Peter Griffiths – Yunome

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

KNAS Ekdahl Moisturizer Spring reverb
KNAS Ekdahl Moisturizer Spring reverb

The Multimode Filter knob with its flashing lights and the red LFO Filter knob on the modified KNAS Ekdahl Moisturizer Spring reverb makes me smile when I feed it noises which can often become thunderous, scary sounds, and this unit is an instrument in its own right with a preamp, a multimode filter and an LFO. Sorry, that was two knobs! Oh, and don’t get me started on the switches on this thing 😉

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

Erica Synths Zen Delay

I have a thing for hardware delay pedals, and I love the Erica Synths Zen Delay; it’s almost perfect; it would have been nice to have software control or an app to have deeper controls/options like the new software version, which has bit depth and sample rate controls. 

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

A desktop of synths

I have taken the 1010 Music Nanoboxes, Lemondrop and Razzmatazz, as they are mighty and creative little machines. Usually, I take one FX pedal, such as the Chase Bliss Habit, and it all gets recorded into the Tascam Portacapture X-8.

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

I got my wish recently when Erica Synths made a software version of the Zen Delay, so that’s pretty cool! 

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

I haven’t regretted selling any hardware to date. Once I decide it’s going, it’s because it isn’t making sense in my current setup. My worst purchase was the Roland TR-8.

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

Soma Laboratory Pulsar-23

The Pulsar-23 is a drum synth on steroids with 23 independent modules, I use it to synthesise drums and rhythms, bass and melodic lines, effects and sound landscapes, and it’s a crazy source of control voltage and a decent analogue FX processor all in one unit. 

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

Any Soma Laboratory gear. The Rumble of Ancient Times is a clever little deep and gnarly synth with a Chaos button to randomise and shake things up.

Soma Laboratory – Rumble of Ancient Times

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

Not so much annoying, but my trusty old Erica Synths Fusion Mixer I use for spicing up drums or synths. It’s only irritating because it’s in euro rack format and is one of only two modules that survived my euro rack cull. So I had to buy a wee case for them.

Erica Synths Fusion Mixer

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

Not input mixing (no external input) This is routing the output back to one of your inputs on your mixing desk and using gain and EQ to create different tones/noises/synth-like sounds internally, call it a feedback loop. You can spice up your feedback loop by adding FX into the signal chain, and then you have infinite sonic possibilities.


Artist or Band name?

YUNOME, aka Pete Samplers and 12modes.

Genre?

Dancing across experimental electronica, house, techno and breakbeat 

Selfie?

Peter Griffiths – YUNOME, aka Pete Samplers and 12modes.

Where are you from?

I am from the Wirral, a little Peninsula in the North West of the United Kingdom close to Liverpool.

How did you get into music?

One chance gig at my local youth club when I was 13, and I was hooked on Electronic music. I was lucky to grow up close to Liverpool and Manchester, which had great music scenes back in the 90s. I spent most of my teenage years in record shops and clubs there. 

What still drives you to make music?

My deep curiosity for how music makes people feel and my need to make sound with whatever I can get my hands on. My wife says I am a much better human when I make music.

How do you most often start a new track?

It can be many ways, but it usually starts with me seeing or reading something that inspires me, then that gets interpreted as a synth line, or I program some drums and riff off of that.

Chase Bliss Habit, Boss DS-1 Distortion, Zen Delay, Eventide H9, Source Audio SA 263 Collider Delay+ Reverb

How do you know when a track is finished?

When I am not fussing around it anymore, once it gets to the stage where adding anything else will ruin the vibe and simplicity of the arrangement, it is time to park it.
It is always best to return to it later with a bit of distance; then, you can see with rested ears and a fresh perspective.

Show us your current studio

Younome studio dektop
Younome studio

Best creative advice that you’ve ever heard?

Press record! Said my friend and fellow producer, Euan Murchie.

I often jam for hours and sometimes cannot re-create some of the things that happened during some sessions when I wanted to translate some stuff into arrangements, so having the record button armed is an obvious solution.

