1. Favourite knob/fader/switch on a piece of gear and why?
Arturia MicroFreak
One of my favorite knobs are all the Arturia MicroFreak potentiometers, but my fav thing about the MF is the touch sensitive keyboard (I was scared at the beginning, but now I’m totally in love). Another thing that I like so much, are the wooden and clicky buttons of the OrganelleM.
2. Do you have an ‘almost’ perfect bit of kit? What would you change?
I don’t own many things, I have the Critter & Guitari Organelle M, Norns Shield by Garret Labs (+ Novation Launchpad Mini MK2 as 64 “Grid”), Arturia MicroFreak, Koma Elektronic Field Kit FX, Zoom MS-70CDR pedal and an old Panasonic Dictaphone.
Panasonic Dictaphone
I use an old version of Ableton Live Intro (8), just as multitrack recorder + Audacity and Adobe Audition for “editing” with Zoom U-22 as audio interface. I would love to start/switch into the modular world, but for now I’m learning/trying this great and awesome world with VCV Rack 2. Also the Ciat-Lonbarde ecosystem, it fascinates me a lot.
3. What setup do you bring on holiday/tour/commute etc.?
Critter & Guitari Organelle M
Organelle M is the perfect companion in combination with the Norns Shield (with external power bank) and Zoom MS-70CDR.
Zoom MS-70CDR
4. What software do you wish was hardware and vice versa?
Valhalla Supermassive as a real pedal and almost all the Splice VST effects. I would love to have all the Ciat-Lonbarde (Cocoquantus, Deerhorn Organ, Sidrax Organ, Tocante, etc …) as virtual instruments, to try/learn their workflow.
5. Is there anything you regret selling… or regret buying?
Regret selling, the Boss SP-202 and the Yamaha MT50 4 track cassette recorder. Regret buying, probably nothing, all the equipment that I’ve had, have in some way either good or bad things about them, that help me to learn something.
6. What gear has inspired you to produce the most music?
Norns Shield and Organelle M are my main “brains”, especially with generative scripts / patches. I like to control them with 2host USB (Midi USB-USB) or sequencing the MicroFreak. Sometimes I like to record samples / fields recording, with piezo mic on the Koma Field Kit FX or with the Dictaphone.
Norns Shield
7. If you had to start over, what would you get first?
I’m not consider myself as “musician”, my workflow is about feelings, insights and following the flow, so maybe probably, learn and study music theory and a lot of things that I don’t know, even if I like (perhaps too much) the transportation and philosophy of the generative music.
Arturia MicroFreak and Organelle M
8. What’s the most annoying piece of gear you have, that you just can’t live without?
Cables and power adapters.
9. Most surprising tip/trick/technique that you’ve discovered about a bit of kit?
I have no real tricks (being self-taught), but I have learned a lot thanks to the various online communities (for Norns and Organelle) and I wanna say thanks to all those who spent time and energy creating new scripts and patches!
Artist or Band name?
Asymmetric Cut
Genre?
Ambient / Soundscape / Drone
Selfie?
Where are you from?
Italy
How did you get into music?
When I was child, I got an xmas gift (Bontempi keyboard) then around 14, playing guitar (hardcore / punk / grunge), then I dive into electronic music with FastTracker 2 on 486 PC. Later with different gear, such as samplers (E-mu ESI-32 and Boss SP-202) and grooveboxes (Roland MC-303 and MC-505).
What still drives you to make music?
I’m not a professional musician (I’m photographer and teacher), so for me it’s just something to relax, make something (hopefully good) and with the social media, make connections and know nice and talented people (like you and many others).
How do you most often start a new track?
Depends of my mood, but usually I start with the Norns Shield or /with Organelle M and the MicroFreak through the MS 70-CDR, layering some sounds and working on, till I’m ok with the result.
How do you know when a track is finished?
I usually start listening to it many times to understand if I have skipped any steps or made some drafting errors, then I let it settle, like wine and decide if it is usable or not.
Show us your current studio
Desktop Studio
I don’t have studio or studio space in my little apartment, so every time I wanna play I set everything on the living room / work / eating table.
