Best music producers interview

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Underworld: Electronica liberated by Tomato

Rick Smith and Karl Hyde are two true godfathers of electronic music. From the time of their early stint as the atmospheric band Freur, through the driving electronic advent of and sonic world takeover by Freur’s sequel, Underworld, Smith and Hyde have consistently found ways to crush any limits to their creativity.

Yet, both realized a while back that being rockstars alone wasn’t going to lead them to creative liberty and financial independence. So the duo figured out a way to be able to create the art they wanted to make, and get paid well for it. They did this by joining an art collective media company called Tomato. Smith and Hyde now regularly contribute their creations to the agency which, in turn, then blends the music with video and other media to be used in commercials for companies like Nike, Adidas and others.

“At Tomato, we make things because we need to make them, whether it’s film, sound, sculpture, or whatever,” explains Smith. “With Tomato, our completed personal work is taken and then used to sell a product or something, or to make a video for Underworld. It’s really just a way in which that purely personal work is used, really.

Two Fingers Toward The Music Business “Underworld wouldn’t be here today if it wasn’t for that, really, because both Karl and I have earned a very decent living from making music for the directors for advertisial clients like Nike and Adidas, which allowed Underworld to stick two fingers up to the music business and go, ‘No, we won’t become what you want us to. We’ll do what we want to do. And we’ll sell records in our way,’” says Smith.

“When you’ve been in a band, and you’re living off of advances — because we never sold that many records — then you’re always living off of borrowed money,” he adds. “It was so empowering to do a piece of work and get paid an amount of money, and then the job is over and you can move onto the next thing. It was fantastic!”

From Freur to Underworld Smith first formed Freur with Karl Hyde in the early 1980s, and the band’s single, “Doot Doot,” quickly topped the charts. But when New Wave became passe, the duo kept on, taking Freur’s sound to a new dimension by adding groove to the atmospheres they were used to creating.

This shift hailed the birth of Underworld.

In the mid-90’s, this new sound broke through when the cult hit film “Trainspotting” featured the music of Underworld. Underworld managed to cultivate a dedicated audience, and still sells out shows across the U.S.

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Sowing the Seeds of Genius Smith’s music teacher mother planted the seed for songwriting in his mind at an early age, starting him playing the piano when he was four. “Thank god she did, because I never would have stuck at anything in my life if she hadn’t done that really,” he says. He continued with piano until he was 11.

“I gave it up for two or three years until I was 14, and then I discovered rock music and I thought, ‘Wow, now what is this?!’ Then I started playing piano for my own amusement, you know, when my mother was out of the house — I couldn’t let her know that I was playing again.

Smith Falls For Technology And that was it. Smith went on to play in gospel choirs, until one of the choirs he played for bought him a synthesizer. “It was an old Roland which had these little preset tabs. It was in the early days and the Rolands were almost like synthesizers that home organists would put on top of the organ,” he explains.

“I fell in love, and since then, I’ve always loved technology,” admits Smith. “I was a sad hi-fi buff as a young boy, pawing through magazines, dreaming of being able to afford that loud speaker, you know, I didn’t know what it would do, but I wanted one anyway! And that was it, once I discovered synths.”

Hooking Up With Karl Smith went on to study electronics in college, hoping to learn how to build synthesizers. “But it was a disastrous choice,” he says, “because there was no practical work at all, it was all highlevel math, and I despised it really. At the same time, New Wave was at it’s peak in the UK, in the very early 80’s and I loved that so much,” he says. “Then I discovered Kraftwerk, and about then everything started getting clearer for me.”

“My best friend was in a band with Karl, and their keyboard player was really disastrous, not turning up, and turning up drunk and that sort of thing, so Stuart said, ‘I know somebody.’ So I joined their band for a year. I flunked my university class, left and said ‘This is the best band in Cardiff, it’s all kicking off, it’s so amazing...’ And then, of course, I was so disillusioned after about a month, going ‘What have I done?! I’ve left university, this band isn’t that special, i had no money, and now I’ve got even less!’ So in a year I left. Three weeks later, Karl and I were back together and talked, formed Freur, and that’s it. We’ve been together 22 years now.”

Film Scoring The band name Underworld came from a movie that Smith and Hyde scored the music for in the 80’s. It was an adaption of the Clive Barker book of the same name. Since then, Underworld songs have made it into several films, including their breakthrough hits “Born Slippy” and their song “Dark & Long” in “Trainspotting,” “Moaner” which was featured in the blockbuster flick, “Batman & Robin,” and more recently, three songs — from both Freur and Underworld — made it into the movie “Vanilla Sky.” “It would absolutely be wonderful to score more films,” says Smith. “I really enjoyed the experience. Working with film is so exciting, but it’s also so time consuming. But if somebody specific asked us to do something that was exciting, I think we’d make plans to make the time.

“What’s lovely about music alone is the ambiguity, and I really like that and it’s open to interpretation, but equally there’s something exciting about being very specific with a visual which is hitting people first, and then using the music to play with what’s happening with what’s going into people’s eyes and I think that’s fascinating,” he adds.

“Sound design is a personal obsession of mine, really. The guys who do Foley that stuff leaves me breathtaken,” says Smith. “Freur was all about film music really, and we never really changed, we just added groove to these pictures that were in our heads and it was like, ‘Oh, good god, it works, and people really like it. Well, let’s carry on then.’”

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Richie Hawtin Adding Ableton to the Mix

Richie Hawtin has been spinning and mixing records for over 20 years. But like many who have already proven their mastery of a given art, Hawtin recently decided to move beyond just the realm of vinyl, and into using computer-based, BPM-warping tools — namely Ableton Live rewired into Pro Tools HD — to expand his options for creativity.

The globe-trotting Hawtin took some time out to speak with us from Berlin and share some tips and tricks that he used to record his latest record, DE9 Transitions, and tracks for his other project Plastikman.

Ableton Versus Turntable Speed Warping “I found that I can use Ableton Live to quickly try out ideas of what will work together with different loops and different sounds from different songs,” explains Hawtin. “Once I had some sort of idea, I would bring those tracks into Pro Tools using ReWire, and upgrade the sample and bit rate to 96K. I do that just to give it a little bit more clarity and have better processing on the effects and such.” So deejays don’t just rely on their BPM-warping minds these days!

“Ableton Live is a great application, coming from the live performance angle,” he says. “It’s very intuitive to try out different ideas and just experiment. Most of my career, as a performer or recording artist, has always been about using technology, plugging things in, letting things run and seeing what happens. I was never a big fan of planning everything out too much. I like having lots of possibilities for accidents. And Ableton is great -you can load it up, and then just start to play around and have fun and not get lost in the program. You can actually have fun making music and seeing what works together so that’s why Ableton was perfect for outlining the basic structure of “DE9 | Transitions.”

“It was also great because I could grab it on a laptop and take that laptop out with me on my performances,” he adds. “That way I could play some stuff out, mix it into Ableton, try things out and see how they worked on a crowd. So by the time I got into the studio I had a good idea already of where I was going with the album.”

Tube Trix in the DJ Mixer Everything Hawtin does gets processed first through a customized Allen & Heath V6 mixer. “I have some Manley and other really high-end Discreet and Solid State hardware, but this DJ mixer is the best sounding thing ever!” explains Hawtin. “It’s not cheap — it’s a couple grand.

But I had a modification done to it by the Allan and Health guys. It’s the full version and now every output stage has a tube on it but I also have special sends and returns so I can actually use it either as a submixer or just send something into it, through the tubes, and then back out.”

So he uses his DJ mixer in the recording process, to send in records that need to be reencoded and, in some cases, digital files that he wants to process. “I’ll run through that to

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www.audiohead.net warm it up a bit,” he adds. “When you’re doing a project like this, it’s important to either retain or re-input warmth into some of the tracks, or it would just become a conglomeration of digital files.

Bumping It Up Even though most of the masters were 16-bit, and 44.1 or 48khz, Hawtin felt it was very important to upgrade those to 96khz. “I did that just to give the tracks a little bit more head room and a bit more depth,” he says. “That way all of the frequencies and effects that I was working with would have more possibilities for warmth and keeping those characteristics of vinyl and that kind of classic sound that everybody likes.”

Hawtin uses Ableton Live strictly as a BPM-warping tool and leaves the effects processing to Pro Tools. “For me, Pro Tools is the best platform — I’ve been using it for 8 years,” explains Hawtin. “I have what I call an HD4 system — which is an HD3 with an additional farm card — and I max the fucker out! I need the power and instant access to the power because, when I have the inspiration, I need to be able to go for it. I can not wait. If I have to wait, I’ll go and have a coffee and I’ll lose the inspiration.”

