italian Archives - Martin Yam Møller

M. Beckmann – Post Droner

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

The “E” switch on Count to 5 by Montreal Assembly, specifically on mode three. I love the eight seconds looping mode and that switch is the one that allows you to add a second and a third playback of the same loop, also reversed and pitched up or down, chromatically or at different intervals. I love the ability to abruptly add some sped-up elements.

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

Since I primarily loop stuff, I have to go with Blooper by Chase Bliss. Even though it has a 30 seconds limit and it’s mono (which contextually is what I would change), it’s a very powerful and versatile looper, and I could probably perform just with it – and say a guitar and reverb, or OP1, or a keyboard in general – and get plenty of inspiration.

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

Usually on holiday (since I don’t do many livesets) a backpack with my norns and grid by monome, OP1 field and a stereo pedal – Zoia or Mood MkII, or Walrus M1 – maybe now the latest addition, Chroma Console.

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

I recently discovered Ridgewalk by Aqeel Aadam as AU on my iPad and I really love it, an original and accessible take on a looper/delay/granulator. I’d love to have it in pedal form. I guess I would expose my laziness by saying that I’d love to have any Spitfire library on hardware – because I could “just” learn cello or something. Though, since I love portability, I’d love if they could do some cheaper libraries for OP1 or stuff like that. That would be great.

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

I regret selling my 2019 monome norns shield. After I got my hands on the original
manufactured by monome, I kept it for 6 months or so, and then I decided to sell it. I really wish I didn’t, norns scripts are a real source of fun and potential ambient-electronic bliss, and having a couple of units should be really nice in a live DAWless setting.

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

Probably a tie between the app Samplr (I started 14 years ago heavily using iPad for making music) and the OP1 (I had the OG before the field), mainly for their sample mangling and looping capabilities. I love treating dusty recording as samples or loops, and both excel in that.

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

If I had not much money I would start over just like I started 14 years ago, which means an iPad and apps in the AUM ecosystem. I think iPad music making is also a good combination of software flexibility and tactile experience. There’s lots of inspiring stuff to explore. If I had plenty of money I would go modular – always in a sample-oriented way, like granular and looping modules above all. That’s very tempting!

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

My Zoom H6 recorder, it is annoying in that it is old and also for the fact that five years ago or so I decided to set the screen as always backlit when powered on: the constant high brightness level started whitening the corners about 3 years ago and now the display is all white except for a central circle, where I can barely see the levels. I will need to change it some day.

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

This is not so much a trick or tip on a piece of gear, I probably have very little wisdom in that regard, but something I find useful to balance my dark EQ instinct, so to say. I very often tend to cut a lot the high frequencies while recording, but I do know that “they are good for me”, so I started using Baklengs by Pladask Elektrisk in its octave up mode right after Blooper, which creates a fluffy and digitally-warbly higher pillow of sound to lift up the whole piece. I mix it in as I go.

Artist or Band name?

M. Beckmann / the volume settings folder

Genre?

Ambient-drone-post rock

Selfie?

M. Beckmann / the volume settings folder

Where are you from?

Padua, Italy

How did you get into music?

Gawd, it’s been a journey! I was into techno-eurodance stuff between 7th and 9th grade, then a friend at school lent me a copy of Mechanical Animals by Marilyn Manson, and I was hooked. From mainstream modern metal (here is where I started playing guitar, obviously) I started exploring the fringes – drone, post metal, post rock, ambient, electronica… and here I am!

What still drives you to make music?

I love making sounds and compositions that evoke the feeling of nostalgia, even if it’s not attached to a particular event or person (I recently found out that this is called anemoia, the nostalgia for a time you never experienced). That’s it. Better making this music myself than waiting for someone else to please my taste.

How do you most often start a new track?

By throwing a couple of chords – or a melody if I’m really inspired – into my pedals, start looping and building up from there.

How do you know when a track is finished?

I always finish a track – and by that I mean that since my approach is mainly improvisational and recorded on the spot, I can’t and I don’t want to treat it much further on my DAW (even though I sometimes do it). In fact, the feeling of knowing that I will not need to expand on what I recorded with some post-production is what makes me say that I did something good and I can consider it finished.

Show us your current studio

Best creative advice that you’ve ever heard?

To force yourself into using sounds or gear that you don’t like in principle, or make you uncomfortable, and incorporate even bits of these into your music. I don’t always put it in practice, but I have to admit that when I do the results are very good, more original than usual. I can’t remember who said this.

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

Here’s a link to my bandcamp page with the latest releases, and to my social network pages:
https://linktr.ee/thevolumesettingsfolder

Idra – Modular Via Trumpet

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

One of my favorite knobs is without a doubt the Summit cutoff combined with the noise knob that always adds a lot of depth to the sound.
Other knobs that I find very interesting are the branches and mutation on the Qu-Bit Bloom, which makes any patch generative and potentially infinite. Sometimes when I’m in the studio (which is also my home) and I’m doing something other than producing music I create a random patch and totally open both knobs, it’s fun.

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

I’m not a pianist even though I studied it a bit during my studies in classical music at the Conservatory. I think that among all the instruments I own, my grandfather’s piano is my perfect one. Both for an affective value and for the harmonic completeness, it has always been the instrument that allows me to create more, I just sit there and throw down some ideas and then go down to the studio and develop them on my modular system.

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

Modular (although it’s starting to become huge, in fact I think I will shrink it with a Palette case from Intellijel) headphones and zoom recorder for holidays. But when I have to play live I don’t care too much about comfort and I carry everything and more, including the Summit (my back doesn’t thank me).

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

All Felt instruments plugins on eurorack format would be great, as well as a hardwere version of Ableton, would probably make live performances much more interesting

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

I’m not a person who sells a lot, but I recently sold my digitakt two days before its new update – that’s all I’ll say.
Joking aside I must say that in the eurorack world there is a lot of buying and selling and you can never lose anything or have too many regrets for having sold something.

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

As I said before certainly the piano is always my starting point for composition, but in the end my main tool today is the modular system, which constantly offers a continuous sound research avenues and new ways to create sounds from scratch, even using a few modules and always trying to study them in depth. The great thing is that it can be an instrument in continuous evolution and change and the perfect medium to express ourselves even with our personal changes.

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

I think I would do the exact same path again that led me to be who I am today. I don’t know if everyone knows this, but I start my music journey as a classical trumpet player.
Classical music and its study has definitely helped me both in technical knowledge but especially in maximum attention to listening. A sensitivity to sounds and sonorities, I would say. So if I had to start again, I would start with the trumpet again.

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

Endless cables

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

One of the tricks I use the most is after watching a video of Ricky Tinez based on understanding how to manipulate LFO phase points and make them free and random in independent points of time.
I highly recommend it, especially to create movement and use LFOs in new ways.
Another “trick” that I often use is to stop listening to an album that is almost finished for a while before putting the finishing touches on it.