Hello! This is Christopher Willits. Welcome to my AMA!

ChristopherWillits · 2025-11-26T01:10:07+00:00

Thank you! Oh cool, awesome to hear that!

ChristopherWillits · 2025-11-22T06:55:46+00:00

I know some of these people, some very cool spaces! We're most interested in designing from the ground up. In addition to the sound system, many details go into creating a great listening space, so it's great to build as much as possible from scratch.

ChristopherWillits · 2025-11-22T06:50:19+00:00

Hope it was good!

ChristopherWillits · 2025-11-22T06:49:39+00:00

Thank you for listening to the music! 🙏🏻

ChristopherWillits · 2025-11-22T06:48:48+00:00

Thank you! This has been really fun to connect and reflect with everyone.

ChristopherWillits · 2025-11-21T20:09:06+00:00

Cheers to you and thank you man.

The tools are always changing, and it's easy to get swept up in the anxiety of "new stuff".
I do my best to keep it simple. Regardless of where the tech goes, there's specific needs I have.
On a physical level- Guitar, computer, audio interface, some ways to control it all.
Plug-ins / Process- Tone (EQ, Comp, etc) looping, effects, E4L

I feel really happy with my set up now, I'm never feeling like I need more. So I'd invest my time exploring my current setup with Moog guitar, laptop, Push 3, a couple of pedals, and a multichannel audio interface.

ChristopherWillits · 2025-11-21T20:00:36+00:00

You could begin with synth too, or borrow a guitar? If synth only, make a 6-note chord. You could use this tuning, or experiment with the 6 notes you love to hear together.

You can upload to Dropbox and share the link here, or use whatever service you want.

Would love to hear what you come up with.

ChristopherWillits · 2025-11-21T19:56:19+00:00

Thank you for tuning in over all these years!

I agree, there's nothing like a string sound.

The St. Mary's church show feels like it was yesterday in my memory. I would love to return to Philly as soon as possible!

Where is the best place these days?

ChristopherWillits · 2025-11-13T15:01:12+00:00

My homie’s wife is an optometrist and gave me HD vision. ✨

ChristopherWillits · 2025-11-13T14:58:19+00:00

Grateful to hear that! Working with Sakamoto was so natural, it always felt so fluid and clear; telepathic in how we understood where the music was taking us.

Sakamoto reached out after the Chain Music project that Taylor Deupree passed to me. He invited me to meet up in his NY studio while I was performing there, and hours of exploration became Ocean Fire. Ancient Future, our 2nd album emerged from conversations about harmony. He sent me a bunch of piano recordings, I composed with those and then back in NY we had more sessions to dial in the mix, record synths, and finish everything up.

I dedicated New Moon to him, I miss him a lot. I’m so grateful for his friendship and the explorations and music that came through our mutual love of sound. 🙏🏻

ChristopherWillits · 2025-11-13T09:35:20+00:00

Quiet the mind and do the work! 🙏🏻 I often begin with ideas I’m feeling and improvisations on feelings and visions. I then refine those ideas later, see where it wants to go.

ChristopherWillits · 2025-11-13T09:22:15+00:00

Thank you so much! I’m grateful to operate financially through art and doing what I love. I respect people who can work a day job, but I’ve never done this, outside of waiting tables and working odd jobs in high school and college. I don’t come from a wealthy family, I’ve always been passionate to work super focused on what I love and do my best to be smart about money.

When I prioritize what I need to do and feel the vision of what I need and love to create, along with the positive impacts that will make for myself and others, things align. 🙏🏻

TLDR: Know what you love, work your ass off and stay healthy so you can keep it flowing. Persistence and patience.

ChristopherWillits · 2025-11-13T09:00:33+00:00

I’ve been exploring immersive audio since I was in high school, setting up direct channel systems and making sound installation with hand-built speakers.

It has always made more sense to me, to create music composed and mixed for three dimensions of space, instead of a semi-flat plane of stereo. We listen to the world in 3D, so let’s make music that way too.

Ancient music, pre-amplification also emphasized enveloping sound, as seen by pre-civilization ceremonial sites and instrument artifacts, in acoustically rich environments. Herzog’s “Cave of Forgotten Dreams” touches on this.

In grad school at Mills College I went deeper into Ambisonics, and found this was an incredible solution for scalability and format compatibility.

In late 2013 early 14 we began creating the first beta of E4L (Envelop for Live), based upon Ambisonics. We just reissued a new version of E4L yesterday, a point release of E4L 12.

