Author: Martin

Caspar Hesselager – Synthful Jebus

1. Favourite knob/fader/switch on a piece of gear & why?

Mighty Macbeth Vernier knobs

Great question. This matters. 100% the Vernier-dials on my Macbeth Elements. Posh answer, I know, but they’re just so smooth and satisfying to turn!

MacBeth Elements

2. Do you have an ‘almost’ perfect bit of kit? What would you change?

Probably my Sequential OB-6. It’s so damn good. In a perfect world it’d be 8 or 16 voices. But it’s amazing, and especially if you add the GeoSynths Low Frequency expander (which I definitely will) it’s pretty much all the poly-synth you (I) need. The Make Noise Shared System is close to perfect in a way too. I would make the Erbe Verb have a stereo input, if I could change one thing. Best reverb ever.

Sequential OB-6

3. What setup do you bring on holiday/tour/commute etc.?

I’ve brought my OP-1 and/or Digitakt on several trips and tours, but I usually never get around to using them much. Right now with this whole Corona-situation I’ve assembled a little spot at home with a DFAM, Vermona RetroVerb and a modest 104hp of Eurorack to pass the time and come up with sounds to use later on.

TE OP-1

4. What software do you wish was hardware or vice versa?

I wish there was a Soundtoys multi-fx hardware unit of some sort! Like their Effects Rack plugin. That would be fun, especially for live use. I use Soundtoys constantly (like everyone else?).
The other way around is more tricky, I almost feel like we already have everything? Oh, I know, an iPad Make Noise Shared System would be interesting for jamming in the sofa.

5. Is there anything you regret selling… or regret buying

I regret selling my Prophet 08. I replaced it with the Rev2 because it has some advantages live. But I have to say, the 08 just sounded better. I will be getting a used desktop version at some point again, I think. I usually hold on to things though, since I just know I’ll come back to most things, even if I don’t use them for a while. I don’t really have any buying regrets. Maybe some modules here and there, but hey, that’s part of the journey!

6. What gear has inspired you to produce the most music?

Yamaha upright piano

Definitely the good ol’ piano. But I find the Make Noise Shared System (and modular in general) incredibly inspiring too.

Make Noise Shared System

7. If you had to start over, what would you get first?

Starting out today with synths on a relatively modest budget, and wanting to get into (semi) modular,  I would probably get a 0-coast, Mother 32, or Grandmother. For starting in general, get a laptop and Ableton or Logic. All you need, basically.

8. What’s the most annoying piece of gear you have, that you just can’t live without?

My computer, by a mile. I kind of hate it, and Logic too (which I the only DAW I use). Don’t get me started on why! And a shout out to my MFB Tanzbär. I use it quite a bit and adore the sound, but man, that interface is something else. Drives you crazy. Good luck getting parameter locks to work, EVER!

MFB Tanzbär

9. Most surprising tip/trick/technique that you’ve discovered about a bit of kit?

More a general piece of advice or tip maybe, but I encourage everyone to get into pedals and hardware effects. It just changes how you approach making sounds, and takes you away from the screen. As much as I love plugins, there’s just no substitution for the hands-on tweaking and interaction on the fly that you get from pedals. And it teaches you to commit to your sounds, because there are no infinite recall and undos. I have this chain that I use very often where every synth I have goes through a small stereo looper, three Eventide pedals + one Strymon, and into a Culture Vulture stereo distortion before hitting the computer. The opportunities with something like that are infinite.

Artist or Band name?

Caspar Hesselager. My Heart the Brave. Palace Winter.

Genre?

Epic widescreen alternative everything.

Selfie

Caspar Hesselager. A man of many knobs!

Where are you from?

Copenhagen.

What still drives you to make music?

Simply discovering new sounds. Infinite options, surprises, and ways to go, even with the same few Legos.

How do you most often start a new track?

Often with a tempo that feels right for that day. After that drum machine and acoustic piano combo, usually. With modular, sort of the same, I have a tempo and a vibe from the beginning that I try to pursue, and then the machine will surprise me along the way.

How do you know when a track is finished?

When it sounds KILLER! 😀 At some point it just becomes this little universe that stands on its on feet, and then you leave it there. I can take a week or 2 months though, to get to that place, that’s the tricky part. But I’d say in general, I don’t have a hard time finishing tracks.

Show us your current studio

Caspar’s Studio

Best creative advice that you’ve ever heard?

Hmm, trying to search through all the bad advice I’ve endured to get to some good, hold on. I heard Knud Romer [Editor: Danish author] say recently when asked, how do you write a great book, that “you edit a bad one”. To me that translates to keep writing and recording until it’s good. Stay at it, eventually you will come up with something cool.

Promote your latest thing… Go ahead, throw us a link.

