hutyluty wrote:In your mixes, theres a load of really raw techno and stuff yet your mixdowns are often very clean and precise, like in your fact mix when it goes from porcupine to drexciya t. Is it a conscious decision to make music which is different to the stuff you play, or is it your take on it?
actually it's just that i'm not very good at making the really raw stuff. i'm such a perfectionist that when i start out making a very raw or distorted track i always end up inadvertently cleaning it up over the course of a few weeks until it's as clean as everything else i've made. one of the reasons i haven't strayed that far from an in-the-box setup (apart from one or two synths) is that i liked the extra control - being able to automate everything and so on - and there's definitely quite a difficult tradeoff right there if you want to be making analog 90s techno. i guess that's why i've put so much effort into making things sound thicker than you might normally expect from a DAW (especially ableton, which has a reputation for somewhat thin sounding FX in the wrong hands).
hutyluty wrote:What's it like to play at the berghain? (i'm assuming youve done this haha, if not tell me what its like to dance there as they wouldnt let me in
)
it's great - amazing to be able to have total faith in a soundsystem and room. the booth is very comfortable but i actually didn't find it that easy acoustically... you can still hear the mains clearly enough that you really have to work with the room sound and not just crank the monitors otherwise you end up with a mess. this is something the residents have got down cold... it feels like the kind of room that you can develop a real synergy with once you know it inside out, but even after three times i'm not sure i'm at that stage yet, ha.
oh, and there's no proper backstage area, which i kinda like. just a grim concrete room behind the booth.
Woony wrote:Do you pitch your tracks up or do you play lot's of older stuff as well? There's so little 132+ BPM Techno being made these days that it seems rather hard to me to play a set full of more recent 132+ stuff.
i play a lot of older stuff... but there's plenty of faster techno being made today dude. i do pitch a lot of it up though, as long as it works (it doesn't always!).
Hircine wrote:static_cast wrote:Hircine wrote:How do you compose your atmospherics and incidentals?
you mean how do i make the sounds, or how do i arrange them?
Both. I'm fascinated by ambiences. How do you set up the mood for a track?
Thanks for answering, btw! big up.
incidentals are often bloops recorded specially off the JP6 and heavily timestretched and glitched in ableton, or little samples from whatever library happens to be around... but almost always timestretched beyond recognition, automated, effected, reversed, etc.
ambiences are most often long reverb tails, resampled, timestretched, put through more processing (heavy compression, eq, delay, bitcrushing, more eq, more delay + reverb, etc), resampled again, automated, sometimes lightly sidechained (don't go over the top, just give it a little movement).
arrangement of the above - see the link in an above post to a thread i made ages ago about writing down your workflow
neka wrote:ever used max msp?
not yet. only reaktor
oscarhenson wrote:given this is dubstepforum - what relationship do you feel you have with the genre? how do you see yourself as fitting into the dubstep scene? and do you still listen to much dubstep in its more traditional forms, and if so, which artists?
massive big ups for all your work - needless to say i am a huge fan
thanks!
these days i don't really
have a relationship with dubstep to be honest. i was never really one of the "heads", i just checked out some of the deeper and weirder end of it in the past, and hung out on DSF because it was one of the more active producer communities on the net. but i don't listen to much of it anymore. of course there are dubstep influences in some of the music that i make, but i think these have now been pushed quite far back in my brain and act subconsciously rather than as me trying to sound like loefah or whatever.
corticyte wrote:First of all, since I got into dubstep in 2005, you are my favourite producer by a wide margin, and 'Unglued' is literally a masterpiece.
...anyway
You mentioned Reaktor, layering up drum samples and processing them. When you're working on sounds, how do you push beyond something being 'good enough' without going too far and getting bogged down with the intricacies? And how long do you work on a track (from inception to completion)?
