M. Beckmann – Post Droner

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

Count to 5 by Montreal Assembly

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?

Ridgewalk iOS app

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?

Zoom H6

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?

Pladask Baklengs

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.

Chase Bliss Blooper

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

Table of fx pedals
Studio desk

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?

Novation Summit Noise and Frequency

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.

Branches and Mutation on the Qu-Bit

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.

Piano

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).

Intellijel Palette

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

Felt VSTs and Ableton

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.

Smokin’ hot Elektron Digitakt

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.

Idra’s Eurorack

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.

Trumpet

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

Endless cables

Cables… nicely organized

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.


Artist or Band name?

IDRA

Genre?

Ambient

Selfie?

Idra

Where are you from?

Milan, Italy

How did you get into music?

I started playing trumpet when I was nine years old, graduating in classical trumpet.
For a few years I got into jazz and world music, but it was electronic music that I fell in love with and where I found my own spot in the world.

What still drives you to make music?

The sense of freedom and the need to communicate something first to myself and then to others, is a refuge and a medicine that keeps me alive and allows me to express myself in the most creative way I can know

How do you most often start a new track?

Whenever I feel the need to enclose and let out my feelings and sensations. I often have very profitable moments of production, but I also often need silence, I do not follow a precise path, every time I turn on the machines in the studio and I feel that something beautiful comes out, it can become a track or simply my soundtrack of the
day.

How do you know when a track is finished?

When it makes me smile and gives me a clear picture in my mind, I would say the moment I think of a title the track is over.

Show us your current studio

Idra Studio

Best creative advice that you’ve ever heard?

Don’t be afraid to listen to advice and always be open to change. But the best will always be: keep things simple.

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

seilrecords.bandcamp.com/album/lone-voyagers-lovers-and-lands

(I always take the opportunity to thank Boris aka. Jogginghouse – for this release)


Northern Lighthouse – Travel Moods

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

From an aesthetic point of view I like the big old-looking knobs on Momo Modular’s version of Mutable Instruments Rings. I like having small sets and portable instruments but I admit small devices are sometimes difficult to use, especially live. Big knobs = big satisfaction.

Momo Modular’s Mutable Instruments Rings

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

I don´t, but for gigs I usually have a drum machine, a sampler and two keyboard synths for live improvisations. No midi sync for the clock, just a mixer. I am now exploring all the features of every instrument I have and try to end the Gear Acquisition Syndrome fuelled by Instagram and YouTube! The synth world is so different from the rock scene I entered during the MySpace era. There is too much attention on social media, gear and design than music. Myspace was used to sell merch and organise gigs, the rest was pure fun on stage. No need for 4K videos on your page showing your new shiny pedal. I bought my drum set more than 15 years ago and I basically never changed it. Instead with synths, I keep on checking modulargrid for new modules…

Northern Lighthouse gig setup

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

During my last summer holiday I brought with me some Eurorack modules in a small . It wasn’t easy to decide what to bring with me and I’m always afraid that something could break or not pass airport security. I once was stopped by an Italian officer who wanted to know more about my Arturia Keystep! One day I might buy the OP-Z because it’s as big as a TV remote controller.

4ms eurorack pod

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

One of the things I like the most about Ableton is the ability to slowly launch several clips and use separate faders on a midi controller to control the volume of each one, and that is something that I looked for for ages in samplers. The tiny Blackbox sampler by 1010 music seems to tick this box. Regarding software although they give me endless possibilities they do not inspire me enough when making music. I use my laptop a lot at work already and I do not want to stare at a screen in my free time.

Akai kidi controller

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

I regret having bought the Ableton push 1 controller. It is huge, really heavy and not standalone. I bought it in a second hand shop but I‘ve almost never used it and when I play live I don’t like using my laptop on stage. I prefer launching loops with the SP404 and playing with other synths on top of it.

Live setup based around the Roland SP404

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

Critters and Guitaris’ organelle is my favourite instrument, I use it in every jam because it has so many sounds and it is portable. It’s in every song I have recorded so far because some of the patches created by the users are incredibly versatile, warm and close to real older hardware synths. Who wouldn’t like to have a free Juno or theremin patch in their tiny synth?

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

I would still start with the Volca FM which was my first hardware synth. Cheap and portable and not scary to use at the beginning. I confess, at the beginning I didn’t even know what attack or LFO meant!

