 Hey friends, I'm here with serentip serentip. Oh, no, I already probably said it wrong serentip is fine. Yeah serentip We are doing an online interview today. So Let's get into it. Hey, let's start with Just your your background because from what I've seen your cultural background has influenced who you are as an artist a lot So where are you from? Let's start there Um, so I was actually born in Bangkok, Thailand and Then when I was 11, I moved to Sweden. So my mom is Swedish and my dad is Thai And then I've been living in New York for almost five years now. Okay. Wow. So do you speak? Thai Swedish and English wow. Yeah, it's a Power trio and what's your what's your musical background? So I kind of started playing My first instrument when I was nine I played piano and violin and then I also played some Thai instruments And later on in high school. I started to play double bass For a while. So I played a lot of instruments But I I started to sing when I was just a kid just you know singing along in the car in Bangkok There's a lot of traffic. So I had a lot of time to sing in the car to whatever was going on But I actually didn't start in taking lessons until I was 16 However, when I was Nine or ten my mom asked me if I wanted to You know Apply to a bunch of music schools in Sweden elementary music schools And it was kind of like if if I got in we would move so I went to Sweden and You know, I flew by myself from Thailand to Sweden and at the time It was like an 11 hour flight and to be 10 years old and flying that far by yourself. You felt pretty pretty cool So that that flight did all the additions got into the school. So we did decided to move and The school I started at was called autofritics music music classes and It was music elementary school where you had choir singing seven hours a week And all the kids in the school could sing so for me moving from Thailand to Sweden to start at this school Was like starting at Hogwarts and Harry Potter came out at the same time So it was like I'm going to all this school with all these wizard kids, you know And it was the coolest thing ever and that's just kind of like where it actually Catapulted for me to stay with this as like a a thing for life Awesome. I'm a little bit jealous. Actually, I wish my experience was that And then did you get post-secondary? education as well for music so after I went to the music elementary school for music. I went to music high school For a jazz voice. So that's when I actually started to focus on the voice as my primary instrument And then I so in Sweden you can go to something called a pre-college But the pre-college in Sweden. It's after high school before college. It's not like a thing you do while you're in high school It's it's a thing after so and usually these pre-colleges are in the middle of nowhere So I was in this town in the south of Sweden where they had like 20,000 people and the only thing that was fun that you could do on the weekends was to go to the pizzeria There was literally nothing just crops of canola and you know Fields forever, but the music school we had there they had a music like building with studios and rehearsal rooms So we're open 24-7 So we would have like six hours of ensemble a week And then just rehearse and practice and play for the rest of the time for two years Wow With no distractions. It was great. Oh my goodness. Yeah, and you can definitely including myself hurt yourself because you're just You know on your instrument all the time. Yeah. Yeah, that's a factor Yeah, but it was great and then after that I went to the Royal College of Music in Stockholm for my bachelor's degree and then I applied for the masters of music in New York at the Manhattan School music Wow, and you So you've are you in the masters of music or is that complete? It's completed. Yeah. Wow A lot of music education had a lot of potentials and at what point did you start? because you focused on jazz throughout that was there a time when you started focusing more on the the electronic Instrument and influence side of that So I've actually never really Like studied electronic music that part of me meant my musicality is self-taught more or less I did do one Ableton class in my masters At Manhattan School music, but otherwise I've it's just been all driven from and a passion and curiosity and I think a lot of it started from A that I've always loved pop music like Sweden is a pop country So you can look at Max Martin, you know, he's frightened like all the greatest songs and But then the other part of it is also that in with the jazz tradition as a jazz singer It's so common that you know you sing the head once you're done with the the head You might take a scat solo or not or you just let everyone else solo and then you sing the head again And for me that was so bizarre and so boring I wanted to be more involved with the music and be able to use my voice more like an instrument So it was very very influenced by Bobbi McFerrin So what I wanted to do was like, okay, how can I try to contribute to my band without taking away from the musicians? So the idea was like, oh if I have pedals then I can create these sounds and And camouflage my voice and decide when I want to be a singer a lead singer in the center in the center of attention Or when I just want to accompany So you're really treating your voice like an instrument exactly so actually my first pedal This one. Oh a good choice. Yeah, so I got the T.C. Hellecan