Robert Schneider

This article is about the psychedelic pop musician. For the Texas musician, see Bob Schneider. For the American actor/comedian, see Rob Schneider. For the American cyclist, see Robert Schneider (cyclist).
Robert Schneider

Schneider performing at The Black Cat nightclub on October 20, 2006
Background information
Birth name Robert Peter Schneider
Born (1971-03-09) March 9, 1971
Cape Town, South Africa
Origin Ruston, Louisiana, United States
Genres Indie pop
Indie rock
Occupation(s) Singer-songwriter, producer, engineer, composer, guitarist
Instruments Guitar
Keyboard
Bass
Vocals
Percussion
Years active 1987-present
Associated acts

The Apples in Stereo
Neutral Milk Hotel
Marbles
Ulysses
Thee American Revolution
Spaceflyte
Orchestre Fantastique
Robbert Bobbert

The Foresters

Robert Peter Schneider (born March 9, 1971) is an American pop musician, music producer and mathematician. He is the lead singer / songwriter / guitarist / producer of The Apples in Stereo and has produced albums by Neutral Milk Hotel, The Olivia Tremor Control and a number of other psychedelic and indie rock bands. Schneider co-founded The Elephant 6 Recording Company in 1991.

Life and career

After spending the first six years of his life in Cape Town, South Africa,[1][2] Robert Schneider's family moved to Ruston, Louisiana. In Louisiana, Schneider befriended Mangum, Hart and Doss and began discovering and playing music with them. After graduating from Ruston High School, where he was Junior and Senior class president, and spending two years at Centenary College in Shreveport, Louisiana, Schneider moved to Denver, Colorado to attend university. Although he subsequently left school to pursue his musical ambitions, his academic interests remain strong, being an avid student of analytic number theory. In recent years Schneider studied mathematics at the University of Kentucky, completing his Bachelor of Science in Mathematics in May 2012, while also composing, producing albums and touring. As of August, 2012, Schneider is engaged in graduate studies in Mathematics at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia where he is pursuing a PhD in Mathematics with an emphasis in number theory and theoretical mathematical science under mathematician Professor Ken Ono.

The Apples in Stereo and Elephant 6

Soon after moving to Denver, Colorado in 1991 Schneider met Hilarie Sidney, Jim McIntyre and Chris Parfitt, who formed the indie pop band The Apples (the name was subsequently changed to The Apples in Stereo). The group made their first release in 1993 with the Tidal Wave EP that became the inaugural release on the Elephant 6 record label.

Schneider's prowess in harnessing the sounds of Elephant 6 bands became apparent with his distinct production style. In addition to producing all of the albums for The Apples in Stereo, he's produced work for the Olivia Tremor Control, the Minders and a number of other artists, but is best known as a producer for his work on Neutral Milk Hotel's critically lauded In the Aeroplane Over the Sea. The Wall of Sound production style implemented by his heroes Phil Spector and Brian Wilson was used on these records and cemented Schneider's reputation as the man behind the sound of many bands of the Elephant 6 label, which grew through the 1990s into a sprawling collective of psychedelic pop and experimental groups.

Solo work and other bands

Schneider has a number of solo projects. One, a project called Marbles, began with lo-fi Beach Boys-esque recordings done with Will Cullen Hart, and is the name most of Schneider's solo work appears under, beginning with the 1996 debut album "Pyramid Landing" and Other Favorites on spinART Records. Another project, Orchestre Fantastique, is an instrumental venture which recorded a soundtrack for the as-yet unreleased film Dean Quixote. Schneider also collaborated with Andy Partridge of XTC in the early 2000s, with the pair reportedly writing over thirty songs together by telephone; the project, however, produced no recorded results. Schneider also composed a number of jingles for television commercials during the 2000s, including a string of pop songs for the Kohl's department store chain.

Schneider formed a comparatively dark band in 2004 called Ulysses in Lexington, Kentucky, which released the 2005 album 010 on Eenie Meenie Records recorded live with a single microphone, and released a second Marbles album Expo in 2005 influenced by Electric Light Orchestra, as well as Gary Numan, Michael Jackson, New Order and The Cars.

During 2006, it was announced that Schneider was playing in a Kentucky-based psychedelic garage band with his brother-in-law, Craig Morris, called Thee American Revolution. Thee American Revolution released the lo-fi psych-pop album Buddha Electrostorm in 2009 on Garden Gate Records; the album was reissued worldwide on December 5, 2011, on UK label Fire Records.