Korg Volca FM

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

Reverb. It is not annoying, it is essential in my music. I use it on almost every synth because I rarely like harsh and metallic sounds. That’s why I have a love-hate relationship with FM synthesis. Even when distorted my songs need to sound like they come from the past or from a far away land. When I create music I focus less on melody (although I find long drones a bit boring) and dedicate more time on creating a melancholic atmosphere, usually made of different layers talking to each other. Guitar pedals help me create new sounds. The downside of it it’s that 90% of these sounds cannot be reproduced again. I listen to a lot of posthardcore and post-rock and compared to those, ambient is much more ephemeral.

Digitech Polera

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

Using pink noise to quickly mix all the tracks in a song. I know professional sound engineers might disagree…

Artist or Band name?

Northern Lighthouse

Genre?

Electronic/Ambient

Northern Lighthouse

Where are you from?

Bologna, Italy. A town full of students and music, with its many squats, art cinemas, festivals and bars for alternative music it somehow made me who I am and feeded my interests in films and music. I later moved to Newcastle, UK where I started this electronic music project. I’m now based in Brussels, Belgium. This is where I started jamming with other people and moved from daw to actual instruments and even modular synths in 2019.

Erica synths Cables

How did you get into music?

I always liked percussions. When I was in kindergarten my parents gave me a drum kit for children as a present.

Northern Lighthouse and first drumkit

Years later, during high school a club near my family house went bankrupt and I managed to bring home an old Pearl drum set for free. I was into punk and metal and I started playing music with a guitarist friend of mine. After a while we founded a metalcore band called Rising Hate. There was a big hardcore scene in the early 2000s, we played around Italy for 5 years until I went abroad. It was so fun, I miss that life!

The way I approached electronic music is really different though. I remember as a kid I had an old music software called Music Maker which was my first daw. Years later, in Newcastle, a small town in northern England surrounded by beautiful cliffs and touched by the northern sea, I saw Loscil live and it blew my mind. I was without my drums  and I was so curious about this genre called Ambient that was new to me. I decided to look for a new tool to make music and I started using Ableton. The following year I moved to London looking for a job, but it was a really sad and lonely time, so music was my escape!

What still drives you to make music?

Making music is like a trip from your daily routine to an exotic destination that you choose and create. It affects my mood, it gives me energy and it makes me imagine new landscapes and allows me to meet like-minded people. This project in particular was born from the need to create soundscapes and stories with a deeply nostalgic atmosphere which also includes field recordings, videos and photography. I like curating every aspect of it.

Having lived abroad since 2010, travelling, exploring and missing my Heimat became part of my life. This mix of nostalgia and excitement affects and inspires my music a lot. I also listen to a lot of posthardcore music which I find the most cathartic music ever and I try to transfer this feeling into my songs as well. Besides electronic music, I keep on playing the drums in a post-rock band called Yakhchal. I need this dualism of sadness-happiness, delicateness-anger in my life. Unfortunately COVID put on hold every live gig and opportunity…

‘Fyrtaarn’ is Lighthouse in danish

How do you most often start a new track?

I simply improvise with my gear and if there is a sound or melody that I really like I recorded it as a loop. I then add more parts like bass, rhythms, field recordings and other drones or melodies on top of that. Everything should help recreate a specific image I have in mind. It is usually something coming from a book, documentary or film I saw. But this happens from time to time, without rush. It can take days or months. This also helps me understand what I want to keep or modify from that track because I listen to it with a “fresh” ear every time.

Microcassette

How do you know when a track is finished?

When it sounds full and when modifying it doesn’t improve the song, but actually makes it worse!

Show us your current studio

I live in a 2-room apartment, so I don’t have space for a proper studio. I have a lot of IKEA pieces of furniture where I keep my gear and I dissemble everything after every jam. I’m a tidy person, so when there are too many cables around I get nervous. 

A tidy desk of fun

Best creative advice that you’ve ever heard?

A friend once told me that he liked the story behind my project. I think it’s important that bands and artists develop a strong and personal identity, do research and explore a specific idea or theme. Many people just copy themselves, follow trends. In this case I feel content and branding should be intertwined and support each other. People need to recognise you and your style.

The Sardinian coast

Promote your latest thing… 

My latest self-released tape is called Lantern, and it is composed of layers upon layers of loops of recorded sounds, synthesizers and guitar pedals that pay tribute to distant landscapes, sailors and lighthouse keepers. I am now working on two projects: a split album with a fellow italian drummer and synth lover and a multi-disciplinary project (music, videos, field recordings and analog photos) on an abandoned miners’ village on the Sardinian coast.

Bandcamp: https://northernlighthouse.bandcamp.com/

Northern Lighthouse Lantern cassette release

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