To the unsophisticated ear, drone music might be construed as little more than grating noise that lacks any semblance of melody or rhythm—the sort of senseless, monotonous racket they use to flush ruthless dictators from their mansions. But for accomplished electronic composer Dave Seidel, this ambient, dynamic, and experimental style—and its boundless possibilities—helped vivify his creative juices nearly 15 years ago, at a time when he began questioning his lifelong devotion to songwriting.

“I had sort of drifted away from music around 2003, but became rejuvenated in terms of composing when I figured out this is the kind of stuff I really wanted to do,” says Seidel, known to drone fans as Mysterybear. “I decided there were things I wanted to explore, in terms of drones and special tuning, and once I actually delved into it myself, I realized it’s a good focus for me. I’ve had a ton of ideas ever since.”

David Seidel performing in Rochester, NY, photo by Rob Nuuja

The sounds that the Le Monte Young-influenced Seidel produces are dynamic and textured. His music challenges the listener with a multilayered range of long sustained, minimalist tones that are delicately interspersed with glorious feedback and intriguing noise fragments. Needless to say, it isn’t for everyone.

“In some pieces, I use a technique called binaural beats and to get the true effect, you need headphones,” says Seidel, who is a software engineer when he’s not writing music. “It’s almost an acoustic allusion, in a way; you need headphones in order to hear it in the center of your head. I think of each piece as an instrument I assemble with everything that I have.”

Seidel, who first picked up a guitar at 12 and studied classical music at Bard College at Simon’s Rock in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, did stray from New England for about a decade, moving to Brooklyn where he survived as a session player. Seidel says that when he can find venues that book “the non-pop stuff that I do,” he plays his epic pieces live throughout New England and the Northeast. He also travels for various music festivals, including last year’s Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States conference in Minnesota.

“I would have been making music wherever I ended up, but I think that, because I ended up being a late bloomer in terms of the type of music I wanted to make, the fact that I was in this environment was completely inspirational,” Seidel says.

“I feel at home here,” he says of New Hampshire. “I live in a rural area near a town; I’m not really in town, so I have constant inspiration from the natural world around me. I can’t imagine ever not living in New England, because it is a big part of my identity.”

Want to hear what’s on Seidel’s Spotify list? Check out our Take a Listen channel.

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Top image, David Seidel performing at Toadstool Books, Peterborough, New Hampshire, photo by Tom DePlonty

The post David Seidel Likes to Drone On appeared first on Take Magazine.

Our region is home to some of the world’s most dedicated synthesizer archivists, people who’ve spent their lives documenting this built analog circuitry of sound. Like the intricate mazes of inputs and connections hidden inside these electronic instruments, New England also has a deep, complex, and somewhat tragic history with synthesizers.

You can’t accurately or truthfully discuss the history of synth archiving and documentation in New England without mentioning the region’s original synth nerd-god, David Wilson. Wilson dedicated two floors of his home in Nashua, New Hampshire to curating, cataloging, and repairing vintage synthesizers. He opened his home to the public, allowing synth obsessives from all over unbridled access to his machines. Wilson would personally set up these instruments, and allow museum-goers the unique opportunity to examine and even play most of his synths. To the shock and sadness of many, Wilson passed away too soon in 2010. His close friends, family, and casual museum patrons describe him as genial, a bit eccentric, and democratic with his appreciation for all people and synths, not just the “important” ones.

David Wilson in his home | Photo courtesy Matrix Synth

Years after Wilson’s passing, his collection remains in limbo. However, there is a resource where some of his synthesizers can be seen and appreciated: Synthmuseum.com, a Boston-based operation that offers “a centralized, organized, and authoritative resource for information about vintage electronic musical instruments.”

The online synth museum is the brainchild of Paula Chase and Jay Williston, who, in 1996, after visiting David Wilson at his in-home museum, decided that the internet would be a great place for a synthesizer archive fueled by user-submitted content. “There wasn’t one place where you could see synthesizers and find out about their features, find out about what existed and when it existed, what it looked like and who played it,” says Williston “This started with us going to visit Dave’s museum. We thought, ‘Oh, wouldn’t it be great to put his museum in a nice building?’ But then we thought, ‘We can’t do that, it’s not our place.’ But we figured we could take his synths, and synths from everywhere, and put them online.

Moog Sonic Six | Photo by Kevin Lightner

“When we started this,” he continues, “we just asked people to send us pictures of synthesizers, brochures, and manuals. It’s basically getting everything you want to know about vintage synthesizers in one resource.”

Today, Williston is the only founder who continues the highly labor-intensive process of updating the website. Since the beginning, Williston and the founders hand-typed everything from manuals, magazine descriptions, or brochures, and still receive corrections, comments, and feedback from folks perusing the site. The website is clearly from the mid-to-late 1990s, and Williston isn’t bashful about pointing that out. For people poking around the site, its dated look lends an extra layer of meaning and congruity to the archive. After all, wouldn’t it be sort of weird to seamlessly click through a collection of late 1980s electronic instruments using a sleek, futuristic, Square-Space-like template?

[This] “Polyvox belonged to a trance-ambient band that played on same stage as we did in a festival last summer. In fact, it wasn’t really their’s either, they had borrowed it from a friend who got it from the janitor at a Russian school…. The band called themselves ‘Lhix’, and are a local but highly competent young band from Umea, Sweden….The picture was taken by me.” – Patrik Eriksson, Umea Sweden | Description from Synthmuseum.com | Photo by Patrik Eriksson

Perhaps someday David Hillel Wilson’s collection will be open to the public again, and perhaps someday Jay Williston will document and list every synthesizer ever made. Until then, we have Synthmuseum.com, and our piqued curiosity about what wild electronic reverberations lived in Wilson’s two floors in Nashua, New Hampshire.

Top photo Patched System 700 | Photo by Kevin Lightner 

The post Did You Know? New England’s Online Synth Museum appeared first on Take Magazine.