Beatdenker “Too Tall To Dance”
Beatdenker Discusses Post-Contemporary Brain Beat on Album “Too Tall To Dance”
Photo credit: Sanni Lötzsch
Hailing from from Berlin, Germany, Beatdenker is a beatmaker, electronic producer, jazz guitarist, researcher, and post-contemporary, subcultural creator. Too Tall To Dance introduces Beatdenker’s own creation of post-contemporary brain beats, an intellectual beat perspective that uniquely blends the improvisational aspect of jazz, the intellectual complexity of new, Avant-grade, and Carnatic music into one project.
Beatdenker challenges the in-the-box approach of traditional beat-making in production and offers great insight into the way our body response to a rhythm on a deeper level. In the universe of Too Tall To Dance, Beatdenker describes beats with moods, emotions, fluctuations, predictability, and instability.
Through more than ten years of research, practice, and dedication to the subject, the different influences and knowledge have become a part of his memory, weaving into his own musical vocabulary. In this interview, we talked about his visualization progress in music-making, his journey through creating this project, and future bloom—a real-utopian project.
Punk Head: How did it all come together?
Beatdenker: Blending influences is a long process. It took me ten years to come to this point. I started to learn jazz at one point at the university, that was one thing, and the other thing was I got to learn some weird rhythm and find out more about it. I lived with a friend who played the drum and I did a lot of research on my own. I found many great musicians such as BC Manjunath and knowledge about South Indian Carnatic music on the web. I had the opportunity to use this knowledge about rhythmic concepts and new music. New Music, (Brian Ferneyhough, my friend Adrian Kleinlosen) is about new complexity and intellectual aspect of music, and Carnatic music can really imagine this stuff.
I try to find a way to combine all the concepts, and I started to compose stuff like this more, using the knowledge of Carnatic music as well, which is really concrete and precise. I use this kind of rhythmic language in my own music as well as jazz influences. They all belonged at some point to me. When I was walking around, I click some rhythm and count in my head.
At the end, when it comes to my main influence with beat music, it’s Flying Lotus, Little Snake, Iglooghost, and the people out there. I started to use more and more effects on my guitar and I ended up as a producer, diving into this world of sounds. This is all somehow I combined, and this combination is a new thing that nobody is really doing.
PH: When you play music, what do you see in your mind?
Beatdenker: It’s totally visual. Through the years, I developed a course of concept where I can always build up one step on top of what I imagined in my head, a layer, on top of another layer. In the beginning, it was the same, but the more I practiced, the more different visualizations I developed.
I really want to be aware of every little detail, like when I try to count 17 beats over 7, which is not so complex for me somehow. I do something like a digital display where I have 4 to 5 lights, then sometimes I see numbers coming to me, and sometimes, I see levels. It’s always a visual thing to get along with all the stuff.
When I improvise, it depends on how much I let go, how much I trust it that I’ll get it right. If I really want to be precise, I need to visualize it, but sometimes when I go into the improvisational mood, it’s in between. Sometimes you follow the blind.
PH: When did this idea emerge?
Beatdenker: It’s more of a conceptual process. My idea was always about the theoretical, to make people dance, but in a different way. Initially, I wanted to bring rhythmic concepts into the beat world. DAW always pushes you into being stuck in the box, which is something that I really wanted to change.
This kind of beat is really special, now I don’t know many people who would use it the way I do. I put a lot of my knowledge about this rhythm on the web, online lessons, sharing on my youtube page, and I think it’s interesting knowledge for producers. There are many great producers who produce the coolest sounds, but they’re a bit stuck in the standard rhythm. I hope that people can make different and fun beats out of it. I want to push things forward.
There’s a philosopher, Armen Avanessian, discussed in “The Time Complex Post-Contemporary” about a time of change. People are observing with pitches, notes. It’s getting more diverse in music, and I think this kind of thinking. I try to be a bit post-contemporary.
PH: What would you say about the emotional context when it comes to beating?
Beatdenker: One is this very intuitive thing where you don’t think and you are just intuitively in this emotional state. When I play it live, it also brings the mood of the day. You could also analyze the chords that create this emotion, but I don’t really think about what people would react to it.
The emotions are all in the beat. The beat changes with the mood. I play it with my fingers, so it brings a natural flow of emotions to it. I have a deeper relationship with rhythm where I could still feel the deeper beat in it. I can imagine the different layers, although there’s a very stable first layer, I don’t play them. I want to play those layers above. I see the world more like this: the complex, the diverse, and the uncertain. The uncertainty is not something we always wish for — you always want to plan and know. I think about how I can use improvisation and intuition in the world. You need a point that you could hold on to, but if anything is already clear, it wouldn’t make sense anymore.
PH: What are some challenges you faced?
Beatdenker: I think it’s more two things to separate: just making music, and being in the structured business world. With making music, there was a year I struggled with things: I thought about if I should continue studying music, but it didn’t stop me from making it.
PH: What are some challenges you faced?
Beatdenker: I think it’s more two things to separate: just making music, and being in the structured business world. With making music, there was a year I struggled with things: I thought about if I should continue studying music, but it didn’t stop me from making it.
I think music really belongs to my life — it’s something I need, my meditation. I sit there and practice and I don’t need all the material things in my life.
But then there’s the other side, the business world where you’re on the market somehow, so if you want to make a living out of it, you have to think. I’m lucky to be in the academic world and there are some funding and grand for people like me. Without them, I don’t know what to do. I still try to get gigs and concerts.
Sometimes It’s just frustrating. I started to release my music, but who cares about it? Then if nobody cares, why do I do it? You need to make connections and take care of the business side.
I started a huge initiative with ten friends in Berlin. We really want to create new music business structures. We wanted to connect 52 collectives from different cities in Germany where they all do a one-week-long interdisciplinary music festival in a political way. To make lectures and workshops about music to unprivileged people and kids who don’t have access to music, but also make workshops about anti-racism, feminism. The festival week would travel from one city to another, so they are fresh cultural events, where all the communities share different music. To mix all the different identities and have a huge exchange, therefore, a great impact on society. We tried to get funding for this, and manage this without giving up. I call it a real-utopian project, like Fridays for Future, the Ocean Clean Up, Extinction Rebellion.
