thing to say. But apparently it’s because people are on their cell phones so much.
Michael: And they’re going back and forth and back and forth.
Becca: Exactly. That they want to look up from their phone every 10 minutes and follow the movie.
Michael: 10 minutes, that’s saying something.
Becca: Oh, and it’s coming for everything. It’s the same with, it’s not just movies and shows, it’s music, it’s music videos. Like it’s bizarre, people can’t make it through a four minute song. That’s true. You’re right, how do you translate this?
Michael: You say what you want to say in two two minute songs. Yeah. You make them different songs. Yeah. I like two minute songs for the main reason is editing them. Right. You know, because it’s like you, if you’re a musician and you’ve created your own music, you know by the time I’ve heard it once, you’ve heard it 1200 times. And you’ve heard that two measure part, 3600 times. You know, it’s, I like two minute songs for that. And then I just, I imagine myself in the audience and my attention span has gotten so small. I’m wildly interested in lots of stuff. And I don’t know if part of that is, you know, ADHD aspect. And that’s another thing I can’t stand is the Instagrammification of every human condition there is. Yes.
You know, we’re living in a world that is 50% narcissistic and 50% empaths. I’m like, I don’t think so. You know, that’s, that’s, I don’t think that’s how it quite lands. You know, you maybe you guys are having problems, but it doesn’t mean you’re this and they’re that. But it’s, here’s something I wanted to kind of talk about.
Patience and tolerance. And that’s what’s going on today that I think that’s so different. Like in my last show, I did a song that was, you know, Frank Zappa was, Oh yeah.
Becca: Okay. Yeah. And then I stole the margarine.
Michael: All right. Well, he did one song way early called Trouble Every Day. And that was a song about like the riots in the 60s. And what he was complaining about or pointing out was the fact that news agencies, they, they just stomp all over each other just to get it to you first, no matter how ugly it was. Yeah. We’re going to get it first. And it’s not about first anymore. It’s like, we’re going to define it best.
Who’s going to define it best? And, and that’s what we’re up against now is I forget exactly where I was going with that thought, but. What we were talking about. Patience. Patience and tolerance. Yes. So people don’t have tolerance anymore or patience for one another.
Becca: Yeah. The patience probably leads to the intolerance because I can’t make it a minute and a half to listen.
Michael: But like, I think the difference between patience and tolerance, this is kind of what I wanted to say. It’s like, you can always find more patience. You can always create more patience.
You know, like if I’m, if I’m teaching somebody to play the piano, which I’m terrible at, it’s like, you know, let me show you a division before I show you a edition of that guy. But if you’re not getting it week after week, but you’re still trying, that is so endearing to me. And I’ll, I’ll stay in it the whole time. You know, but if you’re somebody who comes off really gruff in an attitude with me, whatnot, I know I could exercise 20 minutes of patience, endure you for a little bit, and then we’ll connect. But I, I maybe I don’t have any tolerance for you anymore. And I’m just not, and once you don’t have it, you don’t have it. You can’t, you know, you can say, oh no, I’ve learned to tolerate it. It’s like, no, you just, you haven’t discovered your level of tolerance yet because once you hit it, you can’t unhit it. You can’t, you can’t go back and say, I’m going to put up with X, Y, or Z.
Becca: Right. Yep. Yeah, I feel that. And dealing with some people, you’re like, nope, I’m just, I’m just not going to. Yeah.
Michael: I hope, I mean, you talk about music connecting people and people feeling a higher level of being and just feeling better doing it.
Becca: There’s something about interacting with human beings face to face, right, and going to the concert. I think concerts don’t translate well to video. They’re really cool on video. Some have. Yeah, there’s some, I’m not saying they haven’t, like there are some really cool shows on video, but the feeling of being there, right?
Michael: Oh yeah, just feeling the thumb. The feeling of your heart beating with everyone else at that show. And the audio impact of the decibel level.
Becca: Yep, just, just the, the human experience of being around other human beings. Everyone’s kind of so isolated and like buried in the cell phone. Or whatever it is, like iPod, iPod, cell phone, movies, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, whatever the hell it is, we’re so buried in it and then like cut off from each other because my screen doesn’t show what your screen’s showing.
Michael: And yet the app I’m talking about is exactly that in the same room.
Becca: Right, bring it the other way, right?
