i am not a dj

10/31/2025

making music that only exists for headphones is valid and cool imo music is about connecting with human beings and u can do that however u want . conversely, what if kick drum go boof real loud

tweet from katie dey, posted may 27, 2023

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im tired of making ambient music. i dont even make ambient music! its just referred to as such bc how else would one describe it?? the academics call it “new music” but i contest that it isnt actually music. sound, to me, is more important than music. music is & can be a part of that no doubt. but sound as a broader category is a much more diverse palette. “ambient” or “new music” still present themselves as music, even if abstractly or indirectly. too limiting of a framework for my own expressions.

above all i am not a composer !! medium, conjurer, siren, perhaps. alchemist too for how i design systems & devices to channel the energies swirling around us into physical form. i make tangible what is already present, unseen, but i do not create it.

i started working with diy electronics & modular synths specifically during the 2020 “lockdowns” .. music for me has always been a medium of connection. & at that time what made the most sense was to make music for individuals. to help them connect with themselves. balms & salves for unmoored souls thrust into a reality they werent prepared to comprehend. music for sleep, frequencies for meditation, pathways towards accpetance.

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once we started to come back together my practice changed immensely .. my focus turned from individual spells towards trinkets, and covert instruments. objects of play. toys & tags. what the academics might call installation work. some specific anarchists refer to it as the aural front. my concern was to create objects not immediately recognizable as instruments, approachable thru design & intuition & feedback, that facilitated aural play + exploration within communities. how can non-musicians make music by playing an instrument they dont even recognize as such?? and how could this phenomenon be used to model new ways of connection or communication between living creatures? how can we completely redefine what music making even is?? how can we reclaim “noise” & re-appropriate expectations of “quiet” away from gentrifiers?? how can play be utilized for communal healing, and political praxis?? was the basic idea. manifest thru lots of 1-off diy experiments & a few truly novel ideas + implementations but lots more that never came to fruition or never came to life.

i also started performing as much as i was physically able to. thru performance i was interested in sound .. still building systems & devices & instruments. rather than interaction tho my priority lied in manifestation. conjuring shared altered spaces. ritual music. sound is just energy processed into a physical medium as waves. which can be harnessed to manifest altered states/spaces, together.

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while im extremely proud of my work & my practice i also resent it. nothing has been more isolating than doing this work. i lost everyone around me. which caused my sounds to became more & more challenging. which pushed ppl further away. the spaces i would manifest & the energies i conjured were too close to the real world that many were desperately trying to dissociate from (remember when i opened the entirety of sunbird fest w a bank of oscillators tuned speficially to emulate iof bomber drones?). theres a lot of nuance im leaving out here ofc but ultimately it left me completely & utterly alone.

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now everybody asks if im a dj. probably bc all of my friends are djs. and each time i meekly explain that, no, im not a dj. i love djs! a dj saved my life last night. but i havent saved anyone.

i do want to play techno. just not as a dj. the distinction between playing my own sounds vs others’ matters a lot to me, not for any righteous or ideological reason, just that my flow works differently than that. digging was a passion for most of my life. but now i find it tedious. trans as in from catalogue brain to head empty. consumer to conjurer.

ofc i learn so much from djs. in particular a great dj knows how to craft a set. theres such a specific type of flow & sense of time thats only felt on the dance floor. & i think understanding how sound can literally move bodies thru space & time is something best learned by surrendering urself to the influence of that push & pull. just as one can only learn to surf by sitting in the tide.

which is why i cant dj. theres too many masters. theres so many amazing djs (especially in texas like wtf is that abt) i just dont see what id be able to contribute. which is the entire point: to give to the rave. to make offerings as to deities. community forms thru shared effort.

but what i can do is learn. i learn from djs how to fold space & carve time. actually thats something i feel alr familiar with from my ambient practice. but techno is a completely different language. production teaches me the syllables but djs teach me incantations.

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after making lots of gadgets that didnt work with materials i paid real money for, i realized that, actually, coding offers a lot more flexibility & resources at a much (much) lower cost. the downside ofc is that i have to code .. im no electrical engineer but there was a poetry in mangling circuits into submission. coding requires volume. theres no literally carving clandestine paths into a pcb. theres still mangling, which i do. in this medium its more akin to appropriating puzzle pieces into new shapes, which isnt nearly as satisfying for me.

i hate it. but i do like the creative problem solving it presents. i enjoy making systems more than anything so code is just another way to do that. and building a system will never not be something i love.

