By Rob Hochschild
Berklee.edu Editor
May 2001

	Photo by Liz Linder
	Matt's Audio • "Naked Singularity" (Schism) Listen: slow | fast

Spend a few minutes at a Matt Moldover recital and you are likely to see and hear many things for the first time. During a recent on-campus performance, Moldover traded licks with a turntablist, scraping his guitar strings in counterpoint to the D.J.'s scratchings; altered video images by plucking different guitar notes; and unleashed a series of screams that were so dark and forceful it was as if they came from a black hole at the center of the earth.

Moldover doesn't simply ignore conventions of contemporary music, he absorbs them, distorts them, and spits them back out in ways that surprise and challenge. Messing with people's minds is part of the fun, he admits, but his central goal is to create something pleasing to the ear.

"It's cool to do something unique," Moldover says. "If you keep it musical, it's cool. I try to make music the average person can appreciate."

The crowd gathered that evening in Berklee's Fenway Recital Hall clearly enjoyed the music, reacting wildly after every song. Even one of Berklee's faculty members in attendance, Professor of Music Synthesis Richard Boulanger, couldn't help but stand up immediately after the last number to say a few words about why he likes Moldover's music. A very significant endorsement, considering that a few years earlier, Moldover's music education consisted primarily of what he saw on television.

"I didn't know what was going on with music in general other than what was on MTV and what my friends and I were listening to," says Moldover of his high school years in Rockville, Maryland. Moldover, who began playing the guitar at 13, found Berklee through the Internet.

Arriving in Boston as a power chord guitarist obsessed with Nirvana and Tool, Moldover at first felt overwhelmed by the musical skill of his classmates.

"I had a friend who was an amazing jazz player and I didn't even know how to listen to jazz. I just heard a bunch of stuff," Moldover says. "It really kind of bruised my ego because I saw how many guitar players there were and how good they were."

By spending a few hours in the practice room every day and listening to as many kinds of music as he could, Moldover began to feel comfortable. But a turning point came when he discovered his affinity for music technology and began spending more time in the college's computer labs.

"I used to think electronic music was lame," says Moldover. "But I always thought composing was cool. I had a computer and I liked using it so I got into using the computer for music projects. I got into writing. I thought, 'Wow, this is easy. I can do this. I can crank out whatever I want.'"

Photo by Liz Linder
Matt’s Top Five: Records That Opened My Musical Mind • Hard Normal Daddy – Squarepusher • Live Art – Béla Fleck and the Flecktones • Unorthodox Behavior – Brand X • Everything Frank Zappa has ever recorded • Man-child – Herbie Hancock

Before long, Moldover had become a Music Synthesis major, later adding Contemporary Writing and Production as a second major, a combination that he says has made his work in each field stronger.

Another important moment for Moldover arrived when he met Warren Johnson, a Berklee student percussionist who specializes in drum 'n' bass, a musical style Moldover describes as "double-time funk, hip-hop, dance music with electronic sounds." The pair became friends and then bandmates, forming Schism, a band that plays live drum 'n' bass in dance clubs usually dominated by D.J.'s.

"We're trying to bring live bands back into that dance scene by sounding tight enough for people to dance to," says Moldover. "If we can bring the element of liveness and interaction with the audience and improvisation into that scene, it would be really cool."

Turning the sound of an entire music scene upside down might seem like a daunting task, but it's typical behavior for Moldover, who has walked a unique path through the Berklee curriculum. Citing a desire to write "anti-hits," he dropped out of Songwriting and left the Performance major because he didn't want to "practice for six hours a day." And he has augmented his education by seeking musical experiences outside the classroom. Moldover has sold two songs to the soap opera "One Life to Live," produced projects for other artists, and written music for short films. He has also taken on a litany of management responsibilities for his band, including booking gigs, creating artwork for CDs, and analyzing business contracts.

"I don't want to have to ask a business guy to read something for me and tell me whether it's good or bad," says Moldover. "I think I'll get better contracts because of it. I think you should try to learn whatever's going to help you, even if it's not a musical thing."

But for Moldover, it all eventually comes back to music, and to his desire to do new things in music. He doesn't want to merely play the guitar, he wants to advance its evolution.

"I'm trying to expand the guitar as an instrument," says Moldover, citing Eddie Van Halen and Stanley Jordan as two musicians he respects for developing radical guitar techniques. "Now I want to take it somewhere else."

Anyone who has seen Moldover perform might argue that he's already started.

Links of Interest
•	Matt Moldover's Website

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