An Exclusive Reels of Dreams Unrolled Interview With Jim Bartz:
3-D Renaissance Man

The Reels of Dreams Unrolled philosophy is that undiscovered music is always new, no matter how long ago it was recorded. With that in mind, allow me to introduce you to progressive music's new renaissance man: Jim Bartz. — Scott Hamrick

How and when did you get started playing music? What musical training do you have?

I've been locked onto music since the age of four or five. The radio was my baby-sitter. My older sister could just talk on the phone with her boyfriend as I sat rocking out to the music. I like that it was the psychedelic era stuff that caught my attention above everything else — 1967, the Doors, Jefferson Airplane and the Beatles. I wanted to be a drummer at first but apartment dwelling made that impossible. I received a cheap guitar from my oldest brother (15 years my senior) for Christmas when I was around 9. It took me awhile to flip the strings on it to play it as a lefty. After that it all just seemed to make sense and it came together. I am a self-taught lefty. I started working on my own music right off; recording to a little three-inch reel tape recorder, then to cassette.

Many professional musicians start out as performers, then after spending years recording in the studio they start producing albums for other artists. Is it accurate to say your career has gone more or less in the opposite direction?

Not really. I started as most do in bands, but at the age of 20 I found out that my band of five years wanted to do a Led Zeppelin Tribute thing. I couldn't imagine just pretending to be someone who already was, but they were drawn by money to venture into it. I dropped out of the band scene in 1984, sold my Marshall stack and went to recording engineer school — a quick 5 week vocation course in Ohio. I was determined to get something happening. I had so many sonic experiments brewing in my head. I knew that I couldn't just rely on someone else to capture my ideas onto tape so I was compelled to get myself into a recording studio to work the big dream machines so I could explore the techniques that were evolving in my brain. I was very lucky to land a job in a modern, sate-of-the-art studio built by the guy who recorded Eye of the Tiger for Survivor for the Rocky movie and I began working with some bigger artists right away like Chuck Mangione, Survivor, Cheap Trick, then more progressive styles with Adrian Belew and Darryl Steurmer. I was convinced I was going to be fired while going through the first month there. It was a very complex studio and patch bay and I was new to it all. It was a very high pressure situation with those types of artists used to working the L.A. pro studios but after a month there, I felt like I had it under command. It was a great initiation! After about six months I was already recording what became my first album for Larry Fast's Audion label finishing it up by late 1987. I've also had my share of doing engineer/production as well, but I felt restricted from being able to really let loose and explore atmospheres like I did in my own music.

Which artists have had the most influence on your own music and why?

In order of exposure and inspiration: latter-era Beatles, Moody Blues, Yes, Genesis. I thought this kind of music was so expressive in ways that really seemed to matter to me on a larger scale, like philosophical ideas and personal insight into existence. I found a lot of fundamental wisdom within the music; beliefs that I still carry to this day. It was a freedom of music and true artistry that I have rarely felt since.

Have any new age or electronic artists influenced you, or did you arrive at this kind of music on your own?

Yes, Jade Warrior's early '70s Floating World and Jon Anderson's solo album Olias of Sunhillow made an everlasting imprint. I'm certain that those influences are heard in my stuff, but I don't really listen to much new age music — beyond whatever drifts in on the wind of mass media. I like to think that my music is an invention from my own spirit. It feels very personal to me and some of the sounds I've made really have a tremendous ability to transport me away from this world's chaos.

What are your feelings on the current state of progressive rock? Do you listen to any of the newer progressive bands?

No, I haven't heard very much at all. I'm sure there are many out there who would fascinate me, but I have been on a type of self-disciplined path that keeps me away from most music. I have been intentionally blocking out most music as I have been transfixed with the idea: What would my music sound like if I had never heard anyone else's? I have been digging deep inside to inspire myself with the idea of a new music, even with new instruments.

Have you ever considered playing your music in a band format, or is your music necessarily a mostly solo endeavor?

I must admit to having been driven away from the traditional band concept of bass, drums, guitar, vocals. The media has done that for me, along with our human tendency to follow one another’s lead. You look at a guitar magazine and it shows you what is expected of you as a guitarist — you must be a freak and such. I like a good freak show too, but I just became disenchanted by guitar-based poser bands as the end all of rhythm/ lead instruments. But I have been thinking of a trio situation with the StringStation, percussion and melodisist; hopefully everyone having multi-instrumental abilities.

Hypothetically speaking, what if King Crimson or Yes (or any other band of your choice) wanted a String Station player? Would you be interested in joining the band?

