I saw the Dark Aether Project for the first time on the Orion Studio stage. Their style of music was relatively new to me, as was the Warr guitar, so I spent about 90% of the show watching what Adam Levin was doing. There was still so much more for me to learn about what I was witnessing, so, in the interest of knowledge, Adam agreed to let me pick his brain.

Steve: It’s one thing to be turned on to a genre of music that’s not in the mainstream, but how did you end up creating the style of music that DAP plays?
Adam: Throughout my life, I've been fortunate enough to have been introduced to a wide variety of music by extremely knowledgeable people. I currently have around 2000 CDs in my collection ranging from jazz, pop, classical, opera, folk, electronic music, metal and various styles of ethnic music from around the world. All the music that I have been exposed to has had an effect on me in how I perceive music and I channel that into what I do with The Dark Aether Project.

The direction that I'm focusing on nowadays with DAP is to work with music which can be appreciated on several levels. Where a first time listener can appreciate the songs without delving too deep, but on further listens can start to recognize some of the underlying textural and complex rhythmic elements that might not be apparent on first notice. If we are working on a part where the Warr guitar and drums are humming along in 5/4 while the guitarist is playing in 4/4 and then swap when the cycles meet, I want it to work seamlessly to create an interesting, yet natural feeling break in the context of the song that might go past totally unnoticed to a casual listener.

Steve: My first exposure to the Warr guitar was the first time I saw DAP play live. How would you describe your ambition towards playing a touchstyle instrument to someone not familiar with the instrument or the technique?
Adam: The Warr Guitar has opened up many opportunities as a musician than any previous instrument that I've worked with. The particular instrument that Mark built for me is an 8 string with the full range of a bass and a guitar. It's tuned mostly in fifths ("mostly" because the interval between the 2nd and 3rd string is a minor 3rd and the interval between the 1st and 2nd string is a major 2nd - these smaller intervals are due to string tension issues). The primary playing technique is one where you use the fingers of both hands to tap the strings against the fretboard to sound a note. Because there is no need to pick or pluck, one can play separate or interlocking parts with each hand. However the instrument is designed to allow one to fall back on traditional guitar/bass picking and plucking techniques.

My intent is to integrate it into the music so that listeners aren't saying "Hey, that's a Warr Guitar!" The Warr Guitar is a means to an end - with the end being the music itself. I don't want to be known for playing "Warr Guitar Music", or "Keyboard Music" or "Guitar Music". I'd rather people listen to the music for the music not just for the instruments used.

Steve: Still...there will be people who hear your efforts on the Warr guitar, and the efforts of other Warr guitar greats, and become inspired to the point where they incorporate that instrument into their own musical repertoire. This could possibility set up the Warr guitar for becoming more of a common-place instrument...even if only within the prog realm. How do you see this potential scenario unfolding?
Adam: Mark Warr is a custom instrument builder who handcrafts each instrument from raw woods to his clients' specifications over several months. I know he takes great pride in his work and will not ship an instrument that he himself would not feel proud of, so I don't think you'll ever see the day when his instruments are common-place - i.e. you won't be able to walk into Guitar Center and pick one up for $199.

Steve: That condition could quite possibly lead to the introduction of Warr wannabe guitars, knock-offs of sorts.
Adam: Well, if others get into the touchstyle technique, that would certainly be great. It would be nice to have enough students at the Taptech seminars that I could afford to have several different instructors fly in and present topics!

Steve: So, who is eligible to attend a Taptech seminar? I, for example, play a standard 4-string bass, and have absolutely no touchstyle technique experience. Where would I, and others who match my profile, fit in?
Adam: All players - at any level - of multi-stringed fretted instruments are welcomed. We've had players of "standard" guitars and basses attend in previous years. The whole history of touchstyle techniques predates any specialty instruments (ex: way back in 1952, jazz guitarist Jimmy Webster published a book about his two-handed tapping methods for standard 6 string guitar), so you don't specifically need an instrument designed for this technique.

Steve: You’re primarily self-taught on the guitar. How did you go about teaching yourself?
Adam: Back in 1980, I started banging around on a neglected nylon string acoustic guitar that my parents bought for my oldest sister. Within a few months I started taking some lessons at a local music store. The instructor was horrible. It was clear that he had no interest in what he or I was doing, so in the end, I just stopped going after learning a few chord structures and scales. I was still interested in playing the instrument, but I just realized that I wasn't going to get anything out of this particular instructor. That year for my birthday my parents bought me a cheap no-name electric guitar and practice amp, so I started going through my older brother's 8-track collection learning songs by ear. I'd occasionally buy some books with tablature to help figure out some parts that were too difficult to get by ear, but that was pretty much how I worked until I got involved with Guitar Craft in the mid 90s and realized that nearly everything that I learned on my own was wrong. Ha!

