Kendrick is a semi-autonomous instrument that lives between me and a sound source. It’s what I call a "meta-instrument". It doesn’t have its own voice, so I plug it into an iPad, my phone, or a synth in the studio to give it one. It acts as an intermediary, taking my physical movements and translating them through a music theory brain before sending them out as MIDI. You don't play on Kendrick, you play with Kendrick.

Kendrick actually started as a case study. I wanted to see what I could do with the Power of Life framework I’d been developing. I created scale mappings within the framework because I thought it would be cool to control music using the same relative distances you find in theory.
I treated everything (triads, seventh chords, pentatonic scales) as "scales" and mapped them to the knobs. For me, that engineering process is a totally separate headspace from the performance. The engineering is about hardcoding the harmonic relationships; the playing is about finding the flow within them.

@andrewfrueh Grinding the blues scale on my custom midi instrument #newmediaart #powderoflife #makersmovement #performanceart #midi #music ♬ original sound - andrewfrueh

While I handle the chord changes, Kendrick has a mind of its own when it comes to tempo. It keeps its own beat, so you’re forced to work with it. It’s not a struggle, it’s a symbiosis.
Because the way it handles chord changes can be a bit counterintuitive, Kendrick doesn’t really do typical melodies. It forces you off into exploratory territory. When I was first building it, I was listening to Kendrick Lamar’s DAMN. a lot. The big, open, atmospheric feel of some of those tracks matched the sonic connection I was feeling when I played the instrument. Eventually, the name just stuck.
At the end of the day, I’m looking for that symbiotic relationship where the "cybernetic" side of the instrument and my own intuition land somewhere completely new.
The Interface:

• The Left Hand (The Texture): This hand works the chord changes. I mapped the knob to follow the Circle of Fifths, but it’s aligned to whatever scale mapping is active at the time. Because of that alignment, you often end up with these non-standard, weirdly beautiful progressions that you wouldn’t find on a traditional keyboard.
• The Right Hand (The Run): This hand controls the big lever. It’s a slider that moves across the scale with a huge range — one full rotation gives you four octaves. It’s less about hitting a specific "key" and more about picking out little runs and navigating the harmonic space.

Situated between the human performer and the voiced instrument, and unable to produce sounds on its own, Kendrick is an interpreter, a translator, a true collaborator.
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