Koma Elektroniks FieldkitFX
Best creative advice that you’ve ever heard?
For me works very well the Samuel Beckett’s quote: “Try again. Fail again. Fail better”. So this kind of mantra could be … try, try, try, don’t be afraid to fail and then try again, having learned something valuable from your experience. Eventually it goes without saying, you will achieve success.
Promote your latest thing… Go ahead, throw us a link
1. Favourite knob/fader/switch on a piece of gear and why?
Moog Mother-32
I guess Vcf mod amount from Mother 32. They allow you to make some good movement with this juicy Moog filter.
2. Do you have an ‘almost’ perfect bit of kit? What would you change?
The combo DFAM and mother 32. The only think I would change it’s maybe put them all in eurorack case with some effect and output mixer.
Moog DFAM and Mother 32
3. What setup do you bring on holiday/tour/commute etc.?
My three tier rack Moog with Mother 32, DFAM, Malekko voltage block and the Lyra 8 !
Moog and cables
4. What software do you wish was hardware and vice versa?
I learned how use tracker with Renoise two years ago, it was really fun and now Polyend or Nerdseq is here as hardware. I really hope to integrate this kind of sequencer in my set up one day, but actually I don’t really need them now.
Meris Polymin, Zvex Instant Loop Junky and Earthquaker Devices Afterneath
For software I don’t really use a lot, except plugins for effect and mixing. I recently bought a Polymoon by Meris, very fun. Maybe having Polymoon or Mercury 7 as a plug would be very cool, for use as send effect or something like this.
5. Is there anything you regret selling… or regret buying?
I miss my Moog Minitaur and my Digitakt, but sometimes you have to make choices…
Elektron Digitakt
6. What gear has inspired you to produce the most music?
Always DFAM and Mother 32. But Soma Lyra 8 can offer you lot of weird and limitless possibilities, and I really like to use it’s external input for other gear, it’s very exiting.
Soma Lyra 8
7. If you had to start over, what would you get first?
I bought the Arturia Beatstep Pro a few days ago, and I guess if I have to start over I go directly to my Beatstep Pro and control everything in a eurorack system with it. Two voice synth with complex oscillators for example, drums and lot of cool stuff.
8. What’s the most annoying piece of gear you have, that you just can’t live without
Maybe my Minilogue, because I don’t really use a lot actually, but sometimes I just plug it into an effect pedal, play with my own hand and I can trip out for a long time. So I keep it…
9. Most surprising tip/trick/technique that you’ve discovered about a bit of kit?
Yeah, I have a some good patches, I used this for my video BuGzZ. It’s on the Mother 32:
noise out in vco lin fm.
Lfo tri out in mix 2
Pitch out (DFAM) in mix 1
KB out in vc mix ctrl
And vc mix out in vcf cut off.
Recently I also used pitch output of DFAM to control Lyra 8 hold gate input. It’s mad!
Artist or Band name?
Stufflandsounds
Genre?
Electronic, experimental, happymess.
Selfie?
Jeremy Hernandez
Where are you from?
From France, in a little countryside town around Tarbes and Lourdes. I live in Bordeaux now.
How did you get into music?
I guess it was when I was child, I took headphones of my uncle to listen some CDs, and I found in his room the album Bjork Homogenic, Massive Attack Mezzanine, MTV Unplugged Nirvana. My mind blow up !
What still drives you to make music?
She always opens my mind to a new infinite world and it’s about shared creativity with other people. I can’t do without, even just listening music.
How do you most often start a new track?
Most of time, I’m thinking in my room, I see my gear, and I feel when it’s a good moment to have fun with it.
How do you know when a track is finished?
I never know… haha.
Filming can help me to say « it’s done », and next I keep my project to have some post production, edit, mixing, etc.
Show us your current studio
jeremy Hernandez’s Studio
Best creative advice that you’ve ever heard?
Stay yourself, stay daydreamer.
Promote your latest thing… Go ahead, throw us a link.
