Brett Copeland traces his path into electronic and electroacoustic music through artists who treated the tuba as a flexible, expressive engine rather than a fixed orchestral voice. Influenced early on by Nat McIntosh and the genre-blurring work of Youngblood Brass Band, he became fascinated by acoustic sound manipulation—multiphonics, vocal effects, and timbral shape-shifting—as a foundation for later electronic exploration. That curiosity deepened through performers like Brian Wolf, whose use of effects, drum machines, and live processing opened the door to Brett’s own experiments with signal chains, distortion, and degradation using tools like Ableton Live and Max/MSP. What began as playful experimentation eventually became a philosophical stance: honoring virtuosity while deliberately breaking sound apart, embracing grit, noise, and punk-rooted disruption as a way to expand what the tuba—and composition itself—can be.
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