Modern Biology's Tarun Nayar Makes Beautiful Music Using Mushrooms as an Instrument
In their quest for new and unexpected melodies modern composers utilize generative music and neural networks as a trigger for their creativity. The process often yields unique results, as in the works of Flex Council's Josh Levy who uses AI to make his own brand of ghostly, eerie electronica (read our interview with Josh).
Canada-based Tarun Nayar uses a different approach to make music that sounds quite unlike anything else. With background in Indian classical music and biology he brings together home-built modular synthesizers and "other analog equipment to improvise with the natural vibrations of a certain place and time – via plant bioelectricity, latent electromagnetic radiation, and even the earth's resonant hum".
His latest hauntingly beautiful single Mushroom Dance finds Tarun in the early spring woods feeding the bioelectricity generated by a red-belted conk mushroom to his synths to come up with beautiful unorthodox melodic lines. Here is the story of the track.
Canada-based Tarun Nayar uses a different approach to make music that sounds quite unlike anything else. With background in Indian classical music and biology he brings together home-built modular synthesizers and "other analog equipment to improvise with the natural vibrations of a certain place and time – via plant bioelectricity, latent electromagnetic radiation, and even the earth's resonant hum".
His latest hauntingly beautiful single Mushroom Dance finds Tarun in the early spring woods feeding the bioelectricity generated by a red-belted conk mushroom to his synths to come up with beautiful unorthodox melodic lines. Here is the story of the track.
Tarun Nayar
I recorded this track with a red-belted conk – a shelf fungus that was growing on an old fir tree in the forest near my house. I love the idea of composing with decomposers – and took my modular synthesizer setup into the woods for an early spring session. I used the bioelectricity of the mushroom to inform the main synth lead line by using small changes in conductivity to trigger note changes in the synth. I then went back to the studio and used other odds and ends (and some field recordings) to make a song out of this mushroom recording. I was actually out in the forest recording mushrooms for an upcoming Earth Day NFT project with the well-known artist Fvckrender. I was so happy with the way the recordings went that I decided I should release a version of the music as an actual song. When I got back to the studio and started layering in basslines and supporting pads - I became pretty fixated on the idea of this as a single.
Here is how the magic is made.
Check Modern Biology's Youtube channel for more music and videos.