1. Favourite knob or fader or switch on a piece of gear and why?
That would most certainly be the latest reinforced jog wheel on the Polyend
Tracker. It’s just a top-tier pleasure experience. Nice to touch, satisfying to control things with it.
2. Do you have an ‘almost’ perfect bit of kit? What would you change?
Yes! Yamaha RM1X! For me it’s the closest anybody in this world got to
perfection in a hardware box. I just wish that the synth engine was a bit deeper
and the internal sounds would have 64 voice polyphony instead of 32. I know
there’s this RS7000 and all but that’s just too big. You know, now that I think of
this, the best machine in this world (at least for me) would be a combo of RM1X
and the MC-505. But then I wouldn’t leave my room. Ever.
3. What setup do you bring on holiday or tour or commute etc.?
The Polyend Tracker Mini comes to mind immediately. For live shows I usually
play with the Tracker, Play and Elektron Syntakt or the Roland MC-505, depends
on the set. For holiday I would definitely bring the Mini as it is battery powered
and tiny.
4. What software do you wish was hardware and vice versa?
I left the software realm some time in 2005 and I don’t know absolutely nothing
about this branch of noise making goodies so answering this question would
probably be unfair both to software and hardware.
5. Is there anything you regret selling… or regret buying?
I regret selling absolutely everything!!! Also I don’t regret buying anything. I love
gear and if I don’t have the place for it, I trade it or give it to a friend. I sell stuff
very rarely because… all these online marketplaces and dealing with people can
be mega annoying sometimes. But yeah I did sell some things and I totally want
them back:)
If I must pick one, it would be the Roland MKS-30 Planet S with a PG200.
6. What gear has inspired you to produce the most music?
I know it’s a bit boring but I must say it’s definitely the Yamaha RM1X. Believe it
or not, I’ve made over 700 tracks on this thing, still have them on the floppies
somewhere. The quality is all over the place, but that’s ok since the old floppy
drive won’t load them anymore.
7. If you had to start over, what would you get first?
You can guess.
(Yes it’s the RM1X again)
8. What’s the most annoying piece of gear you have, that you just can’t live without?
Oh I will definitely talk about Roland MC-505 and even the newest Roland Fantom 06
here. I absolutely love both of these machines but I hate how Roland did their
workflow back in the 90s and never “fixed” it till this day.
See in Roland gear you need to save the pattern (or a whole scene) separately to all the sounds it contains. So imagine this, you make a synth patch, you save it, you built a pattern around this synth patch. All is good. Now you have a new pattern or a song and you want to use this patch again but with a slightly more open filter. So you
resave it with the new settings. But now its loaded with all the changes in the old
pattern too.
So in the end you’ll end up with gazzilion saves of the same patch with slight variations because the patch settings are not saved with your song or pattern. I hate this. It makes all patch lists messy as hell. Its the same in both the old 505 and in the new Fantom 06. I truly hate it with all my heart, but I just can’t live without this gear.
9. Most surprising tip or trick or technique that you’ve discovered about a bit of kit?
I’ve discovered this on the Elektron Digitakt, but you can do it with anything that has a HP filter. You basically don’t need EQ for your drums that much. Software guys
are rolling their eyes now but on hardware it’s not too common to have a EQ per
channel which is sometimes pretty annoying especially with the drum samples. If
you crank up the resonance all the way up and roll the cutoff you can find a
resonant peak of any drum sample. This will be super effective especially with the
kick and snare samples and will beefen up the kick or snare in certain frequency
range. Then by rolling down the resonance you can dial up a healthy amount of
that frequency boost. If you don’t have a peaking filter this is a pretty nice way of
transforming a bunch of dead dry samples into a pumping beat.
Artist or Band name?
Isobutane
Genre?
Whatever I feel like when I turn on the machines.
Selfie?
Where are you from?
Bratislava / Slovakia
How did you get into music?
I was too poor to buy full versions of PS1 games so I stumbled upon this demo called
Music on one of the PlayStation Magazine demo discs. I made gazillions of tracks with Music and the following Music 2000 and then moved on.
What still drives you to make music?
Knowledge. And an inner passion for both hearing the sounds of the instruments and touching them. Also, actually playing the instrument, thats a big part for me too.
How do you most often start a new track?
By cursing a lot when swimming through tons of cables and On/Off switches.
How do you know when a track is finished?
Hah, this is a good one. I’m definitely not a perfectionist and count solely on my personal taste that usually guides me through the whole process.
Show us your current studio
Also 3 slides here:
https://www.instagram.com/p/CuRklS_tCt4/?img_index=1
Best creative advice that you’ve ever heard?
Patience. (Although I must admit it can be complicated at times)
Promote your latest thing… Go ahead, throw us a link.
Album – Future Cake
EP – 1998
