electronic

(gentle music) – I got rear-ended, and I couldn’t use my right
hand for anything intricate. (“Re:Member” by Ólafur Arnalds) It wasn’t really until I
started finding these ways to work around it that
I got my passion back and my positivity back for music. It’s such a unique
thing to hear a software controlling something so physical. People think that there might
be a ghost playing that. My name is Ólafur Arnalds. I am a producer, songwriter,
composer from Iceland. I approach my music like
an electronic producer. I work in the computer
with a lot of synthesizers and drum machines, but I’m
using classical instruments like strings and piano. I do like to bring all
these traditional sounds of strings, of woodwinds,
physical instruments that are so expressive, so emotive, into an environment that is
a little bit more accessible for most people. The STRATUS is a software
that I created with my friend and this software creates
generative algorithms that are meant to control
these two self-playing pianos. (gentle piano music) These self-playing pianos
have been around for ages. I always thought there’s a beautiful piece of technology there
that is only being used to play back music, but
not necessarily being used very much to create music. I insert notes and the
software reads those notes, so it knows what chord I’m playing. So each note of the chord
gets its own rhythm, tempo, time signature, and everything. If you give each note just a
very like kind of random number not in any sort of four
four type of signature, that’s when you get these things
that sounds totally random but actually they’re not. They’re just very complex mathematics. There’s a lot of accidental patterns that happen along the way,
which I then listen to and grab onto if I hear
something interesting and then I can build the song from those accidental patterns. This is my song “Unfold”
from my new album Remember. (“Unfold” by Ólafur Arnalds) This song started with me
just kind of improvising and playing around with
this STRATUS software and seeing what randomized
elements the software is throwing at me and grabbing
onto some of those ideas. (“Unfold” by Ólafur Arnalds) I decided to put staccato
strings as kind of the main other element in the
first half of the song. And then the woodwinds
bring the tension to it. I think what provides a very
interesting contrast here, I asked these string players
to play as robotically as they could, but on the other
hand we have this element, which is made by a
software and that element actually becomes more
human than what the humans are playing on the strings
and that provides the kind of emotional aspect of the song. (“Unfold” by Ólafur Arnalds) (heavy rock music) So when I was younger I was in
a band called Fighting Shit. We were like trash punk band. I played drums. We went at it pretty hard. (yelling rock music) We made a lot of records and
kind of made a little career out of that. (“Ekki Hugsa” by Ólafur Arnalds) I become interested in classical music mostly through my
grandparents who were very big classical music listeners,
but it wasn’t really until I discovered film scores
that I wanted to make it. Not really having the musical
education to back it up, my creations became
kind of very simplistic, loopy, versions of that, that
are actually more related to modern punk music. I think the result is what
become neoclassical music is basically people trying
to make classical music but not really knowing how to. The most important thing
I took from punk music was the DIY ethos of everything. Nothing was relying on
management or labels. We really believed in
doing things ourselves. So then when I started
doing classical music, I kept that ethos. You know, I was doing completely
different kind of music suddenly, but nothing in
my head actually changed. I kept booking the same
kind of venues I was touring with my punk bands, but just
bringing a string quartet and a small electric keyboard. (“Unfold” by Ólafur Arnalds) So once I had this idea
which is the piano, the staccato strings, and then
the woodwinds supporting it, that’s when I started adding
more complimentary things like the bass line, which is actually a
polyphonic Korg keyboard. There’s a melody that
kind of alternates between a piano that I actually
play, not an automatic piano, and then some legato
parts in the woodwinds. (“Unfold” by Ólafur Arnalds) And that was kind of enough to
have that very simple melody to kind of give the song
a little bit of meaning. Because of how the rhythms of the pianos are kind of unpredictable, I filled a empty toilet paper
roll with a bunch of rice and hit it with a drumstick
and that kind of helps the pianos define their
rhythm a little bit. Yeah, it’s a little bit ironic that your complimenting very expensive, nice, real instruments with
a roll of toilet paper. (laughing) I got rear-ended. Something that happens
all the time, but it was by a big semi truck,
so it was a bit harsh. After that, I suffered some
nerve damage in my spine, and I couldn’t use my right
hand for anything intricate for like a year, or a year and a half. I couldn’t play piano. It was heartbreaking to me. It was really difficult. I felt horribly depressed, to be honest. And that ended up really
setting this idea completely in stone to use these self-playing pianos. I could play chords, but
I couldn’t play any scales or like individual notes, so that influenced how we
programmed STRATUS to react to me entering chords and turning them into textures and rhythms. It gave me a little bit of a purpose to be creating something without having to use my hands that much. That whole thing brought life back to me. (“Unfold” by Ólafur Arnalds) Instead of building to a traditional peak, it actually builds up and
then suddenly drops down. I came up with this idea of
adding a traditional hip-hop 808 bass drum into it, which you don’t hear very
often in classical music. (laughing) So at the same time as this
big fat hip-hop kick drum comes in, the pianos become so soft. (“Unfold” by Ólafur Arnalds) My friend the singer songwriter SOHN, he came over and I showed
him the very early demo of this song and he just started singing and this like beautiful angelic
choir arrangement came out totally on the spot. (“Unfold” by Ólafur Arnalds) For me, the creative process, you can, you can look at it
like at the circle of life. It’s not just one thing that finishes. There’s always a continuation of it. So this song is very
much about that circle. Birth and the rebirth of creativity. (“Unfold” by Ólafur Arnalds) STRATUS and this whole idea is just a tool that gives me another sound
that I wouldn’t be able to make otherwise. It’s not supposed to
replace humans in any way ’cause music is about saying something. It’s about expressing something, and the computer isn’t
trying to say anything. And music without meaning is nothing.