voice live play Back I think it was like 2009 Wow So 11 years and did you start looping with that as well? No, I didn't get into looping immediately. I felt like the knob result were a little tricky But I did I used a lot of the reverb stuff and the harmonizer Yeah, yes back then Hmm and was that around the time that you? Because you got noticed by the band leader from snarky puppy, right? Is that? Mm-hmm. Yeah, and were you using that setup? Or were you doing a more traditional? So I met Michael Lee the band leader of snarky back in 2012 So, yes, I was already using the pedal And I had a band at the time called Molo. This is super deep cut not a lot of people know about Molo You're one of you and it was kind of like we called ourselves that we were playing indie soul So it was like neo soul, but not really and So Michael like fine found our band and really like what we did and then later on I I released in an EP in 2015 Yeah after I Did the monk competition and the combination of those two I think made Michael ask if I want to do a record with him hmm, and that's what resulted in Tribus, that's what called Tribus hmm, and How we talk is okay. We talked about Tribus a sec. What was the what was the process like for? Writing that did you do a lot of the instrumentation? So I did write a lot of the I wrote all the songs some of them by myself some of them with different friends and I Think the instrumentation the whole concept of blending in Thai instruments Started already with my first EP that I self released so what I did there was that I went to the northeast and parts of Thailand and Met with a bunch of traditional musicians and ask them if they could play and then I Like sampled and recorded them with a little, you know zoom recording And then we put it into logic so we could actually play it as like media instruments so on the record there are these and Influences of Thai instruments that we just you know played in so Michael played one of the drum grooves It's with Thai drums, but on an SPD. Oh, that's so cool Yeah, so that was one of the ideas of like you having Thai instruments to connect with my Thai heritage And then I think the rest of the instrumentations with like synths and stuff that a lot of that came from The music I've already released and the vibe I have I guess and then also just like Michael's Genius brain. So were you using this pedal setup on Tribus? No Mm-hmm. There's actually a hilarious photo I can send to you later So Michael is one of the reasons why I you know got connected with you guys at T.C. Helikin But also at another company called earthquake your devices. Yeah So at the end of one of the songs called Emperor of the Sun It's like going crazy. It's a bunch of sounds and a lot of those sounds are it's Justin Stanton on keys But it's also my voice So Michael just literally just connected a bunch of pedals on this table and then we were just I just sang into a mic And then we were just playing with the knobs and That was when I was like whoa, I can create this many sounds and Then that's that's where it started. That's where it started to go Bad and heavy The pedal board is so heavy now Yeah, it looks how will we talk about the pedal board? What's your what's your order of effects here? So my first pedal is actually a T.C. Because that's the one the T.C. Performed be Because it helps me connect the microphone with an XLR cable into the pedal Yeah, because it has the quarter-inch outputs it has Yes So those can go into the rest of the board but basically because all the other pedals are guitar pedals It's hard for me to go from a microphone with an XLR into straight into a pedal and also because of other noise stuff The T.C. is just like a great Starting pedal and when I do masterclasses or whatever Especially for my female students. I tell them that the T.C. Helicon pedal is like the foundation You know, it's like the thing that you first put on your face to make it smooth And nice before you add like the eyeshadows and stuff That's a good analogy Sorry continue No, it's just the the pedal that I always use So it's never off at all And do you use any of the the midi of harmony effects or the looper? um So I for the T.C. Performed be and why I've kind of moved over to that one instead of the The voice live play is because of the drum machine And the the vocoder Yeah, so I have a midi keyboard now connected into the before me Yeah, I see that on this and do you have the drum pads connected as well? Um, no, so the drum pads of the perform ve is just on the perform ve Oh, we have a We have a recent software update that'll let you trigger it from pads if that's Oh, really? And you'd like, yeah, I can I can send you the information on that. It's in From what you know, but that would be great because sometimes it's hard to play with just these two fingers Yeah, the little button corners can be triggered. Yeah, it's yeah, it's hard to be accurate sometimes Sweet. Oh, that's really cool And then uh, what does the ve go into on your board? So then the ve goes into this pedal from earthquake devices called the swiss things Which is basically um It helps boost the signal and it like They say that they they work with um What is it called in noise suck? So it takes away noise suck because if you have a lot of pedals Then at the end of the chain, you know, your original sound going in is not going to be as clear Yeah So this this pedal just like makes sure that everything is the same