Keeping a Healthy Effects Arsenal Beyond the DSP power inherent in an HD rig, Hawtin attests that — for him — it comes down to just three secret effects weapons. “The SoundToys, and Waves and the Eventide stuff is amazing,” he says. He also uses Eventide hardware like the H8000 and the H7500, which he uses with the Digi system for “some extra brute force power.”

“I have Eventide’s Anthology bundle and I was such a fan of Eventide that when they announced Pro Tools support I was freaking out!” says Hawtin. “The Clockworks in the Anthology is really amazing. And the Band Delays are also really amazing.”

Hawtin consistently uses Eventide and Sound Toys, and he used its predecessor — UltraToys — before that. “I’ve also recently been using ReVibe quite a lot — it’s a really nice Digidesign effect,” he says.

Just Say “No” to Compressors & Knowing “No Limiters” Hawtin recommends leaving the compression and limiting to the mastering house. “I do not use compressors or limiters on anything,” he attests. “It’s partly because I don’t totally understand how they’re supposed to work — and in the early days, I couldn’t afford them! I leave that stage to the mastering because I do not want to limit the dynamic range or the dynamics, period. There should be parts that are too loud or too soft.”

Hawtin recommends working within the mind frame of how you play and perform as a deejay.

“I try to use those dynamics to create tension or emotion,” he says. “And if they go a little too far, then we fix that in the mastering stage.”

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John Digweed: Number One Deejay

Globetrotting DJ and remix master John Digweed, voted top DJ in the world by DJ and Mix magazines, may use turntables, but when it comes to producing his sets, he relies on technology like Macs and software like Logic Audio.

Digweed’s first hit single came in 1993 with “For What You Dream Of” — which also made it into the film “Trainspotting.”

Soon he was the first international DJ to hold residency at NYC’s world-renowned Twilo nightclub, alongside DJ Sasha. Digweed soon became recognized as a key figure in dance music, and demand for his mix CD compilations quickly escalated.

Digweed, who grew up in Hastings, England, found himself attracted to music like Pink Floyd, Talk Talk, Heaven 17, The Cure and New Order. “I always liked music and being a DJ seemed like a really good way to play what I liked for people, and playing it in a way that I liked,” explains Digweed.

“It was hard work, the same as most DJs,” says Digweed. “You have so many knock backs, you send out tapes, you still don’t get a gig. I was very determined that I was gonna make it as a DJ. So I focused hard and made sure that I played well every time. Even if you do have a knock back, you gotta pick yourself up and carry on again.”

Remix What You Love Although he’s now remixed the greats from New Order to Underworld, Digweed insists that it’s not the name that counts. “With remixing, it’s just about working on tracks that you like. If you get the opportunity to do a major band, then great,” he says.

“I tend to like dark moody, hypnotic, progressive, driving house music. But as soon as you put a label on it, you categorize it” he explains. “You know, I think it’s more about music being music. I play dance music and that covers quite a few genres.”

Digweed names the “Bladerunner” soundtrack and Pink Floyd’s “The Wall” as his all-time favorite records.

However, these days he mostly listens to newer stuff. “I’ve got a record label now, so I spend most of my time just listening to demos from producers and DJs,” he says.

Digweed never expected to hit superstar DJ status, and he’s very thankful for his situation.

“I’m really fortunate that I work with amazing people,” he says. “I met Nick on a skiing holiday, and then he came to the studio and we started working together. We really gelled from the start, and it’s been 10 years now.”

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Liam Lynch: Fake Rock Star

Driving Into Rock & Roll. Liam Lynch played his puppet connections right in order to break big on mainstream radio.

Walking into Liam Lynch’s video and audio studio compound is like stepping into a serious time warp. Bright red carpet, a retro globe TV and switch-operated spinning disco ball hit you instantly and are just a few of the random things that make up Lynch’s Dr. Who-era inspired playland.

In addition to his two separate studios — the audio recording and editing studio and the video editing studio that is painted blue to help double as his screening room — Lynch has a room full of props, including countless wigs and sets of fake rubber teeth. Lynch clearly lives in a different dimension — the dimension of fun.

Lynch started writing stories and original music when he was 12 and wrote, recorded and produced his first album of original songs by the age of 15.

He became a published writer and poet by 18, and he scored a recording contract at 21. He went on to further ingest knowlege by working alongside Sir George Martin in recording studios in Liverpool, while attending lectures by Brian Eno.

“My album comes with an included DVD, so it is an audio album as well as a visual album. I made the DVD 100% on my Mac. All graphics, all the videos, all the audio — I made everything in the comfort of my home studio,” says Lynch.

Lynch produced local Liverpool bands while in England, and worked with writer/producer John Parish (best known for work with PJ Harvey). But he also acted in television commercials, and had been featured in three BBC documentaries and publications around the world before finally deciding to mastermind the MTV hit series, “The Sifl & Olly Show.”

“Whatever” An Accidental Hit Between the first and second season of the “Sifl & Olly Show,” Lynch recorded a solo album called “Fake Songs.” “During the second season of the show, which featured two original songs per daily episode, we came up short a couple of songs,” explains Lynch. “So I used two songs from my solo album to fill the gaps. Of all the songs from the ‘Sifl & Olly’ episodes, I noticed that people reacted to ‘United States of Whatever’ the most.”

When the “Sifl & Olly Show” went off of the air, Lynch put the song onto a CD sampler. But before he knew it, his “My United States of Whatever” song had topped the British charts.

Lynch promptly licensed the song as a single in the UK on the label Global Warming.

DVD Instead of Tour “I love making little video skits and such. That’s why I made a DVD to go with my CD. It’s almost two hours of material that I’ve written and edited, up late at night in my studio,” he says. “I’ve done the band thing, the touring thing, but that’s not me.”

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“I asked my record company to put the money that they would have put into touring into running 15- to 30- second spots of material — commercials — that I make myself,” says Lynch. One such commercial features Lynch and Ringo Starr telling people to buy Liam Lynch’s “Fake Songs.” Starr plays drums on some tracks on the album, including “Try Me” and “Cuz You Do.”

“The live thing is great, but I’m not in it for the stage energy,” says Lynch. “I just like being in the studio late at night working on music, video or whatever.”

Comedian/songwriter/performer Jack Black of Tenacious D also appears on Lynch’s release, doing a duet with Lynch on a song called “Rock and Roll Whore.” People can also watch the duo recording the song in the “Behind The Scenes” section of Lynch’s DVD. The “Fake Movies” DVD that comes with the “Fake Songs” CD gives you almost two hours of submersive fun, as you delve into the warped alter-reality of Lynch’s mind, and experience his truly puppet mindset, witness his computer-animated shorts, music videos and home movies, and tap into exclusive behind-the-scenes footage. The DVD is packed chock full of the same zany comedic wit you would expect from the man behind the “Sifl & Olly Show,” and the song “My United States of Whatever.”

Directing Big Vids Lynch’s writing/directing and video editing career have also taken off recently. In 2003, he was nominated for three MVPA awards: “Best Alternative Video” and “Directorial Debut” for Tenacious D’s “Tribute” and “Best Video for Under $25,000” for the video he made for “My United States of Whatever.”

“It shoulda been for the best music video made for under $5,” jokes Lynch. “Because that’s really all it cost. I edited the whole thing in my studio in my garage.”

Dune Warrior. Liam Lynch ponders his alter reality from the comfort of a sandy dune.

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Richard Devine Architect of Aural Mayhem

During the past three years, Richard Devine has remixed top Warp artists like Aphex Twin, designed sounds for virtual instrument deity Native Instruments, scored commercials for Nike and Touchstone Pictures and engineered and performed his own ear-tearing music mayhem worldwide. He’s also been completing his BFA in graphic arts and programming as a fulltime college student.

Learning Music Structure “Classical piano was the foundation for my musical theory and composition — how I write,” says Devine, who played classical piano for about 10 years. “I hated it at the time, but now I’m glad that I had that background, because it really does help me compose the structure of my music,” adds Devine.

“This was my first introduction to the world of music, and more specifically classical music. My teacher introduced me to a wide variety of composers and allowed me to form my own preferences about which music to play.”

During this period Devine learned to play the music of Frederic Chopin, Bach and Dmitri Kabalevksy. He also discovered the music of Erik Satie, who became one of his favorites. “I was drawn to Satie’s emphasis on emotional statement and his slow and unexaggerated tempos,” reflects Devine. “He, along with Chopin, set the foundation for my interest in music.

“Subotnick was creating sonic timbre environments that were completely interchangeable and complex,” says Devine.

After piano, Devine took up drums for about a year and a half. He played bass for about a year and a half, and played jazz guitar for about three years, as well. “I’ve always loved experimenting with new instruments, learning about how to play them, and seeing what they can teach me about the sound and the variation of the timbres,” he says. “Lately, I’ve been experimenting with various frame drums and Middle Eastern instruments like the tablas.

