BT (musician)
Brian Wayne Transeau (born October 4, 1971), known by his initials as BT, is an American musician, DJ, singer, songwriter, record producer, composer, and audio engineer. An artist in the electronic music genre, he is credited as a pioneer of the trance and intelligent dance music styles that paved the way for EDM,[1] and for "stretching electronic music to its technical breaking point."[2] In 2010, he was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Electronic/Dance Album for These Hopeful Machines.[3] He creates music within myriad styles, such as classical, film composition, and bass music.
BT
Brian Wayne Transeau
- Prana
- Elastic Chakra
- Elastic Reality
- Libra
- Dharma
- Kaistar
- GTB
October 4, 1971
Rockville, Maryland, U.S.
DJ, singer-songwriter, musician, composer, record producer and audio engineer
1989–present
- Warner Bros.
- Perfecto
- Reprise
- Vandit
- Headspace
- Nettwerk
- DTS
- 405
- Black Hole
- New State
- Armada
- Enhanced
- Anjunabeats
- Flashover
- Coldharbour
- Binary Acoustics
- Monstercat
BT holds multiple patents for pioneering the technique he calls stutter editing.[4][5] This production technique consists of taking a small fragment of sound and repeating it rhythmically, often at audio rate values while processing the resultant stream using advanced digital processing techniques.[6] BT was entered into the Guinness Book of World Records for his song "Somnambulist (Simply Being Loved)", recognized as using the largest number of vocal edits in a song (6,178 edits).[1][4][7] BT's work with stutter edit techniques led to the formation of software development company Sonik Architects, developer of the sound-processing software plug-ins Stutter Edit and BreakTweaker, and Phobos with Spitfire Audio.[6]
BT has produced, collaborated, and written with a variety of artists, including Death Cab for Cutie, Howard Jones, Peter Gabriel, David Bowie, Madonna, Markus Schulz, Armin van Buuren, Sting, Depeche Mode, Tori Amos, NSYNC, Blake Lewis, The Roots, Guru, Britney Spears, Paul van Dyk, and Tiësto. He has composed original scores for films such as Go, The Fast and the Furious, and Monster, and his scores and compositions have appeared on television series such as Smallville, Six Feet Under, and Philip K. Dick's Electric Dreams.[1][8][9][10][11] He was commissioned to compose a four-hour, 256 channel installation composition for the Tomorrowland-themed area at Shanghai Disneyland, which opened in 2016.[12]
Early life and education[edit]
BT was born in Rockville, Maryland on October 4, 1971. His father was an FBI and DEA agent, and his mother a psychiatrist.[10] BT started listening to classical music at the age of 4[13] and started playing classical piano at an early age, utilizing the Suzuki method.[4][14] By the age of eight he was studying composition and theory at the Washington Conservatory of Music.[3][15][16] He was introduced to electronic music through the breakdancing culture and the Vangelis score for the film Blade Runner, which led him to discover influential electronic music artists such as Afrika Bambaataa, Kraftwerk, New Order and Depeche Mode.[13][14][16] In high school, he played drums in one band, bass in a ska band and guitar in a punk group.[14] At 15, he was accepted to the Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts, where he studied jazz and enjoyed experimenting, such as running keyboards through old guitar pedals.[14][15][16]
Film, TV and video game scores[edit]
BT began scoring films in 1999 with Go. Since then he has scored over a dozen films, including The Fast and the Furious, Monster, Gone in 60 Seconds, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider and Catch and Release.[14][16][22][40] His soundtrack for Stealth featured the song "She Can Do That", with lead vocals from David Bowie.[16] BT produced the score for the 2001 film Zoolander, but had his name removed from the project. His tracks for the film were finished by composer David Arnold. BT also composed music for the Pixar animated short film Partysaurus Rex, released in 2012 alongside the 3D release of Finding Nemo.[51]
He has scored the video games Die Hard Trilogy 2: Viva Las Vegas (2000), Wreckless: The Yakuza Missions (2002), FIFA Football 2002 (2002), Need for Speed: Underground (2003), Burnout Revenge (2005), Need For Speed: Most Wanted (2005) and Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2005 (2004). He made the official second-long alert tone for the Circa News app.[1] In 2013, he scored Betrayal, a 13-episode drama on ABC.
In 2014, BT was selected by Walt Disney Company executives to score the music for the Tomorrowland-themed area at Shanghai Disneyland, which opened in 2016. He spent more than two years on the project, writing more than four hours of music that are played out of more than 200 speakers spread throughout Tomorrowland. BT called the undertaking "one of the most thrilling experiences of my life."[12]
Software[edit]
Sonik Architects[edit]
During the production of This Binary Universe, Transeau wanted to program drums in surround sound, and found that software tools to accomplish this weren't readily available. He decided to develop his own, forming his own software company, Sonik Architects, to create a line of sound design tools for the studio and another line of tools and plug-ins designed for live performance. The company's first release was the drum machine surround sound sequencer BreakTweaker, a PC plug-in.[16][80] In 2009, Sonik Architects released Sonifi, a product for the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch that enables musicians to replicate BT's stutter edit effect live.[81][82] BT himself has used it during live shows.[82]
In December 2010, Sonik Architects was acquired by software and music production company iZotope,[83] and at the Winter NAMM Show in January 2011, the Stutter Edit plug-in, based on BT's patented technique of real-time manipulation of digital audio, was released by iZotope and BT.[84]
In 2020, Transeau released an upgraded version of his Stutter Edit plug-in with iZotope, called Stutter Edit 2. This version includes more sound effects, more presets, and new features such as Auto Mode and the Curve editor.[85][86]
Other software[edit]
Transeau is a user of digital audio workstation FL Studio and he was included in the Power Users section on Image-Line's site in 2013.[87] In 2014, BT collaborated with Boulanger Labs in creating the Leap Motion app Muse, a device that allows users to compose their own ambient sounds using gestural control.[43] He also developed a standalone plugin synthesizer called BT Phobos for the music software company Spitfire Audio, which was released on April 6, 2017.[88][89][90][91] BT created presets for the synth plugin Parallels, released by Softube in 2019.[92] He also created analog synth tone patches for the synthesized Omnisphere 2, created by ILIO.[93]
In 2022, BT released the reverb Tails[94] with Unfiltered Audio and the synth plugin Polaris with Spitfire.[95]
Studio albums
With All Hail the Silence