Manjinder Singh Benning
Biography
From raising the the roof at a dance club to raising the collective unconscious, Manjinder envisions the harmonious, sustainable, marriage of technology, art, nature and music.
As a musician, Manjinder performs killer breakbeat drumset, inter-galactic rolling bass lines, and a slew of electonic gear from custom hardware devices to self designed software to extend the capabilities of what a machine can musically do. Manjinder is also a student of the North Indian Tabla drums and volunteers his time hosting youth workshops on hand-drumming. Manjinder was the co-founder of the World Symphonic Groove Orchestra (WSGO) and a key player in the KarmetiK Underground. Alongside his wingman, Jess "Astroboy" Brown, Manj's musical adventures have materialized into the amorphous psycho-emotive entity that is Bhutan. Manjinder's current list of gear for live performance with Bhutan include: Macbook Pro running Abelton Live and Max/Msp catching loops and effecting his Roland V-Drums with the TD-20 module.
Manj sends the master timing MIDI sync to the rest of the band via MIDI. A Roland SPDS drum pad is used to trigger loop records and send fx on/offs via midi. Manjinder also vocalizes with a head-set microphone swimming in a sea of fx. He is currently experimenting with a Max/Msp based real-time beat tracker that would automatically follow his tempo and send out dynamic, changing, tempo synch messages.
Background & Education
Manj received his Masters of Applied Science from the University of Victoria in 2007 in Electrical Engineering with a focus on computer music, researching a plethora of things including: how to use adaptive filtering techniques for automatic beat tracking and increased gestural precision and analysis/synthesis of beat-boxing vocalization. Manjinder is currently designing and building assistive technology to help people with special needs express themselves, from the basic forms of communication to more creative endevours such as assisted music performance and visual artistry. He continues to materialize his visions through the exploration of an interactive paradigm of accelerometers, wireless orientation sensors, 3-D position controllers, eye-trackers, breathe controllers digitally collaborating to give birth to a sonically and visually therapeutic environment.