The Physical Experience “There’s a certain instantaneous physical feeling you lose when you do music with computers — you lose that connection somewhere,” he says. “I remember picking up a guitar and half of it is the feel, the feel of your body when you get fully into it. When you’re playing the drums, your whole body is feeling what you’re playing. So when you’re working with synthesizers and software — when you’re transferring that info to CD, you have to recreate that feeling with your mind,” says Devine.

Infiltrated By Influences At the same time, Devine discovered the music of Morton Subotnick and Karlheinz Stockhausen. “This was the main turning point in my musical explorations,” he says. “Morton Subotnick was the first composer to influence me to use analog modular synthesizers.

Particularly, his main works such as ‘Sidewinder, The Wild Bull and Silver Apples of the Moon,’ where he used Donald Buchla’s modular electronic music systems at San Francisco Tape Music Center.

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www.audiohead.net “I saw Subotnick’s work as completely dynamic, and futuristic,” he adds. “He was creating sonic timbre environments that were completely interchangeable and complex. After hearing his work I began buying rare analog modular synthesizers and cataloging sounds.

Devine also discovered the work of John Cage, particularly his “Variations” series. “I loved Cage’s contention ‘that noise belongs to the realm of musical sound,’” reflects Devine. “Cage’s work introduced me to the methods of composition, which are based on chance, both in the process of composition and in the performance.

“Being exposed to Cage forced me to expand my consciousness and enhance my appreciation of the sounds — intended or accidental — that are always around us, and helped me compose works that use conventional and unconventional instruments alike. All sounds are acceptable musical materials,” he adds.

“Stockhausen’s compositions brought the idea of movement to me, how he used the direction of the sounds and their movement in space as aspects of form,” says Devine. “It was another totally new concept to incorporate into my music — this idea of surrounding the listener with sound, to actually imply movement.”

From Punk to Electronic Music Early in the 1990s, when techno was becoming more popular, Devine started to get interested in electronic music. He’d enjoyed hip-hop and aggressive punk music in his early adolescent years, listening to everything from Dead Kennedys to Public Enemy, Minor Threat and Fugazi.

“When industrial music came out, it kind of fused both of those elements together. It was this new form of music that combined the hard-edged elements of punk mixed with these low bit digital sounds of hip hop and digital sampling,” says Devine. “And for me, it was the perfect hybrid… a nice transition from what I’d just come from.

“As the industrial scene was coming in, and the scene of the late 80s started to die out, I was hearing interesting things happening in Canada and England with techno music and with groups like Meat Beat Manifesto and Coil. So I started getting more into experimental music,” he reflects.

“It was another totally new concept to incorporate into my music — this idea of surrounding the listener with sound, to actually imply movement,” says Sonic Mayhemist Richard Devine.

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“So, that kicked off everything for me in the beginning. I kept trying to take it from there, from the early hip hop and the punk scene, industrial into techno, into what I’m doing — discovering the Warp Record label from back in the early 90s and kind of keeping the evolution going from there,” he adds.

Warp Recruited While taking some summer classes in 1999, Devine got a message on his answering machine from Rob Mitchell, one of the owners of Warp Records. “I never sent Warp anything,” he says.

“But I got this message saying ‘We’re looking for Richard Devine. We’d like to get in touch with him, please.’”

Before he knew it, Warp enlisted him into the ranks to propel the Warp name into the new millennium, putting out tracks, touring and doing remixes for other Warp artists.

Designing Tweaky Sounds Devine also started doing sound design work for Native Instruments in 1999, creating highly complex and intensely programmed sound banks for virtual instruments like Absynth.

Devine first started using computers for composition around 1993. Don Hasslier, a professor at the Atlanta College of Art, got him interested in computer synthesis, introducing Devine to Csound and other powerful computer-based applications. “Csound was interesting because it was capable of doing anything the user defined,” says Devine. “I was amazed at the sound variety and I quickly discovered that computer synthesis was going to play an important role in my music.

“It’s interesting, because you’re doing things to sound that just aren’t physically possible,” says Devine.

“Csound was nice because it gave me separate control rate and audio rate processing, and the program is widely portable under C and UNIX,” he adds. “It’s also completely open-ended for further development and allows the user to add functions. I used Csound in the beginning for generating granular cloud textures using sine waves.”

The Lowdown On Kyma Kyma is another system that Devine has used quite extensively for sound design. “Kyma was excellent because it ran on its own independent DSP (digital signal processing) engine and offered a wide variety of sound manipulation options,” explains Devine. “Some my favorites were granular synthesis, sample granulation, cross-synthesis, alternate tunings, spectral morphing, live spectral analysis and resynthesis, and cross-synthesis.

“Kyma also has advanced additive synthesis features. For example, I can take a microphone and control 500 sine waves just with my voice articulation map,” explains Devine. “You can drastically change the tonal characteristics of the sound by pulling those partials either way — they can be divided in odd numbers or even numbers. It’s really wild.

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“Spectral Morphing was another strong key feature that I liked in the Kyma system. For example, taking the sound of a train and the sound of water, and then morphing those two sounds into each other,” muses Devine. “Where the interesting characteristics happen, is when you’re going from point A to point B and you hear the envelope, frequency and amplitude characteristics apply to the next sound — because that’s where you can change the sound into this alien formality.”

Devine also coded a couple FFT apps in Supercollider, an environment and programming language for real-time audio synthesis. “I was drawn by Supercollider’s sound quality and efficiency. And I made these sound bridge morphing modules and stuff in it,” he says. “It’s interesting, because you’re doing things to sound that just aren’t physically possible.”

Reaktor, Absynth and MAX/MSP Devine also uses Native Instruments (NI) software. His favorite NI apps are Reaktor 3.0 and Absynth. Reaktor is a very powerful modular system, similar in many respects to classic modular synthesizer systems. And Devine liked Absynth so much that he designed a bunch of sound patches for the app.

“As with MAX/MSP, you can build objects that will link together,” explains Devine. “The sound quality of Reaktor is excellent and the environment is very intuitive. I have been using their software since it first began as Generator. The company has evolved nicely and has created some of the most impressive sound applications to date.”

“I was amazed at the sound variety and I quickly discovered that computer synthesis was going to play an important role in my music,” reflects Devine.

Lately Devine has been experimenting with composing music using algorithmic-based sequencers. “I was doing quite a bit of this with MAX/MSP, but soon discovered other interesting avenues,” says Devine. “The first was a neat little app called Symbolic Composer.”

Symbolic Composer is a complete music language that covers all aspects of music composition.

“It was one of the first systems that I encountered that explored the art of algorithmic composing interactively. The system functions are selected from hierarchical menus and pasted on the editor, so it’s a completely different approach to musical composition, and an exciting one. It’s like composing music from one’s DNA structure.” says Devine.

“Softstep is yet another app that gives you algorithmic composing tools of all kinds, including fractal, chaos, probability and numerical based algorithms,” he adds. “But you can achieve similar results with a simple Mac application called Soundhack.”

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Convulse, Mutate And Morph Soundhack does convulsion, sound mutation and sound morphing and lets you apply envelope amplitude and frequency data from one sound to another sound, computing the two into another sound. “It’s just advanced FFT mutation of two sound files into a new one,” says Devine.

What’s Next?

Since Devine just completed his studies, he’s received numerous offers from various game companies, and production studios. “I just recently took part in a very cool project to remix Iannis Xenakis for Asphodel. I remixed ‘Persepolis’ which was originally created in 1971,” says Devine.

He also just finished up two pieces that were commissioned for this year’s SonicActs Festival.

They are his first compositions in 12.1 surround sound, with horizontal and vertical stereo fields. He also has a new album coming out called “Asect:Dsect” which will be released by Schematic Records. Devine also plans to put out a new 5.1 DVD release this year, to — as he puts it — “push my sound explorations further.”

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Radiohead In the Studio with Nigel Godrich

Radiohead broke onto the scene with the hit single “Creep” in 1993, and followed it up with “Pablo Honey,” “The Bends” and “OK Computer,” all of which received spectacular reviews and won the band a Grammy Award in 1998. Then, in 2000, Radiohead achieved the improbable: its release of “Kid A” hit #1 in the Billboard charts.

Yet, when the band went to record ‘Amnesiac,’ it followed up these previous releases by moving away from its former style of guitar-based music, to an electronically dominated sound — almost completely free of guitars. For this, the band and producer Nigel Godrich, turned to the Mac and several different software apps to come up with a completely new original sound.

