Q/A With Theo Woodward
An old soul, a musical historian, a creative artist; Theo Woodward talks about his music, living with monks, and the ongoing pandemic.
Theo Woodward was born in Southern California in Aliso Viejo but grew up mostly in the Pennsylvania suburbs outside of Philadelphia. His father is from England and his mother is from Vietnam. Theo grew up listening to a ton of classical music, Opera, Brazilian music, and African music from his dad’s music collection. In high school, Theo would join jam bands playing drums and guitar and this is when he discovered his fascination with long form improvisation and ambient music. He also began listening to a lot Indian Classical music and eventually began studying Indian classical vocal technique with a local teacher, Maitrayee Patel. During this time Theo also began experimenting with producing his own electronic music. After high school, he took a gap year where he did volunteer english teaching and traveling in Northern India. Theo lived mostly in a Tibetan refugee colony near Dharamsala, the home of the Dalai Lama. During his time there, he taught english to young buddhist monks in the town’s monasteries and while he was traveling he spent some time in Varanasi studying vocal and flute. Theo then moved to New York City to study Music Technology at NYU. He continued his studies in Indian Classical singing with his current teacher, Noe Dinnerstein. Over the years, Theo has toured multiple times around the east coast with Florry, an Indie rock band, and they have had the opportunity to play at SXSW in 2019 with their label, Sister Polygon. Theo also got deeply involved in the improvisation and free jazz scene in the city, playing with many different ensembles and a wide variety of players. Theo continued composing his own electronic music combining Indian classical singing with electronic soundscapes and began teaching himself 3D animation during the end of his studies at NYU. Now, Theo works as a freelance sound engineer, AV technician, and video editor as well as a digital artist creating music videos, album covers, and promotional videos for musicians and brands while releasing his own music and animations. His discography includes Dictionary, Jbiebz$, Be Full Power, Earth is a Sculpture, Unseen I, and his most recent album Immaterial Notions.
Q: How would you best describe your latest album, Immaterial Notions?
T: Immaterial Notions is a collection of sound structures and three animated music videos that I have been working on for the past two years. Like all of my albums, it heavily references my studies in North Indian Classical vocal technique combined with digital synth textures and a wide array of percussive samples. I improvise vocal melodies in traditional raga style over shifting electronic chords and flowing polyrhythmic percussion. Phrases from ancient Indian compositions are woven into the improvisations. There are other moments of more pure abstraction and ambience where the record moves in and out of rhythmic form and extended stillness. Certain tracks become elaborate collages of sound, rapidly moving from one idea to the next, using foley samples along with digital orchestral instruments and advanced audio processing to create surreal soundscapes.
Q: What was the creative process like?
T: I usually start by creating the electronic soundscape then recording my vocal improvisation over it. I might start by creating a synth drone, playing a melody, processing some samples, or creating a drum kit and sequencing a rhythm. I then keep layering more ideas to fill up the soundscape. I am often thinking in terms of what elements will occupy the different frequency ranges like low sounds, mid-range sounds, and high pitch sounds. I try to leave room in the mix for all the sounds to ‘breathe’ and I try to find balance in terms of shifting density and complexity of sound. I create an array of loops and sound hits that I can trigger, manipulate and mix in real-time with a midi controller. I then ‘perform’ the instrumental part of the piece by recording myself moving through the different loops. This allows the song structure to be flowing and not tethered to a grid. I will then go in and edit the mix before recording my vocals over top of the piece. Certain tracks are completely instrumental soundscapes but will still reference melodies from Indian Raga scale structures. My vocal improvisations weave in words from traditional Indian pieces, as well as using the Indian solfege syllables and extended vocal melodies on vowel tones like a technique known as Aakar. I then mix and master the piece, adding and removing elements. Finally for certain pieces, I will animate visuals to accompany the sounds.
Q: What inspired you to create this album?
