Jump to content
IGNORED

Aphex Twin's mixing process/tools


Lane Visitor

Recommended Posts

This is called polymeter.

 

Thank you! I had no idea if there even was a term for it. I'll update my notes accordingly.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 149
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Thanks Zoe, now I see exactly your point. I have a hard time with the idea of "bars" in music in general, and where exactly they start and finish within the structure of the song. I tend to think of them as musical sentences as I am listening to them, "bars" never ring the same bell to my ears.

 

The Rhubarb meter has puzzled me for the longest time. I would have guessed it's a messy 5/4 loop.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thinking about the phrases instead of the bars is probably a better way of looking it. It's the conversation between the instruments that matters, more than the pace of it.

Hmm... is it just me, or does Bucephalus Bouncing Ball sample the Firepower game over sound effect? (Compare 3:15 into the video with 5:04 into the piece of music.)

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Sorry if this is getting a bit off topic...

If Aphex Twin has been known to sample Astro Blaster, Robotron: 2084 and Firepower, and use speech synthesis in quite a few of his tracks, then it seems like a pretty safe bet that he's at least a bit interested in games which employ speech synthesis. I'd wager that one or two more old arcade games with speech synthesis might have been similarly sampled, even if not the speech itself. (For instance, now that I actually think about it, the first four seconds of 54 Cymru Beats sounds suspiciously like an arcade game...)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thinking about the phrases instead of the bars is probably a better way of looking it. It's the conversation between the instruments that matters, more than the pace of it.

 

Hmm... is it just me, or does Bucephalus Bouncing Ball sample the Firepower game over sound effect? (Compare 3:15 into the video with 5:04 into the piece of music.)

 

 

 

nice, thats where the song actually gets good

Link to comment
Share on other sites

you think rich is left brain in his approach in terms of planning and mapping out his tracks? Or do you think he mostly uses his intuition and ear?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

you think rich is left brain in his approach in terms of planning and mapping out his tracks? Or do you think he mostly uses his intuition and ear?

 

both.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

you think rich is left brain in his approach in terms of planning and mapping out his tracks? Or do you think he mostly uses his intuition and ear?

 

both.

 

booooooring :P ;)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

 

you think rich is left brain in his approach in terms of planning and mapping out his tracks? Or do you think he mostly uses his intuition and ear?

 

both.

 

booooooring :P ;)

 

 

 

Yeah, but the only reasonable answer is that he uses a combination of all of the above.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

you think rich is left brain in his approach in terms of planning and mapping out his tracks? Or do you think he mostly uses his intuition and ear?

 

I have to concur with others here: both. While I think pretty much everyone mostly composes using their subconscious, your conscious should have had enough foresight to provide a decent library of sounds (if you're working in that order) and a decent enough knowledge of music theory for your subconscious to draw from and work with.

 

Sometimes I just hit the keyboard in a way I'd like the rhythm of the tracks to sound. Then I'll spend four hours moving all the notes where I want them to go.

 

 

It appears that Richard regularly goes looking for strange sounds with a portable tape recorder. Every sound he likes, he saves on tape. Many of his machines cannot be played by a keyboard, but just make sounds that can be manipulated by filters and power interruptions. All these sounds end up in an archive of sorts, but he always tries to erase them once he has used them on a track, to avoid repeating himself.

 

This last point about avoiding repitition sounds a bit dibous to me, considering he used the same custom drum sounds on Start As You Mean to Go On, On and 73-Yips, for example. But I guess you can find inspiration anywhere...

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jco1bXBkPdk

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Im with you jchgf, Ive had the hardest time understanding and identifying "bars" and time sigs in music. Oh, this is in 7/18 time. Really? How? I have a lot to learn about theory

Didnt Phillip Glass mention that Richard had no concept of theory in the formal sense and didnt seem to care?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Didnt Phillip Glass mention that Richard had no concept of theory in the formal sense and didnt seem to care?

 

Pretty much, he described his music as having "a kind of intelligence and musicality", and James himself as "a guy who conceptualises music. He hears it. That's what makes his music interesting, that's what makes him interesting. What I heard in his music was the intention to discover a different mode of expression. Whether he reads music or studied at the conservatory isn't important. Richard's a guy who began by building his own synthesizers when he was a boy, putting odds and ends together - pieces of junk practically - making sounds then taking those sounds and turning them into music. That's interesting. I have some friends who go to the Berkley School of Music - it's a very good school - but there you learn the craft of popular songwriting. Basically, you're beaming how to make hits. If you're lucky you have enough talent to do it; but it's about formulation, it's about the recycling of ideas. It's not about building a synthesizer at home and making it burp and twurp and then seeing how it builds into a piece of music. He has a way of thinking that's simplistic, and it's interesting for me. I'm twice his age and more - I like meeting young people and seeing what they're doing."