Schneider occasionally records and performs children's music as Robbert Bobbert and released an album Robbert Bobbert and the Bubble Machine under that name, and is in the process of developing an animated kids' television show based on it.

Recent work

On December 20, 2006 Schneider appeared on The Colbert Report for the season's rock-themed finale. He performed an original composition ("Stephen, Stephen") about the show's host, Stephen Colbert, and then closed the show alongside Chris Funk (of The Decemberists), Peter Frampton and Rick Nielson with an "all-guitar jam". The Apples in Stereo later performed "Can You Feel It?" on The Colbert Report to celebrate the release of their Japanese 7" vinyl picture disc release of "Stephen, Stephen." The Apples in Stereo were officially the first band scheduled to perform twice in the program's history.

Other appearances in popular culture include a cameo appearance as the banjo player in a bar fight scene in the 2008 Mike Myers Paramount motion picture The Love Guru (for the soundtrack of which Schneider also produced a traditional bluegrass song performed by Kentucky group The McKendrees), a short science fiction film starring Schneider and actor Elijah Wood entitled Explore the Universe with Elijah Wood produced as the prequel to The Apples in stereo pop video "Dance Floor," and the performance of The Apples single "Energy" by the contestants of the television show American Idol.

Mathematics

Since 2006 Schneider, who has a BSc in mathematics, has composed using a Non-Pythagorean scale of his own invention based on logarithms, incorporated prime numbers and the sieve of Eratosthenes in both a composition for bell towers and in the score for a play by mathematician Andrew Granville and playwright Jennifer Granville that debuted at the Institute for Advanced Study on December 12, 2009, has written a plan for an electronic composition based on prime numbers lasting millions of years, and has engaged in a number of other experimental music projects taking inspiration from mathematical concepts.

Since September, 2010, Schneider has performed compositions in an experimental notation (including his score "Composition for Two Hemispheres" and a score by Jeff Mangum of Neutral Milk Hotel) for his Teletron Mind-Controlled Interface for Analog Synthesizers, a mind-controlled control voltage generator made from a circuit-bent Mattel MindFlex electronic toy, scored for one "conductor" wearing an EEG sensor with Schneider and experimental musician and visual artist Robert Beatty controlling the filters of Moog synthesizers. Other experimental musicians have subsequently built Teletron units from an instructional video Schneider released online.

In 2012 Schneider announced he was stopping touring; whether this hiatus is temporary or permanent is unclear. Schneider is currently a PhD student in Mathematics at Emory University, studying number theory under noted mathematician Ken Ono.

Non-Pythagorean scale

Approximate comparison of Non-Pythagorean pitches (red) Play  to 12-tone equal tempered pitches (blue) Play .[3] Note that, while the equal tempered pitches increase exponentially, the pitches found lower on the Non-Pythagorean scale have frequencies that are farther apart while pitches found higher on the scale are closer together.

The Non-Pythagorean scale is a musical scale and tuning, based on natural logarithms,[4] conceived and developed by Robert Schneider of The Apples in Stereo. The term "Non-Pythagorean" is a reference to the Pythagorean tuning approximated by the chromatic scale.

The scale was introduced in 2007 with the release of New Magnetic Wonder, the sixth studio album by The Apples in Stereo. The album featured two brief compositions using the scale. Enhanced CD versions of the album included a third composition as well as a variety of information from Schneider concerning the scale. Audio files and instructions are also on the disc, enabling the listener to prepare a MIDI keyboard to play in the Non-Pythagorean scale.

Performing discography

The Apples in Stereo

Marbles

Ulysses

Thee American Revolution

Orchestre Fantastique

Robbert Bobbert & The Bubble Machine

Producing discography

In addition to producing all of the albums for The Apples in Stereo, Schneider has produced many for fellow Elephant 6 bands, including the following.

References

  1. ↑ Jud Cost. "Apples in Stereo: a Terrascopic interview" (PDF). Retrieved 2007-06-29.
  2. ↑ Matt Dornan (1998). "The Apples in Stereo". Comes with a Smile. Retrieved 2007-06-29.
  3. ↑ Schneider, Robert. "Non-Pythagorean Music Scale", ApplesInStereo.com. Accessed 15 November 2012. Archived October 3, 2013, at the Wayback Machine.
  4. ↑ A brief explanation of the differences between Pythagorean and Non-Pythagorean scales at Pop Culture Will Eat Itself
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