Michael: And in the very next breath, what I was about to say, and this, this is causing me to think. In February, I was given the option and this was pitched to me as the best thing since sliced bread. Let’s record, like, because I wanted the show recorded well and it was recorded very well with a new video coming out tomorrow, which is actually a cover. I’m at Co &S on YouTube and you can find that Instagram, all that stuff. Look at that. How many minutes are we in before I got that?
Becca: Very 42 minutes.
Michael: Wow, that’s got to be a record. No plug for 40 minutes. But what was I saying? I’m so sorry.
Becca: Oh, you’re the app. You just brought up the app.
Michael: Oh, yeah, we had the show and this was put to me as the best thing ever. Have the audience all wear headsets. Oh, right. Like nobody’s going to feel the actual physical impact of the sound.
I was like, no way. And you sacrifice a bleed for that, but who cares? And by bleed, we mean music coming one sound into the other.
But yeah, it’s funny. Like the app that I talk about kind of demands that you’re listening to it that way because I’m sitting next to you. I’m dancing next to you in my little electric slide thing. Meanwhile, you’re doing a Nirvana sort of grungy kind of version of what I’m doing. Again, we’re feeling the same beat.
We’re in the same key, but our quantization, the language we’re getting it in is different. And that’s it’s to take the best lyrics that say the most impactful things and bring them to people in the mediums they want to hear them in. I guess that’s the elevator pitch of Co and S.
Becca: Yeah, that’s incredibly interesting to think about. And the headset thing, that actually is becoming a thing. Oh, yeah. Like I get it. I also don’t get it. I’d have to experience it myself.
I think I might like it more once I’ve experienced it because I get the concept behind it. Right? Yeah, we’re not going to bother the neighbors. Like I get that one. I get the people with sensory issues and like you can turn down your headset as much as you want.
Michael: Right? And you could do it instead of the headphone thing, go to the next level. And again, and this is where it’s a freaking iPhone world. I mean, you can have your Android version of this or whatever, but earbuds that can accommodate ambient sound along with the show and the consumer can modulate how much of that they get. If they want to go to straight silence and look at all these weirdos bopping around, they can do that. If they want to go to 100% music and not involve themselves with anything else around them, they can do that. Or they can get it to, you know, you can have club level, you know, club level extreme, coffee house, you know, set your setting for what you want your audio level to be with the band playing. So you could be listening to me just blasting out the hardest thing I can in a coffee house vibe. Right. So it’s not going to hurt your ears where the next person is just getting blown out and you’re all in the same room. Right. Right.
Becca: Yeah, see, that’s the interesting thing when they talk about, this is way out there, we’ll get there eventually, is the augmented reality concept where we really, right, we are getting there. I personally would really like my glasses to be more useful, because I’m stuck wearing them anyway.
Same. Like I could see where air could actually really improve a lot of lives and just be incredibly useful. But this kind of blending of like, we’re not isolating ourselves, we’re bringing technology into the community, we’re actually interacting with it. And just making it more fun, right? Like making it kind of personalized and different and do whatever you want with it, but also be there with your friends. Right. Go out and see artists and.
Michael: That said, everything I just described could be done remotely as well.
Becca: It could be VR. That’s I was thinking that as well.
Michael: As soon as you said it, you could get there, but it’s also like an entirely different, because at what point does the AI taking over, right? The digital music has now taken over because you’re in VR. It hasn’t taken over. Like AI is, to me, it’s just a really sharp blade, which we could slice our own throats with it as humanity.
That’s true. We could develop new surgeries we’ve never known, but we could slice our own throats with it as well. But I, as long as you can manipulate it, or it speaks to what you’re doing, I think that’s the, you know, like you think of stuff like, oh, how’d you get Afro Cuban music? Well, you know, you took these people, you enslaved them for 100 years or so, and this came out.
Right. You can achieve the same thing in a much nicer way, you know, by blending the different angles that people want to approach their music from. And if I think the cool thing would be, you know, if I’m somebody who only listens to this type of music, but I allow 20% of yours into mine, that might flavor mine enough that suddenly, you know, I like that salt, make it a little saltier.
Where does this meal come from? And boom, now, where they never would have listened to your stuff because it interacted and it complimented or augmented their music, they’ll twist more to your side. And now you have another new genre. That’s the only thing. Everything’s been done under the sun, but not everything has been combined in the way it can be so far.
