Photo: James Duncan Davidson

Tim Exile was a child violinist. But the first time he heard house music, his life changed. All he wanted to do was to make electronic music.

“I learnt the key skills and sat behind a computer with a mouse,” he says on the TEDGlobal 2013 stage. “And I totally lost this intimacy of playing an instrument that you put your hands on.”

So Exile decided to make an instrument on which he could play electronic sounds live. It uses a sound inbox, which can deal in prepared sounds as well as in sounds recorded in real time. It also lets him remix and improvise as he plays live.

Photo: James Duncan Davidson

Exile demonstrates this on stage by asking the audience to make sounds. He pulls this new sound in, mixing it with pounding beats and snippets from talks given throughout TEDGlobal. Under the music comes a snippet of Lesley Hazleton’s powerful talk on why doubt is essential for faith. She says quietly, “We insist on faith in the future and each other.” Soon Carin Bondar, who spoke on sex in the animal kingdom, comes in as a motif. Through it all, we hear chants from Egyptian folk singer Dina El Wedidi’s performance.

Get a taste of his set in the video below, which Exile made for the TED Blog last night. And  check out his remix from Tuesday night of George Papandreou’s talk, the protest outside over it, and Tariq Harb’s classical guitar work.