Sounds Eclectic
An Interview with Berklee College of Music’s Michael Bierylo

Interpreting the sound of one hand clapping is more than an exercise in the esoteric when the man at hand is composer, guitar enthusiast and sound designer Michael Bierylo (pronounced "bee a rillo"), an associate professor of music synthesis at Berklee College of Music and its new online classroom, BerkleeMusic.com.

In fact, when he's not teaching courses on digital sampling, soft synths or desktop music production, the punk rocker turned programmer can usually be found cranking out scores in his Virtual Planet studio for clients like Hasbro Interactive, Nintendo, MSNBC, Nickelodeon, VH1, Martha Stewart Living, and Universal Studios, and creating his own eclectic compositions for his genre-free band, Birdsongs of the Mesozoic, which Bierylo describes as a "composer's collective" (think New York's downtown Knitting Factory jazz scene meets punk rock).

This month, Bierylo's new music avatars are releasing an art-rock influenced CD, "Iridium Controversy," and performing at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC. Bierylo's solo album "Life Line" earned four and a half stars from the All Music Guide. His other credits include solo albums "Cloud Chorus," and "Dancing on A'A” (Cuneiform Records); guitar and MIDI production on "Sama Yie" by Senegalese musician Ibrahima Camara; and music for the Sonoton Music Library.

M-Pulse sounded out Bierylo in between gigs. Here's what he had to say:

M-AUDIO: Beginning this September, Berklee College of Music is requiring all entering students to be equipped with a 1GHz Apple Titanium PowerBook, an M-Audio Oxygen8 keyboard controller and a copy of Propellerhead Reason and other music software. Would you talk a little about that decision?

BIERYLO: Traditionally, the piano has always been the primary tool and focal point of music school. Everybody learned piano. In fact, the piano was the major entertainment appliance in the early part of the 20th century. Now that's changed. Today, the entertainment appliance is the computer. People are turning to the computer as the way of learning music and that represents a very radical shift in music education.

I'm not trying to disparage the piano. It's a fine instrument. But in terms of something that's democratic, that every musician can reliably get their hands on, the computer and a keyboard controller win hands down. I believe it's going to make a seismic shift in music education as far as creating opportunities to engage students in new ways. I'm very excited to be in the middle of it.

M-AUDIO: How will it affect your teaching?

BIERYLO: I think it will enable me to expect a different quality of work. In the past, students have been tied to the school's computer lab. Now they will be able to do their assignments at home without having to come in and wait for machine time in the lab. Of course, now we have to figure out a social milieu where students can take part in the additional apprenticeship that the lab experience offers. We don’t want them to hole up in their apartments. That's going to be an interesting challenge.

I am also going to be looking at ways to incorporate the network aspect of all this into their assignments and introduce opportunities for collaboration. When everyone on the campus wireless network has the same tool, you have a big, fat, hairy workgroup and as a teacher that's kind of interesting because you can start to broaden the educational exchange. You can throw something out and say, “Okay here it is, I want you to collaborate and tackle it as a group.” The collaborative model opens up a lot of creative opportunities for music students.

M-AUDIO: How does Reason fit in your musical environment?

BIERYLO: I think of Reason as an incredibly powerful Swiss army knife. I rarely use it all by itself, but rather as a part of a larger process. Now that programs like Digital Performer, Pro Tools and Logic all support ReWire, it has made it easy for me to use Reason as one of my main synthesizers. It's really opened up my tool set.

M-AUDIO: How about your students?

BIERYLO: As far as my students go, the beauty of the Berklee laptop initiative is that everyone will have the same tool set. As you might suspect, our students have studios at home representing just about every equipment set-up imaginable. The trouble has been that it's very difficult to manage their creative work short of having them submit a master stereo-mixed file.

Now with Reason, it's very easy for me to see exactly what they have done and be much more specific in my comments instead of saying “Yeah, that sounds good.” I can look at their rack and say, “Do X, Y and Z and adjust that filter envelope and see what you think.” It's very powerful to be able to look over their shoulder, see what they are doing, and advise them.

M-AUDIO: Has Reason made it easier to add a richer palette of sounds to your music?

BIERYLO: For many years, synthesizers were what I would call "ROM-plers." They were essentially samplers that had their samples burned in ROM memory, and that's what you used as your sound set. The whole line of KORG instruments—from the M1 to Tritons—is essentially an array of ROM-plers. The trouble is that you are pretty much limited to the presets. If you want to edit the sounds, it is pretty daunting to get below the interface. You really had to put in the time if you wanted to build a library of unique sounds.

Reason and other soft synths have changed all that. They have made it sinfully easy to create new sounds because everything is right in front of you. At this point in the game, sound design and creation are becoming more integrated with the process of music making and that's really exciting.

M-AUDIO: How else has the technology changed music making?

BIERYLO: The biggest change is that electronic music making is now portable. You can take your laptop and work almost anywhere and use it to make incredible music on stage. That's pretty revolutionary. We weren't able to do that two to three years ago and, for better or worse, that's changing the whole mindset of the industry. The whole idea of the studio as a single place where all the production is done has more or less flown out the window. Instead, production now takes place in a variety of different places and settings. High-end studios still have their place, of course, but more and more and more musicians are tracking in different locations.

M-AUDIO: Is that what you did for the new Birdsongs CD, "Iridium Controversy"?

BIERYLO: We used a studio to track the acoustic parts and do the final mix. It wasn't entirely electronic. There are a lot of acoustic and processed acoustic sounds. We did a lot of the editing offline outside the studio. I did most of the guitar parts and all of the synths at home, and dumped them into the computer as they evolved. I also made an entire library of sounds and loops before we even started the project.

M-AUDIO: Like what?

BIERYLO: I like to build libraries for my projects. It's not only fun but it often serves as inspiration to finish pieces or take existing pieces in new directions. One of the things I did for the Iridium CD was to take some simple guitar feedback sounds and make maybe 100 variations by hacking the sound up in various ways. That became source material for rhythmic loops for a few of the pieces.

Sometimes on projects, I find that a tool will dictate a bit about the sound. For example, I was really on a Dr. Rex kick for a while. Dr. Rex was originally designed to play back ReCycled loops that were rhythmic or beat-oriented. But I would take things like vocals and saxophone and cut them up into slices and throw them in Dr. Rex and process them. It's such a unique tool. That's one thing I use Reason for all the time.

For additional information about Bierylo’s work, check the following links:

Dr. Rex guitar-based rhythm loop examples
Birdsongs of the Mesozoic band

Special thanks to Michael Menduno, a freelance writer and electric bass student based in Palm Springs, CA.

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