australian Archives - Martin Yam Møller

Dean Fuller – The Washington Monument Amb

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

You want a gateway to all possible multiverses of music? The RANDOMISE button on the Korg Opsix will take you there.

Maybe you just want to go to the universe next door. Korg has got you covered: You can set the level of randomisation, giving you everywhere from the tiniest variation on your current sound too.

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

Chase Bliss Dark World. It’s an ugly/beautiful reverb that makes anything sound cool. But … I want it in stereo.
DARK on the left. WORLD on the right. Let ‘em twist and twirl together. Let them have babies with two heads and two dark hearts . I digress…

PS. An adjustable loop length on the Chase Bliss Habit would be dope too…

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

If I need to be agile/mobile/hostile I stick with this: Korg Volca Keys paired with a Zoom G1 Four. The Keys was my first synth, and it was cheap. The Zoom has pretty much every standard effect under the sun – and a 30 second looper. I’ve recently added the Arturia Keystep as a keyboard, because the patented Volca keyboard is a flaming trash heap.

Korg Volca Keys paired with a Zoom G1 Four and Arturia Keystep

Give it another couple of weeks and it might be the Volca FM2 instead though…

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

If Puremagnetik’s Driftmaker delay was a pedal I’d pay a ridiculous amount of money for it without a second thought. It adds such a gritty, messed up ambience to whatever it touches. Blankfor.ms had a hand in it, so you know the lofi is legit.

I don’t wish any of my hardware was a software plugin* This is not to say that I’m dismissing the digital side of music making in any way, shape or form. Plenty of great artists use it to great effect.
I don’t use these tools because I just don’t have much time to play music.

Booting up a computer, opening up Ableton, selecting one of an infinite array of software synths, worrying about CPU usage or RAM – all of this takes time and energy to deal with. I ain’t in a headspace (or a techspace) where I can do any of that quickly or efficiently currently.

My hardware setup can go from POWER OFF to ready to play in about 10 seconds. Maybe a minute if I’ve got some super crazy stereo stuff I want to dial in.

If I had a small, always on computer with enormous processing power next to my synth setup, then I’d definitely be integrating more.

*although I am intrigued by plugins that work in tandem with my hardware pedals. When I have world enough, and time, I’ll be doing some weird n’ wild stuff with the Chase Bliss Plugin for Gen Loss 2 , as well as a user created plugin for HABIT…

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

Moog Mavis is the perennial underdog of my setup. Don’t get me wrong, it’s beautiful as a single module in a larger modular setup. Oora Music gets a ton of mileage out of it as part of his suitcase of modules. On its own… you don’t have much to work with and I’m not fully ready to commit to it.
In retrospect, I wish I’d saved an extra couple of weeks and grabbed a Make Noise Strega instead. Alas, currently Mavis is a humble lowpass filter for my drum machine.

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

I refuse to read the manual for Matt Bradshaw’s Drumkid because I wanna believe that it has a mind of its own. Sure, it’s supremely limited, but everything it does it nails. I randomise a drum pattern, and now I have a drummer that will flick in a little something extra from time to time. It’s a true collaborator – spitting its endless rhythmic ideas my way to play off. I need a good collaborator with an excellent brain to get my fingers working. Drumkid is both.

Heck, a lot of the time I mute the drum channel – all I need is the groove that the Drumkid thoughtfully provides.

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

I started off many a year ago with just a Korg Volca Keys and nothing else for like 5 years. Please note that the Keys sounds like a squealing pig until you grease it with heavy reverb.

Can you blame me? I was seduced by that wonderful word: ANALOG.

Now I just want a usable sound that I can dial in quickly.

If I could turn back time I’d grab a Volca FM instead and have every DX7 preset ever made loaded onto it. Who needs to properly learn FM synthesis if you’ve got some great presets, right?

Also I’d get a MIDI keyboard for the thing because no-one deserves to be punished with the standard Volca ribbon keyboard.

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

I love the Chase Bliss Mood. I still don’t know what I’m doing with it half the time. I just did a session where it seemed like all the settings were reversed and maybe the thing is trying to gaslight me. I dunno man…

But when it hits, it breaks through the fabric of reality. Even that basic reverb sounds so weird and warped and wonderful. To say nothing of its DELAY or SLIP modes.

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

Treat it right and Chase Bliss Habit can be a mono synth.
Firstly you need:
⦁ A constant(ish) sound source/tone.
⦁ Chase Bliss Habit.

