You perform at a lot of small venues in addition to the major festivals. Do you approach each kind of show differently?

Whether you’re playing in a basement with 10 people or a festival with 10,000, I think it can be very successful – on different levels. For most of the early years of Girl Talk, I never really played to more than 30 or 40 at a time, and I always kind of loved that – that level of intimacy, being able to hang out, being able to communicate and interact with the entire crowd. The festivals are something else entirely. At that scale, it almost transcends the need for intimacy – especially with my style of party/celebration music. A few thousand people all dancing and singing together can be a very triumphant event – so yeah, I love the festivals.

I love the smaller shows, too, but sometimes they can be physically grueling. A lot of times we'll open up the stage, and it’s a physically intense experience to let the show be completely chaotic like that. At the festivals, it’s organized a bit more strongly: there has to be a barricade there. So for me, playing at the festivals is actually, on the physical end, a lot less demanding. So it’s actually kind of more enjoyable. Playing the clubs throughout the year and then playing the festivals is like going through training camp and then actually playing the game.

When did you start letting audience-members on stage?

In the early days, we never really planned it out. It just started happening at all the shows. Back then, it could happen because there was never a barricade. Over the past couple of years, it just kind of evolved into the etiquette of the show, where people come out and they know that I let people on stage and I like it. For me, it’s part of the visuals of the show, and I like to be able to hang out with people and break down the barrier between the audience and the performer.

But at larger shows, where they obviously have to have a barricade and can’t let it be a free-for-all, I kind of understand and respect that. So at all the festivals, we ask, “Can we let a few people on stage?” And we go over it with the organizers beforehand.

Ideally, I've never wanted it to be a VIP sort of crew, or any special granted access – I like it to be as random as possible. So at the festivals we'll open up the gates for a few minutes and let a few random people up there and see how it goes and then push for more people. I love to have that element of the show. I feel like it works out for everybody. I think the people on stage are excited to be up there – it’s an interesting experience to be part of the show from that angle. For the audience, it’s definitely something to watch and it gets across the vibe of the show. I feel like, with the whole Girl Talk thing, people dancing on stage mixes a lot better with my music than some million-dollar light show would.

Do you have any advice for people who want to get on stage?

I think a lot of times, people get caught up in the mix of getting to the front or trying to get on stage, and that’s cool – I like that enthusiasm. But I think the whole point of having people on stage at the smaller shows is almost to have no front. I want there to be no front, no back, no side. It’s just everyone hanging out and being part of the show. I think that works well at festivals because people aren’t as concerned about getting up onto the stage. My advice to the crowd would be to respect where you’re at. I feel like the show can go on from anywhere – from the back, from the side, on stage. That’s the thing at a lot of shows: people always want to move forward, and I feel like you can completely lose your mind wherever you’re at.

What's it like to be on the bill with a bunch of jam bands at a festival?

It’s an exciting thing. When I played at Bonnaroo two years ago – and a lot of the bands were on the jam side of things – I wasn’t really sure how people were going take what I was doing. I remember specifically going into that show without any expectations. I really had no idea what it was going to be like; it wasn’t really my typical audience. But it went over really well and that was definitely one of my favorite festivals I’ve ever played at. Since then, it’s been cool because I feel like it's opened me up to this new world. Now I’ve had the chance to play at other festivals that revolve around jam-oriented bands and I feel like some people from that community have taken to what I’m doing, so that’s awesome. I’m always excited to check out new music and I’m always excited about music that I don’t necessarily follow. I’m excited to be turned on to new things. So yeah, I felt like the 2007 Bonnaroo really turned me onto that audience and allowed me this whole other avenue, playing for these new people. And since that date, a lot of festivals latched on and had me come out and play. It’s gone over well, so it’s cool.

In a way, your live show isn't that different from the modern era of jam bands.

Yeah, I've always thought about that comparison. I think there is definitely some similarity. Like in the show, the way I perform, it’s all live sample-triggering. During the course of an hour-long set, I might go through three or four hundred different loops. A lot of the arrangements are thought out ahead of time – meaning that I know “Song A” will go well with “Song B” will go well with “Song C” – but the actual execution of it, when I trigger the samples and transition in and out of them, that's always improvised. Like a jam band, where there is a general structure. I know where it’s going to begin and end, I know these melodies, I know these parts I’m going to get to, but every night it’s impossible for me to go through a routine.

I'm literally triggering samples every second – a handclap or a kick drum or a high hat. How it sounds on that system and how the audience is reacting determines how many times I’ll loop something. A lot of things are live that you probably wouldn’t even expect. Like when you hear a drumbeat by itself, maybe four or five distinct loops, and then maybe a kick drum loop and a high hat loop and a handclap loop. When you hear a handclap come in, or a kick drum, that’s me actually triggering a loop of that. So everything is very isolated. When you hear any particular part of the set, it could be two to fifteen loops playing at that particular time.

If you hear a sample of Elton John’s “Tiny Dancer,” there might be a loop of the piano part and there might be a different loop of the piano and bass part. Then there might be a different loop of the chorus part. So when you hear that song actually transition from piano to piano-bass to chorus, that’s actually me triggering one sample and muting the other – real time. It’s very much live, and I think you’ll notice because I like to have fun. I like to interact with the crowd. When I get away from the computer and dance with someone on stage or jump into the crowd, you’ll hear the same things looping over and over and over again until I get back up there and trigger it. It’s truly a sound collage.

Like I said, it’s heavily rehearsed and a lot of the arrangements are pre-thought out, but the actual execution is all in real time. And there is a heavy bit of improvisation there. So I definitely see a parallel between that and a jam band, because they organize the set and have the melodies and themes they want to get to, but there are sections where they freestyle it. And that’s definitely how I perform.

What programs do you use?

During shows, I use one program and it’s called Audiomulch. It’s basically a series of loops in real time. Triggering and manipulating the loops and doing visual signal processing and things like that. It’s basically all Audiomulch. I use it on the record as well. It’s how I come up with the arrangements. It’s how I come up with a lot of the ideas. I’ve been performing live on it for the past 8 years.

Some of my earliest material was based more on the processing of sounds than on collage. It was always a collage effort, but then it was taking a pop song and putting a lot of effects on it and completely manipulating that song to make it sound like something else. I really liked the sort of glitchy, cut-up aesthetic to it. So I heard about this program Audiomulch because that’s what it does. I can run a song through it and chop it up, make it sound distorted and glitchy and whatever. So that’s how I initially got into it, and I used it a lot on my first record, which is very glitchy and experimental. Those sounds come from processing songs in Audiomulch.

Then, through the program, I kind of discovered the whole aspect of layering loops together, and all of the sudden there was this flash of inspiration. Once I understood that, that’s when I started performing with it. And back then, I really wasn’t planning on making any money off of music. I was a student, I didn’t really have any money, and Audiomulch was offered up as a beta version, so it was free as long as you got back to them with bugs and errors. So that was one of the main reasons I got into it – because it was free.