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 or fader or switch on a piece of gear and why?
Jen SX2000
I’m not that emotionally attached to individual knobs and faders, but there might be a few which have been important. First, the ”Frequency” fader on my first synthesizer, the Jen SX2000, which gave me the first real player experience of an actual filtered analogue synth sound and gave birth to a lifelong fascination.
Korg MS20 Mini
Second, maybe the MS20 Mini Lowpass filter knob which brought me back to analogue synthesis after many years of playing mainly samplers and vst plugins. And finally, any of the SOMA Lyra 8:s VCO tuning knobs which made me listen to sounds in a different way and appreciate imperfection.
SOMA Lyra 8
When it comes to tactility I must say that my Bugbrand banana cables mean a great deal, though. They’re a pleasure to use. Colourful and sturdy fun!
2. Do you have an ‘almost’ perfect bit of kit? What would you change?
The word ”almost” is important here because the perfect bit of kit doesn’t exist, I think. Gut feeling right now whispers about the Ciat-Lonbarde Cocoquantus. It never disappoints and has opened up a vast sound palette to me. Though ”perfect” is certainly not the correct word for any C-L gear. Which is the wonder of it!
Ciat-Lonbarde
3. What setup do you bring on holiday or tour or commute etc.?
Always: Field recorder. A pretty crap one, my old Zoom H-1 (the Rec button on that one´s been very important, too). For many years the small holiday setup was Laptop/Cubase, USB audio interface, master keyboard.
Lorre Mill Double Knot
If I ever start travelling again I guess the Cocoquantus or the Plumbutter (or my most recent addition, the Lorre Mill Double Knot) would be great to bring but I’m not sure I’d risk them.
Ciat-Lonbarde Plumbutter
4. What software do you wish was hardware and vice versa?
I’m not very good at wishing for what isn’t there already. Nowadays I find it really hard wishing for hardware to be anything else. The tactile side of playing electronic instruments has grown extremely important to me. That doesn’t mean I don’t like software. There are lots of great fx and instruments which I use a lot. I love the Sketchcassette, Valhalla Supermassive and NI Kontakt, for instance. Software into hardware… if Soniccouture suddenly turned their Geosonics library in a portable, beautiful little synthesizer I’d probably be curious about it.
Tactile synths
5. Is there anything you regret selling… or regret buying?
I regret selling my second synth ever which was the Roland SH1000. I sold it for very cheap around ’98 when it seemed completely obsolete (and it probably still is, but what a clumsy old beauty!). To be honest, there was some divine justice going on since I sold it to the same guy from who I bought a Yamaha CS5 even cheaper a few years before that. I kind of regret that I sold my Tascam 388 quarter-inch tape/mixer studio too, but that may be mostly from nostalgia and considering the recent tape hype. Through the years I’ve bought lots of gear which I’ve sold pretty quickly. I’d say most of the Volcas and a Roland Boutique JX03 were all pretty regrettable purchases. And I didn’t gel with the Eowave Quadrantid Swarm, sadly. Maybe I should have been more patient.
Hyve-Synth
6. What gear has inspired you to produce the most music?
Chronologically: my family’s upright piano, my first Porta studio (Fostex 260), the AKAI S2000 sampler, and most recently the Ciat-Lonbarde instruments. All of these have shown new and compelling paths into new territories, or territories looking more and more like the ones I vaguely started dreaming of exploring as a kid. It’s not that different now from what it was back then.
Ciat Lonbarde Deerhorn-Organ
7. If you had to start over, what would you get first?
Piano, DAW, a nice bass guitar and some assorted percussion. And after that I´d discover touch- and gesture-based synthesizer instruments a bit earlier 🙂 .
8. What’s the most annoying piece of gear you have, that you just can’t live without?
I usually sell the annoying stuff. One instrument I think will stay with me is the Lyra 8. It changed my listening a lot and I love it but to be honest, those tuning knobs really take some patience. The lower they go, the more mindfulness demanded to get the wanted notes. But having grown into that routine has made tuning of the Ciat-Lonbarde instruments a breeze, so I guess I should be grateful to that sturdy little ”white angel”, annoying as it is. The Tocante Bistab is on the whole extremely annoying and I could definitely live without it, but it’s a fun curiousity.
9. Most surprising tip or trick or technique that you’ve discovered about a bit of kit?
To my surprise I´ve become a much better bass player through switching to fretless bass. Over all, everything that forces you to listen carefully, instead of having safe routes and measures laid out all the time, is good. As long as we leave the Theremin out of it, of course. And a bunch of other instruments. But – baby steps …
Fretless Squier Jazzbass
Artist or Band name?
Noctopolis and Mattis Hencke.
Genre?
For Noctopolis I guess have to say electronic. And I would hope cinematic and emotional in its better moments. MH is more semi-classic, fairytale music and pop.
Selfie?
Sort of, but not really. A musical portrait 😀 .
Mattis Hencke aka. Noctopolis
Where are you from?
Living in Uppsala, Sweden.
How did you get into music?
Singing, drumming on biscuit tins and making up melodies from early age. Discovering the sound of synthesizers and pop music in general at the age of about 10 was a huge revelation. I took drumming and piano lessons and performed in different orchestras and ensembles but more importantly, I always wrote songs and formed different bands with my brother and schoolmates. Making noise, trying different instruments, dreaming up concepts and bouncing hissy tape recordings between decks with my friend to create full productions became very important, we learned about multitrack recording and from there it really took off. I’ve just never stopped creating and discovering music. Artists like David Sylvian, Trent Reznor, Scott Walker and Fennesz have been huge inspiration sources, as well as numerous neoclassical, ambient and post-metal artists and bands.
What still drives you to make music?
I want to create the sounds and represent feelings and pictures that I carry inside of my head and which are beyond words. I also strive to make the music I want to hear, it´s a way of life by now. Playing and making music is ta great path to get in touch with my core, so to speak. I wouldn´t call it an escape from reality – music and art contains so much more of creative, constructive reality than a lot of other miserable pastimes and preoccupations. Music can be an outlet for emotions and a recalibration of the soul and spirit. And that’s regardless of objective quality and results, as long as it leaves the performer curious and imaginative, I think.
How do you most often start a new track?
That varies a lot. Sometimes with a bassline or a sample, more often with improvising on the piano which turns into fragments of a song. Sometimes with a sung melody. There are plugins which have inspired quite a lot of my music too. The last few years I´ve started to improvise a lot on hardware electronic instruments and nowadays the Ciat-Lonbarde setup is a good starting point for exploring. I’ve got loads of recordings and snippets on the hard drive which sooner or later find their way into more ambient tracks or actual pop songs.
How do you know when a track is finished?
A good sign that I’m on the right track is when I get the sensation ”Wow, did I really create this?”. That, combined with a certain kind of childish happiness when listening to the music in an environment which is not the studio. The most difficult part, when it comes to knowing whether a track is really good or not, is to find the balance between emotional impact and cool or newly found sounds and ideas. That, and also to know that sometimes less is more, but that more is more quite as often!
Show us your current studio
It’s about 1,5 x 2,5 meters with no window. That’s definitely both a blessing and a curse.
Noctopolis home studioNoctopolis home studioNoctopolis home studio
Best creative advice that you’ve ever heard?
Spend time away from your music before finishing it. Never mix more than one track at once. Abandon songs that keep annoying you and make you frustrated, they’re probably not that good anyway. Or (quite rarely) they are, but you need more time to grow into them.
Promote your latest thing… Go ahead, throw us a link.