"I'd rather people listen to the music for the music not just for the instruments used."

Steve: What are your words of advice (or, caution!) for others who want to go the self-teaching route?
Adam: The biggest problem is the development of bad habits. If you're working on your own, you have nobody there to tell you "No, try it this way, it's much better." After many years I finally had a chance to work with decent instructors I came to the realization that I was worse off than the green beginners because I'd developed so many bad habits that were restricting my growth as a guitarist. When they're that ingrained in you, it's very tempting to fall back on them rather than pushing yourself to work on a new better way of doing things. So now looking back on things almost 21 years later, I wish that I had pursued other more appropriate instructors after bombing out with the first guy. This is why when I started playing touchstyle back in 1997, I looked around for instructors, rejected a few and eventually started doing the TapTech seminars where I bring the best instructors for this style of playing to Baltimore to spend an intensive weekend working with anyone interested in learning.

Steve: Tell me a little bit about what changing guitarists has done for DAP's live shows, and how it affects the new material.
Adam: When I've been confronted with a lineup change, I've tried to find people who could provide a fresh element to the sound and keep things interesting. We've just started working with a new guitarist named John McCloskey. John is a happy medium between the previous guitarists. He's able to nail the intricately composed parts with 100% accuracy and has a keen improvisational sense. John's work in recent years has mostly been in the realm of jazz. He studied under jazz guitarist Paul Bollenback and is also dividing his time with a jazz group called "On the Rocks". John sought me out via a friend at work to ask me for some advice about the production of OtR's CD. We got together for lunch and hit it off. John told me he would like to try getting together at some point and jam around on some ideas since despite his more current jazz focus, we shared many of the same influences in our pasts. A month or so later I had some free time and invited John over. The two of us jammed on some ideas I'd been working on as well as banging away on some King Crimson chestnuts. Things clicked and since I'd already decided that the situation with our previous guitarist was not working out as planned, I invited John to come back the following weekend to try out with the others. We were all pleased with the results, so John got the invitation to join - which he accepted.

Steve: You’ve recently introduced a new element to the DAP sound: a female vocalist in the name of Jennifer Huff.
Adam: Following our run of summer shows, I placed an ad on a local music bulletin board for a vocalist. There was no mention of the band name - just a description of the music and the type of person we were looking for. Jennifer was one of the few respondents who showed an interest and knowledge about the type of music that we are working on as well as a shared appreciation for a diverse variety of music. Since unlike most of the other ads people post, I hadn't specified male or female, she asked for clarification whether we'd be interested in giving her an audition. As I mentioned, I'm always looking for fresh elements to add to our sound and having a great respect for the more musically adventurous female-fronted rock bands like 3rd and the Mortal, The Gathering, Sunday All Over the World, Drain and Lacuna Coil, I was happy to give her a shot. Jennifer auditioned by singing an a capella blues and then sang to a backing track of the Stone Temple Pilots song "Plush" and proved that she had an amazing voice and range - she's been tested at 3 octaves. I gave her one of the demos we'd been working on and she came back several days later with new lyrics and vocal melodies that blew away what we were previously working with. Jennifer's background is in group a capella work. While in college she recorded toured with the University of Maryland's "Treble Makers" group.

Another lineup related bit worth noting is that I'm happy to announce that after a brief hiatus Allen Brunelle is back behind the drum kit. Allen left during the summer to focus his time on other commitments. During that time, ex-Boud Deun drummer Rocky Cancelose stepped in, but due to logistics problems - namely a 200 mile round trip drive to rehearsals - it started to look like it wasn't going to work out. At that point I was talking with Allen about the situation and he agreed to come back and help out. While I'm sad that things with Rocky didn't work out, I'm very pleased to be working with Allen in DAP again.

Steve: Earlier this year, our paths crossed indirectly at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center when you helped prepare the material for an IT Security Training seminar that I attended. Now that I'm familiar with your expertise level, I'm curious to know whether your network engineering career determines your participation in the music world, or is merely your way of financing your musical aspirations. How are you able to get these two time-consuming ventures to co-exist?
Adam: The money from the day job definitely helps towards the musical pursuits. The gear isn't cheap and the music that we're playing isn't exactly a big source of cash.

I'd certainly enjoy having more time for music, but I enjoy my job too. One needs to find the right balance. Up until the fall of 1998 I was running a Washington DC area internet service provider company - one of the first in the area. I made a nice income that helped pay for a lot of musical toys, but the work load was too much. 60-70 hour work weeks didn't exactly leave me much time to think about music, so I switched to another job that allowed me to be much more flexible with my time.