1. Favourite knob/fader/switch on a piece of gear and why?
Make Noise Morphagene
Lately, it’s been the Vari-Speed knob on the Morphagene. It’s really incredible how something as simple as changing the speed and pitch of a sound can turn it into something completely unrecognizable. Things get even more interesting when you start reversing things too. You really end up discovering all kinds of sounds within sounds that you never really would have thought were there, especially when slowing samples down. Gotta love the wonderful world of microsound.
2. Do you have an ‘almost’ perfect bit of kit? What would you change?
Moog Subsequent 37
The closest thing for me would be my Moog Subsequent 37. It just puts so much sound design power at your fingertips, you almost don’t need anything else. Between having one of my favorite filters, two different kinds of distortion, and plenty of modulation options, there’s enough in there to make a lifetime’s worth of music. It may not be as infinitely versatile as my eurorack setup, but there’s a certain immediacy about it that allows me to get what I need out of it very quickly. The only thing that could possibly make it even better is if it had voltage control over more of the parameters. I actually really regret not jumping on the CV version while they were still making those, as that would have been as close to perfect as you can get.
3. What setup do you bring on holiday/tour/commute etc.?
Moog Mother-32
I can’t say I do much traveling with my gear, as my setup wasn’t exactly designed with mobility in mind. But I guess if I were to bring anything, it would be my Moog Mother-32. Not only is it one of my more compact instruments, but I find its limitations to be pretty inspiring. It’s a surprisingly deep instrument and can yield some very unexpected results with a bit of clever patching. I often feel like I’m just scratching the surface of what it can do, so I suppose traveling with it would really force me to get everything I can out of it.
4. What software do you wish was hardware and vice versa?
Spectrasonics Omnisphere
I really wish there was some kind of hardware version of Spectrasonics Omnisphere. It’s such a useful instrument when scoring for a film, especially for creating cinematic soundscapes. It’s one of the few VST instruments I find myself going back to time and time again. If they made a hardware version with some CV control over the parameters, I’d buy one in a heartbeat. Of course, with the size of the library being what it is, I’m sure it would be incredibly impractical to actually implement in hardware form, much less in eurorack format.
Walrus Audio Descent
On the flip side, I’d love a plugin version of my Walrus Audio Descent reverb pedal. I use the shimmer mode on that pedal quite a bit to add an almost choir-like quality to synths, and would love to have multiple software instances to use throughout a mix. Sure, there are ways of creating a similar sound using other software (the Descent is digital after all) but the pitch shifting on this pedal has a very particular, kind of unnatural sound to it. Hard to describe, but it definitely has a tone and I haven’t really come across anything else that sounds quite like it.
5. Is there anything you regret selling… or regret buying?
Korg MS-20 mini
I sold my Korg MS-20 mini when I first started diving into eurorack. At the time, I figured it didn’t make sense to have a semi-modular synth that didn’t speak Volt per Octave and was looking to get some cash to finance the beginnings of my modular (I believe I ended up buying a Maths with the money I made). But over time I realized just how much I missed those oscillators and filters. It’s such a unique instrument, and much like the Mother-32, it just has a very inspiring set of limitations. So last year, I actually ended up buying it again and will never repeat the mistake of selling it.
Arturia Minibrute 2S
As far as buyer’s remorse on a piece of gear, I bought an Arturia Minibrute 2S when they first came out and had some regrets on that one. The synth voice itself is phenomenal, and the ability to integrate it with eurorack really enhanced the functionality of my existing modular system. But I never got into a good flow with the sequencer. As someone with a background in music theory, I found it really difficult to visualize musical intervals due to its lack of a traditional keyboard. So I eventually ended up selling it and getting the keyboard version instead. Been loving it ever since.
6. What gear has inspired you to produce the most music?
Signal SoundLabs Eurorack
Lately, my eurorack rig has been the most consistent source of inspiration. I made some upgrades to it recently, and after about three years of buying and selling modules, I finally feel like I have most of the puzzle pieces in place. Modular synthesis definitely has an element of unpredictability, feels like these modules have a will of their own sometimes and I’m just along for the ride. It really is a happy accident machine. The downside is it can be a bit difficult to tame, especially when working on music that is synced to visuals. But lately I’ve managed to find a workflow that has been very effective for film music. The key was to start recording everything I did on the modular and then spending some time editing to pick out all the best parts. The editing can be time consuming, but I find myself getting faster and faster with patching so it all evens out. Overall, I just find it more inspiring to capture a bunch of audio from the modular and then work by subtraction rather than addition.
