Autechre the Autechre technique?

[Guest jbuonacc]

i've been getting heavy back into Autechre over the past month or so. listening mostly to the later stuff and live sets from '98-05. from roughly the Chiastic Slide period onward their sound has evolved considerably, and i've always been particularly fascinated at how the timing of certain patterns seems to stretch and shift all over the place.

 

i've never really been able to figure out how they do it. the Max/MSP patch did nothing for me really (not that i really studied it) and i knew that it must be more than just programming drum patterns that change signatures, etc at certain points and time-stretching bits here and there. i'm not too keen on generative software, but that's been stated as playing a part in it (as evidenced by their use/dissection of another user's generative patch). on the other hand, they've always denied this, saying that everything is more predetermined than everyone assumes. also, they're evidently able to recreate this sound using Elektron gear, a G2, and an MPC so reliance on a complex programming environment like max/msp doesn't seem to be the case.

 

any theories on exactly how they do what they do?

 

anyway, i've been toying around with the Nord G2 the past few days and think i've stumbled on something. i'll post more in a bit, but it has to do with running audio through wet delays set to different clock-sync'd quantization amounts (from whole to 64th notes for example, with triplets and dotted notes in between) and basically sampling and looping itself while modulating the delay times. maybe this is rudimentary grain synthesis of sorts? if you set it up so that this varies rhythmically it sounds pretty wild. listening more to them over the past few days, i think that's exactly what's happening (among other things). seems constant resampling and realtime/programmed adjustment of loop quantization plays a big part in it.

 

more later...

[awepittance]

anyway, i've been toying around with the Nord G2 the past few days and think i've stumbled on something. i'll post more in a bit, but it has to do with running audio through wet delays set to different clock-sync'd quantization amounts (from whole to 64th notes for example, with triplets and dotted notes in between) and basically sampling and looping itself while modulating the delay times. maybe this is rudimentary grain synthesis of sorts? if you set it up so that this varies rhythmically it sounds pretty wild. listening more to them over the past few days, i think that's exactly what's happening (among other things). seems constant resampling and realtime/programmed adjustment of loop quantization plays a big part in it.

 

more later...

 

they definitly do what you describe in one form or another. Im suspecting they do it with max/msp mostly due to the inner workings of the confield-era patch. However it could also be done with Reaktor, Battery, and even hardware synths and samplers . I recently purchased a machine drum and the very confirgurable retrigger loop settings sound very similar to Autechre's recent work.

and after long hours of attempted reverse engineering i found that the hardest part of recreating the autechre stutterung sound is getting the pleasurable synth timbres created when sped up very fast.

Edited December 22, 2006 by Ghostbusters III

[ishishiba]

they said in an interview (the wire's invisible jukebox yonks ago) that they got into computers with chiastic slide. before that they had been mostly using hardware, albeit in an original way. but i can really hear software at work on chiastic slide, lp 5, ciclli suite and ep7. i also read once sean saying he went to math class (this was around '96 or so), so I'm guessing it was to help with programming. so i reckon between max/msp, reaktor and fm7 and their nords, this is where their sounds came from.

but its cool that they've sort of turned their back on software since releasing untilted, totally hardware-driven live shows. Ae can make Ae-music using whatever they turn their hands to.

[Guest jbuonacc]

ehhh yeah, i should've really stressed that what i'm talking about is an effect that i think has popped up quite a bit in their music over the past ten years or so (especially with Untilted). it may actually just be more of a traditional delay effect or a different way of sending trigger events.

 

here's a couple examples i did a few nights ago. the base patterns themselves aren't very 'autechre-ish', i just dropped in something from another patch to test it out. i'll be working more on the sounds and composition over the next few days.

 

http://www.soundclick.com/util/downloadSon...;key=F899D398-B

 

http://www.soundclick.com/util/downloadSon...;key=F899D398-B

 

here's a screenshot containing a few of the cutdown devices i've made for this. much work to be done still though, this is its' most basic form.

 

 

let me know what you think, i could be way off. obviously this is just one trick though, any other theories on other methods are plenty welcome if just for something fun to talk about.

[six]

Interesting, a long way to go yet, but it's always cool to figure out how someone acheived a certain sound.

[Guest transfer]

ehhh yeah, i should've really stressed that what i'm talking about is an effect that i think has popped up quite a bit in their music over the past ten years or so (especially with Untilted). it may actually just be more of a traditional delay effect or a different way of sending trigger events.