T: Many different forces inspired the creation of this record. Part of it is I want to expose people to this ancient tradition of Indian Classical singing. I found this style of music and improvisation to be deeply moving and I think more people should be aware of it. Even in modern Indian culture, popular music has been taken over by Bollywood which tends to use western like pop song structures instead of extended Raga improvisations that can last for hours. I also wanted to greatly expand on the complexity of my previous work. Creating more dense and intricate pieces with many different moving parts and structural shifts. I also create this music to try and entertain and intrigue myself. This style of improvisation is very much a journey of discovery for the performer/singer as well as the listener. I think it is very important that as an artist you can enjoy your own work and that you are making something you want to listen to first and foremost.
Q: How would you describe this album to someone that is not familiar with this type of music?
T: It is fairly difficult to explain since I am combining multiple esoteric disciplines but I would say it is rhythmic ambient music with vocal improvisation or Indian classical music combined with electronic music.
Q: What has inspired you to mix music and digital animation together?
T: Since I was very young, I was always playing keyboard. Then around age ten started playing guitar then later on drums, and electronic music production. I also was painting at a young age. I am very lucky to have a family that really encouraged my creative pursuits and put up with all the loud jams I would have in the basement. In high school, I was making collages combining magazine clippings, newspaper, leaves, cds, glue, and paint along with playing in bands and improvising with friends. About two years ago, I got into animation and digital art and that naturally progressed into creating videos for my music. I have always been greatly inspired by visual art and film as well as sound. I greatly enjoy the art of Salvador Dali and Roberto Matta along with the surrealist films of David Lynch and Alejandro Jodorowsky. The music mirrors the visuals in that they are both collages in a sense. The music uses elements from many musical traditions from around the world and modern electronic production techniques. My animation uses models and images from all over the world as well, combining 3D scans of landscapes, people, animals, and instruments in ways that defy physics and logic. They both use a surrealist approach, moving unpredictably from one idea to the next, leaving it up to the viewer/listener to create their own narrative. They both combine elements that are rarely paired together. As the music explores the harmonic spectrum and with all the different shades and moods of sound, the visuals explore the color and light spectrum. Sufi musician Hazrat Inayat Khan once said “The language of the soul is sound and light”. Through my videos and sound, I try to communicate abstract ideas directly through this universal language of color and harmony.
Q: Who are your biggest influences in music?
T: In high school, I discovered the music of Pandit Pran Nath (Pandit is an Indian title given to great musicians) through listening to the music of his pupils La Monte Young and Terry Riley. His music absolutely blew my mind. I first listened to his recording of Raga Malkauns, a midnight raga. Ragas are scales or groups of notes which are used in Indian Classical music. Each raga is assigned to match the mood of a specific time of day. I was deeply moved by the meditative quality and expansive improvisation that came through Pran Nath’s voice. I drifted away on the drone from the tambura as raga developed (the tambura is a four stringed drone accompaniment instrument in Indian classical music). The piece lasted for an hour and twenty minutes and I listened to it all in one sitting. I marveled at how a performer could improvise for so long using only five notes in this particular scale. I had grown up listening to a lot of western classical music that mostly had musicians following a score. I was then amazed to find this incredibly complex traditional music style which focused so heavily on melodic improvisation and having the performer come up with his or her own ideas on the spot. After first listening to Pran Nath, I dived into listening to more Indian Classical music as well as his students who were greatly influenced by his teachings. Pran Nath studied for many years in India and was a popular radio singer at one point. He spent seven years alone practicing singing in a cave in the mountains only singing for god. This ended with his teacher telling him he must rejoin society and share the beauty of his music. He then moved to New York City where he taught many prominent musicians like La Monte Young, Don Cherry, Jon Hassell, Henry Flynt, John Cale of the Velvet Underground, and Terry Riley. His music had a huge impact on the experimental NYC scene in the 1960s. Such as the droning violin from John Cale on the early Velvet Underground records as well as Terry Riley’s organ looping experiments which would go on to inspire the Who song “Baba O’Riley.” He also taught vocal technique to a sitar player, Noe Dinnerstein, who have been studying with for the past four years. I am unbelievably grateful to be a small part of this ancient tradition. Pran Nath’s dedication and transcendent music is a great inspiration to me. I was greatly inspired by his students in the ways that many of them transferred the Indian techniques to piano, electronics, trumpet, organ, and violin. In high school, I had also discovered many electronic musicians that inspire me to this day such as Autechre, Animal Collective, and Sun Araw. These artists used samples and synths in very unique ways and inspired a lot of my experimentation with fluid songs structures and electronic improvisation.
