Background: Acoustic to Digital
I wanted to spend some time reflecting on building this thing. Because over the last decade or so, I’ve been slowly processing the question of what it means to spend time well.
Don’t get me wrong—I’m not one of those people who believe everything should be optimized for 110% productivity. I’m kind of against growth-for-growth’s-sake, actually (it’s the old punk rock drummer in me). But we all have limited time here, so what to do with it?
The older I get, the more I find myself returning to my first loves: skating, poetry, music, and art. Having always had an analytical bent, digital product design was a great way for me to make art into a career. And I’m still neck-deep in that career—at a point where I’m asking these hard questions. I want to optimize my impact in areas that I care about. And that’s what steered my attention back to music technology.
My dad was a left-handed drummer. He played for fun in his church band. He taught me how to play his lefty setup at home in Southern California. I already had a deep love for music, and rhythm really spoke to me. As soon as I saw him playing, I knew I wanted to learn. So he taught me, and I ended up in a few different punk/emo bands in the late 90’s.
But I was also a natural nomad—loving to explore and be self-sufficient in new-to-me place. Lugging around an entire drum set wasn’t very conducive to that lifestyle, and so drum machines popped onto my radar. I think it was 1997 when I got a BOSS DR-5 “Dr. Rhythm” drum machine. Needless to say, I devoured that thing. It lived in my backpack at all times, and every spare second I had was either on that, writing poetry or skating.
(I’m so glad I saved a lot of the songs I made on that device… they were so weird but they hold a special place in my heart today. I’m considering making an album out of only DR-5 songs!)
That device changed my life.
It wasn’t because it was so intuitive, or because it was the best drum machine available at the time. But because the right ingredients for me lined up at the time: portability, drum + instrument sounds, a solid sequencer, ability to store multiple song projects. Beggars can’t be choosers—as they say—and I was a beggar at the time. I couldn’t afford to try out anything on the market. I had to make-do with what I had. And looking back, I’m so glad I ended up with that BOSS DR-5 instead of, for example, an Alesis SR-16 or one of the other—arguably more popular— drum machines of the day.
Recently: Hip-hop and a Design Career
Coincidentally, I also fell in love with hip-hop around the same time, but my roots were firmly in new-wave, punk and that *real* early emo (Mineral, etc). But I was also reaching out, exploring new-to-me genres and falling in love with a lot more experimental music like The Sugarcubes, Atari Teenage Riot, A Silver Mt. Zion, and yes, some underground hip-hop like Petter and even Aesop Rock.
I wasn’t really even producing hip-hop music on my BOSS DR-5, but I was listening to a lot—especially goldern-era East Coast stuff like Wu-Tang Clan and A Tribe Called Quest. But even so, a close friend of mine (also a hip-hop head) asked me to join his 5-man rap crew as their producer. I had no idea what that meant, but I said yes, and that’s what irreversibly sucked me into hip-hop. I already had this deep love for poetry, and was a percussionist, so it really wasn’t that big of a leap.
Not long after that, my design career started demanding a lot more of my free time than I might have liked, if I’m honest. But I got the chance to build and run a record label’s design team, work on a congressional campaign, do marketing for automative companies like Hummer and Cadillac, and design a massively long list of highly complex systems, like Ebay UK and The Trainline. I got to design & code Coca-Cola’s Christmas emails and shoot trackside photography for our own NASCAR team. I designed a TIME Magazine’s Best Invention of the Year Award winning product with UNICEF. I won a Webby Award for a website. I never expected any of this, and it still surprises me to look back at it all.
Now: Form & Fader
It’s all been a blast. But one thing I could never shake was the desire to steer the design of these music devices I was using over the years. Now, armed with decades of experience in human-centered design in mostly digital, but also some hardware products, I can articulate the why’s about it all. And that’s exactly what I’m doing. I want to invest all my experience into an area that’s deeply impacted me, so that even more people can fall in love with a device that helps them create their best work, and become a meaningful part of their creative lives.
I named this company Form & Fader to clearly show the convergence of human-centered design and music. I knew I didn’t just want to create and run a design agency. (I’ve done that before.) What I wanted in this experience was to actively share my knowledge, but also open the door to learn from each other in this space of the design of music technology. That’s why I’m starting with Youtube video—it’s a platform I know, and I like that it lets me go deep into products. I’ll also create a podcast, where I’ll speak with designers and artists in this space to learn form them, understand their pain points, and then put it all out there as a sort of knowledge source.
I can’t wait to see where this journey takes us, and how it evolves into new and unexpected territory. Welcome aboard! I’m so thankful to have you here with me!
Chris Lorensson