 

here's a couple examples i did a few nights ago. the base patterns themselves aren't very 'autechre-ish', i just dropped in something from another patch to test it out. i'll be working more on the sounds and composition over the next few days.

 

http://www.soundclick.com/util/downloadSon...;key=F899D398-B

 

http://www.soundclick.com/util/downloadSon...;key=F899D398-B

 

here's a screenshot containing a few of the cutdown devices i've made for this. much work to be done still though, this is its' most basic form.

 

 

let me know what you think, i could be way off. obviously this is just one trick though, any other theories on other methods are plenty welcome if just for something fun to talk about.

 

I liked what I heard.

[Guest Dr. Elemeno von Hat X: PhD]

just noticed this in their wikipedia entry:

 

They emphasize that their sound comes from combinations of tools and techniques, and "creative routing", more than any single magical machine, although many of their tools possess unusual capabilities. This has been the case since their early days, when, for example, they used a Boss delay that had a pitch/trigger input, allowing it to be used as a realtime sampler. When the square wave input it received for determining pitch had resonance added, the pitch would drift between notes in a special way. If the output was mixed back in as a control pitch, it could produce unusual fractal patterns, something that cannot be recreated easily with software, or on an embedded system.

 

the mysterious $100 secret weapon? or maybe it's a circuit-bent sk-1... but still, i thought that was the most interesting thing in the wiki entry...

[Guest jbuonacc]

damn, i used to have that Boss sampling delay. never tried doing that with it, sounds like a blast.

[Guest Dr. Elemeno von Hat X: PhD]

what model was it? i'm gonna keep my eye out for one...

[Guest jbuonacc]

Boss RSD-10 half-rack delay (they also made a pedal variation, but i think this is the one). looks like someone bent one here:

 

http://www.floorshow.com/foodteam/gallery.html

 

a bit underwhelming maybe, not sure if i'll be buying another soon. selling off my Boss fx collection was one of the worst things i've ever done, i'd rather forget the whole affair. :(

 

they had the RDD-10/20 digital delays, the RPS-10 pitch-shift delay (very cool), and the RPD-10 panning delay in this series as well. the Boss half-racks were some of the best things they ever did.

Edited January 1, 2007 by jbuonacc

[Alzado]

i have a "mate" who used to room with rob brown's cousin. he said they use a lot of pitch bend on their drum machines.

[Guest jbuonacc]

'pitch bend on their drum machines' - hahaha, lots of help there for sure...

 

the RDD-10/20 have delay time modulation which the dd-3/5/6 don't have. here's some tracks using the RDD-20/SH-101/TR-707...

 

http://www.soundclick.com/util/downloadSon...;key=29042047-7

 

http://www.soundclick.com/util/downloadSon...;key=29042047-7

 

http://www.soundclick.com/util/downloadSon...;key=29042047-7

[Alzado]

well, he also said that they do lot's of snare rushes with reverb

[Plarkreluke Banloboh]

Can anyone who is familiar with the sound of the Boss RSD-10 Digital Sampler Delay suggest any tracks from back in the day that you think it was used in? Here’s a video demonstrating the sound: 

 

[ignatius]

36 minutes ago, webby said:

Can anyone who is familiar with the sound of the Boss RSD-10 Digital Sampler Delay suggest any tracks from back in the day that you think it was used in? Here’s a video demonstrating the sound: 

 

here. being gated and as peer the AAA nord is 'playing' the delay at the pitch input. 

 

[kausto]

Gantz Graf mostly sounds like the rsd10 is in a sampler 'mode C' (with something sampled previously) and being triggered through trigger input by modulated pulse signal (i guess from ensoniq asr10 where you can move looped window over sample which could be just a single cycle square) - rsd is capable to produce such hyperdense stuttering in this mode + some stuff like kick, ticking click, harmonic pads on top + rsd's pitch input still could be controlled too 

I also guess parts of Uviol's rythmic carcass were made using rsd10 somehow

it is used all over Confield imo. Pen Expers DMX mangling for example (low pitch bursts sound like the rsd was fed back by its output thru pitch input) and so on.

rsdio from Tri Repetae

according to this interview from 94 they started using rsd10 from very beginning (like some Lego Feet trax for example)

Edited September 12, 2021 by kausto