Michel Germain is a musician, audio artist and technician based in Winnipeg. He has played with Greg MacPherson Band, ex-Absent Sound, Hummers, Mikimoto, Breath Grenades, Mincer Ray, XOXO and more



In November 2010 Michel Germain presented a live experiment in sound featuring cymbals — struck and treated by an alchemical array of computer tricks. Says Michel Germain: "It’s about tones rather than straight-up percussion. I do touch on things that are rhythmic but I don’t touch on a beat, per se. It’s all about exploring frequencies. It’s unwieldy — quite like analog synthesizers. You can set it and write it all down, then use the same settings, and you still won’t get the same sounds. If I’m not hitting the cymbal there’s nothing happening. The computer acts as a glorified stomp pedal because the microphones are running through the computer — that’s how I’m processing the cymbals."



Michel Germain got the idea after he saw Andy (Captain A.K.) Kyba in Breath Grenades playing a Moog synthesizer with a drumstick: "That was amazing, and an inspiration, the beginning of this idea."



Kyba's idea of using cymbals and resonators was inspired by American percussionist Jason Kahn (ex-Leaving Trains, Trotsky Icepick, Universal Congress Of…).