When our new vocalist Jennifer Huff came in to audition we talked about commitments to music, work, family, etc. and it dawned on me that I'm like a shark. I always need to keep moving. So I balance the band, day job, organizing concerts for other groups, The Progressive Rock Web Site, mowing the lawn, feeding the cats, painting the deck* and doing the laundry in a juggling act just to keep myself from going braindead with boredom.

Steve: Curious, that three out of the first four examples you gave involve music (four, if you include the fact that your day job pays for your music equipment). What else do you have in mind to accomplish within the music Universe that you may not have attempted yet?
Adam: I have all kinds of bits of music that I've recorded over the years that don't properly fit into the DAP universe, so I may someday work on some alternate projects to explore those realms. One of those projects would be a more avant garde cut-up jazz/punk/metal style fusion in the Naked City/Mr. Bungle vein.

Oh yes! I also just recently started playing drums. The intention there is to be able to be self-sufficient enough to record fairly complete demos that I can give to the others to work with as things progress.

"All the music that I have been exposed to has had an effect on me in how I perceive music and I channel that into what I do with The Dark Aether Project."

Steve: You mentioned that you were sought out for production advice. What would you tell the novice producer about your views on the subject?
Adam: I still think of myself as a novice. I'm certainly learning as I go along. I guess the best advice is to find someone who has more experience to work with so that you can pick their brain. I've learned quite a lot from Mike Potter during my time hanging out at Orion Studios, so being familiar with alot of the gear there, I used that as a guide for the construction of my own studio at home. There's also news groups like rec.pro.audio where (like all other Usenet groups!) the people can be fairly passionate in their opinions and advice on the subject.

Steve: To this point, DAP have only released five songs with lyrics, and you've penned the lyrics to only three of them. It appears that you have more to say with notes than you do with words.
Adam: Basically the writing process for DAP's material starts off with the notes. I'll bang around on my Warr, acoustic guitar or keyboard to come up with fragments that I'll either keep plugging away on my own or present to the others for input. Sometimes I'll just present a guitar or Warr part, in other cases it's pretty much fully fleshed out. Generally at the point where it starts getting fleshed out, I'll come to the decision whether the music stands on it own or needs additional melodic content. If so, that's when I start thinking "OK, this is a vocal song". As for what goes on from there, I personally would rather have the vocalist write the words and melody line that they're singing - to me it makes the performance more authentic when there's that personal connection, however either from neccessity or inspiration, I have ended up writing lyrics myself. Of the three new songs which we currently have in a semi-completed state, Jenn has written the lyrics for one and I wrote the other. The third is a fairly long instrumental which I've had on again/off again thoughts about lyrical content, so that may change. Jenn is also playing around with some vocal ideas for the instrumental "Burnt Sunrise" off of our previous CD. In my opinion that song needed the additional melodic content, but it never came about in time for recording.

Steve: I see that you post periodically to the ProgAndOther e-mail list. What are the benefits---or, perhaps, the necessities!---of a musician frequenting e-mail lists and bulletin boards?
Adam: I've been participating in Usenet music discussion newsgroups as well as music-oriented mailing lists since 1990 - long before I started the band. So I think of myself as just another music lover participating in the discussions and I think most of the folks think of me that way too since a lot of them knew me before DAP. Of course now that I have the band and the concert series that I work on at Orion, it's also an invaluable promotional tool.

Steve: What influenced you to choose the band name?
Adam: I've been fascinated for some time by the early scientific theories about an element called "aether" that pervades the universe. If you visit our web site you will find a link to an excellent site discussing this topic.

I'd originally considered calling the group The Aether Drift Experiment*, but realized that most people would have problems looking us up (i.e. mistakenly looking under "E" for Ether"). Since most of our music is fairly Dark, "Dark Aether" sounded right. The "Project" part came about because my original intention was just to put together a trio for a one-off gig at the 1st Taptech. But as you can see, things kind of took a different turn.

*It should be noted that the diagram on the first CD cover is for an early 20th century interferometer that was designed to measure aether drift.

Steve: Now, it’s free-form time.
Adam: The band is currently in the middle of recording two songs at my home studio for a sampler CD featuring Baltimore's finest progressive/avant garde/fusion bands. One of the songs will be "Shades" - a new song which will appear on our next album and the other will be a new recording of "Feed the Silence" featuring the new lineup. This sampler is being put together for inclusion in Expose and will also feature the participation of Uncle Gut, Kurgan's Bane, Sonus Umbra, Trephine, Dark Water Transit and perhaps a few others.

	The Dark Aether Project home page
	Theories of the Aether...this is the site Adam mentioned in his interview.
	Feedback, dammit!

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