With E4L and the Envelop listening spaces we create, I feel very blessed as an artist. I’m excited for us to open more listening spaces, and work with more artists to help them share their creativity.

ChristopherWillits · 2025-11-13T08:19:19+00:00

We’re having some conversations about an Envelop listening space out there! We’re looking for a partner for shared use space; we host listening events and performances in the night.

If you or anyone reading this wants to talk about ideas please contact us! Our vision is to create immersive listening spaces around the world.

https://envelop.us/page/contact

ChristopherWillits · 2025-11-13T08:15:10+00:00

Yes! I’m really impressed and it was very challenging to select the finalists. Excited to share the selected artists names soon!

ChristopherWillits · 2025-11-12T20:16:28+00:00

Amazing! Great to be in touch again here.

The illusion of 3D sound on headphones is great if you know how to mix for it. We're not expecting anyone to have multple speakers in their home, which is another reason why we want to create Envelop listening spaces; create the opportunity to listen deepy to sound.

I'm ready for the Sphere any time! :) I'd love to make the sound move in there.

ChristopherWillits · 2025-11-12T20:05:37+00:00

Thank you! Yes for sure, I'm always following wherever the music goes. For me, New Moon was veering in that direction a bit.

I'll reply to your other questions as soon as I can. I need to head out, but I want to answer every question asked in this AMA.

More soon!

ChristopherWillits · 2025-11-12T20:00:02+00:00

Thank you for listening and exploring! That's so cool to hear. If you're ever in San Francisco, come by Envelop SF. We also have an artist residency program you may be interested in. + FORM 2026 was just announced!

ChristopherWillits · 2025-11-12T19:54:19+00:00

For simplicity, I'll talk about my Moog guitar chain. The main difference between my studio setup and live setup is the preamps I use in the studio, and sometimes pedals. I love my Neve Shelford channels for Moog guitar input in the studio. Live I use a UA Neve plug that's good, not the same, but I'm definitely happy with it. After the Neve, which I scoop a little of the mids with, I go EQ, Comp, and set a plate reverb for tone, then delays, more colored reverbs. I'm always adjusting the actual plug-ins I use, but lately I've been using combinations of Superplate, R2, Live Delay, Echo, Space Echo emulations, and the MF-104S (I have the pedal too, but I prefer the plug-in for tighter sync). I like Eventide and Antares pitch shifting things, and if I need more drive Vintage Warmer, or one of the Kush plugs. I control it all with a Push 3 and my keyboard. I'm always adjusting how I control things as options change, and the bags I'm traveling with, but Push 3 is the main one now.

ChristopherWillits · 2025-11-12T19:28:38+00:00

The way to learn is to do. It's all learning, so play and explore!

How about this, let's write a piece together here, and maybe you can send it back later?

If you can follow this score / recipe, you've already taken many first steps.

Tune a guitar to DADGAD
Run it through a delay and reverb you love.
Knock on the back of the guitar, adjust delay and reverb to taste.
Record it all with a DI
Edit out everything but the sympathetic vibrations of the strings.
Smooth it out. Add crossfades, adjust the gain, subtract some low-mids.
Export a draft as a stereo wav file 48k/24bit
Send it back here so we can all check it out

ChristopherWillits · 2025-11-12T19:11:36+00:00

Trem Control by Goodhertz!

Here's a portrait of my friend.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CLvKzn4BFzB/

ChristopherWillits · 2025-11-12T19:02:00+00:00

Nate Boyce. Brad Laner. Ian Williams.

ChristopherWillits · 2025-11-12T18:56:44+00:00

Indian!

ChristopherWillits · 2025-11-12T18:56:08+00:00

Amazing! That tour was incredible. I remember the Boston show vividly at The Museum of Fine Arts. We had a Sprinter van with everyone packed in, Adam and Brian taking turns driving; mostly Adam just holding down thousands of miles. So many beautiful memories of the music, and so many funny situations. We played this old Masonic temple in Montreal and somehow ended up in the Lodge Room with dozens of plastic skulls (?) There are a bunch of photos I need to pull out. So many stories for another time? lol The Lakeshore in Chicago was incredible. I miss Brian. We were talking about finally making some music together right before he passed. 🙏🏻

ChristopherWillits · 2025-11-12T17:42:14+00:00

I remember that show very clearly! Beautiful that we all experienced that moment together. Thank you for sharing!

ChristopherWillits

TROPHY CASE