Q: Your music for Earthly Fantasy Sublimator is very surreal. Can you walk us down your vision and explanation for this music video?
T: Sure, I can give an explanation but this description is by no means absolute and I really would like viewers to create their own ideas about what the images and sounds could mean. Part of the concept for the record was exploring the creative unconscious and where ideas come from. I wanted to kind of represent the mysterious source from which we draw our inspiration. The vast infinite water that creates the floor for the objects to float over represents the limitless possibilities we have in our minds. The objects that arise are ideas coming into being. Some fall apart, some combine with others, and some evolve. I included the Venus de Milo and other sculptures in the background representing tradition which we all must draw from when creating a new work of art or any idea in general. Musical instruments like guitars and violins bend and twist over this open ocean showing the sounds and acoustic musical structures twisting into new ideas and forms.
Q: How did taking a gap year influence you as a musician and as a person?
T: Taking the gap year was incredible. For six months I travelled to North India where I mainly lived in a Tibetan refugee colony doing volunteer english teaching for young Tibetan monks. I also travelled to the city of Varanasi which resides on the edge of the Ganges River. While in Varanasi, I studied Indian Classical flute and continued studying vocal technique. I saw so many amazingly beautiful temples, sculptures, rituals, and concerts while in India. It was incredible sitting in on Tibetan buddhist rituals in their ornate temples. Some would have hundreds of monks all chanting at once, interjected with cymbal crashes, huge droning horns, and massive drums. The colors and beauty of those Tibetan temples around India are absolutely unmatched and definitely left a lasting impression on my artistic sensibilities. There would be massive golden buddha statues, incredibly intricate paintings all over the walls depicting surreal, colorful scenes of thousand armed beings, meditating deities, burning rainbows and mandalas. I also witnessed the nightly fire rituals on the river Ganges where devotees swing around huge metal snakes that hold many burning candles and the crowd chants along to beautiful holy songs projected over loudspeakers. It was haunting to witness the funeral pyres by the river, seeing people perform ancient rituals over the dead bodies then setting them on fire to have their ashes poured into the Ganges. I stayed mostly in the foothills of the Himalayas in North India which had amazing access to nature and stunning views. The Tibetan refugee colony is a well-known paragliding hub, so it was great to take a few trips soaring above the mountains on a parachute. The gap year really showed me how vast and complex the world and its’ cultures are. Meeting all the Indian people, Tibetan refugees, and other travellers gave me a deeper appreciation for the incredible diversity in customs, mannerisms, humor, religions, and music. The trip also showed me the crushing effects of extreme poverty that many Indians must suffer through everyday, a humbling reminder how lucky I am to have been born in the U.S.
Q: What did you learn living with the monks?
T: I was living in a volunteer house mostly, with volunteers from all over the world coming in and out to help with teaching. It was great meeting all these different people and hearing about the different parts of the world they come from. I taught a wide range of age groups during my six month stay. At one point I was teaching 7-10 year olds and then another time I would be teaching 14-18 year olds. The younger monks are very much regular kids in that they are extremely rambunctious and filled with energy. They love superheroes like X-men and Spidermen, playing sports like soccer and basketball. With the very young monks, it was almost impossible to teach anything without them climbing up the walls and playing games among themselves. Many of them are incredibly kind, generous, and considerate. Often they would invite the volunteer teachers to eat with them and even the young ones would always remember to create a place for you at the table, serve you food, and give you tours of the monastery. I became friends with one of the senior monks who gave me Tibetan drawing lessons in exchange for guitar lessons. He taught me how to draw basic buddhist symbols and I taught him songs from Bollywood, Oasis, the Beatles, and John Denver. We also hosted conversation classes with older monks which was a great opportunity to learn more about the lives of the older monks and getting to hear their stories and unique perspectives on life.
Q: You mention that you meditate. How has that helped you in your life and music?