6 Synthesizer Performances Album:
https://open.spotify.com/album/4YaG8wKDZap9Ge3HF5Snel?si=g0ooOyFCTHGHgq_p4M-5jg

YouTube synth videos:
https://www.youtube.com/c/casparhesselager

[Editor: Do you have a favorite tip, trick or way of working with any of the gear from this interview?
Then throw a comment below…]

Todd Barton – The Don Of Buchla

1. Favourite knob/fader/switch on a piece of gear andwhy?

Large blue, skirted Rogan knobs like on my Buchla 259 Complex Waveform Generator. They fit my hand nicely, feel good and I can see the index on the skirt. For sliders, all the sliders on my Easel. I prefer sliders to knobs, because I can more easily see where they are. Clearly I use the sliders a lot, since the printing is wearing off!

2. Do you have an ‘almost’ perfect bit of kit? What would you change?

When I travel my favorite setup of my Buchla Music Easel plus a lunchbox of eurorack modules, ususally a Makenoise Morphagene or Epoch Hordijk Benjolin to bring into the Easel’s Aux In for manipulation and processing and the Intellijel Planar 2 for spatialization.

3. What setup do you bring on holiday/tour/commuteetc.?

see above

4. What software do you wish was hardware and viceversa?

I wish Tom Erbe’s Soundhack plugins were hardware. Ooops, wait! They are 🙂 All of his modules with Makenoise: Morphagene, Mimeophon, Echophon,Erbeverb are the ones I have.

Eurorack case

5. Is there anything you regret selling… or regret buying?

My Buchla 100 and Synthi AKS. Couldn’t be helped at the time.

6. What gear has inspired you to produce the most music?

Buchla 200e

Clearly my Buchla instruments, but I have also created a lot of music I love with my Hordijk and Serge systems.

Hordijk and Buchla 200

7. If you had to start over, what would you get first?

Though I learned about analog synthesis from a friends’ Easel back in the 1970’s, the first modular I owned was a Serge Modular Music System in 1979. It was a great entreand, I’d do it again.

Serge

8. What’s the most annoying piece of gear you have,that you just can’t live without?

I’m going to interpret “annoying” as “tempermental” in which case my Easel. It’s tempermental, but I love it.

[Editor: It’s a little nice to know that even a synthesis master, who clearly has a superb grasp of the Music Easel, thinks that his instruments can be ‘tempermental’]

Easel Eurorack setup

9. Most surprising tip/trick/technique that you’vediscovered about a bit of kit?

Feedback. I try to get every module I encounter to feedback and learn what that has to teach me, what I can discover from it.

Artist or Band name?

Todd Barton

Genre?

All

Selfie?

Sure. Well a photo of me taken by my artist daughter, Ursula Barton

Todd Barton

Where are you from?

Originally the San Francisco Bay Area in California. Moved permanently to Ashland, Oregon in my late teens. I’m now 70.

How did you get into music?

Though my parents weren’t musical they played musicin the house (radio and phonograph) and there was a piano in the house that I began exploring at age 5. From then on I was obsessed with sound . . .

What still drives you to make music?

Sonic curiosity.

How do you most often start a new track?

By following the sound, listening to where it might takeme. It feels like sonic T’ai Chi, or more specifically a T’aiChi form called Push Hands which is done with a partner and it is an exploration and exercise of moving energy. I feel like my partner is sound.

How do you know when a track is finished?

Completely intuitive . . . the sonic sculpture looks and feels complete, nothing more to add and along the way I have stripped away unnecessary gestures and layers.

Show us your current studio— Too messy to show, but here are a few isolated shots ofsome gear.

Best creative advice that you’ve ever heard?

Listen, deeply.

Promote your latest thing… Go ahead, throw us a link.

Buchla Now album. In 2020 the cassette tape label Ultraviolet Light will release Buchla Now. This album will feature a compilation of new tracks recorded by some of the most exciting electronic musicians working today, and focus solely on instruments designed by Don Buchla, the legendary instrument builder, physicist, circuit designer and inventor of West Coast Synthesis. Buchla Now was curated by Todd Barton with contributions from Marcia Bassett, Suzanne Ciani, Dan Deacon, Jonathan Fitoussi, Steve Horelick, Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith, and Hans Tammen.

Suzanne Ciani once said of Don Buchla that his “ unique mindset allowed him to be outside the popular notion of what electronic music was”. Each of these artists, in their own way, carries on this tradition of boundary-pushing music, expanding the very notion of what music can be.

https://www.ultravioletlight.blue/

[Editor: There are affiliate links to the relevant gear throughout the articles. It helps to support this blog. In fact, should you be needing some patch cables or guitar strings. Then clicking on one of the above links and buying any product that you prefer, will help the blog… doesn’t even have to be the ones in the link. Thx]

Julie Østengaard – RealTime Samplist

1. Favourite knob/fader/switch on a piece of gear and why?

I like the MORPH on Make Noise Morphagene because magical sounds appear from playing with that knob and getting gene overlapping, random pitch shifting and stereo panning.