That's a wild question! I would be flattered to no end, but would most likely decline the offer. Sadly, some of these artists are beyond being produced anymore — the politics of their career have them locked into certain expectations from management and also from fans. I wouldn't want to linger in shadows of days gone by when I'm thinking of the future in new ways. I think any newer artist wants to create something unknown, bold and fresh for themselves first and foremost, joining an established group would certainly make that artistically difficult from my vantage point. But then again, I would have to gauge the personalities and reasons for it all. I would love to do projects with individuals as the legend of the band would not be so strong an influence to the new music we might make.

Tell us about the StringStation. How was it conceived and built? What does it sound like?

I came up with the idea in the studio while recording my album for Larry Fast. It was an accident that caught my ear when I bumped one instrument while holding another. It was a Chapman Stick and an eight-string lap steel guitar. The sound was very cool. It was a year or so later before I actually assembled anything as prototype to really play with, but when I did, it seemed to have a logic that I couldn't let go of. The way it sounds today after about 10 years of playing and evolving on it is quite cosmic and emotionally evolved. I have the array of 40 strings tuned in groups of favorite chords. It's all very major modal stuff, so it has this beautiful and evoking essence to it. Very conducive to conjuring visuals in the mind's eye and soothing the brain, but in an engaging way. I have it all going through a mound of gear that gives me the ability to take any single sound and warp it out how ever the moment derives. It's a random universe and I let the music live in that realm.

What are the most common techniques you use to play the String Station?

There are literally dozens of playing techniques from tapping to harmonic plucking to hammering. I have spent most of my skill development on dual finger-style picking and bass tapping. It takes a good half hour to warm up on all the varied playing modes of it, but it can be very enticing with the possibilities it presents at any given moment thereafter. The real technique of it I found is in the idea of letting the music just flow from the instrument as it wants to. I have been evolving this idea of making my playing of it somewhat second nature, like driving a four-speed manual transmission car. After a while, you don't consciously clutch and shift, you just do it when it's called for... even while carrying on a conversation. This way the music is always a surprise and a joy to me and not something I've been pounding at for weeks to make it “just so.” The music exists in that moment of creation as a gift that will never be quite the same way again. Sometimes I think its just me being a lazy musician but it just feels right this way — naturally.

Will the StringStation ever be made available to the public?

I'd like to see that! One in every home in the new world! but I wonder if it could ever be a household appliance. Chances are that I will remain the sole practitioner of it for a while but I would love to make some other versions beyond my prototype and share them with recording studios or artists looking for a new sonic trip. It's a somewhat expensive collection of wood and gear though and takes some time to dial in... but it's something I think any guitarist or musician would have fun with right away. It draws you in with all the varied playing styles.

Why do you feel that the StringStation is perfect for DVD applications?

From an engineering aspect I am extremely excited about the resolution that DVD offers. I always work to create an immersion factor to my music that enables you to fly inside of it and feel it as something real. I feel that if ever there was a music to be made in surround DVD, it is with this instrument. I've designed it to be a custom surround instrument that utilizes weird pickup placements and recording techniques that are always swimming in my head. It will be such a gratifying thing to record and project to listeners. It's really a completely new world of audio expression on a large scale! It's like undiscovered alien spaces. It makes you feel a powerful emotion when it shows itself to you. I am always dreaming of an expedition into this unknown. Surround is a sensation that will tickle your mind into emotions you never knew you had in there! In a way, its realism presented larger than life and then twisted into evocative emotions by artists. It's a wondrous time to be on the planet, technologically.

Why do you want to record a DVD? What could we expect to see on a Bartz DVD?

It really defies description. I do know that it will be an adventure of a new degree. It will be unprecedented in so many ways and forms. The timing of its arrival is perfect! The new DVD formats are going to allow outrageous sonic advancements equivalent to what the Hubbell space telescope did for astronomy.

Until you are able to produce a DVD, will you continue to produce regular CDs? Will Moodzoolia be a regular CD? If so, where are you in the production of it and how long will it be until it is out?

At this point with the StringStation, it's Surround Sound or bust. The two things are made to become one in my mindset. Most of my own studio technology is of the old 16-bit variety, I have been holding out on production of the new music until I can do it the way that I see it in my mind in the new DVD medium. It's 24-bit or nothing these days. It may be a year or so before a new recorded work is out. I want it to be very special. Lately, instead of recording, I have been working on a series of intimate live performances in the Wisconsin area. It's a “live sound experiments” show and it's giving me ideas and accelerating evolution of my playing in cool ways. On stage is something that I have not done in a long time, but I am very excited in showing the instrument to people and trying different presentation ideas to an instant live response.