quality as when it first went into the first Perform ve pedal And it also has these circuits where I can um turn on and off multiple pedals at the same time So I don't know if you can see in that photo. There's like um loop one and loop two So those are actually not loops. They're just like I have all the reverb stuff Or delays on loop two and then I have all the I have the pitch fork, which is a Harmonizer but based off intervals the tremolo distortion on loop one so I can like turn them on and off at the same time Sweet Yeah, which helps when you have a lot of buttons. Yeah. Yeah, it's an easy solution. We're hoping to Add effects loops to our our products because that would be really handy for people with this type of setup Yeah, um So you're going Can we just talk through how you use each pedal? I think that would be really interesting. That's interesting to you. Um Because especially the pyramids and the rainbow machine are Pretty crazy and I'm curious how you would Use those frequently live Yeah, so the the pyramid and the rainbow machine If we go back to the makeup analogy Those are literally like the colors of the pedals itself It's a bright pink and a pretty bright purple. You don't use it all the time. You pick your moments That's how I view them. So I don't let me see if you can hear any of this But this is me using the pyramids Oh, is it ramping up in speed? That's really cool. So I was I was moving the the feedback Knob and the the rate knob at the same time manually. Okay. Yeah um But it has a bunch of really weird effects So actually with the drums it can be pretty cool So you can get like a really like pitch shifted wobbly glitchy. Yep. That's awesome Yeah, it's it's really really cool Um and then the rainbow machine has a similar thing but it It kind of feels more like it's going into like this dreamy cloud So this is just like if I just trigger it It's just weird And funny But then there's something called the magic button and when I trigger the magic button, you really just go into space Do that's awesome Yeah, never Sorry, I was gonna say I've never heard that used on vocals. Um, that that That sounds like a lot of fun. We got to get one of those in our office for testing purposes No, it is very very fun And like I told you that I I've always wanted to be able to contribute When I'm playing live with the band but without becoming the central focus So before I use any pedals if I was just trying to accompany like a guitar player with my voice just like Or whatever you want to do Then people would think that I was trying to sing and they would just be like why is she not singing louder or like No, why is she doing that? That's distracting. But you know, if I just go Yeah, then it's people don't even know that that's coming from me And it's I feel like I can I can do more to add to the overall Music landscape, but without stealing attention when it's not about me. Yeah That's awesome. That's uh, it's a humble approach to It's a jazz approach, you know, yeah, the many would say the correct approach At least at the music schools I've been to um And then the avalanche run is just acting as your ambience there So, yeah, the avalanche is it's a delay pedal Hello Hello So you're you change the delay time live and get those pitch shifting effects exactly So that one is great too and you have a tap trigger on that one But um when I've been doing some looping now with ableton, I actually Use the delay in ableton more Because then it's perfectly in sync with the click And even if I try to you know tap it now, it's it's not going to be as In time as like, you know a digital delay. Yeah where I can sync it But I like that I can play with those time knobs and just play with the sound So there it kind of works for me in the same sense as the rainbow and the pyramids Yeah, that is it's more like a color. Yeah Nice And then so that's loop. That's one loop. Is those three pedals? So I also have the afternoon on that one. Oh, yeah Which is a big reverb. Yeah, how does that sound on a voice? You can drag is that just quickly changing the The size of the space Yeah, well actually not the space. You're just like kind of dragging the reflection So it's almost similar to a time knob Okay Yeah, it sounds it sounds like a big delay almost like with a bunch of tiny repeats That's really cool. So that's loop one and then loop two is your overdrive tremolo and pitch Exactly your first is the pitch fork Which I love because I'm a woman and sometimes I want to sing a bass line and I don't have that register my voice. Yeah, so Like if we would do You know Billy Jean And that's really cool because when I loop it in it sounds like an instrument And you'd normally just use an octave or do you use the intervals as well on that? Yeah, so that was actually two octaves down. Okay, this would be one octave Okay But I also use like the fifth. I I mean, it's kind of like what kz benjamin who plays with robert glasper does So improvise with the fifth below Which is cool. Yeah And then sometimes actually an octave up With some reverb is pretty too And that's going into the hummingbird That's let me see here My my cables are not that the best and also it's tricky with you know, the different sides that the The cables need to go in. Yeah. So let me see here. Where do I go? No, so that one goes into the tremolo the hummingbird and then the hummingbird goes into the westwood the distortion pedal And then it goes back to the brain Of