Becca: Right. Right. This is all fun to talk about. This was probably a decade ago, back when remind me of what this program is called for the DJs to match beats per minute. Oh, Camelot. Camelot. Back when Camelot came out, YouTube went through this weird phase of combining totally bizarre songs together because they could. They matched, yeah. And one of the ones that to this day I still go back and listen to is a blend of a slipknot song, Psycho Social, and Justin Bieber’s Baby.
There you go. And it blended so well together and like it made such a heavy song into this sort of like cheeky, fun pop song, but it still has a very heavy riff to it. And it just, it scratches two parts of my brain that I didn’t know needed scratching.
Michael: That could be scratch. You could reach at the same time.
Becca: Yeah, yeah, exactly. And it’s just funny that you talk about this and you’re right. Like that wouldn’t have happened if someone didn’t have that software to kind of like recognize that they could fit.
Michael: And you see how they all can fit. Like, I mean, you look at the, you know, another thing you see a lot of is, you know, these older dance things that they put new music to.
That doesn’t match at all with it, but they’re dancing just fine to it, you know. That’s the next frontier is, it’s the me show. That’s all we want. Nobody wants to watch the network. They want to watch the me show.
What’s the, give me the me show. It’s, you know, imagine another element of the show where dancers used to dance to the music. What if dancers created the music? And by that, I mean, imagine you have a dance floor and in the center of the dance floor, for lack of a better word, you have a big stripper pole. It’s just the center point of the pole and they’re in a circle. And in each quadrant, you have four different dancers. And they’re, imagine their points on a graph.
Whoever’s closest or whoever’s furthest from the pole has the biggest influence on the equation. You know what I mean? And you have a hip hop dancer in quadrant one, you have an African dancer in quadrant two, you have a ballet dancer in quadrant three, and you have a ballroom dancer in quadrant four. So now wherever they move on the graph will dictate the MIDI underpinning. Now within that, each of those dancers can affect what they’re playing. So say the Latin dancer, when she twirls to the right with her dress, it triggers an arpeggio in this direction. When she twirls to the left, it twirls an arpeggio in the other direction. When she does this, you know, it triggers whatever that quintessential would be the best word, cliche would be a bad word for whatever resonates with that type of music, you know, the, you know, the African dancer could have the same thing where, but imagine you also have, if they dance above a certain, you have like the electronic beams, you know, that you break the beam, if you go below the beam, you don’t hear it, you boom, hitch, harm up, you break that beam, it’s going to make a sound. You squat down low enough and this beam connects, it’s going to make another sound.
Becca: Right. Like a three-dimensional theorem and kind of thing.
Michael: Exactly. You know, and so instead of me knowing I’m going to hit a G with my index finger, they know I’m going to go below 32 inches on this stage and this is going to make this noise. And each one of them has their own different set of interactions they can use and their, their importance is gauged on their position on the graph. That’s really interesting. It’s a Broadway show I have in my head is what it is. It’s a Broadway show. If anyone’s looking to finance me.
Becca: No, that’s a really incredibly cool concept and it’s cool watching because MIDI is heading in this direction. There’s a new device out that’s been kind of blowing my mind that it’s a keyboard, but it’s not a keyboard because it’s also a theremin, but it’s not a theremin, right?
Because it is three-dimensional, right? Like they can push forward, they can go up and down and it keeps everything in the same key, but it is a keyboard. Like it has a MIDI controller with a theremin basically.
Michael: MIDI controller is what you, that’s what it boils down to. Exactly.
Becca: But with that, like the way they can move is exactly how a DJ naturally dances was the exactly what they were going for is, oh, well, the DJ starts doing this. Well, the rhythm section starts following the way they’re dancing and such a cool thing. Like I’ve been watching that going, I wonder, like I’m not a DJ where I feel like I could make a lot of really crappy noises with this thing, but I’m really excited to see someone who is good at what you talk, you mentioned this, getting it programmed enough so that you can actually go on stage and make it work in real time is the, I don’t feel like I have remotely scratched that where I could do that. It’s so much fun playing with MIDI controllers though.
Michael: Yeah, it is. And there’s, you know, everything is about zero to 127. That’s MIDI. There’s nothing you can explain that is, doesn’t have a number somewhere between there, you know, from volume when you play a piano on a keyboard like that, it’s, there’s 127 variations from silence to as loud as it’s going to get. The amount of choices and directions you can make is 127, but it’s the routing, you know, and that’s where I say like, if I hit an effect, I want it to be global or maybe I don’t, you know, like I want just this section of my keyboard that’s going to interact with my vocoder so I can harmonize without that thing trying to harmonize with me way up here in some octave that’s like completely out of my range and it’s going to try to make me sound that way. To get all the trains on the track and get them all running on time because is, is hard because this last show I did two weeks ago in Rhode Island went really well with the Looper and stuff. Whereas the one before that, not the February show, but there was another show that I did where I tried to do the same thing and it ended up being a very acoustic show because it all hit the fan. Yeah. And I just had to work. Yeah, it didn’t work, you know, and it took me an hour to set the stuff up and it worked great at the house.