Pro Tools and Logic Audio “We mainly used Digidesign’s Digidesign’s Pro Tools for editing and manipulating audio,” says Godrich. “We also used Steinberg’s Steinberg’s Cubase for MIDI sequencing but recently switched to Emagic’s Emagic’s Logic Audio, which is slightly more interesting.

“Pro Tools is an industry standard and has been for years,” says Godrich. “It has very reliable hardware and of course, our set up is Mac based. But Logic is an astounding piece of software.

It’s almost too powerful!”

Logic Audio on the Tour Bus When Radiohead goes on tour, it’s imperative that the band can still capture its creativity on the road. “We have recently done a bit of recording on the road using a Mac running Logic Audio as a multitrack recorder. It’s been great! But the method is still work in progress for us,” says Godrich.

“There is some kind of sound generation or digital editing or arrangement on every track of the ‘Kid A’ and ‘Amnesiac’ albums. Some more than others, as you can probably tell,” he says.

“We mainly used the Mac as an instrument to create new sounds or treat things to make new sounds rather than using it as a multitrack device.”

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Coldplay: In the studio with Pro Tools and Logic

“When we started doing our first album, we thought that using Pro Tools was some kind of...evilness, you know?” jokes Coldplay bassist Guy Berryman. “Because we were thinking ‘It’s got to be tape…it’s got to be analog.’

“So we started putting it onto tape, but we got frustrated with the time consumption that using tape takes.

You know, like if you want to do a take, you’ve gotta rewind the tape,” says Berryman. “Or if you want to drop in, you have to rewind the tape and find the right spot.

Coldplay. Guy Berryman, Will Champion, Chris Martin and Jonny Buckland left their studies at UCL after hitting the big time.

“I can’t believe that we actually tried to do that, you know, because Pro Tools was out at the time,” he says. “So we switched over to Pro Tools part way through the first album, and that switch sped up the whole process. We realized, actually, you can get a lot more work done, quicker, if you use Digidesign Pro Tools.”

“Parachutes” Through Pro Tools So Coldplay finished “Parachutes” in Pro Tools, running on a Power Mac. The band’s awardwinning, full-length debut album, which features the radio hits “Yellow” and “Trouble,” sold nearly five million copies worldwide and won a Grammy for best alternative album in 2002.

The band then went on to use Pro Tools to produce its entire second full-length album, “A Rush of Blood To The Head,” which features the highly played track, “In My Place.” The tour supporting this record quickly sold out shows across the U.S. Lured by Logic Despite the unquestionable DSP advantages of using Pro Tools plug-ins, Berryman is wholey devoted to using Logic Audio as the software sequencing interface for his recording, arranging and sound design exploits. But luckily Logic and Pro Tools TDM are designed to work together.

“I’ve been using Logic for about a year now, and it was a little daunting at first — it can be a little hard to get to grips with. But once you do, it’s unbelievable,” he says. “I think it’s going to start luring away from all the other sequencers that are out there.”

“While working on ‘A Rush Of Blood To The Head,’ I was generating a lot of sounds in Logic on my Titanium PowerBook and then sending the audio files through a VXpocket into the Pro Tools system, so I could generate keyboard sounds that Chris could then play through a MIDI keyboard,” he says.

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True Mac Faithfuls. “We’re pretty geeky when it comes to Apple Macs, to be honest,” says Berryman. “We’re huge fans.”

Waves Faithful “There are loads of plug-ins we’ve tried,” he says. “But I’ve found that most of the plug-ins don’t come anywhere near to being as good as the Waves bundle, so I’ve just been sticking to that set of plug-ins, for the most part. The Waves reverbs and compressors are really good.

“We’re using some of the reverbs and the compressors and plug-ins within Pro Tools — you can get things like the Fairchild plug-in and all those compressors modelled from the 60’s and 70’s. We like to use those as well — like the Telectronics ones,” adds Berryman.

“We used Amp Farm on Jonny’s guitars, just to go through different distortions and different sounds, because it’s just so easy,” he says. “Instead of plugging in numerous actual guitar pedals, you can just scroll through different sounds really quickly, just to get a good idea of what you’re trying to ac

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Nine Inch Nails The End of Nothing

It was the last summer that Nothing Studios would exist. Soon enough, Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross would finish their work on the long-awaited new Nine Inch Nails (NIN) release, “With Teeth,” and Reznor would kiss New Orleans goodbye and permanently relocate to Los Angeles to gather a band and get ready to take off on tour. In early February, I received an invitation from the dark prince to come hang out with him in the studio while the recording was in progress. In late July, I showed up for my three day stint at Nothing Studios.

After I’ve settled into my hotel, Reznor pulls up out front in his SUV with Ross in the back.

Reznor introduces me to Ross, Reznor and I quickly exchange some jokes at the expense of some former NIN band members and then move on to discuss our plans for the next few days.

Our previously contemplated adventure of going jet skiing with alligators has suddenly been cut short because Rob Sheridan got in a jet skiing accident a week prior. So Reznor suggests that we kick off my trip with a studio tour.

The Ultimate Candy Store We show up at the giant former funeral home turned recording empire, Nothing Studios, and Reznor walks me through what seems to be an endless maze of recording and other rooms, including a drum room, mixing rooms, lunch room, living room and a workout room quite ironically equipped with a tanning bed. The studio headquarters for the goth prince of the Nothing era is visibly equipped with every pedal known to man, every guitar that Reznor likes to use (and hasn’t smashed up beyond recognition while on a NIN tour), a sizeable selection of keyboards, and a wall of modular synths and processors.

In The Studio Three days in the studio were enough to prove that the rumors about Reznor’s talents are entirely true. Reznor is not only a sonic genius, well-skilled at producing tracks that mercilessly attack our senses and leave us captivated and humming his hooks for hours on end, but he’s absolutely impeccable at playing everything. On my third day in town, Reznor suggests that we spend some time recording together in the studio that afternoon. “How about I record a song from scratch so you can really see the process here?” As if God — or 500,000 plus NIN fans — wouldn’t strike me dead if I said no...

Even better — Reznor insists that I sit in between him and Ross throughout the recording process so that I can really get a feel for the Nothing studio experience. Grinning ear to ear, I heartily oblige.

Our recording session at Nothing Studios follows. Reznor wants to develop a song idea he came up with in the car that morning, on the way to pick me up. He begins our recording

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www.audiohead.net adventure by simply voicing, “I’d like to record a drum track.” Ross responds, “Alright Trent, I’m going to bring up some of your favorite drum patches.”

Once the patches are loaded into Battery inside of Logic —which is used primarily as a MIDI host for Pro Tools— Reznor turns to me and says, “Okay, Steph. Pick out a number between 4 and 14.” When I respond, “14,” Reznor casts me his somewhat branded dirty look, and says “You would pick the fastest timing. Alright, fine. Let’s do it.”

Recording Drums and Bass Reznor sits down at an 88 weighted-key controller that is nestled between Ross’ workstation and a rack of effects processors. As soon as the click track starts, Reznor hammers out a few sequences of drums, with perfect timing and precision—fills and all— via the keyboard. All I can think is “Wow. Those childhood piano lessons really paid off.”

When Reznor finishes playing, he turns to Ross and states, “Let me hear those.” Ross plays the drum tracks back and Reznor, deploying the quick decision making expertise that is evident in most world leaders, states, “Okay, I want part 1 followed by part 3, followed by part 2.” Ross politely accepts his mission and starts a flurry of editing in Pro Tools, slicing and dicing up the audio he’s recorded out of the virtual Battery sampler — hosted by Logic — into Pro Tools, and then quickly moves the trimmed bits of audio into a nice, clean arrangement.

Meanwhile, Reznor turns, thinks and then speaks his next desire for the song in progress.

“Next, I’m going to do a bass track and I think I’m going to use these three pedals...” Reznor speaks out loud the names of the pedals, and as he turns to his rack full of basses, picks one up and tunes it, the pedals almost magically appear before him, hooked up by his highly efficient studio assistant.

By the time Reznor is satisfied with his tuning (less than a minute from the initial contemplation of the bass part), Ross has the arrangement ready and the pedals are ready to be played through. Reznor begins recording his next part. After yet another stellar performance, I realize that the absence of studio musicians isn’t a control thing, it’s purely logistical. No studio musicians are required because Reznor is a virtuoso when it comes to probably every instrument short of the physical drums. And even then, he effortlessly masters drum programming and drum performance when triggering samples in Battery through a keyboard controller.

Reznor turns to Ross and says,“I like that. Let’s keep that order. Now I’d like to do a tambourine part.” He gets up and walks into the next room. Ross turns on the monitors to the live room where we can see Reznor slipping on some headphones and picking up a set of tambourines. Ross then plays Reznor the sequence and records the tambourines into Pro Tools alongside the drum and bass tracks. He quickly applies a little EQ and has a mix ready by the time Reznor walks back in the room.