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

There are two 12modes tracks on my Bandcamp right now. 

A YUNOME album which will drop in the autumn.


[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]


Urspring – Durch Veraltet Technik

[Editor: If you’re here for the Free Stuff in this post. There’s the Impulse Response samples from the Great British Spring Reverb tank that Urspring recorded]

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

The panning dials on the Yamaha MT-120S cassette recorder are just yummy.

I like the pan dials on my Yamaha MT-120 four track cassette recorder. Not as much for what they do, but how they feel and how they enable me to actually play the stereo field simultaneously with 4 fingers. If they were designed as knobs you could only control 2 at a time, in an easy way. But they are designed as dials almost like the 4 encoders on the OP-Z and therefore you can control all four at the same time with one finger at each dial.

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

Elektron Digitakt and Digitone

We are always in endless search for a perfect bit of kit, aren’t we? Haha! Well I don’t think there will ever be a perfect kit – especially not a perfect kit for all times. For me an inspirational kit changes over time. 10 years ago it would have been Ableton Live and a Push. Or simply just an acoustic guitar.

These days I’m tripping over the Digitakt/Digitone combo after watching a Patreon video by Jogging House. I think these two in combination simply allows me to translate melody and sonic texture ideas very easily to tracks that I can then record straight to my 2-track Revox B77.

The Digitakt/Digitone also lets me sit down and make music without sitting in front of a laptop screen. I have a non-music related daytime job where I’m in front of a screen all the time. And music making with hardware has almost become a kind of meditative activity away from the screen. Where the perfect combo is the Digitakt/Digitone … At least it is for me.

I also really dig the Ciat Lonbarde Cocoquantus and Deerhorn in combo with the Digitone.

Ciat Lonbarde Cocoquantus and Deerhorn

There are instruments that when you master them, they almost become an extension of yourself. They let the feelings you are expressing flow without friction. Like the piano or the acoustic guitar.

Then there is gear the keeps surprising you. Like a good band mate. It’s gear that you always have an interesting conversation with. The Cocoquantus is like that.

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

These days I’m bringing the Digitakt/Digitone combo. But sometimes just the OP-1. It’s sometimes really hard for me to get into the creative flow and mood when only having small islands of time, like 20 minutes, between family time. But now I’m better at telling myself “you’re not suppose to make an album now. You’re just having fun!” That inner voice is my friend.
So I often bring my OP-1 to the summer house.

Teenage Engineering OP-1

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

I almost never use compressors in my composing these days, but I like the Vulf Compressor VST for it’s distinct lo-fi squeezed Madlib sound. I could definitely see a use for this as a hardware pedal in my setup. But then again I might just throw a Boss SP-303 into my setup. The Vulf Compressor is heavily inspired by the ’Vinyl Sim’ effect on the SP-303, which is a radically weird compression algorithm.
These days I’m mostly into a DAWless approach, so I don’t have any hardware that I wished was software.

Vulf Compressor

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

I’m really not that much of a gear flipper. I try to have a minimal setup with only a limited set of handpicked pieces. I tend to stick with a piece of gear for way too long before letting it go. I still have a Push 1 laying around, haha. However I see this changing quickly because somehow the amount of gear on my desk has multiplied lately!
Anyways, I don’t really regret buying or selling anything, but one thing I regret NOT buying was a secondhand Juno 6 about ten years ago. The price was around 400-500 euros at that time, and at the last minute I decided that I didn’t have the space for it. Well, now the prices have rocketed out of the atmosphere, and I’m still looking at Junos. Poor me.

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

No doubt it would be the 4 track cassette recorder. When I was around 13 my dad had a 4 track Fostex, that lived in my room. Back then in the nineties I made hip-hop parodies, sad core indie and I recorded my grunge band with that piece of gear.

When listening back today I must admit that most of the music was kind of crap. But I still remember the excitement and feeling of loosing myself 100% in music making for tens of hours and the feeling of listening back and thinking “this track rocks”.
Fast forward 30 years and I was still using a Fostex 4 track (another device though) as a core device in an electronic duo Klingerhult with Martin – yes the editor of this blog.