Becca: Yes. Yeah. That’s it. The more complex you make it, the harder it is when you get on stage.
Michael: Right. Sometimes. My, my, my little rig is going to be complex, but I got a little wagon I can pull it on. Once all the identifiable inputs and outputs are established, I’ll kind of wrap them together as a snake and label them. Right.
And again, my goal is I want to like, just pull my little wagon into some really strange place in this or cool places in this, tons of them here and just do a little live set here, live set there, live set here, live set there, which should be wonderful. I’m always stunned at people who say I used to play. Yeah.
Becca: Well, that was me for a long time. I used to play and I just recently started playing out with a band again this year and it’s been.
Michael: You don’t have to play out, but I mean it’s.
Becca: It’s so nice playing with other people that I hadn’t played with anyone in a very long time. And I kept playing by myself. I’m really happy that I did because I didn’t, you know, lose my chops in completely.
Michael: Right. But playing with other people. They come back fast though too. Yeah, they definitely do. But it’s, there’s something really wonderful about just like going to a show, like being with other people with music, there’s, there’s something like really deep down in our souls that just, it speaks to it, really means something in a way that, man, I wish, I wish, I hope we keep some music venues open in this state. We’re having a hard time. They’ll come back. They’ll come back.
Becca: Yeah. They’ll come back. What’s the, what’s the new, you know, 20 years from now, what’s the new nectar is going to be that’s going to be the old place, you know? And who knows where that place will end up too. But it’s, maybe it’s going to be just more guerrilla shows. You know, you mentioned an underground person’s place here. Will you just have shows in? Oh, there’s a lot of it. That’s it. There’s a lot of these little, little places around Burlington right now.
Michael: Maybe that’s, maybe that’s the thing to do. I’d love to try some of them. Reach out to me, whomever.
Becca: Hey, you should reach out to safety pin shows. It’s like my friends have booking service and odd fellows has become a very important cultural hub in Burlington for this exact reason.
They actually have Jim’s basement speakers right now, which I think we’re going to replace. But it’s really trying to keep like the 242 what, you know, what Nectar’s was, but what we’ve lost. Yeah. Alive, just keeping something alive. And it’s actually a really nice venue for what it is. Yeah. It’s pretty big.
Michael: I’d love to check it out.
Becca: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So let’s run through because we’re at 56 minutes. Let’s run through all your links and stuff. So can you spell co-in-s for me and send them to your website?
Michael: All right. So it’s co-in-s, which is co-in and co-a-less. So it’s K-O-A-N-E-S-C-E. And you can add that at Instagram, at YouTube, at Facebook. co-in-s .com is the website itself, where if you want to get involved, by all means, I would love to hear from you, from everybody. This is going to go in the direction people take it. It’s not so much my dream as me offering to provide a vehicle. Maybe we can all get somewhere in. And this has been a wonderful, wonderful hour. Thank you so much.
Becca: Thank you so much, Michael. This has been really, really fun. And just plug my own, vermonttalks.com, forward slash 60. This is the 60th episode that I’ve done. And that will link to all of your stuff as well as having a transcript. And I’ll probably embed some of your YouTube videos and just Love it. Thank you. And share your links.
And this is how we grow together. Thank you. But highly recommend that you post on DIY Burlington. I will.
Other groups because I think there’s a lot of musicians that really enjoy collaborating with each other. That’s great. Cool.
Okay. Thank you so much, Michael. Thank you all for listening.
Goodbye. Thanks so much for listening to the end of the show. Subscribe to vermonttalks on your favorite podcasting platform. You can find me on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, all over the web. Contact Becca at vermonttalks.com if you’d like to be interviewed or if you know someone who should be. Thanks so much to Jason Baker for creating the show music. The views and opinions expressed by the guests are those of the individuals and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of vermonttalks. Any content or statements provided by our guest are of their opinion and are not intended to malign any religion, ethnic group, club, organization, company, individual, anyone or anything. And that’s what was new in the 802. Have a great day.