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for years ive contemplated how to perform live improvised techno using modular synthesis. by which i mean vcv rack.

working with eurorack taught me that actually u can yield quite a bit of variety from a limited system. constraint breeds creativity, after all. even so, eventually theres a point where u need (“need” as in to not break the progression of a set) to start altering the patch itself to re-allocate resources into a different arrangement. which can be done! but is often cumbersome & carries a lot of “risk” as euro controls are extremely sensitive to stray movements. and one mis-handled patch point can shoot static.

plus vcv rack is free, contained on a small laptop, yet provides a vast library of virtually unlimited modules. so each element of a track can be its own patch, influenced by & interacting with every other patch combined into a big modular web. the only resource constraint is processing power.

more cumbersome than handling physical patch points tho is using a trackpad to drag & drop virtual cables. or worse, right clicking into the file system. which, just as those present within the physical domain of modular, are a similar hinderence to performers seeking to enter a flow state. nothing breaks flow more than a managing troubleshooting mindset. djs dont want to fight the mix & an improvisor doesnt want to fight their instrument (unless they do 🤔).

its taken years of contemplation & study to design a virtual modular interface that facilitates simple interactions without limiting the breadth of gesture, or the fluidity of input + feedback. last summer the ideas finally came out of my head as i began drafting & prototyping designs. first as several already existing devices chained together. then doing it all exclusively in max. eventually i settled on keeping the synthesis inside vcv, and building an interface within/around it to facilitate performance.

now, over a year of tedious work later, its finally come to fruition. it was painstaking ngl. i hate coding. respect to anyone who can do it. and ofc to the many who helped me so patiently.

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basically what ive designed is a 12-track interface within vcv rack, each track in communication with an ipad running a custom controller designed in touch osc. i call the controller “flow state” bc its built in two halves. one half, “flow” facilitates a fluidity of performance gestures. it contains a mixer, modulation points, simple phrase/sequencing switches .. the other half, “state” interfaces directly with and manages both the vcv interface as well as the computer’s file system. no trackpads no muss just some simple buttons that execute wild & otherwise cumbersom processes.

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one of my mantras from when i built installations was to “complicate the system to simplify the interaction.” thats exactly the spirit behind this entire interface. really what ive built isnt anything new or novel. basically i made a clip-launcher performance interface ud maybe find in ableton, just using vcv patches instead lmao. but what really makes it unique is how ive designed the interactions. most interesting of these is the ability to swap patches on any/each track within vcv, in musical time, with the simple press of a button. dont ask me how i did it bc it involved coding thousands upon thousands of lines of midi completely from scratch. complicate the system to simplify the interaction. flow. state.

the flow half has some points of inspired design as well. one example is a very unique implementation of tempo handling, where tempo becomes influenced by the velocity of my gestures. as well as musically moderated rates of change .. no fiddling with a bpm dial & risking sudden jumps in pace. theoretically, if im tuned into the crowd, then that connection alone will self regulate the tempo to match the pace most desired by the dancers.

did i mention i also worship feedback?? literally portals to the divine.

its funny how all these past influences converge into what im doing now. not just the music stuff either (wait didnt i say it wasnt music) but the street shit i do, the dancing, the connections. it feels like im where im supposed to be with this. truthfully tho ive yet to make any actual music yet, outside of a few tech demos. & those felt great!! but i needed to step away from the project all together for a while. live some life. developer mode & creation mode are very distinct for me & ive placed a lot of my energy into the former. so im eager but patient. trusting the pull. i feel it already, its just not quite time. soon tho.

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one of my friends left recently. i only found out bc a different friend of mine encountered them in city redacted where they apparently live now. the last time we crossed paths was at the last body i attended before my hiatus. we danced together all night. reminisced abt the history of texas techno, abt how much love & commitment we feel in the scene now compared to other more mainstream scenes we’d been a part of thru our lives. while finishing a joint together near the end of the night, they told me that they wish they had dedicated more of their life to techno. which in the moment i thot was kind of odd bc we had just spent the rest of the joint talking about our respective decade+ of rave experiences.

ofc what they were really speaking of is the violence done unto the self as a trans queer person. to b small, tame, acceptable to society. as to keep the self out of harm’s way. the dance floor can heal this. or at least liberate us temporarily. which then becomes practice, perhaps meditation, carried into the daily (societal) life. the rave gives back whatever intention u bring. society requires compromise. it can only take. it requires sacrifice as condition for survival. oppression by any other name ..

I thought about, what would I do if I had a lot of money? And the answer would be, I'd travel more and paint more trains. And it's like, well, why can't I do that now? I have my whole life. I have all of my time, and it's my time to use. So, I only spend a little bit of it earning just as much money as I need, so that I can spend my time out painting trains. You know, I have friends telling me, "Oh, you're living the lifestyle, I'm living vicariously through you, I wish I could take a road trip, but I got the kids, and I got the mortgage and I got the-- you know, I'm working full-time," and I'm like, "Well, you know, we make our choices.”

ichabod interviewed in "rolling like thunder"

rather than the cynicism expressed in the quote above, i took our interaction as one of hope. a sign to be more intentional about my own choices. this person had already dedicated so much (of themselves, of their time) to techno. theyre the one of the most dedicated ravers i know. so i was confused by the regret with which they told me this, that they wish they had dedicated ~more of their life to techno .. i do too but what else is there to give?? obviously there was something they held back. me too. i just hadnt realized till they spoke it.

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