I actually stopped using Reaktor because I ended up just making instruments and sounds instead of music!
thank you
i'm not really sure what you're asking re: reaktor. i use it for synths and effects that i've already built - the sound design process is then not much different as it would be with any other synth. the key is to separate the instrument design from the music making. don't start trying to build a synth in the middle of a session.
i spend AGES on a track. months. but then i also have a day job and quite a few gigs. i suppose on average, if i were to work 8 hours a day on a track, it would probably take me 3 weeks or so, but that's not counting the many, many failed attempts.
ufo over easy wrote:what's it like in berlin is there a lot of techno is that why you make techno
<3
johney wrote:how do you make your drums and sub sit so well together? (Goose that got away)
pick the right kick for the right sub line. sidechain the sub quickly and subtly off the kick. that's basically it
goodeh wrote:do you make any other types of music? drone stuff, drum and bass autonomic type stuff
i've been toying around with some drone tracks. also some more industrial stuff (as in actual industrial not industrial techno). a few more IDMish bits at various tempos. nothing really finished though.
stranger_sounds wrote:Yo Objekt, big fan over here
Saw you play not too long ago in manchester and your set was epic (from what i remember)!
On the subject of playing live what are you favourite tunes to play out at the moment? Do you have any go-to stompers which you find yourself playing in every set? I remember there was one banging techno tune with like some cheesy vocal chants in it, can't explain it any better but i was loving it.
Also, when you dropped cactus the second drop blew me away, had so much weight. Any tips on replicating that low-end power which really sets it apart on a club system?
thank you
lol that was probably nitzer ebb. i have loads of records which never leave the bag. that nitzer ebb 12 was one of them for a long time but i'm trying to wean myself off now. my set actually develops quite slowly because i don't really care about playing unreleased material, so records i buy are on rotation for quite a long time.
i can't remember the last show i did where i didn't play genetic code by clatterbox
Amantus wrote:Favourite drummers? I see you've already mentioned Steve Gadd.
Favourite drums in a tune? How about favourite drums in a non-electronic piece of music?
ooft. hmmm. steve gadd. elvin jones. carla azar from autolux.
favourite drums... lemme get back to you on that one. 50 ways to leave your lover springs to mind. fenix funk by afx. i'm terrible at this kind of question though
Etches828 wrote:1. Do you feel it to be essential to have certain equipment when producing tunes e.g. do you find having decent monitors essential or dual screens (all the basics you see studios having etc...)
2. Continuing from that, what piece of equipment could you not work without (apart from obviously a computer/software)
3. Do you produce your beats off-grid/hand play them in anyway, the beat in Cactus always gets me doing this odd shoulder shuffle in clubs where I can't quite pick up on where its hitting hahah
1/2. i think you need to be able to work efficiently, and each person has different requirements. my very basic requirements are my laptop with all the software i use, decent monitors, and a room that doesn't completely suck. a big screen, keyboard and mouse definitely make my life easier.
other people make great music on computer speakers. i don't think i could. but if you can, more power to you
3. i rarely play beats in but very often move stuff off grid. cactus is full of off-grid triplets
Jim Ill Sung wrote:Only a couple of questions: Cactus was a fucking awesome, unique and incredibly strange tune - one of my favourites - so I'm wondering how long did it take to get such a complex rhythm sounding so perfect?
thanks!
not that long actually. the rhythm itself came together in a day. i finished the track in another month or two and then went over it again about 18 months later shortly before its release.
Jim Ill Sung wrote:Also, if you had to choose between (electronic) German music and UK music which one would you choose?
i like apples
deadly habit wrote:as i recall you mentioned that you worked alongside emika at NI at one point. Did you guys ever feed off each other for sound design ideas or collab in an advice sense?
actually no, we rarely saw each other.
deadly habit wrote:also where is the best place to start learning how to do plugin programming and audio algorithms? always been fascinated with that stuff and never looked into in spite of being a coding geek for longer than i've been making music.
searching through the KVR developer forum is probably a good place to start when it comes to plugin APIs and so on. for DSP there are a bunch of resources on the net, some much more mathy than others. i learned all the maths at university so i'm not really sure where to direct you if you're looking for signal processing theory from first principles. i think i've commented on this before on DSF so maybe have a search and see if you can find anything... i'm pretty sure i did at some stage post some links but i don't really have any idea what they would have been, sorry.