Here’s how you do it:

⦁ Set the MODIFY switches to A1. You are now in pitch delay mood. Twisting between 10 o’clock and 2 o’clock will pitch your echoes down. Twisting it further either side will pitch your echoes up to the heavens.
⦁ Set the DRY KILL dipswitch up to ON. Now you have no dry signal. This is very important.
⦁ Set SIZE and SPREAD to minimum.
⦁ Set LEVEL to maximum.
⦁ Run your signal through HABIT.
⦁ I like dragging my input cable over a surface for extra loftiness. Radio static is also cool.
⦁ Twist the MODIFY knob to get your note of choice.

Artist or Band name?

the_washington_monument_amb

… in retrospect, this name makes me incredibly difficult to search google for. But hey, it’s mine now.

Genre?

Lo-fi ambient. Lofi is a fine way to hide my (currently) novice playing skills.

Selfie?

[immediately before an exorcism]

Where are you from?

The land I live on was called Boorloo before colonisation. Nowadays it’s called Perth.

How did you get into music?

My parents played me stuff that blew my mind*. My sister played me stuff that blew my mind. My friends played me stuff that blew my mind. I feel obliged to return the favour.

*specifically, in no particular order: Elton John. Frank Zappa. Queens of the Stone Age. King Crimson. Heather Nova. Foo Fighters. South Park: Chef Aid. The Goon Show. Tom Waits. Goreki. Massive Attack. Godspeed You! Black Emperor. David Holmes. After Dinner.

What still drives you to make music?

Vanity. I like that people like my work. Shouting into the silent abyss can get dispiriting.

Progress. Seeing improvement today over yesterday and the day before is awfully gratifying.

Meditation. It’s been a strange few months. I’ve been keeping too much in my mind. The act of creation wipes things away, if only briefly…

How do you most often start a new track?

I’ll hear something on my way to work from tybo_ambientsky or shimmery.mp3 or kaicarsonwest do something cool with a piece of gear that I have. I’ll spend the day consumed by the thought. I crib the settings in the margins of my workbook. I imagine all the ways that I can take this and break it and then go ham with distortion and layers until I have an ungainly tower of grain and fuzz. Then I go do it.

How do you know when a track is finished?

When my darling tells me to go to bed.

Show us your current studio

Best creative advice that you’ve ever heard?

Create incessantly and with intention. Be like Prince – record all the damn time, release only the gems. And release gems all the darn time. You are an iceberg; you are a vault. The little that the public sees is supported by the vast volume of work that you toiled on out of sight. Constant introspection and evaluation will make your work better. But only if you make your work.

I’m paraphrasing Father Bronques here. His advice took me from an unemployed student to a photographer charging $200 an hour in the space of a year.

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

I have a YouTube that would love a few more followers. Feeling like long, long lofi ambient pieces to sleep to? Do you need to hear tape loops looping forever? This is the place to go.

Also @royriverswhite is a good mate of mine doing fabulous art on an early 1980’s Apple MacIntosh. We’re gonna be doing something weird. Together. Soon.

[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]

Benjamin Shaw – Ponderer Sounds

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

Recently I got the Type One Analog Ensemble by Tom Oakes of Horrothia FX who just
happens to live in my town of birth, Cornwall in the UK. Asides from being an absolutely gorgeous chorus the Type One has this excellent arcade style button for the footswitch and it is so satisfying to click.

I also really love the Speed Control dial on my Sony Clear Voice Walkman, it’s old, plastic and the dial is knurled and recessed almost past the point of being able to turn it but the tactile experience mixed with the sonic result is awesome.

Lastly I don’t own one yet but I’m really looking forward to getting a Nakedboards MC-8 MIDI controller, the faders are a little larger and spaced nicely for using with orchestral software libraries to add that ‘human’ feel.

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

A recent addition for me is my StudioLogic SL88 Studio MIDI keyboard. I have an old family heirloom upright piano that is gorgeous but I haven’t been able to relocate it to our current residence, so getting a properly weighted, natural feeling, full size key bed has made writing with software instruments way more enjoyable and inspiring, so far I wouldn’t change a thing on it.

I used to manage a mates boutique shop, Pedal Empire, in Brisbane and build pedalboards professionally, so I have played hundreds, if not thousands of individual pedals, my ethos from that experience is that ‘perfect’ is a relative term and every pedal, if you allow it the time, can yield some ‘perfect’ results in the right context. I think it’s up to the player to find the gold and follow where it leads. Even something as amazingly engineered as the Chase Bliss Blooper for example, is full of quirks, artifacts and limitations of sorts, but if you ironed all those out to be ‘perfect’ it probably wouldn’t be half as fun.

