Christopher Willits (US electronic musician)

Christopher Willits (born April 8, 1978) is a San Francisco-based guitarist, electronic music composer and producer, visual artist and scholar. His music is electroacoustic in nature, in that both analogue and digital sounds are meshed into one singular sound. Born in Kansas City, Missouri, Willits began playing guitar when he was about 13. He got his first guitar after a football game when, out of the blue, his father suggested they buy one for him. He had played piano as a child, but up to this point, his main interest had been sports. "I couldn't really stand piano. It felt too boxy and classical," he remembers. "I loved that dynamic energy of sports and the improvisation... I played everything; soccer, baseball, basketball. ... That's really where my understanding of improvisation and teamwork came in." With his own guitar, he began playing all the time, trying to figure out the solos that he heard on his Jimi Hendrix records, and then forming bands in the psychedelic vein. Also a visual artist, he attended the Kansas City Art Institute, where he studied painting, then came to Mills College in California where he studied with Fred Frith and Pauline Oliveros. An ambient album released while still in college on Taylor Dupree's 12K label launched his solo career. Willits is also skilled computer programmer. To create his soundscapes, he uses his own custom software and accompanies his live performances with interactive visuals. The Kansas City native came to the Bay Area in 2000 (After a painting scholarship at KCAI)and received a master's degree in electronic music at Mills College where he studied with Fred Frith and Pauline Oliveros. Along the way, he advanced his skills in photography, cinematography and new media. Willits completed a master's degree in electronic music at Mills College. Willits, as a solo artist or in collaboration, has released music on the following record labels: 12k (US), Ghostly International (US), Fällt(Ireland), Sub Rosa (Belgium), Ache Records (Canada), Yacca (Japan) and Plop (Japan). He has toured throughout Europe, America, Mexico, Canada, Australia, China, Thailand, and Japan. Willits has participated in numerous projects, including collaborations with Ryuichi Sakamoto, Tycho, Zach Hill (drummer from the band Death Grips and Hella), Kid606, Brad Laner (Medicine), Nate Boyce, Latrice Barnett (singer/songwriter and bassist for Handsome Boy Modeling School), Taylor Deupree (12k record label founder), Scott Pagano (visual artist and motion graphics designer), Matmos. Willits is also the founder and director of the record label and community building organization Overlap. In 2023, Willits remixed Kenneth James Gibson’s track Poured Semi Silently Upon You for the remix album Further Translations on Gibson’s label Meadows Heavy Recorders. Also featured on the album is Jack Dangers, Brian McBride, Scanner, and others. Willits regularly teaches workshops on spatial audio, music production, the creative process, and leadership. He has taught at California College of the Arts (CCA), San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI), Berkeley City College (BCC), The Art Institute San Francisco, Norcal DJMPA, Sound Arts, the Bay Area Video Coalition and Goucher College. Willits is also a meditation teacher teaching at The Center (cite ), Habitas, Envelop SF, and his own private workshops. Willits plays a custom Moog guitar. Along with various outboard gear and uses Ableton Live with Max for Live, and Touch Designer for video processing. Willits is the executive director of Envelop, a nonprofit organization that amplifies the connective power of music through immersive audio venues, and open source spatial audio production software. Christopher Willits directs the creative collective http://overlap.org which is involved in creative community building events and runs a studio in Oakland, California. Willits' guitar lines and harmonies are folded into each other using custom-designed software (Willits uses the term "folding" to describe the non-linear, real-time indexing, cutting and re-sampling of guitar and voice). Willits, in an interview, further expanded on the term 'folding,' "It has a lot to do with time. I actually wrote a whole thesis about this, if you want to go to the Mills library and check it out [laughs]. It's a very simple process of recording something to memory and then indexing at different points. But instead of it being a granular process [a form of synthesis in which a sample is separated into 'grains'], I'm actually skating to different locations within this memory. So there's this continuous rupture of time that creates these rhythmic patterns, so these melodic patterns start to emerge out of this time processing technique." New Moon (Ghostly International) - 2025 Gravity (Ghostly International) - 2022 Sunset (Ghostly International) - 2019 Horizon (Ghostly International) - 2017 The Art of Listening (An Original Score Soundtrack) (self-released) - 2014 Opening (Ghostly International) – 2014 Ancient Future (Ghostly International) - 2012 GOLD (Overlap) – 2011 Live on Earth – Vol. 3 (self-released) – 2011 Tiger Flower Circle Sun (Ghostly International) – 2010 Live on Earth – Vol. 2 (self-released) – 2009 Live on Earth – Vol. 1 (self-released) – 2009 Plants and Hearts (Room40) – 2007 Surf Boundaries (Ghostly International) – 2006 Pollen (Fallt) – 2003 Little Edo (Nibble) – 2003 Folding, and the Tea (12k) – 2002 :plateaus, centers, stoma... (self-released CDR) – 2001 storks and wires (self-released CDR) – 2000 Willits + Sakamoto (Christopher Willits and Ryuichi Sakamoto) – Ancient Future (Ghostly International) – 2012 Boyce + Matmos + Willits - Subconscious Attraction Strategies (2011) Willits + Sakamoto (Christopher Willits and Ryuichi Sakamoto) – Ocean Fire (Commmons/12k) – 2008 Christopher Willits + Taylor Deupree – Listening Garden (Line) – 2007 The North Valley Subconscious Orchestra – The Right Kind of Nothing (Ghostly International) – 2006 Christopher Willits + Taylor Deupree – Live in Japan 2004 (12k) – 2005 Flössin – Lead Singer (Ache Records, Yacca) – 2004 Christopher Willits + Taylor Deupree – Mujo (Plop) – 2004 Christopher Willits + Taylor Deupree – AS08 (Sub Rosa, Audiosphere) – 2003 Saturn 138 (HWTBL) – 1998 Tycho - Montana (Christopher Willits Remix) The Glitch Mob - The Clouds Breathe for You (Christopher Willits Remix) Harold Budd - Olancha Hello (Christopher Willits Remix) Alejandro Bento - Heartbeat (Christopher Willits Remix) Clarinet Factory - Nautilus (Christopher Willits Remix) Tmymtur - 050912/0 (Christopher Willits Remix) Various artists – Idol Tryouts (Ghostly International) – 2006 Various artists – SMM vol.2 – Breathe in Seven Sections (Ghostly International) – 2004 Various artists – E*A*D*G*B*E – Seven Machines For Summer (12k) – 2003 February 20, Aidin Vaziri on; AM, 2015 at 10:30 (February 20, 2015). "Christopher Willits talks Noise Pop 'Opening'". Loaded. Archived from the original on June 20, 2019. Retrieved June 20, 2019.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link) "Christopher Willits Is Enveloped in Spherical Sound". PopMatters. July 11, 2017. Retrieved June 20, 2019. "Christopher Willits Tiger Flower Circle Sun". exclaim.ca. Archived from the original on June 20, 2019. Retrieved June 20, 2019. "Christopher Willits' Floral Reverie The Meditative Muso and Digital Artist Takes Us On a Head Trip". www.nowness.com. August 6, 2010. Archived from the original on June 20, 2019. Retrieved June 20, 2019. Andy Kellman. "Christopher Willits – Music Biography, Streaming Radio and Discography – AllMusic". AllMusic. Archived from the original on October 8, 2011. Retrieved November 10, 2014. [verification needed] "Christopher Willits on Collaboration with Ryuichi Sakamoto". www.ableton.com. Archived from the original on June 20, 2019. Retrieved June 20, 2019. "Christopher Willits & Ryuichi Sakamoto: Ocean Fire burns on 12k". Tokafi.com. Archived from the original on November 10, 2014.