Becoming Music with Qid Love

Qid focuses on contemplative improvisation and music as a spiritual practice

Qid Love at the Recreational Psychoacoustics Lab in Seattle. Photo by Nicole Richards.

Before each interview Mustard tries to find a way to relate it to something regarding humans. That is still their goal, but they must admit, talking to

Qid Love 🕉️💕🎸🏳️‍⚧️

- an experimental guitarist, electronic musician, and multidisciplinary artist absolutely blew them away.

How Qid Love approaches and creates music is unlike anything Mustard has come across before. They invented a musical scale naming system which is the subject of an upcoming documentary. We speak about this more below.

Additionally they have released over 150 albums on their Bandcamp. Each an exploration of sound and designed to be used as a mediative practice.

In our interview below you will learn more about how Qid creates music as a mediative practice, their sonic sacturaties, and so much more.

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1. Mustard is grateful and appreciative to have you join them at Mustard Off The Shelf. How are you doing today?

I'm doing really well, thanks! Despite the state of the world, I have a lot of peace and ease in my life, for which I am grateful.

2. Mustard wonders what your relationship with music was growing up?

I caught the music bug really early. My 2nd grade teacher brought her guitar to the classroom and taught us all to sing "One Tin Soldier". I knew from that moment that music would always be part of my life. My aunt would also teach songs to me and my cousins, and my father would sing songs with us on fairly regular roadtrips. Music was always there for as long as I can remember.

I joined the middle school orchestra at 11 and played first violin for 3 years before moving to a school that didn't have an orchestra, which is when I really began making music on my own. My uncle played keyboards and gave me access to his studio and equipment, and was the first person to introduce me to improvisation. I was around 14 when I got my first keyboard, a Korg Poly 800. I didn't find guitar until my first year of college, but that became my primary instrument for most of my life.

3. Mustard has observed that you have created Xenomes; an innovative new system of musical harmony and scale naming. Are you able to share more about this musical scale naming system?

I was in my 20s when I started really exploring modes and scales beyond the traditional major and minor scales of western harmony. I became quickly frustrated at the lack of a comprehensive and non-arbitrary naming system for scales, so I made my own. Still to this day the only other system that mostly fits the bill is the numbering system developed by Canadian composer Ian Ring, who wrote the foreword to my book (The Book of Xenomes), and his system still requires a calculator to use without a reference. It's critical for my work that the system doesn't require a thousand page reference to be useful, and the book itself is less than 50 pages and mostly just contains examples to illustrate how the system works. All the info you need to use the system is covered in the first chapter of the book.

A xenome is a 3 digit hexadecimal code (0-F, using A through F to represent the numbers 10 through 15) that precisely defines the notes in a scale. It works by taking the 12 possible notes in a scale, representing those as a binary string using 1 where a note is present in the scale and a 0 where it isn't, and then cutting that up into 3 sets of 4 notes for easier math. Four "bits" in binary can be represented by a single hexadecimal digit since there are 16 possible combinations. Once you learn the system, you can easily do the math in your head to convert a xenome to a set of notes and vice versa. To be clear, xenomes are designed for the 12-TET system and aren't as useful for microtonal work out of the box, but any possible set of notes you can play on a piano or standard fretted guitar is covered.

As an example, the major scale would be xenome AD5. Converted to binary, that would be 1010 1101 0101, which can be superimposed on a keyboard or fretboard to tell you exactly which notes are included. Determining the appropriate xenome for any given scale is the same process in reverse.

4. Xenomes, your musical scale naming system, will also be the subject of an upcoming documentary. How does it feel to have your innovation highlighted?

It's very meaningful to me that someone else has taken enough interest in my work to invest time and money into understanding it and sharing it with the world. It's also sort of my "Beautiful Mind" moment, because I created this system over 2 decades ago to use in my work, but never really got around to sharing it as something interesting in its own right. My film producer/director helped me see it as something that was important to share, which ultimately led to me finally writing the book and setting it free in the world.

5. Mustard has observed that you are an experimental guitarist, electronic musician, and multidisciplinary artist. Which came first? How are these intertwined within your creative process?