Phigure wrote:how do you feel about vinyl culture? do you think it's important to release on that medium? what do you think about very limited releases? do you think exclusivity adds something special or that it's better to give more people an opportunity to own the music?
i think vinyl is more special and gives more weight to the music-purchasing experience, which is one of the main reasons i buy lots of it.
as for exclusivity, i used to think limited pressings were cool but am now gravitating towards your latter point of view. if you're in the luxurious position of running a label whose records are wanted by thousands, you may as well support the rest of the struggling vinyl industry by pressing to meet demand. objekt #1 was repressed and #2 is coming soon, though i did wait a year as a nod to anyone who did buy into the exclusivity factor by paying silly money on discogs (sorry guys).
hasezwei wrote:people in münster definetly are into faster (and harder/darker) stuff lately, we have a lot more CLR type stuff going on since the last year or so. i kinda like it but its not something i can take for a whole night especially when they start playing 'pure' hardtechno. thats music made purely for your legs, not your head.
yeah... listen to too much straight workhorse techno and it starts sounding like aerobics music or something. i'm not so into that kind of CLR "muscle techno", at least not over long stretches. not much sexiness to it. too much stomp.
hasezwei wrote:didnt know you made the tape saturation in kontakt, been using that just a couple days ago!
though to be honest i have no idea what tape saturation is actually used for by professionals
i just use it to catch harsh transients and make stuff sound a bit more fuzzy.
that's exactly what it's used for. the classic application is live drums, which have really strong peaks. tape can soften these peaks without pumping like a compressor. if you saturate a bit more heavily and then bring out the peaks again afterwards with a compressor (or use a transient designer) you'll find they've been thickened up quite a bit.
i don't often use tape for heavy saturation... it's usually a subtle thickening tool in conjunction with post-compression.
skimpi wrote:When are we gonna hear these industrial tracks?
: )
Lysergic wrote:It's good to hear of your success at NI, I'm studying audio tech at Salford uni which primarily focusses on acoustics but I've found my real interest lies in the DSP aspect of the course and it's definitely where I see my future. I'm heading into my final year in September after failing to find any appealing work placement in the field due to confidentiality (as expected really), generally the response was get back to us once you graduate.. I took this as a polite way of saying no, so promising to hear you got in at NI with just a degree (?) since they were one of the companies I applied to. I'm pretty competent with matlab but have only touched on C/C++.. I realise I have no particular focus to this question just wanting to pick your brain a bit as someone on the 'inside'.
I'm currently thinking of doing a masters but change my mind on a monthly basis.. did you find it particularly competitive from your experience or just walk straight into the job? Also as someone that's never yet been outside the education system I find the prospect of settling into a career slightly unappealing since it's learning new stuff that keeps me interested.. so what is the work you do at NI like, particularly monotonous? I've looked into research at Aalto as a path to take since it seems like it would be more multifaceted but i really don't know.. obviously there will become the point when money is the real issue too once I'm done suckling on the government's teet. But yeah any insight you could offer would be greatly appreciated.
i can only speak for NI, but i've found the work here really fascinating, largely because the small (7-8) DSP team are shared out between whatever projects need us, so i've worked on many different technologies in the past 3 years (effect emulation, synth design, traktor timecode, hardware gain staging, etc) rather than just one product. the learning curve is long and steep (and we're all still on it) but it's very rewarding.
as far as i know, all the DSP crew at NI have a masters. applications for DSP jobs can get pretty competitive, but i don't know what the usual level of qualification is. aalto has a very good reputation along with various others (CCRMA, ircam etc). again, i can only speak for NI, but i think for them it's more important that you have a strong background in the maths behind signal processing and the structure of various FX, and that you're keen to learn as quickly as possible, than that you're a C++ whiz. at least that was the case when i joined. the programming - what you need as a DSP dev anyway - is much easier to learn than the maths.
in general it can be difficult to find internships and placements in DSP as a student since there's really not so much "DSP donkey work" that employers can offload onto you - even graduates need time on the learning curve. therefore, most of the placements are actually research projects - e.g. spend 6 months at NI emulating a piece of hardware or working on a certain technology - but we've had the issue before where we've taken on masters students for research projects and have had to invest so much time supervising them that we may as well have just done the research ourselves.
Burlish wrote:Did you ever get round to remixing/sampling that reggae record you picked up at PST ?
lol, no; i did play it at a dinner party the other week though
