Human Error by Human Error

Jeremy Barnes began Human Error while teaching music to kids: incarcerated teens at the YDDC juvenile detention center in Albuquerque, as well online classes in recording and songwriting to refugee youth in New Mexico from Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Tanzania.

The recording techniques and music composition aspect was all computer based, and so, Barnes began to write music in that way. And often, while the students were working, he was also working on little tunes as a way to keep learning. That is how some of these songs came to be, and the process of working with a computer as a compositional tool compositional tool opened up some new avenues. A good portion of the direction of this music came about while sitting in a jail cell, overseeing a recording session, with four mattresses that were put together as a vocal booth for the students to record in.
The recordings were finished with real instrumentation at Barnes’ studio Sonido del Norte.

The title Human Error is a reference to the way that mistakes often lead to new discoveries, it is not a judgement upon the students he taught, who Barnes found to be motivated, inspired and inspiring.