Good question. I am an artist, first and foremost. I feel it goes beyond any specific medium or project I might be working on, and is really about just embodying creativity. So, in the grand scheme, that came first. I was a keyboardist for several years before I picked up the guitar, although that was more pop, R&B, and jazz, so not what I would generally consider electronic music. I began making the first of what I would consider electronic music with experimental guitar around 2007 with my Echo Root project. I now consider myself to be fully an experimental musician, with guitar and electronics as my tools of choice. I also make digital art and films, and write quite a bit, which easily gets tangled up with my musical endeavors from time to time.

6. They have also observed that you build sonic sanctuaries for deep contemplation. Could you share more about how you build these sonic sanctuaries?

My music for the past couple of decades has been largely textural in nature, with the goal of creating an environment with sound. You might think of this like creating the soundtrack for a film, except currently the main character is the guitar, and the film is playing inside your head. With my current spiritual/musical practice, I begin by intentionally creating the sonic environment, which I call "building the Bardo room". Once I feel like I am physically situated in the space, then the contemplative work can begin. I think it took me much more time to find this in the past, but now it just requires a few minutes.

For someone listening to my music, the hope is that the music gives the feeling of being in a physical place, with nuanced sounds drawing your attention to different parts of the environment over time.

7. As a condiment, Mustard is curious, what does it mean to contemplate something?

For me, contemplation is multifaceted, starting with awareness, mindfulness, and being present in the moment. Once you are aware and fully focused on the thing you wish to contemplate, you can move to reflection, which is more about determining the meaning of something as it applies specifically to you, i.e. reflected in the mirror of self. Of course, attention is always a dance, so it can take gentle prodding to stay on target, but in truth a lot of insight comes from the places our minds wander to in the process.

8. Who (or what) influences Qid Love?

I have a ton of minor influences across mediums and disciplines, but the biggest influences on my music practice are Philip Sudo, the author of Zen Guitar, and Mick Goodrick, who wrote The Advancing Guitarist. Interestingly, I have listened to very little of the music either of them made. I suppose it's fitting that my legacy is sizing up to be less about my music and more about my ideas around music.

9. Mustard has observed that you recently launched the "Cryptid Soup" label on Bandcamp. What are some of your goals with Cryptid Soup? How does Cryptid Soup help allow listeners to explore the various eras of Qid Love?

Cryptid Soup has been a number of things, and a label is now one of them. Cryptid Soup is meant to be a community, a collective, a dark forest, a metalabel, a container for meaning, Qid+n, and/or basically anything that involves me plus other people. I would love to do more collaborations, perhaps some compilations, and generally just build a small community of neuroqueer creatives who are into the same things as me.

One benefit of setting up the Cryptid Soup label on Bandcamp was being able to split out all of my "eras" into separate artist accounts. So now Echo Root, Mood481, and Qid Love are separate distinct pages with their own distinct discographies, making it easier to experience my work in that way, and alleviating a bit of the difficulty of navigating my rather large catalog.

10. You are joined by Girl Ballz on Cryptid Soup. Could you share more about your relationship with Girl Ballz? Can we expect a future collaboration?

Girl Ballz is lead by multi-instrumentalist Gabi Aerial Emerson (fae/faer), who played with me as part of the Cryptid Soup ensemble last year during my studio residency at Seattle's Recreational Psychoacoustics Lab. Future collaboration is a possibility, but Gabi is a very busy rockstar and we are currently mostly meeting a few times a month for coffee and grilled cheese.

11. If you had to create a definitive Qid Love timeline for new listeners what would it look like? Where do you recommend they begin?

I think it's worth checking out the first and last things, which would be Sludgehammer by Echo Root and the new Qid Love album, Sacred Math. Despite the 149 albums in between, there's a discernable thread. I think Clockwork Angels is my favorite Echo Root album, although Starfish Taco includes a track that made it into a film, Glass is a must-listen album, and Spiralology is an important album from a compositional / modal improv perspective.

Mood481 covers so much ground, containing the bulk of my catalog at 119 albums. There are some curated "best of" albums, Vita and Vita Disc 3, which were the 50th and 100th Mood481 releases, so those are a great place to start. Nothing to Fear is the most popular/successful Mood481 release of all time, so that's worth a listen. If you do the first and last thing again, you get First Contact, the first of a trilogy of albums about an alien exchange program, and Return to Serpo, which was meant to be the final Mood481 track and a call-back to the first album. The final actual release is a 10-year anniversary uncut version of Prism, which is also a great album. If you only listened to those, you would be missing a lot, but it's a start.