7. If you had to start over, what would you get first?
If I had to start again, I’d probably get the most powerful computer I could afford, along with a copy of Cubase, a Universal Audio Apollo Twin, and some kind of semi-modular synth like the Minibrute 2. A basic rig like this would cover pretty much all the essentials, while combining a tactile hardware workflow with plenty of digital flexibility.
8. What’s the most annoying piece of gear you have, that you just can’t live without?
Mutable Instruments Clouds
Hard to say, but I guess I kind of have a love/hate relationship with my Mutable Instruments Clouds module. I rely on it pretty heavily when it comes to making any kind of ambient drone patch, but I find it rather annoying having to remember what all the controls do in its various different modes. Having installed the Parasite firmware really didn’t help with that either. That said, I came across an iOS app called Modes that acts as a nice cheat sheet for some multi-function modules, so I’m definitely not pulling my hair out as much as before. As much as I have a few gripes with Clouds, it really brings a lot to the table and has become pretty much irreplaceable in my rack.
9. Most surprising tip/trick/technique that you’ve discovered about a bit of kit?
Chase Bliss MOOD
I’ve recently been getting more and more into processing audio from Cubase using effects pedals. Plug-ins can be great, particularly for utility functions like EQ, but nowadays there are so many unique pedals out there, it feels like a shame not to use them to process in-the-box sounds as well. I’ve been doing this a lot with my Chase Bliss MOOD pedal in particular, which lets me grab a short slice of audio from the DAW and transform it in all kinds of quirky and interesting ways. Lately, whenever I get stuck on a track, I’ll start feeding random audio into MOOD (unused takes from the modular work particularly well) just to see what happens. It’s a great way to get myself out of a creative rut.
Artist or Band name?
Paul Talos
Genre?
Cinematic Electronica. I’ve never been sure how to categorize my music exactly, so eventually I just made something up. I think it sums things up pretty nicely.
Selfie?
Paul Talos
Where are you from?
Born in Germany, grew up in Boston, MA. Currently living in Philadelphia, PA.
How did you get into music?
I started playing electric guitar around the age of ten and started experimenting with home recording on a laptop when I was a teenager. After high school, I spent some time at Berklee College of Music studying guitar and discovered a love of synthesis and all things electronic music shortly after that.
What still drives you to make music?
Music’s become my job over the last few years, so a paycheck is definitely one thing that drives me. But more importantly, I constantly find myself inspired by just listening to other people’s music and trying to deconstruct what I’m hearing. I’ve come across some very interesting synthesis and production techniques just by trying (and usually failing) to emulate something I heard somewhere else.
How do you most often start a new track?
As a film composer, the answer to that question really varies from project to project. Production timelines and deadlines can be vastly different from one film to the next, so sometimes it might be starting a new track every day, other times I’ll write two or three a week. I do try to spend some time every day just to make some kind of noise though, usually on the modular. I find that synthesis is a skill that really needs to be maintained, otherwise it just gets harder the longer you are away from it. So regardless of what I’m working on, I try to squeeze in some synth time at least once a day, so I don’t get too rusty.
How do you know when a track is finished?
It really never is, but once the deadline hits it’s usually good enough. Honestly, if I didn’t have deadlines of some sort, I’m not sure I would ever finish anything.
Show us your current studio
Signal SoundLabs studio
Best creative advice that you’ve ever heard?
This one kind of relates to one of the other questions about finishing tracks. I took this music production class in college, and the professor said something one day that really stuck with me. I’m paraphrasing, but it was something along the lines of this: A mix is never done, you just stop working on it eventually. To hear that from a professional in the industry was incredibly reassuring at the time. I think it’s something that applies not only to a mix, but to music making in general. Nothing is ever truly finished and that’s okay.
Promote your latest thing… Go ahead, throw us a link.
Back in July, I released my score for a short thriller film called ‘Just Like You.’ The score is available on all streaming platforms. Links below.
