Chris Beyt | "New Roots"

Chris Beyt is a guitarist, bassist, recording engineer, electronic composer, and educator living in Asheville, NC. He has a master’s degree from the University of North Texas and a doctorate from the University of Illinois, and he is now the Assistant Professor of Jazz Guitar and Recording Arts at Western Carolina University.  

As a husband and father of two boys, to Chris, his music always comes back to the family. New Roots is guided largely by his family and their story. In 2017, they moved from Illinois to North Carolina where they will be for the foreseeable future, establishing new and deep family roots as the Beyt boys grow up. This narrative, while by no means an uncommon experience, was a driving force for this music. 

The first song on the album, “Scott’s Song” originated from Chris’s son Scott himself. When he was 1 year old, he often vocalized by repeating “da,” as kids do. This was the genesis of the composition heard in the repeated chords at the very beginning and all throughout. “Two Against One” was guided by the difficulties and “bad days” of parenting two small children alone when Chris’s wife was at work. And “Time on the Road” is a song that was largely conceptualized while he was driving on his long commute through the mountains of Western North Carolina.. The form of the song is symmetrical, ABCBA, but, such as leaving your neighborhood at the beginning of a trip is a very different feeling than entering your neighborhood on your return, the song does not feel symmetrical. Rather, it’s a continuous journey, until the final explicit return to its introduction, such as finally arriving back home. 

As an artist that utilizes both worlds, Chris created this album with a combination of recordings  of live, interactive jazz quartet performances and music composed electronically with samples and virtual instruments. As such, there is a range of very realistic sounds, sounds that don’t originate in the natural world, and even some from everyday life, such as the sound of the coffee maker at Chris’s parents’ house recorded on his phone one Christmas morning as his boy played with the Legos Santa Claus brought the night before. 

The album features Jacob Rodriguez on saxophone, Pavel Wlosok on piano, Ryan McGillicuddy on bass, and Jay Sawyer on drums. Chris performed all guitar and electric bass parts, as well as sampling, midi sequencing, and recording, mixing, and mastering engineering. 

With this latest project, Chris Beyt found a comfortable workflow combining live performances with electronic composition and post-production effects. By handling composition, performance, and audio engineering himself, he was able to freely compose and improvise at every level of production. 

In an age where listeners so frequently shuffle playlists and streaming radio stations, Chris decided to not be concerned with centering on a single sound for the record, as  many great jazz records do. Embracing sudden changes in timbre and styles, and shifts from live musicians to electronic compositions, New Roots employs a diverse set of styles, always centered around the guitar. 

The tracks largely fall into two categories: entirely live performance with added editing and effects, and a combination of electronics with live performance recorded at various times. For instance, on “Scott’s Song” and “Two Against One,” many of the instrumental tracks were prepared by Chris ahead of time, then Jay and Jacob recorded their contributions after the fact, followed by further editing and processing. “A Cold Open” and “Time on the Road,” on the other hand, were recorded entirely as a live performance with only some effects and editing applied afterwards. “Further to Fly” by Paul Simon was composed entirely with electronics, using composition through non-linear sequencing, and then guitar and bass tracks were recorded on top. Finally, the first half of “An Outro into a Fugue” was entirely electronic composition with ambient saxophone tracks layered on top. This track also includes some outside-the-box approaches, such as the warbling electronic sound created by Chris running a guitar cable across his fingers. 

Some approaches were accidental. For instance, when recording the drum track for “Two Against One,” Jay recorded his part with two takes. Chris liked them both, so decided to combine them, adding to the frantic feeling of being outnumbered that the composition is based on. The result is a tense and busy feeling to the song with a too-brief moment of deceptive relief during the guitar solo. The complex melody of this song actually came from an improvisation Chris recorded into the computer, then virtual instruments and Jacob on sax performed the actual execution of it. 

This release marks Chris Beyt’s third release as a leader, and second also functioning recording/ mixing/ mastering engineer.