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

Since moving to a rural, coastal location in Tasmania in recent years I haven’t had need to take a rig on the road much, however if we do go away for longer than a few days and I need to film a demo or make some music I’ll usually take the Walrus Audio Slö, Bondi Art Van Delay, 1981 DRV & CBA Blooper. Those with a guitar, laptop and little interface is all I need for guitar inspiration.

Walrus Audio Slö, Bondi Art Van Delay, 1981 DRV & CBA Blooper

I’m also building a small modular system that is easy to take out and make generative ambient music.
If I don’t have need for anything and just want to make some music in the moment I love using the Fugue Machine app, it’s great for coming up with a simple melody and layering in different speeds and directions… too much fun.

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

I use PaulStretch a lot, something about taking a 1 minute piece and making it 15 minutes long is so fascinating to me and PaulStretch does that in it’s own special way, I’d love that in a pedal. I’m pretty new to modular synth but perhaps there’s a module that does that.

I recently got hold of a Pecan Audio Edera which is a stereo warming unit in a small simple pedal format. Previously I would use some plugin distortion on the fx bus to warm up tracks while wishing I had something like the Analog Heat, but way less complicated, so the Edera has fulfilled that wish.

Back the other way, hardware I wish was software, I still haven’t found a plugin or process that yields the same result as recording to cassette or tape and slowing down. 80’s and 90’s tape/cassette equipment all have their own oddities that they impart to a recording. They sounds so good to me and even the best tape emulation can’t quite nail it just yet. They’re getting closer and closer though.

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

Years ago I made my mind up that I wouldn’t have any extra pedals/gear laying around that weren’t in constant use or on my pedalboard so I used to sell everything surplus to my needs and made my mind up not to regret any of it. I don’t follow that mantra anymore and have heaps of gear in corners and on shelves. I have bought and sold an El Capistan about 4 times now, currently don’t have one, that’ll probably change again. I did have an original Bondi Del Mar that I let go right before the prices got exorbitantly high which is a bit of a bummer, but I kinda despise that part of the gear community anyway, I like to sell knowing people are getting a good deal.
Working at PE for years made it easy not to miss things I’d personally sold when it’s always there in store if you need a fix. I would get way too sad if I let myself think too much about what I’ve let go, safe to say I’ve moved through hundreds of pedals on my board in the last 10 years. I don’t think I’ve regretted a purchase ever because it’s all a learning experience finding out what works and what doesn’t.

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

My process for making pedal demos has always been to let the subject pedal guide my noodling and musing so mostly when you watch one of my videos you’re hearing snippets of how the said pedal has inspired me.
I always get inspired easily by Spitfire Audio orchestral samples, they just capture so much realism and are emotive to play, same goes for Fracture Sounds, The Phonoloop and Felt Instruments.
Pedal wise the Hologram Electronics Microcosm is pretty much the most inspiring analog thing I’ve owned and I can rest assured that plugging into it will spark something if I’m ever drawing a blank.

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

I started playing guitar in the ‘Big Amp Heavy Guitar’ era, if I could go back and tell myself to get a Telecaster and a Princeton it would make a world of difference. My first pedals were a Line-6 DL4 and a Crowther Hot Cake which I still think now for the way I like to write and play are great pedals to start with.

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

I feel like maybe I’m in a sweet spot where I’ve narrowed down my choices to equipment that largely improves my work flow. That said, I recently dived headlong into modular synthesis after a few years of deliberating, and though I have a clear vision for what my desired sounds from Modular are, the learning curve is pretty dramatic. The Patch & Tweak book from Kim Bjorn Bjooks is helping a lot though.

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

In the box I love to duplicate tracks, hard pan them, and then zoom in and move one of them just a few milliseconds ahead for a massively wide sound. Also a fun trick is recording something to tape, physically speeding it up and recording it again and then slowing it down and stretching it out to overlay with the original recording. This adds textures that I absolutely adore the heck out of.

Hardware wise the Horrothia Type One I mentioned earlier is a terrific widening tool with the chorusing effect dialed at it’s slowest where you can’t actually discern the movement. I nearly always record guitars for stuff other than demos through the Type One in stereo even if I later end up panning or summing to mono, it just sounds so good and I leave it on constantly. The only downside is I don’t get to smash that arcade button as much as I’d like!