Recording Guitars and Vox Reznor listens and states, “Great. Now I’d like to do a guitar part. For this I’d like to run a couple pedals through the Diezel and the Vetta.” He again speaks the names of his desired pedals aloud, not even directly asking for them, but rather like he is merely contemplating his next step out loud.

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Next Reznor walks to the guitar rack, picks up an axe and then sits down to tune it. By the time he’s ready to play, the bass pedals have been whisked away and replaced with the guitar ones. Reznor leans down, and within seconds tweaks the effects knobs, morphing the tone into that perfect Reznor sound that most effects plug-in companies now spend hours trying to emulate in their presets. And again, with perfect precision, Reznor plays a few guitar parts in and when satisfied, turns to Ross.

“I’d like to do some vocals now,” he says. “Can you bring up that really cool Native Instruments Vokator thing?” The studio assistant quickly appears with a mic stand, Blue microphone and three sets of headphones so we can all monitor the mix in real time. Reznor plays with a few different ideas and then finally turns to us and says, “Alright, that’s enough for now. Let’s get some dinner.”

About Recording After having a bite to eat, Reznor, Ross and I sit down to discuss their theories on the current state of technology, recording and what they hoped to achieve with the new album. “I usually take a while between records if anyone hasn’t noticed,” says Reznor. “And a lot of times that is because we usually end up touring for a lengthy amount of time — and that takes a fair amount of effort on my part. After that, there’s usually a period of decompressing and figuring out what makes sense to approach next musically.

“When we did ‘The Fragile,’ there were certain parameters that established themselves as the way we were going to work,” says Reznor. “All of the songs were going to be written in the studio. We knew it was going to be a long process — we probably spent over two years recording almost every day. So the last thing I wanted to do on this record was start where that left off and just keep going. There’s a lot of left over stuff from ‘The Fragile’ that’s just not inspiring to me right now. So it took me a while to kind of see what seemed exciting to me.”

Reznor Has Issues With Technology Despite having a foundation based on using computers for recording, Reznor voices some active discontent about how high-end recording technology is so accessible these days. “I have found myself reacting against music made on computers and I’ve noticed that as technology and great programs have become more readily available to people, it’s easier to make perfect, polished music,” says Reznor. “I’ve seen a lot of programmers who assume they’re producers just because they can make things sound professional. They can cut some engineering corners and it’s really easy with some plug-ins to make things sound polished and great and perfect — and I think, ultimately boring.

“The spirit of music that inspires me or excites me is something that still has some sort of feeling behind it, or emotion or rawness or danger,” he adds. “And I think a lot of the time now — when everything is composed purely in a Pro Tools or sequenced environment — it’s so easy to perfect everything. So that’s the way you’re supposed to do it — which just seems flat to me.”

But Reznor does still swear by using computer technology for his own recording projects. “The idea of trying to work with tape is stupid to me, seems archaic and is not something I want to

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www.audiohead.net embrace,” he clarifies. “But I do think you can take the aesthetic of humanity and imperfection and spontenaity, and use it with computers. And that’s — in kind of a rough, raw way — one of the things we’ve stumbled into with this record.”

Macs, Pro Tools and Logic “We have one main G4 running OS X with Pro Tools as our recorder,” explains Reznor. “The main problem is that there is no top quality software sampler available other than the EXS24 in Logic. I love using the EXS24, but I have to use it inside Logic and we don’t use Logic for very many things.”

So they run Logic on a second Power Mac. “We have a third G4 for running Reaktor primarily, and every other VST plug-in in the world, including Battery and all the Native Instruments plug-ins, which we run using Logic as a host,” he says. Two additional G4’s and a PC run digitally in and out to the main Pro Tools computer. “If there is a little bit of MIDI trickery that we need Logic’s MIDI engine for, then we can bounce it back and forth between the computers, ” says Reznor.

Processing: Avalons and Pro Tools HD “We’ve got a couple of Avalon DI’s and mic pres,” explains Reznor. “But generally we’re using the converters in the new Pro Tools HD. It’s funny because we were like, ‘Let’s get the high definition Pro Tools and then have everything be as low-fi as possible.’ But if we do need to go 192k, we could.” They also deployed the use of a Pro Control 24 for the mixing of the tracks.

When working in the studio, Reznor and Ross struggle to not get sucked too far into certain directions. “I can come in here and get obsessed with noise levels, or I can get obsessed with a couple pieces of gear that sound really cool,” says Reznor. “I’ll want to spend time really learning to program and it is fun to do that, but the hobbyist in me gets carried away with that side of things.

“I can think ‘It would be great to go through all the samples and get them all organized so they’re perfect,” he says. “Yet that really is a lot of work invested in something that might be nice to have. But the real thing I’m trying to do here is make music that affects me, that matters to me and comes out of my heart and has something to it.”

Modular Analog Over The Digital Revolution In 2002, Reznor became enamored with virtual and analog-modeled synths, but he rarely touches them now — with the exception of some Native Instruments (NI) apps. “I’ve gotten a lot more into real modular analog and just the kind of garage-y imperfection and the unpredictability of it and the inability to ever save a patch,” explains Reznor.

“These accidents happen where I’m not sure why some things sound the way they do,” he says. “And that has really inspired us to pretty much become the main focus of this album.

Monophonic analog synths are the main instruments much more than the guitars this time, much more than the layered things. We tried to make a garage-y type album with a mix of software and analog stuff that still has some kind of freshness to it and has a spirit of what rock should be about, in my opinion.”

Ross adds, “It became more of that spirit of performance thing. It’s got to reflect a personality, rather than a quantized performance. Despite the technological revolution that’s been going on over the past few years, it’s not like we’re sitting around saying, ‘Wow... much better records are being made.’”

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Reznor agrees and then comments, “I’ve always kind of envied real bands with real people playing real things and I’ve tried to get that. But I’ve realized that I can stumble onto things working by myself and I’m not afraid to do that anymore. Yet that doesn’t mean that everything has to be assembled in a kind of cut and paste factory. I think a lot of composition software — whether it be Pro Tools, Logic or any sequencer — it can make you work a certain way that I think can sometimes suck the life out of tracks. And you can turn the radio on and find a million examples of that.”

Native Instruments Apps Have “Teeth” “I think it is an excellent time right now — from a sound and sonic point of view — where the dark ages are past,” says Reznor. “There’s a limitless palate of interesting stuff coming out software-wise. I mean, Reaktor alone. It’s great to have additive and granular synthesis at your fingertips, and the spectral stuff. I’m excited because there are several new software apps that I’ve got and some hardware that I haven’t even scratched the surface of.

“I find that exciting from a sound design point of view —new ways to treat things, ways to evoke emotions out of certain things, ” he explains. “At the top of my list would be pretty much everything Native Instruments makes. From Reaktor to Vokator and Battery for drums.

I’ve messed around with Kontakt a bit and Absynth is great.”

Aside from NI, Reznor attests to a few more plug-ins. “The Waldorf Attack is a good little thing to use a lot.” He also deployed the use of the previously PC-only Trash plug-in extensively for “With Teeth.” “But don’t even try using Trash on a Mac without saving your song first,” he cautions.

Back To Hardware Reznor and Ross used a stockpile of analog subtractive synths for processing and sequencing.

“The analog world has provided limitless amounts of inspiration and it’s fun because you have to have a lot of brain to signal path your way through it,” says Reznor.

“And rarely does it not yield some kind of unexpected kind of result,” he adds. “I would find myself in the world of software a lot of times randomizing or starting with patches and fucking with them until something cool comes out rather than starting from scratch and putting sounds together. It’s been surprisingly inspirational to the point where I can’t believe I haven’t stumbled into it earlier.”

Working Together “Atticus and I have a working situation where often we’re inspired by each other,” says Reznor. Prior to “With Teeth,” he worked with Ross on two other projects: Tapeworm and 12 Rounds. “We realized that we have a similar aesthetic and working together seemed fresh and immediately lots of ideas popped out,” says Reznor.

“Once I get some parameters set up to work within, it’s a lot easier for me to execute my ideas,” he says. “We’ve narrowed down how we work and what we’re trying to work on. This album has come out very different than ‘The Fragile.’ It’s more song-focused and less sprawling.”

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NIN: Solo For The Most Part Reznor explains that, despite his heavy collaboration with Ross for the engineering of the record, NIN is still a solo project. The only part where external performances come into play is in the percussive realm. Reznor and Ross spent several weeks recording Jerome Dillon playing drums for “With Teeth” in New Orleans, following that up with having Dave Grohl guest perform on a few of the tracks once recording operations shifted out to Los Angeles.

