by Toshiya Ohno

Note: Translation of an interview with Authentic Artists founder Chris McGarry originally published by Rolling Stone Japan in the May 2022 print edition, online April 20, 2022.

Can you let us know your background briefly?

Music, popular culture, and new technologies are lifelong passions. I started studying violin in the Suzuki method when I was 5 years old. So you could say that the origins of WarpSound, our metaverse music brand, are in Japan. My musical interests and background are pretty diverse. I played with the San Francisco Youth Symphony and have DJ’d for Prince. Prior to starting Authentic Artists (parent company of WarpSound), I led music vertical development for Oculus VR. That was an exciting time that sparked our vision for creating the sound of the metaverse. Japan’s own virtual idol, Hatsune Miku, was another inspiration.

What’s your basic idea and the mission?

We use cutting edge deep learning and game engine technologies to make new virtual artists, social music experiences and music-driven collectibles for virtual worlds. Our mission is to awaken a deeper connection with music. Everyone on our team loves music. WarpSound is how we share this love with others. Our interactive artists and music experiences are ways for audiences to have fun with music and explore it in new ways. I think that makes us the first truly metaverse-native music company. Our music and content are born digital.

How did you get into NFTs?

Our creative leader, Jeff Nicholas, deserves most of the credit for getting me into NFTs. Throughout last year, Jeff was minting Bored Apes and Cool Cats and showing me a lot of other groundbreaking projects. He helped me to mint my first NFT, an Adam Bomb from The Hundreds. Matt Mason at Palm NFT Studio was also down the NFT rabbit hole and took me with him.

Based on your experience, how did you come up with the idea of launching WarpSound and WVRPS?

We’ve been making generative music content for virtual worlds–for what everyone is calling the metaverse–from the jump. In late 2020 and early 2021, our team started to get excited about NFTs both as a creative space and also as a new way to find community. The DIY vibe and creator-first culture felt good. We decided that if we were building a future music brand, it didn’t make sense to do it like a traditional music brand–through a lot of paid promotion. We also knew we could bring something completely new to the space with 9,999 unique pieces of visual trait-driven music composed, produced and mastered note-by-note by an AI-driven audio engine. So, we decided to put our virtual artists and their music in the hands of the NFT community with WVRPS and see if they liked it. Fortunately for us, they did. When people like Cozomo de’ Medici, a visionary patron of the space, started saying things like we “could be the next Bored Ape Yacht Club” and creators we looked up to like Mike Shinoda, Flosstradamus, Gramatik, and even Snoop Dogg started supporting us, we were blown away. And then WVRPS became the top music NFT of all-time on OpenSea. We’re still getting our heads around that. We’re grateful. We also feel a responsibility to keep helping lead music forward.

How do you make it happen, combining the idea of “generative visual art and AI-composed music” with the technology?

WVRPS required us to evolve our core AI music tech so that instead of serving our roster of 4 virtual artists–DJ Dragoon, GLiTCH, Nayomi and Gnar Heart–it could give 9,999 virtual artists unique musical voices. We made it happen by linking all of the visual traits with musical traits like instruments, effects and more in our audio engine. We wanted to make every piece of music distinctive and “personal” to each WVRP.

Can you let us know the detail of the idea aspect and the AI technology aspect?

Jeff pitched the idea of doing a music PFP collection to the rest of the team. We loved it. We had been looking to do something fun and original with NFTs, and it felt like a natural fit to turn our generative musicians into a generative audiovisual NFT. One of the first questions that we asked was, “How do we make sure that the music harmonizes with the visual art?” We didn’t want a scowling WVRP to make happy music. We had been exploring this relationship between music and the source of the music, between music and identity, all along. So WVRPS was the next chapter in a journey that we were already on.

As for the technology, our audio engine uses machine learning to compose music. We think of the AI as the music brain. There is a second layer of the audio engine that applies sound, style and more to the AI composition. This layer is where a lot of the musical feel and richness comes from. Incredible artists like Shinoda, Jay-Z’s engineer Young Guru and DECAP have worked with us on this part of the system. We’re always down to collaborate with creators and help them to learn about they can use these new creative tools. That’s why we set up our Machine Arts Lab.