How would you describe your music to someone who has never heard it? Is it progressive rock, new age, electronic, a combination of these or something entirely different?

I always find myself looking for the words to describe it all. Space Jazz — future trip comes to mind, but I think it will be different on some scale just because of the novelty of the new instrument.

What are you trying to create or achieve with your music?

Music has always had such a defining power in my life. I have always been drawn to the strange unknown sound; something that makes you feel a depth of emotion and seeming as if from a dream. I feel a depth of emotion in large chords, ones with 20 or so notes going. They have the ability to evoke images in my mind's eye that seem covered, then summoned into focus by the strange sound and music. I want people to feel an exquisite inner beauty; detailed and awe-inspiring like a great star-strewn night when you can see a billion suns at midnight gleaming over head and you know it's something so beyond concept.

Are the pieces on your albums composed ahead of time, or do they usually evolve in the studio as the result of improvisations and experiments?

My three albums to date have had combinations of the two, but the last one Evolver is much more organic and free flowing. I have a bit of the String Station on it, but it is primarily a freaky evolving dream sequence of mesmerizing sound trips woven into one long resolve. I let it assemble itself in a lot of ways, which was a very pleasant way to work. It seemed very natural. Like I mentioned earlier, I have been obsessed lately with this idea of a musical segment in a moment that goes beyond our ability to construct it... it just happens in the now and is gone just as quickly if not captured in a recording. I have been focusing on letting my ability to play it become somewhat second nature so that anything I play is off the top of my head and derived from what I am feeling at that time and place. In those moments, I can play things that I could never actually construct mentally. It's just natural flow in a Chi sort of way. You don't think about what you are playing, you just let it emerge and ride its own wave.

Without being too technical, what instruments and equipment are heard on your albums? How much of what is heard on your CDs is synthesizers or studio effects and how much is guitar, StringStation or other more organic instruments.

I have always taken an amount of pride in the fact that my albums are made almost entirely without keyboards or synths and that Larry Fast dug it as pure sound creation. I have devised a way, using gear in the studio and varied stringed instruments as the source sound, to twist and shape it into forms that are no longer really recognizable but have that elusive ability to summon wonder in my own mind's eye, hopefully to a vivid degree. I've never heard anything else like it really. It's a complicated process but the effort always rewards. Some of these sounds are like transports to other worlds for me. It is all well beyond the norm of music that is thrown at us daily. It's a very large undiscovered universe in that sound.

Your second and third CDs, Build Your Own Planet and Evolver, were only available as limited edition, home-burned CDRs. Why is this? Is there any chance these CDs ever be officially released in larger numbers? Have you sought a label for these CDs?

I, like so many musicians, have become disenchanted with pandering and catering to record label's bottom line interests which lie above and beyond the art of the music itself. It's all understandable when money is the real reason you are in this field of endeavor. I'm not so sure I would sign me either! Too eclectic and left of center! I had a few fans of my music track me down and they actually gave me the impetus to release these new works on my own label Imagineer Audio-Visual. The Internet has sparked me to reveal the music to an audience in new ways. I live as a starving artist for sure, but I feel deeply the true reality of my pure music, unmolested by corporate interests, and that's worth a lot in this day and age. First and foremost, music is a human-to-human communicative art of desire. All the business stuff is another trip all together. I would like to find another label like Audion to release my new CDs to a wider audience but more and more, music is just another money making scheme. I hope the freedom of the Internet will change that somehow but things are quite weird there.

When and where were these two CDs recorded?

Build Your Own Planet was early ‘90s as the unreleased follow up to P.O.E.A.S. I recorded it on my own mobile sound lab at home. Evolver was let loose throughout the ‘90s in it's own discipline at home also. I just put out 100 of the first editions of each in early 2000.

P.O.E.A.S. was released on Audion in early 1988 and then re-released on my own Imagineer A/V label in 1994 with a couple of bonus tracks from the era sessions. I have a very great feeling for the record, it captured so many elements of new sound for me. It was the thrill of a chemist for sure; combining many altered things to make new ones. There are moments on the record that give me an extreme sense of personal solace and have a deja-vu type mystery to them for me. The song “Over Oceans” moves me in ways nothing else has ever come close. It's a magic of discovery. I think that Evolver has many of those abilities and is more serene while Build Your Own Planet has more of a song and melody expression that moves within a cosmic kind of grace.

Your web site and album covers display an intense desire to unite music with visuals. Where does idea come from?