“We usually use real drums, some analog synths and some guitar and those are pretty much the only instruments on the record,” says Reznor. “The creative process with Nine Inch Nails has always been minimal. On the last record, ‘The Fragile,’ Keith programmed, I played everything, Alan Moulder helped with engineering and sound shaping sort of stuff, and someone would play drums on the occasional track.

“It’s never been a ‘Let’s everyone sit around and jam’ type of arrangement,” stresses Reznor.

“There were people who played parts in occasionally, but it’s never been any sort of a collaboration. And with this album, I’m not even pretending that it is. It’s just the two of us going at it.”

A New Approach And Line Up While writing the music for “With Teeth,” Reznor actively tried to picture what the music might look like while it was being played live. “I tried to see it as if it was just somebody playing a real drum kit in a room, and a couple guys with Minimoogs and guitar pedals,” he says. “A band that rocks within that format. So I asked myself how that could work. By trying to execute something that followed that plan, we stumbled into some stuff that we never would have come up with in ‘The Fragile’ era. We’re in a different kind of mindset now, it’s been fun, and that sort of inspiration has really defined the record.”

In addition to cleaning up his health, Reznor cleaned house, keeping only Jerome Dillon from the previous line up for the coming tour. “I’ve said this before, but I don’t want to go out with the same set up as we had last time,” says Reznor. “I think it worked and we did it well. But if I did it again, I would be living in the past. It’s tough sometimes to say goodbye to something, but I think that has run it’s course. And I’m not saying I’ll never play old music. But I think the format has been documented, we played a million concerts and it’s time to risk failure at something else.

“We’re trying to keep it fun, too, being open minded, trying new things and being adventurous,” he says. “If there’s one kind of music I hate, it’s corporate-safe sound-alike bullshit. It infuriates me to hear it.

“I’m sure I fucked my career up by not putting out enough stuff, but that’s not why I’m doing it,” says Reznor. “We’ve never been the type of band where somebody sits down and says, ‘Book your tour because you’ve got this much time to get your record done, and then we’re going to shoot your video.’ The most important thing to me is making great music and the rest of the world has to fit to that schedule. That is — to me — the most important thing. And in my own brain, I’ve had to work some issues out to be able to make music. But I’m fortunate that I’m in the space that I’m in right now, where it feels good.”

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Keith Hillebrandt: Blessed with the Gift of Sonic Intuition

I’ve always liked the sound of transistor radios, and I’ve always really liked droning sounds,” says sound designer-remixer-programmer Keith Hillebrandt. “I think that comes from watching scary movies as a kid. I always liked how they could create a mood with a sound. If somebody is walking down a hall, it’s not too exciting. But if somebody is walking down a hall — and you’ve got this eerie drone going on — all of the sudden, it turns it into something substantial.”

As one of the best sound and soundscape designers in the world, Hillebrandt can create a sound texture that can make a musical piece evoke a desired emotion. His work is often so subtle that you can’t even tell what what he added — until you take it away.

This natural intuitive talent of his — combined with years of hands-on experience playing with sound — led him from a testing position at Opcode, to producing sounds for the renowned “Poke In The Ear” sound series, to his very own “Diffusion of Useful Noise” sample CD, which landed him a job working for Trent Reznor’s Nothing Studios, designing most of the sounds for Nine Inch Nails’ epic “The Fragile” album.

Hillebrandt recently left New Orleans and Nothing Studios to launch his own sound design company, Useful Noise. He just produced and released a CD collection of his own sounds, “Useful Noise V2.”

Noise Knowhow The start of Hillebrandt’s adventures in sound tweaking began soon after his parents decided to buy a Kimball organ, when he was nine years old. “They did it to be cool,” he explains.

“Everybody else in the neighborhood had pianos, but my parents decided to get something electronic instead.”

“All of the sudden, here was something where I could make anything sound completely twisted… completely out of this world, ” reflects Hillebrandt.

When Hillebrandt and his siblings started taking lessons, he took to the keys instantly and found he could play by ear. “At the same time, I realized my interest in noise was there,” he says. “I used to take my forearm, put it down on as many keys as I could, and then use the Tremolo to make it sound like a train coming. And then when it went through ‘the tunnel,’ I’d kick in the Leslie.

“That moved on into trying to play guitar, not being able to play guitar, realizing you could make a lot of weird sounds on a guitar without actually having to play it, but that didn’t get you in the band,” says Hillebrandt.

Bands and Beyond “So, I ended up buying keyboards and playing in bands,” he says. Eventually, he got tired of playing in bands and dealing with band members. Then he got his first Mac and started using Performer. “After that I was hooked,” he exclaims.

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www.audiohead.net “That led to a lot of noodling around, learning how to write songs again in a different context, because all of the sudden, you didn’t have a drummer who knew what to play, you were basically gonna play whatever was coming out of your non-drummer head,” he explains. “So, it made me come up with a lot of interesting rhythms that I probably shouldn’t have.”

When Digidesign came out with SoundTools and TurboSynth, Hillebrandt got super-sonically inspired. “All of the sudden, here was something there I could make anything sound completely twisted… completely out of this world — especially in those days. TurboSynth was so far ahead of its time, as far as sonic destruction,” he says.

Audio Initiation After finishing school, Hillebrandt figured that if he was going to hold down a job, then he might as well hold down a job that was related to the process of making music. He first got a job working for a tape recorder manufacturer, then moved over to work for a company called Audio Images that represented WaveFrame — a competitor to the Synclavier and Fairlight systems.

“WaveFrame put out an amazing machine for its time. It was a $120,000 computer with a built-in digital mixer with digital EQ you could automate, and a 32MB, 16-bit sampler in it,” he explains. “There was a sequencer that was built into the machine — a program called Texture that was written by Roger Powell.

“That was the first time that I’d heard such a tight-feeling sequencer, because everything was internal and it wasn’t going out to MIDI,” says Hillebrandt. “And it wasn’t until recently that I’ve been able to get that feel again out of a sequencer. Finally, with all the soft synths that are out, you can again cut out the delays of interfaces and cables and things like that.”

“You’d come up with sounds, and they would always want something even stranger,” says Hillebrandt. “This kept pushing me.”

On to StudioVision When he got the opportunity to work for Opcode as lead tester for StudioVision, he jumped on it. Because Opcode paid him to use StudioVision all day, he could write music while testing the software. “I got to take home a lot of gear as well,” he says. “That’s where I got into the Kurzweil K2000 and VAST Synthesis, which is one of my faves.”

While he was working at Opcode, the company OSC spawned the original front-end for Pro Tools — ProDeck — and put out a sound library. “When I heard the first ‘Poke In The Ear’ CD, I was blown away, so I got in contact with them. I then made a bunch of sounds for them that eventually got onto the second and third ‘Poke In The Ear’ CDs,” explains Hillebrandt. “It was a great experience because nothing was too strange for the guys at OSC. Diffusion Of Useful Noise “You’d come up with sounds, and they would always want something even stranger. This kept pushing me,” he says. “Then Ron MacLeod suggested that I do my own CD-ROM, — ‘Diffusion of Useful Noise,’ which came out in 1996. Doing the CD was a lot of fun, because they gave me free reign, but they helped me in staying focused and keeping organized in assembling the library.”

But right when the library was scheduled to come out, Macromedia bought OSC. “That was the end of the OSC sound library world. So, there were about eight or nine months where Ron MacLeod, who had headed up OSC, wasn’t sure what was going to happen with my sound library,” he says.

Logic and Peak for Sound Design Today, when Hillebrandt designs his crazy, droney, tweaky and atmospheric mood-touching sounds and soundscapes, he relies on a Power Mac running Logic and Peak. “Peak is my main program. It is always the front end and the back end of my sounds.

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www.audiohead.net “I always need a precision sample editor. A while back, when Alchemy wasn’t doing it for me anymore as a sample editor, I found that Peak did everything I needed it to do,” he says.

“Plus, it’s also a program that continues to expand.

“Peak also has given me some weird sound design processes,” says a grinning Hillebrandt. “I have this process called ‘Sound Design Roulette.’ I will go to the batch processor in Peak, and I’ll set up three or four things for Peak to batch process, I’ll have it convolve and then I’ll add gain by 10db, even if it sounds normalized. Then, I’ll just grab a folder of sounds — drums, glass breaking or something — drag it on there, then open each sound. Every once in a while, I’ll have a winner!”

Why a Sound CD? “When I left New Orleans, I wanted to do something that was uniquely me. And I don’t think that there’s anything more uniquely me than to make a CD of my noises,” explains Hillebrandt.

“It’s a collection of all the kind of noises I like, and the kind of noises I like making have got real deep, dark drones and wide atmospheres, nasty drums, digital-sounding synth sounds.