T: It has helped with all aspects of life. One of the main things would be helping de-stress and giving the mind a break from constant inner dialogue. It definitely influenced my love for minimalist and ambient music. I would use music to draw me deeper into meditation, allowing myself to drift away on the sounds and have the music take up my entire focus. Over the years, I have strayed a bit from traditional sitting meditation and I have adopted practicing and playing music as a type of meditation. I will practice singing for up to an hour at a time singing along to a tambura drone, sometimes monotonously repeating simple melodies so that they become internalized and I can use them and build upon them in improvisation. The school of Indian singing I study has a huge emphasis on perfect tuning of each note being sung. In order to correctly invoke a Raga, you must be hyper aware of your intonation/tuning so that each pitch creates a ringing resonance in relation to the pitch of the tambura. Pran Nath embodied this extreme tuning precision with his singing which makes his music so impactful. I practice drumming which becomes like a meditation at times especially when repeating phrases hypnotically to internalize them. I also find composing electronic pieces to be meditative when I allow my mind to get lost in the soundscape. Playing and improvising with others can also be a meditation for me and can be great for focusing on your listening muscles. It is a subtle art trying to feel how to best contribute to an improvisation as it’s happening. Especially when there are many players, the sound can become very dense very quickly and then can lose dynamic variation. It is very important for all players to leave room for one another.
Q: Who your favorite artist right now?
T: Difficult to say. Lately, I have been listening a lot to a French electronic musician called Loto Retina. He is doing some incredibly interesting things with electronic production, rhythms, and texture. His surreal song structures I find incredibly inspiring.
Q: How would you best describe the culture of music today in American society?
T: I can only describe it simply as complex. Our music culture contains so many different genres and scenes that are constantly evolving and mixing. A lot of pop music has become an amalgamation of multiple styles including hip-hop, rock, soul, electronic, and latin elements. America’s music culture is rich and extremely pervasive as well. Even the monks in the Tibetan colony knew Justin Bieber and Eminem.
Q: Why do you believe music is so important in society?
T: Music seems to arise naturally out of all societies just like language, religion, and art. Music is basically like a universal language which all societies eventually discover. All cultures use certain ratios or intervals that create harmonious sounds. Some cultures use only five notes or intervals in their musical systems while many, like ours, divide the octave into 12 notes. Tuning systems may vary but harmony seems to be a mathematical constant that happens to create complex ranges of emotion in us. As the famous adage states, “Music begins where words end” (the quote’s origin is unclear). Music seems to be a necessary means of expression for all cultures.
Not only does music allow for complex emotional communication between musician and listener, it also provides a sense of community and in many instances communal dance and rituals. Whether it is prehistoric humans gathering around the fire to join together in song or people connecting to a livestream concert on their Iphones today, there is a feeling of shared experience among the participants. There is a shared emotional journey that the listeners and musicians go on. Music resembles the art of storytelling but gives the listener much more freedom of interpretation.
It’s incredible how music is connected to the environment. To create drums, trees are needed to be hollowed out and animal skin is needed to create the drum head. Bamboo, reeds, or woodworking is needed for flutes. There is a Native American story about how flutes were first created where a boy is lost in the words and to comfort him, the woodpecker pecks holes in a hollow branch and the wind blowing through the holes creates a soothing sound for him. String instruments take another level of knowledge to mine metal and melt it into strings. Some cultures only have a vocal music tradition which is partly due to harsh environments like Inuit throat singing. Now that computers have become widely accessible and part of our environment, they have also become our main musical “instrument”.
Q: How did you stay sane during the pandemic?
T: My main things have been just keeping busy and working on music and art. During the summer when cases were lower and the weather was warmer, I would participate in many rooftop jam sessions around the city. I am involved with a tight-knit group of improvisers including Mo Kubbara, Nebula and the Velvet Queen, Ayumi Ishito, and many others. We would organize many jams, recruit whoever was available, set up on someone’s roof and improvise till it got too late for the neighbors. It was incredible to play in those extended jam sessions for hours, exploring new sonic territories. We are not doing anymore for the time being since it is too cold to be on roofs and covid case numbers seem to be rising. Composing my solo music and animating have been taking up a lot of my time during the pandemic as well. I moved apartments a few months ago and now have space for my old electric drum kit so now I am able to practice drums in a kit setup without using a loud acoustic kit. This has allowed me to dive back into practicing drumming. I have been working a lot on jazz drum improvisation, playing along to tracks and following online tutorials. Spending time with my girlfriend, June, has also been a huge factor keeping me sane during this pandemic. We now both work from home so it has been great talking with her, going on walks, playing video games, and making music together.
