To BT or not to BT....?

    BT, born Brian Transeau, known as one of the pioneers of electronic music is both a visionary and an artist to take note. He is solely responsible for bringing you the disc jog your mama warned you about, but in a rhythmic, effect-filled and "glitched" flavor. What the heck am I talking about? Read on.

    As early as 1970's "Noise Music" was the fringe of what technology was doing for music (and vice versa). Acts with sound-producing, filtering, playing of damaged Cd's and vinyl records were a sample palette for ages of breakbeat and industrial DJ's and Producers to come. The concept is simple; any distorted, bit crushed, bit depth-reduced sound is spliced and effected over a rhythmic pattern, more often used as a percussive element, sometimes digs deep into the avante-garde and experimental to bring you glitched symphonies. Spanning art performances and loose concepts in early video games until the mid 90's, glitch music exploded as its own scene and production craft. Countless artists all over the world utilized this technique in a sparing manner, mostly using the sound of skipping Cd's layered together alongside more typical instruments. Fast forward to the 00's and glitch music and effects are in unexpected arrangements and blockbuster movies. They have in one way or another permeated our pop culture as slickly as the word "baby". Up until those times, a respectable glitch asset was slaved over for hours, cutting, fixing, arranging and mixing until a few seconds of a flurry of erroneous sounds can be called something close to music.
   
    BT's career as a remixer in the EDM circuit was embellished by his signature glitch sound. It wasn't until his software company, Sonik Architechts (who was later bought out by iZotope) that one would appreciate the amount of work put into his songs. Stutter Edit is a program that effects any signal in a multi-layered filter and effect "screen" that can separate samples one from another and space them out, oscillate frequencies between one another, bit crush, timestretch, granulate, phase, etc. all at the same time, producing professional results in a press of a button (or key). This program has been used by professionals in the club industry, and also myself. It's very easy and even though not every effect is gold, there are some magic moments that leave you breathless.
   
    "BT composed the high octane film score for the blockbuster hit The Fast and the Furious as well as the haunting tonal background for Charlize Theron's Academy Award-winning performance in Monster. His other scores include Doug Liman's Go, Under Suspicion (starring Morgan Freeman and Gene Hackman), Miramax's The Underclassman, Sony's Stealth and the video game Tiger Woods Legends. " [8]
   
    Not all pioneers ever get [any] credit. As a music industry professional, there is a lesson to take away from BT's success and the edge he found and expanded on to get there. I view his career a raging success not only for the amazing remix work he produces, but the innovations that his team made possible for simpletons like me to press one button and do the work of a few people over the course of a few hours otherwise would. His passions have led him to a road bound with exploring music from a technological eye's point of view - to hold everything as a masterpiece waiting to be engineered instead of flukes and wild ideas. I bet for BT, the moment of magic happened when he realized that there was something physically out there lifting up and carrying his name with pride. Something that he wasn't the first to accomplish, but was be able to give to the rest of the world - the gift of seeing rhythm and sonic palette possibilities not regularly made in nature or instrument. Something his mind conjured up and made real through perseverance and hard work. Through being bold and innovative. For making the world conform to his vision, not the other way around.

-Chuma