As for the Qid Love releases, Drone, Glitch, and Blues is a must-listen and the first release under my name. The World is Full of Suffering got some pretty stellar reviews, and When We Were Vampires has been my biggest album to date. I think all of these together is a pretty decent overview.

12. Mustard loves how expansive and detailed your discography is. How can a human use your music as a spiritual practice?

As a listener, the key would be deep listening, which is a form of mindful listening. All of my music is textural and nuanced with plenty to discover. Allowing yourself to be transported into the space created by the music and being present in that space can lead to something. Ultimately, my catalog is more important as a catalyst for folks to explore spirituality through making music in their own unique way.

13. As a condiment, Mustard wonders, if you could elaborate more on the concept of practicing spirituality with music?

My spiritual practice is contemplative improvisation. This means I create music as a meditative practice. The goal is to cultivate awareness and remain fully in the energy of the creative space for extended periods. Improvisation is critical to my practice, because it is being inside of creativity that is the key. Xenomes facilitate this perfectly by providing a focal point and options for movement without the need to pre-define things or risking getting into ruts.

It's not exactly the same as traditional meditation where you're trying to be fully present in the world, because I do have the sensation of being transported, as in a trance-like state. I discovered over years of improvisation that I was returning to the same place, the place that I call the Bardo room. I think we all have one that is unique to us. Mine is sort of like a large abandoned space station, except I realized at some point that I wasn't exactly alone. I won't go much further into that here, but I do experience a connection with Source, the Divine, my own personal deity, my shadow and/or higher selves, or whatever you need to think of it as.

So, music is very much my spiritual practice, and the sacredness of it for me has led me away from performance as entertainment. Part of my studio residency last year was an attempt to find a context for practicing with others, but for now, I am happy to exist in semi-retreat and grow in my practice, sharing the occasional recording like polaroids from a road trip.

14. You experience and work with a lot of sounds. Is there a specific sound (or sounds) that bring Qid Love comfort?

These days, my music has a specific aesthetic based in drone, glitch and noise. I always make sure that those 3 elements are present. Drone is the foundation, the earth, the underlying spirit. It is the harmonic home at the beginning and end of the journey, the starting point and the destination. Glitch is the accidental, the imperfect, the matrix poking through. It blocks perfection and gives permission to explore without fear or shame. Noise is the formless, the indecipherable, the void. It's the paint and the canvas, the radio static from which voices emerge if you listen too closely.

15. Your latest release, Sacred Math, is best experienced with eyes closed and noise cancelling headphones on. How does this experience help the listener pay better attention to their feelings?

I create my music in this way, and I strongly feel like it is the best way to fully experience the music. The immersion is critical. The more you can block out of the physical space you are in, the more fully you can be transported to where the music is taking you. You can be more fully aware of your emotions and the physical sensations of being in this other place if you're not hearing passing cars, your partner banging around in the kitchen, or your dog's toenails clicking around on the floor.

16. Mustard has observed that some humans are afraid to express their emotions. Why is it important that a human be in touch with their feelings?

Emotions are important because they are information with many layers, and they are instructions to our body. If you are not in touch with your emotions, meaning you are not aware of them in the moment, then you are in them, swept away in the drama of them, immersed in them, and at the mercy of whatever instructions they are giving your body. Getting in touch with your emotions means becoming acutely aware of them, reflecting on them, learning from them, and empowering yourself to choose how to react to them. Emotions are great teachers, but you have to be listening, taking notes, and learning their lessons.

17. What is on the horizon for Qid love?

I am mostly in semi-retreat at the moment, taking in the insights of my practice, learning everything that xenomes still have to teach me, and putting in my 10,000 hours on my weird guitar tuning. The albums will keep coming as often as I feel compelled to hit the record button. The film is in progress and will take up some time this year. There are a number of books brewing, one on contemplative improvisation, one on my guitar method, and possibly something on existential wellness. And I occasionally remember to write something meaningful on my Substack newsletter. Even with all of that, I've mostly let go of striving and I'm staying open to opportunities to serve as they arise.

18. Where can readers listen to your music?

My music is exclusively available on Bandcamp.

Thanks so much for your interest in my music and the opportunity to share with you readers. You're pretty awesome, as condiments go!

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