I have always felt the urge to be a visual artist but could never draw a straight line really. Then when I started working with computers and Photoshop in the early '90s I was amazed at what could be achieved on the screen with the aid of the software and imagination. It could draw a straight line! The unresolved visual artist inside of me came out. I now design the album cover art while I am recording the music and it becomes a unified expression of what I am thinking and feeling in that moment. I am very proud of the covers for both B.Y.O.P. and Evolver and know that they create visually what the music makes me see in my mind's eye. I think the detail in the artwork matches the detail of the music as well. It's a lot of work and it doesn't come easy, but it is a great way to get away while recording and gain some perspective from another side.

Why the interest in 3-D artwork? Why spend so much time creating 3-D versions of your favorite album covers for your website?

I joyously discovered a way to make these 3-D images from my own experiments and found the process to be very relaxing and not all that time consuming. It takes a couple of hours on average to make each one and there are times when I need a break from the music but still feel like I want to do something artistically. It forces me to think in 3-D. My graphic computer is right next to the audio one, so it's easy to fly from one to the other. I like to think in 3-D and explore what it is that makes something appear 3-D. I have some new ones that I've been advancing and ideas on maybe doing a book of the works. It's also a way to share the music that has inspired me. I believe in the positive nature of progressive music. It all has such great intentions and motive. It 's all about evolving!

What possessed you to remaster Yes’ Tales from Topographic Oceans? Has Yes or Atlantic Records found out about this? Are you worried about being sued for selling unauthorized copies of this album?

I am worried and have stopped sharing it. I didn't do it to infringe rights or to make money. It was all just a labor of love as it happens to be one of the albums that moved me into music exploration. I almost felt a compulsion to make it sound right as it always should have for the people like me who appreciate it. It is like a fine wine, but it was always served in a dirty plastic cup by Atlantic. The recording released on CD always sounded horrible — very low-fi and after a re-release of a “digitally remastered” version that still sounded awful, I felt kind of cheated at purchasing it again only to find it was again so poorly done. For my own listening pleasure, I decided to tweak it through my audio gear in my studio. I had fun and It came out sounding detailed and powerful. As any proud engineer would like to do, I wanted to share it with some people who would appreciate it and who perhaps also felt shorted by the remastered version. The Internet gave me access to other Yes fans on newsgroups and people started to ask me about it. I only shared it with those who had already bought the album — usually several times over. I devised a way to give it away as a bonus or gift with the purchase of a Trilogy of my three CDs . It always seemed kind of not right I guess, It was something Yes and I shared. I was wanting to share it with those who wanted to feel it sounding polished as I did. I have had many people totally love the refined version I did and find so much joy in it. That was the point. The album was a great statement of human insight and intuition that I feel the band made as artists for those reasons, and to share it with those who were longing for it to sound good was a thrill for me. But the Japanese recently did a remaster and found the real master tapes. It sounds much better even though it was EQed and processed like a heavy metal CD. But I was able to chat with many fans of the album and have some fun sharing a very human work amongst those who already owned it. I don't think anyone got hurt and a good time was had by all!

What’s the next thing on the Bartz agenda? What can we expect to see or hear from you next?

The StringStation is my main focus these days, along with my live sound demonstrations and working up my abilities with it before some serious surround recording. I am searching for the right people to help me build the instrument past my current prototype and the people to help me record it in 3-D. I just had it patented and all that's missing is the money to start it all up with. I am hoping for those who have a philanthropic intent rather than those whose interests are purely of monetary gain. Again, I believe this music and instrument are about human achievement, inspiration and communication. I want people to be involved with it for the right reasons this time out. This is not about money at all — other than the lack of it. Once the tools are found and implemented, I feel certain that some glorious, unprecedented music and visuals will occur for a new world of thinking people. It's all going to be very sophisticated, ultimately human and very alive in this random universe.

Instructions for viewing Bartz's 3-D art in above interview (Yes and Bartz album covers):

1. Sit about a foot and a half to two feet from center of screen.

2. Keep your head LEVEL and don't tilt from side to side.

3. Look between the two images.

4. Let eyes relax while staying fixed on space between the two images. Focus "through" monitor as if to see what's behind it. Allow eyes to begin to merge the two sides together as you gaze beyond your monitor screen A third image will seem to appear "between" the left and right images. The trick is slowly bringing that "third" psuedo-image into focus. Once it is achieved a few times your brain and eye muscles will "remember" the technique. It is like bike riding or swimming. Do it once pretty well and you never forget. It may take a while at first, but it does work!

5. To see more of Bartz's (and your) favorite album covers in 3-D, visit his website.

All graphics on this page (except Bartz of Space and background graphics) © Jim Bartz.