 Backroads is made possible by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund, with money by the vote of the people November 4th, 2008. Teach up at BSU in the music department. My name is Greg Gaston and the rest of the group is Kevin Daly from Minneapolis on electric guitar. Eric Sundine adjunct professor of percussion at BSU on mallet cat midi mallet controller. John Stewart who plays keyboards and Lee Foster who plays electric bass. I think Greg and I kind of met in the hallway one day and I'm pretty sure that I came up to you and said that I had heard a pretty well-known classical trumpet player playing a Bach cello suite on electronic wind instrument, which is what I play. And I said, Greg, this is so cool. And he goes, oh yeah, man, you know, it's been around for years and he goes, what's wrong with you? You haven't seen that yet? No, I'm kidding a little bit. But anyway, so we got to talking about it and decided that it would be fun to put together both a faculty group and a student group. And what is the name of reference to? The technology that we use is called midi, M-I-D-I, and it stands for musical instrument digital interface. But what I like to call it is USB for musicians instead of using a typewriter keyboard or a calculator number pad to input data into a computer. We as musicians use the electronic wind controller. We use a mallet. We use a percussion and we use keyboard and we actually use string instruments as well. Would you describe a midi show to someone who has no idea coming in? What would you say to them to expect during the show? Anything. Yeah, be prepared for the unexpected. And pay attention, I think, because there are so many different sounds, you just never know what you're going to get. And if you're not paying attention, you miss things. I think it's pretty important in a midi, it's a concert to really lock in as an audience member and try to figure out, okay, who's making that sound. And we're going to try to make it obvious tonight who is making each particular sound. It's an active experience. It's not designed to be whatever music, complacent music. It's the type of music because it is original, so the listeners never heard it before. But it's also a challenge in a sense because even though the rhythms are very familiar to the listener, what they're hearing along with that is something completely new. So we ask the listener to come on our journey. It isn't like rock and roll or country or polkas to where you start with one style and you end there. There's a lot happening. And that also includes some improvised solos in the middle of all that, too. So that's the jazz element, I think, improvisation. Roads is made possible by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund, with money by the vote of the people November 4th, 2008. If you enjoy watching Backroads Online, please consider making a tax-deductible donation at lptv.org.