Article and Photos by Hilary Nichols
The first time I experienced Kyler Wilkins’ music I was mystified. I had to move toward the front of the audience to witness close-up all of the intricate and elegant sounds being amplified from a simple set up on stage. He was playing the Ann Arbor’s SummerFest side stage in June 2022.
Kyler Wilkins is the one-man band known as Ki5, pronounced [kī] (rhymes with pie) five. The wall of sound he creates are all live sounds made with his voice in real time along with claps and snaps that he records and plays back to create the rhythm, melodies, harmonies and vocals overlapping through his Boss RC-505 loop station. The results are a mesmerizing musical experience that is unique each time as Wilkins layers up to 30 tracks of his beat boxing and vocal acrobatics in a free form improv arrangement. What goes into making a whole band with only one voice?
Kyler Wilkins is an enthusiastic, crisp, and inspired conversationalist. His love for his artform was heartwarming as he mused on all the elements that went into crafting his act. “I loved playing viola and guitar in school, but everything clicked when I started singing in the high school choir,” Wilkins began.
Wilkins started training on the violin at Rudolf Steiner Elementary School in Ann Arbor and continued at Pioneer High School where he also joined the choir. In college at Michigan State, he joined the a capella group “State of 5ths” and found he could combine his musicality and his voice with beat boxing and vocal instrumentalism. He became co-director running rehearsals and arranging the group’s music. “I am so grateful for what I learned early on from studying the violin—the power of harmony. It informed my musicality lifelong. Just putting two simple things together to make something new, watching sound compliment itself,” he gushed. “I was training myself to become Ki5, though I didn’t know it.”
After college he turned to making music alone at home as a therapeutic experience. “I really missed singing with a group.” When he discovered technology like loop stations, which can capture multiple parts for artists to craft intricate pieces by themselves, he was sold. “I saw others building their own multi-layered songs. I knew that was exactly what I needed to do.”
His relationship with the artform was only for himself at first. “I started out in my living room, as a way of balancing out the stress of work, with an hour or two every day.” But quickly he started playing for others at open mics, in living rooms, and backyard shows. His act, Ki5 was named in 2016 for his first real gig, playing for a shop opening in Royal Oak. His bookings grew steadily from there as he added regular shows at 734 Brewery, Cultivate in Ypsilanti, and the Beer Grotto in Ann Arbor. Years of solo crafting prepared him to know not only his own voice, but his equipment intricately. “I have a system to organize the sounds, uploading a full set of inputs in each category to be at the ready.” There are five different stacks, and each one can have unlimited layers. Vocal drum sounds are stacked, then a lyrical layer is added over an atmospheric layer. A single song has about thirty layers. “I control them in big groups, in my own system to template them out, so I can predict my choice.” Wilkins described, “With my Boss RC-5 loop station, I became a one-man acapella group.”
On stage Ki5 begins in silence and then starts recording live vocal sound clips like a conductor warming up all the instruments before starting the symphony. The individual sounds are then swirled and harmonized into an original and dynamic new piece. Live improv in front of a crowd seems risky. “It is scary and wonderful,” Wilkins admitted. “If something comes out of my mouth I don’t like, great. I won›t play that track again,” he mused. “When you think about it, there is nothing to be afraid of, because nothing exists to compare it against. The only thing to compare it against is silence, right?”
I had never witnessed anything like what Wilkins creates. There is a sense of being invited into the complex mind of the creator. “The thing that I love about the spot that I am in is I get to do it my own way—Leaning into the idea that I am niche. There aren’t a lot of examples of what I do—that is a really beautiful thing. I get to set my own example,” Wilkins said. “To explore and push boundaries, and learn from others, and gather sounds from other places not trying to sound like any other traditional group. That is what Ki5 is. I am creating harmony from my own unique voice.”
It was exhilarating to get to be witness to such an act of creation. There are no back tracks, no drum machines, no violin. He is not using a harmonizer or even a starting pitch. “Nope. It all lives inside of me,” he assured. Like watching a live painter but with my eyes closed, I found myself falling into the musical creation and being carried through the soundscape.
Using this technique has freed Kyler Wilkins to make his work without having to coordinate a group. “This approach fights against the feeling that one person is not enough. I get to use the loop station to play with time and to express simultaneously. Every bass line, every melodic line, to vocal percussion, it is all there.” He too seems surprised by the freedom. “With the loop station and Ki5 I get to share it all. I get to express the joy, and the beauty, and the heartache that lives inside me.”
The process is more poetry than production. I ask him where the new songs come from. “It›s kind of a mystery even to me. At home I will just be doing improv for myself. I will start singing different lyrics that I didn’t know were inside of me. I will speak something, record it, and repeat it. And then wonder, where did that thought come from? I asked myself, “Who would say this?” because there is a story here, but I don’t think it is my story.” Like a writer of fiction, Wilkins is a conduit for his creations. “I tapped into something real with the feelings. And other people tap into that.”
His offerings are his own, but he doesn’t gatekeep. Wilkins is more than willing to share his craft and pass on what he has perfected. “I teach live looping. I teach beatboxing. I teach songwriting through the Neutral Zone and on my own.”
His classes provide young musicians a way to access their creativity without having to rely on a traditional route of a band or studio commitments. His unique production style and skills can be passed down, but there is more to Wilkins’ gifts than technological know-how. With his spirit of kindness and encouragement he is a natural teacher. It is more than a job—what he offers his students is all of his heart. As he was preparing for a collaborative performance piece at Pathways to Success High School, one of his students told him that she was too nervous to go up in front of people. “She was a really good singer. I just told her, ‘You literally have everything that you need already. All you have to do is bring that last little piece of yourself that believes in what you do, and you›re going to be just fine.” His commitment goes above and beyond the musical craft. “I asked her, ‹Do you trust me?’ It wasn’t a question if she could sing. That’s rarely the concern. “It is just a question of if you can walk yourself up there and show up for yourself.”
You can stay in the loop here: ki5loops.com/about on Facebook at facebook.com/Ki5Loops or on Spotify: at open.spotify.com/artist/30F9SM05K7KGA2vGfwDYJy?si=cvzV-e0HQEuFotb3dKyhRA.
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