Q: What have you learned during this pandemic?
T: I have learned like I imagine many of us have how fragile and unprepared our country is at dealing with a pandemic. It is horrifying how little financial support has been given out to individuals and small businesses that have had to close. I have learned how much we really take being able to socialize for granted. It’s been very difficult not being able to see friends, play shows, or travel. The pandemic has truly shown how in terms of live music, nothing beats playing for a live audience or going to see a show.
Q: What inspires you to make music?
T: First I want to create music and animation that I enjoy. I want to stimulate my imagination and reach meditative and trance states through my own sounds. It is also incredibly gratifying to be able to share my music with others and open people’s minds to new sonic perspectives. It brings me great joy to hear others appreciate and understand my work.
Q: What is next for you as an artist?
T: Next for me, is to keep experimenting. I will keep practicing Indian singing and find new ways to combine it with electronics. I want to keep honing my animation skills as well and work on creating higher quality animations which takes a lot of time and patience. The higher resolution you want to render at, the longer it can take to create. For certain simulations, like the complexity of liquid or smoke movement can cause the animation software to take up to 24 hours to render a single second of footage. This is still nowhere near the quality of professional animation studios like Pixar which can take weeks to render a single frame (usually there are 30 frames per second). I am also sitting on some recordings of African xylophone music that I made earlier in the year which I am waiting for a good time to release. During my time at NYU, I studied West African percussion with Valerie Naranjo in her ensemble. I learned many traditional pieces on the Gyil, a pentatonic wood xylophone with calabash gourd resonators, which I found time to record on my own during the beginning of the pandemic. For these songs I recorded myself playing the gyil then layered tracks on top of one another, so I could play over myself. I then added vocal parts with June and played hand drum over the gyil parts too. I also have an upcoming show on February 20th with William Hooker that will be performed at Roulette, a concert hall in Brooklyn, and live streamed online. William is a free jazz drummer who has been involved in the New York scene since the seventies. I was lucky enough to meet him through some other improvisers a few years ago and I have improvised and collaborated with him many times since. I was a part of his ensemble for his album Symphonie of Flowers that was released in 2019. I will be playing synth in his ensemble for the 20th and providing some live visuals as well. I am also part of another ensemble called The Spacemen (lineup includes Ayumi Ishito, Nebula and the Velvet Queen, Gene Baker, and Steven Bartishev). We just did a recording session a few weeks ago and we are in the process of mixing it into a record now. It should be released later this year hopefully. Florry, the band I play drums in, also has been sitting on a record for awhile now and it should be released sometime soon.
Q: What is happiness?
T: For me happiness is getting lost in something, whether it is music, animation, laughter, or meditation. We are ethereal beings trapped in material bodies in the physical world and moments of stillness, ecstasy, connection, and joy bring us out of our everyday suffering and isolation. As the great shanhai player Ustad Bismillah Khan said, “Music lets me forget bad experiences. You cannot keep ragas and regrets in your mind together.”
Q: What does success mean to you?
T: Currently, for me it means being able to support myself while having time to create music and art. I also want to be sharing it with as many people as possible and collaborating with like minded people.
Q: One word that describes the process of making music for you?
T: Journey. I think all artists no matter their level of mastery are on a constant journey of discovery and reinvention. I feel like there is always more to techniques to discover, new artists that open my mind to greater sonic possibilities, more times to practice and hone. For me there is never enough time in the day for music.
Q: How do you feel you’re contributing to making the world a better place?
T: I think connecting with others and creating community is more important now than ever. To make the world a better place, we must laugh together, share ideas, collaborate, and work together. I feel I’ve contributed by improvising with others, creating music videos and artwork for others, trying to inspire others with sound and visuals, and interacting with like-minded people. Also, it definitely helps to donate money when you can and support artists. That’s why all the profit from Immaterial Notions is going to food banks to help support those who are hit the hardest by the pandemic.
What’s your story?