Sharissa Every Beat Of My Heart CD - Import

ndCv: I moved to Seattle after living in Montana for a few years, in order to play and pursue music. I moved in with a group of like-minded musicians in Ballard.... Basskamp! I've been playing music most of my life, and I've touched on and been touched by a number of styles and genres through the years, but my "residency" with the Basskamp crowd has probably been my most formative. Playing jazz/trip hop with Oggmung, later live electronic/dn'b/downtempo/blahblahblah with Skylobby, but mostly living and playing with these diverse influences (and great people) did a lot for me. This scene later evolved into the Basskamp weekly at the Lower Level, which is where I was introduced to the wider Seattle techno/electronic crowd.

Short answer: Basskamp, Seattle Dave Segal: Was your music study at Wesleyan University beneficial or detrimental?A surprising number of musicians have negative experiences in academicsettings.

ndCv: I was very happy with Wesleyan. It wasn't like what I suppose a traditional music education would be. There was a focus on improvisation, experimentation, and creativity rather than structure and strict theory. And I had amazing professors; theory and history classes with experimental jazz genius Anthony Braxton, avant garde-ists Alvin Lucier and Ron Kuivila, and inspired jazz improvisation training from Jay Hoggard. I studied piano with Fred Simmons. Sometimes I think..."If only I had actually been a decent musician back then, just think of what I could have learned!"I practiced a lot though...Short answer: Beneficial. Made me what i am.

Dave Segal: Can you reveal some of the sources of "the sounds around," you use tocreate your music, or do you prefer to keep them mysterious? Would youcare to expound at all on your creative process?ndCv: My music is created entirely from sounds that i have recorded. Percussive noises like me kicking my furnace, hitting everything in my house with a drum stick and then my hand, an old typewriter, the vacuum, a tea kettle, the coffee grinder, walking through the leaves... I enjoy choosing an object and then trying to "provoke" as many sounds as possible from it, a bike for instance, or the fireplace. I also record some of the more traditional instruments at my disposal. A note from my Rhodes, a bit of my own voice, a guitar. Lately I've been doing a lot with guitar. Most of the drum sounds I've been using lately all came from hitting an acoustic guitar, not like I'm mad at it or anything, but, you know, guitar players get all the attention.

My creative process goes like this:Pick some samples.

Create an instrument out of them.

Come up with a melody or harmonic progression.

Beat.

Arrange.