[Editor: Hello everyone 🙂 … if you’re curios about us? Then check out Klingerhult here]

Yamaha 4-track cassette recorder MT120

I’m also still using the 4 track cassette recorder now as a simple mixer, with tape loops, for pitch and reverse effects, resampling and for crunchy overdrive.
I just like the texture and sound of tape recorders.

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

An Op-1. Then I would sit down for tens of hours and just go with the flow.

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

At the moment it’s mildly annoying to tune the Ciat Lonbarde Deerhorn to a chromatic scale. It’s like Petter Blasser (who invented it) intentionally made it almost impossible, like a big “screw you” statement. But when it is in tune it is so liberating and relaxing to play the notes with the hands on top of an ambient bed. And here’s the thing: Tuning has become a way of clearing my mind, like an inlet for getting into the zone.
But the Deerhorn is not the easiest beast to tame.

Ciat Lonbarde Deerhorn

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

I like the sound of flaws and almost broken things. Whenever I use a bit of gear that supports that, I think I’m more inspired and make more music. For example, when using tape loops or just using tape machines I often find myself deliberately exaggerate the flutter and wobble effect by holding a finger on the tape reels or shaking the dictaphone or walkman. In that way it’s possible to control the pitch flaws almost like playing an instrument. The tape machines are probably not that
happy about it. But it’s fun!


Artist or Band name?

Urspring

Genre?

Ambient I guess

Selfie?

Rasmus Rune Larsen aka. Urspring

Where are you from?

I grew up in the endless suburbs of Odense in Denmark, but currently I’m living in Copenhagen.

How did you get into music?

My parents were music teachers at elementary school and I grew up with guitars, amplifiers and synths in my home. Then I watched MTV and wanted to be like Nirvana, Beck, Beastie Boys and all the rest. It all got rolling from there…

What still drives you to make music?

Music is the art form that, by far, resonates the most with me. I make music simply because I need to. In particular making ambient music is to me an effective way of expressing abstraction.

How do you most often start a new track?

Most often I start by fumbling with a naive and cheesy melody loop and then build upon that from there. But there’s no clear recipe. I could also be a dusty pad loop or a drone done with the Lyra. I can also be really inspired by a track that has a part, a texture or sound that I like. I often wonder how they made it and suddenly I’m switching on my gear, and going exploring.

The Lyra is a really good track starter.

Revox B77 Reel to reel and Lyra-8

How do you know when a track is finished?

It’s finished when you keep adding new things and it’s making it all worse 🙂
Well, I’m not sure it’s that simple. Most often it’s a kind of feeling that is hard to explain. It’s when you somehow suddenly can see that the track has got its own personality and you can see it as a part of the family.

Show us your current studio

Unfortunately I don’t have the luxury of a separate room for my music studio. My studio space is a multi functional, shared family space in my apartment: It’s a home workplace, a walk in closet, a pathway to my daughters room and a hang out
place. So there’s not much room to go crazy with blinking lights, knobs, faders and keys.

Urspring coming out of the closet

Nonetheless I’m quite happy with this little studio space in the corner.
One thing I have done is hack an IKEA storage system (BESTÅ) so it’s almost
a hidden music studio. Open the storage doors, let the ambient spirit out and rock on! (but very softly and quietly)

[Editor: You can get some Impulse Responses from this Great British Spring reverb right click and download here. If you do use’em let us know in the comments😉]

Great British Spring Reverb
Spring tank
Pianette

Best creative advice that you’ve ever heard?

“Make sure you are having fun!” Quote by Jogging House on his Patreon blog. If you are into making ambient music I can highly recommend supporting Boris and joining this fantastic community over at his Discord server. It’s a really supporting and friendly place.

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

I’m still working on an actual release. But until then you can follow Urspring at:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/urspring_/
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwiEV85XM7cEElzmEOdfmtg