the swiss things. Yeah, so the hummingbird is just a tremolo So actually with the octave up on the pitchfork and the afterneath They get pretty they get pretty together And do you do you keep it generally at a fast because I've heard uh I've heard in demos you use the fast a lot. Do you do you often change the time on the tremolo or do you kind of Yeah, so I was actually playing that one now The rate I like to play with a rate knob um So I kind of go between slow and fast But I think it's just easier to hear the faster ones because they're more of the the attacks Yeah, you know to get that Yeah, yeah, definitely Yeah, and the last one this is the distortion pedal. Yeah This is the distortion with the fifth down So this gives you that like guitar You know stored a guitar sound you can just take a solo with it. Exactly. Which is what I do. Yeah um, and do you so how would you use Say the vocoder and the ve into the pedals. What would that think you could demonstrate? something like that um, so Let me just think What I do So once again, I don't use any of the crazier stuff on the perform v e Just because I already have a lot of craziness on my board So the perform v e for me kind of works more. It's just like the thing that just can make me sound good um But um, but I'll try to do a loop I'm just curious about how the perform v sounds with the craziness on your board. Yeah combined Oh my goodness you have said it yourself best Your your voice is used like an instrument with that rig and I love it. That's I'm gonna listen back to that. I'm so excited. That was so awesome. Thank you so You you're involved in this live live music festival right now, right? Oh, no Um, but you're still doing workshops and live performances pretty frequently Right. Yeah. So, I mean the the festival is a festival and fundraiser actually So it was running April 1st until April 7th And we had artists like chi korea perform and bill brazil and john patatucci and linda o and then You know, Antonio sanchez And it's been like an amazing thing and we've been so crazy Happy and surprised about the response that we got from all these artists that they wanted to, you know, donate with their time and talent for the cause Um, so they played and you know, we raised a bunch of money. We actually raised I don't know how much it is today, but we've raised over 50 50 5000 dollars. Wow Congratulations. Really cool. Thank you. So that money is going now to help new york musicians who've lost work due to the virus Mm-hmm The application just closed But the the online concerts will still be up until April 15th Okay, so people can go and donate still and watch the concerts Exactly. Awesome. And um, we're planning, you know, to do other things on the platform So the website live from our living rooms will still be up and running and You know, hopefully we'll we'll put up some, you know, maybe do some interviews like this or blogs or, you know, master classes and collaborations just to kind of keep everyone connected because now everyone is so isolated in their bubbles And I think the world really Needs a platform to connect more than ever. Yeah, definitely So we're trying to do that for the audience and the artists As well, that's awesome Uh, so we'll we'll have a link down below to where you can all watch the festival and donate And we'll keep posting on our socials whenever You share something. Um, because we're just so excited about what you're doing I'm doing a master class on sunday actually On the snarky puffy page They have a crowdcast account So i'm doing a master class on pedals for non-guitar players for non-guitarists That'll be good. Um, is that is that gonna be live or It's gonna be live. Well the videos stay up after the stream likely. Oh, sweet. Yes But please tune in because that's it'll be fun. Yes, sweet. So do you have anything else you're Wanting to talk about what's going on that you're releasing? Do you have new music on the way? Yeah, so I just released a new track. That's more of the electronic music vibe um a week ago, I think With in collaboration with evan marion who was an amazing bass player and composer and producer So that track is out right now. It's called claire. Oh Okay, where's that available to listen to is that on all platforms? Is that all platforms? Sweet Yeah, so if you go to my Spotify page, I've pinned it as like a new song to check out. Oh, that is claire. Oh awesome And um besides that I have some other music with him coming out and a couple of other artists that I've collaborated with But then I'm also working on a new record myself Yes, that uh that I'm gonna be recording with uh michael Again next year Awesome. So you're still in the writing phase for that? Yes. Yes Yeah But we'll definitely have a lot of vocal effects And still, you know elements of tai and swedish in there and the the record will be a Based of the concept of climate change Oh interesting. Yeah I think this is a good place to rap. Um, thank you so much for your time. Uh Everybody check out um seren tips instagram and her live Shows that she's doing also check out her new music and her upcoming music But just genuinely thank you for this. This means a lot to us And um, we're just so happy that you keep using the perform ve um, and that you've you've just uh Integrated it into your fantastic live setup. Um So thank you from the bottom of our hearts. Keep doing what you're doing. Thank you, you too, ravi Yeah, happy to be a part of the fam