Immersive Talk with Matthew Burtner

Can you please introduce yourself, tell us your job title, and tell us a little bit about what you do, and how you ended up doing it!

My name is Matthew Burtner and I am a composer and eco-acoustician from Alaska. I direct the EcoSono environmental sound non-profit organization, and I am a professor of composition at UVA in Virginia where I teach computer music and ecoacoustics in the Composition and Computer Technologies Program (CCT) and direct the Coastal Conservatory.

My sound art composition focuses on climate change and immersive environmental sonic models. I have been composing this kind of music for 30 years, and I developed my approach to music because I grew up loving the wild and powerful sounds of extreme environments in Alaska, particularly abiotic systems like icefields, glaciers, and wind.

My music is built from scapes and microtimbres of sound so I need a high level of detail but also powerful sound projection. That’s why I use Genelec speakers in my studios.

Can you tell us about your studio space? Where its located, any history of the building, the approximate size of the studio?

I’ve built a lot of immersive sound studios over the years, but today I’d like to talk about my personal multichannel composition studio in Virginia. The 6.1 sound system uses 8350s and 8351s with a 7070a sub. The sound system is powerful for the space which is about 4.5 x 6.5 meters, so I’ve done a lot with acoustic treatment, especially for low frequencies. For example, I built a false wall behind the front speakers as a giant bass trap to tame the room’s low resonances. I can send a lot of power and bass out of the speakers without generating standing waves in the room. The bass wall also structurally supports a flush-mounted display that I use as a 2nd monitor for film or video composition.

The space is historically interesting because it features a full wall painted mural by the Spanish artist, Chicho Lorenzo. The studio has a gallery-like feel and people sometimes come to see the mural because Chicho is a well-known painter in the area.

Can you give an overview of the key equipment you use in the studio – consoles/DAW/processors/sound sources/signal distribution etc?

The studio uses an Apple computer (Mac Studio with 192GB of RAM for interactive multichannel sonification with video rendering). Two ADAT-networked RME interfaces offer enough I/O for multichannel surround and analogue summing. An Allen & Heath console and a 48-point patch bay enables flexible interaction between hardware and software.

My music blurs the lines between human, environmental and computer sources. For this reason, the computer input and output chains are very important to my process. For inputs, I use a bunch of field equipment for outdoor recording, then a few preamps for electronic and acoustic sources in the studio. In the computer, I primarily work in Max/MSP and mix in Logic. I sequence MIDI using environmental data so the flexibility of an environment like Max is very helpful. I bounce/render tracks through a Dangerous multichannel analogue summing mixer that blends the digital and acoustic sources together beautifully. Then I apply analogue EQ and compression, and sometimes a Neve transformer which helps glue acoustic, electric and digital harmonics together to get that blurred effect I’m going for.

What type of work do you do in your studio?

I just finished “Profiled from Atmospheres” in here, an album of musical environmental models. I worked on processing field recordings of the Aurora Borealis for Auroras, composed the ultrasonic Moth Music, and created sonifications of greenhouse gasses for the piece Profiled from Atmospheres. I’m really proud of the album: https://www.ravellorecords.com/catalog/rr8106/. I also recently composed ecoacoustic music for the Australian theatre group Legs on the Wall in this studio. Our piece Thaw is currently playing in London and Antwerp. I also composed the music for Time Lapse Dance’s recent performances in New York and Dallas, in particular the work Arbor that uses tree sonifications, field recordings and string quartet. I also created the music for the Oculus environment Dwelling in the Enfolding which uses immersive sound and video,and was released both for Meta headsets and then for museum planetariums. I also wrote most of the music for Icefield and Glacier Music, my two previous albums, in this studio.

How and when did you become interested in immersive audio? Is there a particular Immersive format you specialize in?

For environmental music, multichannel diffusion is important because it helps emphasize the environmental over the human. I also record environmental sound in surround, using ambisonics or customized formats so multichannel diffusion is the best way to audition those recordings. Surround-sound multichannel audio has been a core form of computer music for decades, so as student, I came up on 8-channel ear-level systems that treat each speaker equally, like a ring. Because my philosophy of music collapses the distinction between human and nature, I use the multichannel array to do that, turning human instruments into environments and environmental systems into instruments.

Can you tell us why you chose Genelec, and how the monitoring system helps you to work in immersive?

I can tell you exactly when and why I chose Genelec. I was in residence in Mexico at CNMAS in the early 2000s, which is an awesome computer music center in a castle, and they set me up in a room with a pair of 1037s. It was just a grand open stone room with very tall ceilings and the two mid-field speakers. I worked in there for a week and I was hooked! After that residency, I ordered 1037c speakers for our computer music studios at my university, then set up our surround sound studios with smaller Genelecs, a 16-channel and an 8-channel system.

Personally, I prefer midfield monitoring and wide stereo, so in my studio I pushed the speakers back from the listening position. I added the 8351b center channel to sonically match the 8350s and because it looks like a center channel. It would be cool if the Genelec logo could be repositioned horizontally.

I use Genelec because I want to love my music. No one listens to it as much as me, and no one cares about it more than me. Because Genelecs are super transparent and also beautiful sounding I can hear the music critically while still loving the sound.