Tryad: Making Music The Open Source Way

Free and Open Source software has been attributed to many things, such as applications, operating systems, books, and even beer. How would music be if it was developed by following the open source methodology? To find the answer to that, we turn to Tryad, which is a group effort currently preparing for their third album. I was lucky enough to speak to the group’s lead vocalist, Vavrek, and ask him about Tryad’s music and what it means to be musically open.

First of all, please tell us a little about Tryad and what it represents to the music industry.

Tryad represents a complete change as to how music can be made and distributed. With the onset of networking, musicians are now able to exchange their music freely with each other, and the online world.

We of Tryad are making music together, as a “global band” with members often never meeting in person. Tryad music stands for itself, inviting every person, listener or artist, to become inspired to play along, sing along, to develop, to remix, to share with their family and friends.

We love it!

This is truly free music, in every sense. The music is free to exist as long as people choose to keep it alive, free to be altered, free for broadcast.

It’s what I call, “this now age renaissance.”

How did you guys get started?

After many years of publishing my demos and songs online for free
download, I ended up spending time in the forum of the open music pool opsound.org.

Within opsound, myself and two other musicians, rjmarshall and John Holowach, began collaborating together, sharing our music with each other over the net, building songs together dynamically from across the world.

Since there were three of us at this point, John chose the name
“Tryad”. I liked it, agreed, and began building a website for our new
band.

Soon after, we attracted two female singers to record with us, Ema and Arna from Seattle. With this team of five, we created our first album “Public Domain”.

T’was the beginning of it all…

Your approach to releasing music seems similar to open source software and operating systems. Were you at all inspired to adopt your way of releasing music by such things, or was it perhaps the current state of the music industry?

Yes! I have been hugely inspired by the free and open source software movement. Was a great fan of GNU / Linux long before Tryad was ever conceived.

I always felt compelled to give back, to write code and release it under the general public license, yet music has been more of a natural interest of mine.

It made immediate sense to me that “open music” could be developed in much the same was as “open source software”.

Indeed, we’ve proven it!

Of course, the state of the music industry was a clear factor as well. As a musician these days, it feels like the only way to be heard is to have tons of money to buy time in the major broadcast mediums and press. Talent and quality seems to have taken a back seat to profit, with the most popular artists being largely manufactured by industry executives.

This net was right here, open, immediate, and available.

My thought was that if our music was good enough, it would spread
online, on its own, with little promotion. This has always been a healthy pressure upon us.

If music has value for people, it lives. Otherwise, it dies.

Awesome! Please tell us a little about the types of technologies you use as a group to communicate with each other as well as to make your music. Perhaps even a little about the people you make music with and their individual talents.

We communicate primarily via email, although Facebook is quickly
becoming popular.

File sharing is usually done via FTP, with files being hosted within
the Tryad web account. Sometimes musicians will use an online file
sharing services such as Megaupload to send tracks, which then I upload to the server for further sharing. I’ve just heard of Soundcloud and am looking forward to taking a good look at that…

In regard to music technologies, each artist is strikingly different. Speaking for myself, I use entirely free open source software for my recording, mixing, and broadcasting. I currently run Ubuntu Studio, Ardour, Jack, Audacity, Rezound, VLC, and a bunch of other free software applications. You can view my full software list here.

We have the fortune of being surrounded by enormous talent within this collective. Each person brings their own distinct character to the mix.

With so many musicians involved, it’s extremely hard to generalize, other than to say we all appreciate a similar kind of sound.

The composition abilities of core Tryad artists such as rjmarshall, ioeo, realaze, subatomicglue, Daniel Laufer, and Scott Waddell, is simply astounding. I always feel incredibly thrilled to be collaborating with such amazing artists and greatly enjoy helping their music be heard.

My role in Tryad is primarily as the lead vocalist / lyricist, yet I also play a large part in the overall feel and focus of the music, choosing tracks, directing vocal recording sessions, and making general production choices.

You could say that I am to Tryad what Linus Torvalds is to Linux, a
kind of benevolent dictator… or so i hope.

What are some of your musical influences?

My single greatest influence is Martin Gore of Depeche Mode. Also been deep into Beethoven, Nine Inch Nails, Tori Amos, and Front 242.

David Byrne from the Talking Heads has also been a huge influence, along with John Denver providing my childhood spark.

The Beatles, of course. ^_^

You can see a more complete list of my influences here.

Let’s check out some music. Are there any tracks from the new album that you’d like to have my readers hear?

Sure!

Obviously there’s still plenty more mastering and remixing work to do, but here is a handful of our more complete demos:

Die and Begin Again

Begin

Ancient Lace

Happy Sun Day

Frantic Ants

Lights

Feel free to browse our entire working directory. Updates will be appearing as they occur.

Tryad’s last two albums can be found on jamendo.com:

Listen

Public Domain

Enjoy.

You guys sound amazing. I must admit “Die and Begin Again” has been on rotation in my car for the last few weeks and I even catch my wife singing along from time to time. Good job! Anyway, you guys are big supporters of the Creative Commons license. Please tell us why this is important to you and how such a license can help others.

Thank you… The music is great, isn’t it?

This is the main reason that I feel inspired to continue. I love all the music we have made and are making.

Some of my material was born of a good degree of personal suffering, particularly ‘v3′, yet it’s often illuminating to listen back in time, to remember previous states of being… Art is such a release.

Creative Commons licensing is at the core of why Tryad happens. It’s given us a clear foundation to be able to share music in a way that everyone can understand.

The Creative Commons music pool is an open “primordial sea” of sound, available to anyone who would like to jump in and play. there are few rules and vast possibilities.

As opposed to conventional copyright, fans of music should be eagerly seeking and sharing creative commons works, as these works contain inherent freedom, the freedom to copy, remix, share, and broadcast, as long as they so desire, for the rest of their lives.

Yet, music is simply one medium.

Anyone who believes in freedom of expression, the right to speak or sing one’s mind openly, should feel thrilled by creative commons. Scientists can share data. designers and photographers can share their images. Writers can share their words. Film makers can share videos.

Along with this net as a vehicle for global communication, creative commons can give any of us a voice that can be heard by many, many others.

It has happened to me!

And what a great voice indeed! Is there anything you want to say to anyone out there wanting to be a part of something and making it happen?

Well, patient stubbornness is often what it takes to achieve anything.

Endurance.

It seems to me that the bands that “make it” into fame and glory are often simply the ones that are able to last the longest.

If you have a dream, work at it slowly, patiently, keeping a grand vision, aware that what you are building may not be achieved for quite some time, if at all…

Most anything worthwhile is hard work. It’s difficult.

If you can focus on “practice” as opposed to “results”, you may actually end up getting to where you want to go.

“practice makes better practice”.

I love this quote.

Thank you so much for taking the time to speak to us and make great music.

Thank you !!!

Happy holidays! ^_^

There you have it. In the world of open source software, it’s amazing to see the methodology used for things other than software. Tryad have adopted the open source methodology for their art and have produced great things with it. The lesson is simple: being open and collaborating with great people to produce great things can produce some amazing results.