2. Do you have an ‘almost’ perfect bit of kit? What would you change?

At the moment I’m very pleased with Make Noise Morphagene. I like the way it expands on classic tape machine splicing techniques in a complex and real-time way. I would like to be able to replace the buffer continuously while being modulated, I love when live sampling another instrument, how the sampling shifts along with the instrument when changing it.

3. What setup do you bring on holiday/tour/commute etc.?

A nice compact set-up would be my Zoom H2N and Aquarian Audio H2a hydrophone, Razer laptop and Elektron Octatrack – Then I have the opportunity to both record some new sounds and play around with them, and the computer for Max patching.

4. What software do you wish was hardware and vice versa?

I would love to run Max/Msp patches on embedded SBC hardware for creating custom abstract musical instruments and self-running sound installations. It has been attempted with ex. Lattepanda that can run Windows, but if Max/Msp would be compatible with Linux for starters, it would be easier. Another way would be to turn to Pure Data -Max’ open source sibling, which has more options on this front.

5. Is there anything you regret selling… or regret buying?

Not really, but I do sometimes regret hacking my Revox A-77. I got it for free a long time ago, because it didn’t work. I fixed it and decided to create a new instrument from it where the motor pulling the reel is dynamically controlled by a Max/Msp sequencer so it sequences the reels playback – It turned out to be a really strange sounding, but cool instrument. Sometimes though, I do wonder why I had to use exactly that machine and not just any tapemachine.

6. What gear has inspired you to produce the most music?

My Elektron Machinedrum is one of my first machines, and I have used it for a great deal of projects. Especially using the RAM machines for live sampling, is where it really goes off-grid, using the main input level on the recorder to create gnarly feedback. And sending tracks, machines or instruments through it, to create sampled sequences that interplay with existing sounds.

7. If you had to start over, what would you get first?

Of course it would be nice to have developed skills like programming and circuits from an early age, or going into hardware synths earlier. But I don’t mind that I didn’t. My initial way of creating music was purely intuitive, not having any theory to lean on made it honest and from within, in a different way than now.

8. What’s the most annoying piece of gear you have, that you just can’t live without?

Mutable Instruments Braids – Can’t get it to sound perfect, but for some reason I won’t sell it because it has a certain “promise”.

9. Most surprising tip/trick/technique that you’ve discovered about a bit of kit?

Using re-trigger on Machinedrum with a Random LFO on re-trigger modulation and re-trigger gain to create out of sync beat repeats and melodic stuff.
And the “IDM in a box” trick, using the CTR-ALL machines to make crazy glitchy things – thanks to Rui Peixoto for the great video!

Artist or Band name?

Julie Østengaard.

Genre?

Sound Art, Electroacoustic/Acousmatic, Ambient, IDM.

Selfie?

Where are you from?

North Sealand, but I have lived in Copenhagen for about 10 years now

How did you get into music?

I started playing electric guitar with my childhood friend, which turned into acoustic guitar, writing and playing singer/songwriter type music. I soon got an electric bass, some multi effect pedal and I think a pro tools license, which thereafter slowly started the evolution into electronic music – I guess Julie with the acoustic guitar didn’t see this coming.

What still drives you to make music?

Music technology, curiousness and learning new things. The depths of music technology never cease to amaze me, every time I get to know something new, I don’t seem to feel the world of music contracts, but rather it expands and a new world appears, of possibilities and things to grasp. There are so many exciting ways to interact with music, and to express through music. Music is so closely related to both physics and math, but music is also something that you can approach very intuitively, making it possible to unite both thinking and feeling.

How do you most often start a new track?

Often I start by creating limitations, like a specific technology, method, theme, a set of rules, a specific sound or such, and then I seek to push the boundaries of those limitations, which is where I think I’m most creative and inspired. Sometimes, I am more interested in how the sounds are created than how they sound, and I’m not set out to create something that only sounds good, but the journey there must also be interesting.

How do you know when a track is finished?

I compose and record all my pieces by playing them live. I like that it keeps me very present in the music I create, and gives the music a sort of liveliness too, with the small imperfections that can’t be edited away afterwards – at some point I know, that doing another take will not contribute to the artistic nerve, but stifle it – then, the piece must be finished.

Show us your current studio

Promote your latest thing… Go ahead, throw us a link.

instagram: http://instagram.com/sisterevertone
website: https://www.julieoestengaard.com/
latest live set: https://www.julieoestengaard.com/quarantine-session

[Editor: Do you have a favorite tip, trick or way of working with any of the gear from this interview?
Then throw a comment below…]