The “Useful Noise” CD, distributed through Hillebrandt’s website, includes a collection of more than 1,000 sounds that Hillebrandt designed, plus a special access code that allows the person purchasing the CD to get access to Hillebrandt’s sound portal where he puts up new sounds weekly.

New Projects Now that Hillebrandt completed and launched his “Useful Noise V2” CD, he is onto a few other projects. He just completed work on another sample collection — a 24-bit construction loop library called “Arhythmia” with insane rhythms created by former NIN drummer Jerome Dillon, blended with Hillebrandt’s unique sense of sonic processing.

“I have this process called ‘Sound Design Roulette,’ explains Hillebrandt. “I’ll batch process drums, glass breaking or something, then open each sound.”

Hillebrandt also plans to help out on Dillon’s coming solo album, which will chronicle the evolution of a certain recurring dream he’s had for years. Plus, Hillebrandt will soon jetset out to Brazil to remix a couple of artists there, including Brasil Nove.

Hillebrandt is also considering lending his sound design expertise in designing sounds for his favorite software companies. He’s also up for designing sounds for film companies, or other bulk sound design projects. “If someone hears my library and says, ‘Oh we like this kind of sound.’ I’d like to say, ‘Well, okay, here are 1,500.’”

“Music will always be my first love, though, so I couldn’t get too far away from that,” he insists. “If I were working on sounds for movies all day, I’d still go home and do music on my own at night.”

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Jack Dangers: Master of Dub Electronica

“The special thing about the Synthi was the sequencer is digital,” shouts a smiling Jack Dangers over the thumping, throbbing sounds of his Synthi 100. “So you can program a lot of MIDI information, clock that sequence into Logic and get a perfect synch.” He stands up to tweak the sounds live, using its top-mounted dual mod controls.

An Englishman from Swindon (the same small town as XTC), Dangers moved to Marin in 1994 and set up Tapelab, a recording studio where he now works on his recording, producing and remix projects, including Meat Beat Manifesto and — most recently — Tino Corp. “I was doing a lot of work with bands over here — like Consolidated, Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy, Public Enemy — so I moved,” Looking like something straight out of an old Dr. Who episode, this 1970s machine is one of only 29 ever made, and one of only a few known to still function. The 600-lb. room-sized contraption required eight people to maneuver it through the window of Tapelab. The Synthi 100 is one serious piece of furniture. Set up like an old mixing desk with eight buses and XLR inputs, it even has cabinets built in, perhaps for all the manuals you’ll need to learn the ins and outs of its countless functions. he says.

Secrets From Yesteryear Some of Dangers’ synths are so old, they have battleship-looking boards with pins, rather than cable connectors, to, for instance, trigger certain filter effects combined with a particular sound wave form. So Dangers has to take extensive notes on the knob positions and pin positions that he uses to achieve a certain sound.

Then he shows me a class note book that came with his rare Synthi 100. When asked if that’s where he keeps his notes, he nods, grins and then points out that he also is actively stealing the ideas of the poor students who experimented on the old Synthi and carelessly left their secret formulas for his exploitation.

Heavy Breaks In 1986, Dangers was in a band called Perennial Divide, produced by Andy Partridge of XTC. “Andy Partridge is the only true musical genius I’ve ever met,” says Dangers. “Lyrically, he’s incredible. I had so many questions to ask him. He’s such a nice guy, so level. He was very open minded.”

Soon after, Dangers carved the path for dub electronica when he decided to mix heavy breaks with experimental sound, as the songwriting leader behind industrial performance art brigade Meat Beat Manifesto. Dangers’ music forecast a new generation of electronic music.

Now he’s been labeled the “überlord of breakbeat.” “I like dub, so there’s usually an element of

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www.audiohead.net old hip hop mood in my music,” he says. “There’s a lot of underground stuff that’s good, these days. Most of it is in the Bay Area. Like DJ Shadow and Future Primitive Sound.

“But my favorite type of music is classical avante garde music from the 50s and 60s. I listen to it every day,” he says. “Finding these old things that were ignored 20-30 years ago, and were written in very primitive situations. Back then you really had to work for your sound.”

More Vintage Than Vintage Sonics from the Synthi 100 are all over Danger’s new album, “R.U.O.K.?” In addition to the Synthi 100, Dangers uses a lot of wacky and extremely rare and old outboard gear triggered

by MIDI arrangements in the computer.

With vintage gear, remembering how to make a certain sound is a lot tougher than just saving a template song arrangement or sound design file. “Instead of cables, you use pins,” he says. “So it’s very tidy and sophisticated.” He takes extensive notes on knob and pin positions.

Songwriting By Experiment When Dangers creates, it usually starts with a beat, hammered into the Mac via MIDI. “It’s not a musical thing you’re sending, but you’re turning it into music. Or, recording passages and then editing them. It’s definitely experimental,” he says.

“I’ve always had a sense of rhythm,” says Dangers, “I started on the bass guitar. I think the guitar has too many strings. I’ve been playing the bass for 22 years now,” he says. “So I use the guitar more as a sound instrument, really. I run ball bearings against it and such.”

“The first album I did for Consolidated, ‘Friendly Fascism,’ was edited using the very first version of Sound Design,” says Dangers. “That was the first time I’d ever used a Macintosh.

“Back then, Consolidated were using a lot of Emax. They had just gotten into the Macintosh, but their first album had been done on an Alesis sampler. So, it was pretty lo-fi.

“But then after that, they stepped up to using the Mac,” he adds.

After working Consolidated’s second album, Dangers and Meat Beat Manifesto toured the U.S. and Europe with the band in 1991. “That started a cycle of doing an album, touring, doing another album, touring and so on… which never really ended,” he says.

In 1999, “Prime Audio Soup” brought the music of Meat Beat Manifesto to a wider audience as part of the soundtrack of “The Matrix.”

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You can hear a sampling of Dangers’ remixing versatility on “Pro.File vol. 1: Jack Dangers Remix Collection,” which includes cuts by Nine Inch Nails, David Bowie, Deepsky, Atomic Babies, the Shamen, David Byrne and Papa Brittle.

R.U.O.K.?

In October 2002, Dangers released the long-awaited Meat Beat Manifesto album, “R.U.O.K.?”

“I was dabbling with that one over a period of four years,” he says. “But that’s the way I wanted to do it because the other ones were sort of forced — they had to be done over a certain period of time. “‘Subliminal Sandwich’ was done while I was in the middle of trying to get out of my label deal — which is always a bad thing — so I just made the best of a terrible thing and did a double album. I was just waiting to get out of that miserable, boring, heard-it-all-before stuff.

“I decided not to work with anyone after that,” he says. “Just to button down and do my own stuff.” Most of the work was done over the past two years.

For years, Meat Beat Manifesto toured as a three-piece: Dangers on an arsenal of synths, samplers and other vintage gizmo mayhem, another keyboard player and a live drummer.

Dangers prefers real drums on stage to accompany the tweaky sounds coming from his samplers and synths. “For live, I like to see something live, not just a laptop or a keyboard, alongside the music,” he says.

Stokes On Video By teaming up with Ben Stokes as the video artist/director/producer in Tino Corp., Dangers fulfilled his need for something more. “Ben Stokes, my partner, did work for Ministry, and did all the Meat Beat videos,” says Dangers. “He uses Final Cut Pro and all Macintosh.”

Now that “R.U.O.K.?” is out, along with several Tino Corp. releases, Dangers says that he’s planning a small tour, and then it’s back into the studio for more recording.

If you catch a show, you can expect and eye and and earful. “Ben’s pretty big on the visuals. He regularly does visuals for DJ Shadow’s show with three PowerBooks,” says Dangers.

Nothing Can Stop Him Now Dangers, long known for carving new paths in sound, ignoring the mainstream and generally just doing what he wants to do in music, is showing the same defiance as always in the face of a changing music world. He’s using technology to produce and cut his own tracks, putting out records on his own schedule, touring to as few or many towns as he feels like, and going back into the studio to record more tracks when the desire hits him.

“I love music so much that — no matter what happens now — no one can take that out of me, ” concludes Dangers. “No label, no agent, no manager can extract that final spark.”

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Hans Zimmer: Speaking Through Music

German-born composer Hans Zimmer has been nominated for seven Academy Awards, including his music for “Gladiator,” “As Good As It Gets,” “Crimson Tide” and “The Preacher’s Wife.” In 1998, he was nominated for two Academy Awards: Best Dramatic Score for “The Thin Red Line” and Best Musical/Comedy Score for “The Prince of Egypt.”

After working on “Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron” last year, Zimmer decided to take on a darker adventure by scoring “The Ring,” a remake of the Japanese horror movie.

