Issac Monheit: Funk, Electronic Folk, and Computer Lullabies

Issac Monheit is a Tufts Computer Science Major from the Bay Area. Quickly after arriving at Tufts, Isaac and a group of friends formed the band Land Urchin, playing venues in a more traditional college campus music-making mode. He has since diverged from that and morphed into a tech-music experimentalist. Originally trained as a pianist, Issac has recently discovered an intersection between visual media, computer science, and musical expression. Last year, one of his Instagram clips went viral, and he has learned that there is an industry for his creative technology work. Now, his energy has shifted to experimenting with what he can do technologically, jamming with friends, and playing small sets and performances with his electronic folk band, Big Moss.

So, let’s jump into it. Give me a little introduction.

Sure, yeah, I’m Isaac. I’m from the Bay Area, originally, and music wise, my dad got me playing piano when I was really young, and I kind of just kept on with it from there. I play a little bit of other instruments if I need to, and I do a lot of music production, so I’m into the electronic side of music and putting stuff together. And I think piano is really good for that, because it translates well to making your own stuff. Because most of the programs just use piano input for everything. So you could play the piano to play drums, bass, whatever.

Would you ever return to just your more classical origins?

Funny enough, I was so against it for so long, and now I’m finally coming back to it. And sometimes when I sit down and play, I notice myself playing more like classical type things. I do a lot of improvisation, so sometimes it leaks its way back in. I’m like, Oh, this kind of sounds like some classical that I used to play. But the story with classical is I took it for all of elementary and middle school, and then by middle school, I was hating it because I didn’t like that. There were all these notes on a page that I had to read—too much practicing. I just didn’t practice at all, and I wasn’t into it. And then I discovered jazz and funk. I was like, wait, you can, like, improvise on something? And you don’t have to read something and play? You can just, listen or play what comes from you.

What was your introduction to funk?

I joined this funk band class that my parents were like, oh, you should try this. And it ended up being the most instrumental thing in my music career. The guy who taught it was just like we’re not gonna read any sheet music, we’re just gonna listen to songs and play them. And there’s no like, oh, you have to play this. You have to play that. It’s like, Oh, listen to this. Like, what? What can you pick out from that? What can you play? It kind of opened up all these new worlds of what can I do? And so I started doing that little bit of jazz and then pop and kind of like, everything else is kind of a variant of a variant of those things.

Where would you kind of land yourself now, on that scale—or is it just a bit of everything?

I’ve been a lot into more ambient, improvisational stuff. So I most times now when I play piano, I kind of just sit down with nothing in mind and just play.

So you’re like Lofi Girl?

Haha, yeah pretty much.

Did you ever play music formally at Tufts, or was it always kind of just jamming with friends and then forming bands and that sort of thing?

Yeah, I did play music formally, but it was not the first thing I did. I ended up joining one of the Jazz Combos my like, sophomore spring or sophomore fall, maybe. But at that point, I was already kind of deep in the band scene. As you might have heard from Jay (Jacob Galuten). We have a similar beginning at Tufts situation where this guy, Lucas, approached me, literally, before school even started, and was like, we should play music together. I was like, I mean, that sounds great. It was just during orientation week, we got a bunch of people together and started playing and that was, like my introduction to the Tufts band scene, or music scene in general.

Obviously, Land Urchin isn’t still a formed band, so how did that evolve for you. What are you doing now?

Yeah, I think at the start of Tufts, it was like, everything’s about Land Urchin, and all the music I played was with them, and not much else besides, like, jazz combo for school. And then by now, I think I’ve morphed into more of, like, I jam with some people at certain times, and I jam with other people. I’m in a band right now, which is more of a smaller thing, like electronic folk type of thing. That’s really fun just me and two friends. So it’s like a little bit more chill than the Land Urchin scene. We don’t play like, the same type of venues where it’s like big parties, but and I also do, like my own, like musical projects. I also recently discovered I took an SMFA (School of the Museum of Fines Arts) class for the first time, and I fell in love with this program called Touch designer, which is like a visual program.

What does electronic folk mean?

Well, I feel like we kind of, what is it? We move around different genres. It’s a little bit more amphibious. Electronic Folk is a good way to put it, because the composition of the band is a drum machine and a synth and a guitar. And so it’s very just like, cut down. We all we do some like, harmonies, we all sing sometimes, and we play some sometimes we play like, older tunes, some 60s tunes. We just kind of play whatever we’re feeling at that at that time.

I’m imagining Steeley Dan with a Synth.

I love Steeley Dan but its maybe less put together than that.

Tell me more about your Musical projects and Touch Designer.

I kind of just got this idea in the SMFA class with Helenski. He showed us this thing one time where you can connect it to Ableton, which Ableton is a music production software. So you have these visual software, musical production software that, like, work together. And then I found this third party thing where this guy set up hand detection on the on the visual software. And so you could have your hands move around and things happen. And so I was like, Wait, what if I, like, turn that into music? And so I have, like, I created a thing that, like, when you press down each finger, something different musically happens.

Thats so cool. What kind of music are you making with this?

I think there’s a lot of differences. I haven’t really fleshed out the music that I make virtually in that way. As of right now, it’s a lot of like ideas and like and concepts, more where it’s like, you could do something really cool with this, and I’m expanding towards that. And it’s funny I posted, I have an art Instagram where I used to just post a bunch of beats that I make for friends, and when I was in the class, I posted one of the projects that I made, and it like, really blew up on Instagram. And then that catapulted me to like, wanting to make more and more things that are like it. I didn’t want to be influenced by that but I was also really hyped it was received like that.

So you were initially planning to go into Computer Science, how is this impacting that trajectory?

I think it’s a good tie in, actually, because, yeah, I originally was on the path of computer science which is, like, try to get to a big tech company where you paid a lot of money, yeah? And, like, work hard hours, it’s a tough job, but it’s a good job because it pays you a lot of money. And that’s kind of the reason I originally took computer science was like, okay, if I’m gonna get something out of this very expensive experience, it’s gonna be a degree that will allow me to do these things. I think over time, especially this past semester, and learning these new programs, and the Instagram stuff, it had gotten me more excited about making it. I’ve talked to some people, and I’ve realized that there is a field doing a kind of technology, music thing, maybe not necessarily music, but, like, some type of visual technology. Its a field called Creative Technology, which I had no idea was, like a thing. It essentially made to help people figure out how to make something using technology. Like, you could use this program and this program, and this is how you turn it to real life. I’m getting more and more excited about doing something like that, yeah, rather than working like a software job.

So you’re trying to figure out how to turn this into a full-time gig?

That’s my idea right now. If you asked me this a year ago, it would be like, the answer be definitely no, I’m gonna do my job, make money, and then do this as a side hobby. And now I’m realizing that software engineering is not exactly what I want to be doing permanently. It’s interesting, but I’m way more excited about when I get off of work at my internship and pull up my computer and do a little fun project.

More of Issac’s music can be heard on Spotify | Instagram | Youtube