You have a big team! You have Andy Poon as an original art creator, and DJ Dragoon, Nayomi, Gnar Heart as original creators, and you have more people and supporters. How did you hook up with them, and how do you work together as a team?

First, I absolutely love that you refer to DJ Dragoon, Nayomi and Gnar Heart as “original creators.” That’s exactly what they are! They have musical machine hearts, and those hearts beat music. As for our team, it’s not big enough! We have a lot to build, and we’re always looking for more talented people who love music and are at home on the bleeding edge. We’re here in service to music and the future. If you relate then reach out!

I read your Roadmap. Each phase has a different mission and some are completed already. Can you let us know what you did and what you will do in each phase? And what’s coming up more in the future?

I’m incredibly excited about the roadmap. As we’ve said before, WVRPS is just the “opening note” of our vision for new forms of music creativity and shared experience. The roadmap we’ve shared is as detailed as we want to get for now. We like to surprise! I’ll just share that we’re at the dawning of a new age in music. We see a new digital civilization rising, and we’re going to bring music to it and help others to make music in it for a long time.

So far, my favorite roadmap items have been the airdrop of our Bored Ape Yacht Club musical mutant, GLiTCH and our WVRPS remix contest with Audius.

I guess holders really enjoy new music experience. What kind of reaction you got from them? Did you check out the new music they created? What do you think?

Our whole team has been listening nonstop to the music that WVRP holders are creating. It’s been really satisfying not only because some of the music is really good, but also because we’re fueling creativity and letting more creators benefit from our music tech.

What kind of community do you want to build? Do you expect the community will create something as a collective work?

We want to build a community around music that supports self-expression, discovery, and a deeper connection with music and each other. At the same time, we’re here in service to the audience. Ultimately, we’ll listen to them and build the kind of music community that they want to create with us. And yes, we will be enabling the community to build together in 2022.

If a music creator wants to do something with WVRPS, what can the creator do? How do you support music creators with WVRPS?

Each WVRP comes with full commercial usage rights to the music. We’ve also made it easy for holders to get the audio stem files for each composition so that those who want to use audio production tools to create new music can do so. We’re working to highlight the musical creations of WVRP holders whenever possible to our community.

Can you name some of the music artists involved in WVRPS?

I already mentioned some of them. Ten-time Grammy-winning mixing engineer Manny Marroquin was one of our remix contest judges. We collaborated with A-Trak, Cookie Kawaii and Princess Nokia on our Tribeca Festival show in the streets of New York City last year. Grandtheft is about to drop a WVRPS collab. I think Gramatik might too. We’re a collaborative team, so you can expect more in the future.

I guess there will be a lot of fun things coming up, like events, merch, collaboration, metaverse, etc… with more new music and more new creators. What are you mostly excited about?

It’s hard to choose! Right now we’re working on a collaboration with a music festival. I personally feel a close connection with this event, and I’m guessing that many of your readers will know it.

What’s your vision about the future of music, art and culture?

The future of music, art and culture is boundless. Future music and art will generate, mutate and evolve in real time–in the now. Music and art will become less passive and more personal. Creators and their audiences will become ever more intimately interconnected, and the line between the two will ultimately disappear. In fact, the rigid way in which we currently construct roles and identity itself will disintegrate. New forms of collective creative consciousness will emerge. The velocity and sweep of cultural shifts will increase as a result. We’re witnessing the emergence of an unprecedented wave of music, art, and creativity. I think this is a good thing for our world.

What is the goals for WVRPS?

WVRPS is a key to a new world of music. WVRPS is our way of finding and connecting with explorers who want to enter that world and build it with us. Our goal is to help write the next chapter–or several chapters–of music history with them.

Any message to Japanese people, especially to music creators in Japan?

Our vision, project and team have many ties to Japan. Shinoda is of Japanese descent. One of our partners and dedicated supporters, Mixi, is a Japanese company. We’ve been greatly inspired by Japanese creativity from anime art and street fashion to video gaming and virtual artistry. Japan has a rich history of leading both the arts and technology forward. To music creators I’d say embrace that tradition, take risks, find like-minded collaborators, and experiment with new tools and technologies. We can’t wait to see–and hear–what you make with them!