“After I did this kids’ film, I needed an antidote to the sweetness — I had to go over to my dark side,” he says with a wicked grin. “I usually spend more time on my dark side.”

Zimmer is also working on director Ridley Scott’s latest film, “Matchstick Men,” as well as “The Last Samurai,” an epic that takes place in the 1870s. “It’s like ‘Gladiator’ in Japan,” he says.

Working With Lisa Gerrard Zimmer pauses to reflect on the “Gladiator” experience. He and Ridley Scott lured eclectic music goddess Lisa Gerrard — known for her work with Dead Can Dance and as a solo artist — into helping with the score. “Lisa didn’t really want to do it when we first phoned her,” he says.

“So Ridley did what every good director does — he sent her the film and said, ‘Let’s wait and see what she says after she watches the movie.’

“Well, she phoned up straight away and said ‘I’m on the next plane from Australia,’” he recalls.

Gerrard was originally supposed to come over for three days. But she ended up staying for three months.

“Things started loosening up in the studio,” he says. “Lisa wasn’t just singing my things, she was really contributing and writing her own stuff. It was so great.

Collaborative Composing “I like working in a collaborative way,” says Zimmer. “I’m not very ego-driven about being ‘The Composer.’ Whoever brings in great ideas should be welcomed. I think it was really good for Lisa — tough, but sort of fun, too. And Ridley is great to work with.”

“After I did this kids’ film, I needed an antidote to the sweetness — I had to go over to my dark side,” says Zimmer, with a wicked grin. “‘Gladiator’ is actually two things,” says Zimmer. “It’s a very structured, thorough score with a very German intellect at work. And then it needed those moments of feminine looseness, which Lisa contributed. Those moments worked like little experiments, little tunes we would develop instinctively.

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www.audiohead.net “The great thing about Lisa is that sometimes she’d be in my room and I’d be writing differently because her presence and influence were there,” he reflects. “So that was great.

Lisa’s got all these computers, but I think in a secret way she fights the technology all the time.”

From Numbers to Notes Growing up in Germany, Hans Zimmer received very little formal training to prepare him for his future as one of the top film composers in the world. “I must have had about two weeks of piano lessons,” he says, joking.

But he made up for his lack of experience with his knowledge of technology and computers. “I was making music on computers a couple years before IBM invented the first PC,” he says, reminiscing. “It would take forever to input a string of numbers into it just to get a couple notes to come out.

“I felt that playing with computers was preferable to practicing the piano,” he jokes. “I was in my late teens, early twenties. I had a Roland Microcomposer MC8 which had 16K of memory.

That was really something then. After that, I used the Fairlight. And nobody could take classes in this stuff because they just didn’t exist.

“Today, it’s amazing what you can do on a PowerBook,” he says. “It’s a more democratic system again. You don’t have to have hundreds of thousands of dollars. You just need to have some good ideas and be able to put them into action. And you have to have talent and musicianship.”

Soon he was working on various rock & roll projects. “We ruined generations of kids,” he laughs, “and we tortured real musicians because our sense of timekeeping was very different — we were very much governed by electronic computers.”

Avant Garde Defined In the 1980s, Zimmer became an assistant to film composer Stanley Myers in London.

“Stanley knew everything about the orchestra,” says Zimmer. “He’d done ‘The Deer Hunter’ and he was working with really avant garde filmmakers in England. You can only be truly be avant garde if you have no money to make a movie,” he says, laughing.

“You can only be truly be avant garde if you have no money to make a movie,” he says, laughing.

Myers wanted to work with somebody who understood the electronic world, and Zimmer fit that bill perfectly. “And so I learned about orchestras from him,” Zimmer says.

They collaborated on a couple of films together, including “My Beautiful Launderette,” which inspired a series of new movies in London. “I think that ‘Snatch’ and all those new English movies sort of came out of that wave,” says Zimmer.

“I wanted to work in Hollywood. But I’d promised myself that I wasn’t going to come to the U.S. unless I was asked to do a job, because I knew I’d make a terrible waiter,” he adds.

Scoring “Rain Man” Then one day, director Barry Levinson offered him the chance to score “Rain Man,” so Zimmer

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www.audiohead.net made his move to the States. “I did ‘Rain Man’ the way I did all my European films. I didn’t really do it in the studio — I just set up my Fairlight in Barry’s office with a couple more toys and gadgets,” he explains.

“It was a relaxed way for Barry to work, too, because he didn’t have to go to a studio where there would have been the pressure of ‘My God, here comes the orchestra. We’d better get it right!’” says Zimmer.

“So we fumbled our way through that score and I thought that was the end of my Hollywood career,” he says, smiling. “But I think every movie I do must mean the end of my career. So, I just keep doing them and forgetting the pain of the last one. I’m still just getting started. I’ve seen glimpses that I might actually get good at this!”

After 12 years in the U.S., Zimmer has finally decided he’s here for good. But he also works in Europe frequently because “You can bring back different ideas. You can’t get stuck in one place.”

Mentoring Composers Zimmer insists that mentorship is essential for developing good craftsmanship. Bothered by how other composers in the U.S. didn’t seem open to sharing the trade with knowledge-hungry budding composers, Zimmer and his business partner, Jay Rifkin, started up Media Ventures, a composing compound where newcomers could develop good craftsmanship.

“When I was in England, Stanley Myers was very encouraging and he got me movies. When I came to America, that sense of apprenticeship didn’t really exist. People helping other people further their careers didn’t really exist,” reflects Zimmer. “Everybody was doing their thing and wouldn’t let any new people in.

“But if you look at the top composers these days — John Williams, Jerry Goldsmith, Elmer Bernstein — most of them are in their 70s,” he points out. “So I always think that in order for something to survive, there needs to be something biting at its heels. It needs to be young and feisty.”

Going By Instinct

“So we built this little place in Santa Monica in a similar fashion to the way I was working — in a room full of technology,” says Zimmer.

“I don’t have any background, but I now instinctively understand how film works. And I don’t think you can teach it. One just has to do it,” he explains.

“The first few movies I worked on, inevitably everything I did was thrown out. And then less would be thrown out, and then it got better,” reflects Zimmer. “I don’t know how I got better understanding of the language of film. It wasn’t anything anybody could teach me. You just instinctively get control over such a beast and learn how to speak its language.”

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www.audiohead.net People Show Up Zimmer insists that he has no idea how people get into the Media Ventures composing collective, which resides within the brick walls of several warehouse-like buildings in Santa Monica. “They just show up,” he says, joking.

“While they learned to do music, we learned how to stop our computers from crashing, and didn’t spend enough time doing music,” explains Zimmer.

“I’m democratically untidy about the whole thing,” he smiles. “If I have a good day and someone turns up and I think what they do is interesting — then, ‘Great, you’ve got a job!’

“However, there is less talent out there than I thought there was. I thought there were millions of people who were absolutely gorgeously brilliant and just were never listened to,” says Zimmer.

“But in my own subjective way of listening to thousands of demos, I came back more with the impression that there isn’t really that much talent out there,” he says. “So, the ones who really must write music, the ones who are so driven by their talent — they usually rise to the top of their level.”

Developing Craftsmanship “There aren’t that many film composers around. But there are a lot of people who think they could be film composers. I think that what is lacking in film scoring these days is that craftsmanship that Elmer Bernstein and Jerry Goldsmith and John Williams have,” says Zimmer.

“While they really learned to do music, we really learned how to stop our computers from crashing, and didn’t spend enough time doing music. All we can really hope for is that someone really brilliant turns up with brilliant ideas, and great craftsmanship and originality,” he adds.

Real Musicians Although he uses samples when he’s writing, Zimmer always has the final parts played out by real musicians in an orchestra. “For my sample library, I went to London and recorded my own samples with the best players in every orchestra, ” he says. “But I made an agreement with them that I would never use the samples without using real musicians. And so, it helps the cause of real acoustic musicians playing.

“The film industry is the last bastion on earth that still has the budgets for orchestral players.

These musicians have spent all their lives training and perfecting their art, and they should be compensated,” insists Zimmer.

“Doctors and lawyers say that they spend a long time going to school — musicians start when they are three or four years old,” he says. “Orchestral music is a tradition that shouldn’t go out the window or be replaced by computers for purely economic reasons.”

The Different Hues of Zimmer Zimmer plans to score his next three movies from this home studio — it is on the beach, after all. But he insists, “I don’t really care where I work. That’s the other advantage of computers: you can just pack it all up in the PowerBook.”

When it comes to doing music, “I’m all over the place as far as what I like to do,” says the composer. “I have to be able to have a point of view and I have to have a voice. I have to be able to say something through the music. Otherwise it’s not worth doing.”

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