“Having worked with my hands and building things and learning how things are built has changed not only the way I write music, but the way I look at everything. You start to see the effort that goes into everything when you work with your hands.”
Bio:
Pipe organ technician. Game show host. Composer.
Age:
33
Location:
Clifton
How did you get started as a maker?
I’d never worked with my hands. I’d never taken a shop class or woodworking or anything like that. But while I was majoring in music in college, a mentor I did an internship with suggested that learning an actual, physical craft is a good thing for a composer to do. When I graduated, I came back to Louisville. And I wanted to do something musical and I wanted to try doing something with my hands. My parents knew someone who was kind of connected to the pipe organ industry. I talked to him and he suggested that I talk to another company. I walked in and they were hiring. I had an interview and that was kind of it.
You just walked in and they said, “Sure, get on board”?
I apprenticed for three years with that company. I think they felt it was easier for someone with a musical background to learn the technical stuff. If you start with someone who already has an ear and is concerned with the sound of music, I think you start out seeing the importance of the technical side. Someone without that background might not have the same set of priorities as the musician playing the instrument.
So was your mentor right? Do you think learning this craft has affected the way you compose?
Absolutely. He was right in that there was so much that I was missing about the world. Having worked with my hands and building things and learning how things are built has changed not only the way I write music, but the way I look at everything. You start to see the effort that goes into everything when you work with your hands.
Photos by Amber Garvey/Kertis Creative.
You primarily compose the music you release as Lydia Burrell with a computer. Do you see a connection between working with pipe organs and composing with computers?
Pipe organs do what computers do, but pipe organs do it physically. They do it with an actual machine that produces sound acoustically. So, if I’m building a sound in a synthesizer, I will certainly use what I know from working with pipe organs to build those sounds synthetically. When you talk about building a tone, what determines the timbre of all the different notes we hear and what we like about different instruments is what harmonics they emphasize. On a pipe organ, there are stops designed solely to emphasize certain harmonics. You can pull out several stops and create a unified but complex sound like you would on a synthesizer. The physicality of the pipe organ, though, helps me conceptualize that process. I definitely think there is a benefit to understanding how beautiful things are made to working on any aspect of music.
On a purely practical level, working with pipe organs has taught me a lot of patience. Not rushing things. Making sure I’ve made the correct measurements and planned things ahead of time. That’s a really valuable thing to acknowledge. Wanting and trying to get things right the first time.
That seems like a skill you might not acquire by just working with computers.
One of the things that I find enjoyable about working on electronic music as opposed to my job in a craft is that I enjoy just fucking around. That’s one of the best things about programming beats and making electronic music. You don’t have to measure things out and agonize. You’re not going to make something that doesn’t work. You can throw everything against a wall and see what sticks and, eventually, if you keep picking at something, it starts to work. That’s the exact opposite of what you’re supposed to do when building something as beautiful and intricate as a pipe organ. So I’m simultaneously doing both.
Photos by Amber Garvey/Kertis Creative.
What kind of problems do you normally see when you’re working with organs?
Anything can affect them. They need constant tuning because of changes in moisture and temperature. Because they’re so big and can occupy several rooms, some components change at different rates than others. You have to make sure those parts are in tune with each other. You also find a lot of dead birds, mice, maggots, that kind of thing. I’ve crawled through bat shit to fix an organ. Like everything else, though, sometimes it’s just a matter of restarting or unplugging and plugging something back in. It runs the gamut.
What do you like about your work?
I like that I work in churches. Like when I’m at St. Agnes or St. James, I’m surrounded by things that are ornate, elaborate, beautifully designed. It’s a peaceful environment. Even if what you’re doing is hard, you’re literally in a sanctuary. I also love that moment when you’re done tuning an organ. The place is empty and, that moment when you’re done tuning, you have free range to play through everything. You’re aware of how it sounded before and how it sounds now and how you were able to bring it all together. It’s satisfying. With a good organ, you get to hear the depth of sound. That’s huge to me.
In addition to working with organs and playing music, you have a podcast called “Probably Not.” Could you tell me a bit about it?
We just had our first ever live podcast with Daniel Martin Moore, Scott Carney, and Jim James as contestants. “Probably Not” started when I was having a conversation with Jessica [Kessinger]. And she has a different way of looking at the world than I do. The initial idea of the podcast was that I showed up with a recorder and Jessica and I just talked about some stuff. I wanted to add another dynamic so I brought Tony [Lombardi] in to make it three people.
We started by answering advice column questions that we found on the Internet, but over the last year it naturally wanted more structure. And it evolved into a game show where we have guests. We’ll invite a band to compete against each other in a game show that’s built from the same dynamic that we started with. So we have silly questions; trivia; and arbitrary, weird games. We have a game called Adele vs. Mumford & Sons where I give a lyric and the contestant has to guess whether it’s from Adele or Mumford & Sons. We have a game where you have to guess the final word in a Lil Wayne rhyme. It’s all designed to get people to talk about random things. And we’ve built musical performances and breaks into the podcast. I think it’s become something really fun and engaging.
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