 

"What I'm interested in is an innovative way of thinking. It comes out in this music because this is what that guy was thinking. It could just as easily come out as something else."

 

"You have to realise that I'm looking at music from a very different point of view; I come from a very traditional background. The historical continuum of the language of music is something that I'm trained in, and a lot of these guys aren't. They don't think that way: they don't think about that at all. But, on the other hand, I don't think about it all the time either."

Link to comment
Share on other sites

You know, I genuinely can't tell anymore... There's a bit towards the end of Ziggomatic V17, just as the manic percussion's winding down (7:28), that sounds very much like a sound effect from Space Shuttle (see 1:43 in the video), but I think it's just a coincidence. You can get that kind of sound very easily from noodling around with a BBD, decreasing its frequency, so it's probably that (especially as the lovely percussive synth melody at the end sounds like it's all BBDed). But it probably says something about this music that even the original parts sound very much like 1980s arcade games... Hell, the very end of Come to Daddy sounds like that game too, but just because it's LFO controlled pitch, which is easy to create electronically...

 

 

I'm starting to think the Joyrex music and Drukqs make more sense as music to be played at an arcade, if you're playing Centaur with the lights off or something...

 

Anyway, getting back on topic, the equipment list's not that interesting... it goes from cheap samplers and FM gear, through a steady progression towards pretty much anything and everything. The process is much more interesting. The instrumentation goes from samples of anything and everything (musicals, porn, arcade games, homebrew synth patches, possibly homebrew equipment, scrap metal, a violin and cello, etc) and the occasional recognisable synth sound (FM pads and the like), towards more exotic sounds until Analord, when it goes back to regular gear again.

 

You can also hear how he's coming at things from a usefully naïve perspective, learning more as he goes along, and trying different things out. There's no one single point where his music jumps in quality, but there's a definite steady progression. But then, that should be true of pretty much anyone who values practice and experimentation over theory, but has room to eventually accommodate some of that too.

 

Note how he started making releasable music around 1985-1986 (the earlier tracks from SAW 85-92 and Surfing on Sine Waves), at a remarkably young age (but considering how young he started experimenting with music, this was probably already after a considerable amount of experimenting and practicing), but it was only around 1994-1995 (Pancake Lizard; Icct Hedral; Wet Tip Hen Ax; Next Heap With; the third 1995 John Peel track; and especially Alberto Balsalm) that he started properly alternating sections in a way fitting with verses, choruses and bridges, the backbone of popular music. Melodies From Mars, bereft of glossy production, sees him really refining his structure and melodies. So it looks like he spent the best part of ten years making quirky, very good music before he really discovered the concept of sections. Indeed, ambient and dance music can thrive with just one single section.

 

Once he learnt that though, he really got very good at it, with Windowlicker showing how a very simple set of sections can fold back in on themselves in a variety of ways, taking lots of little detours before returning back to the same parts. The structure of Bucephalus Bouncing Ball is so off the wall (so to speak) that I doubt anyone with lots of theory would think of something so free from orthodoxy, whereas structurally Ziggomatic V17 seems like a piece of classical music like you might expect from Tchaikovsky, deftly interweaving iterations of a main theme throughout the track, with teasing glimpses of it here and there before you hear it in all its splendour. So I guess what I'm trying to say here is that these are interesting experiments, he's come a long way, and it would be a shame to stop releasing the things now that he's got so good at making them!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Fantastic posts, Zoe. Awesome insight for sure... Thank you. Your comprehensive knowledge/insight into rdj's music and his process is stunning to say the least (:

 

That last post just inspired me to put on some icbyd :D

 

By the way, do you think richard has ever or could ever make his own fm synth, esp for all those wacky 80's space game sounds? Like a sort of custom dx7 or something haha... although, he may not have to mod an fm synth considering there are so many types of sounds fm can produce with experimenting.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yeah Zoe some really awesome posts.

 

From what I've come to know. Richard's claims at making his own gear seem to have been exaggerated a bit, and a lot of the stuff he was making back in the day was just little noise generators and very fragile awkward stuff. I'm sure if he wanted to now though he could and probably has put together some interesting home made stuff. I bet he would be more likely to design it and have someone make it for him though so he has more time to make music and party or whatever he does.

 

I also think it is bullshit that he deletes samples.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thanks!

 

Though I don't want to inspire people to put on some music, I want to inspire them to make their own music! We can all do it!

 

Judging by interviews, James sounds pretty adept at programming as well as electronics, so it would put him in a prime position to make a digital synth. (Many people can only do one or the other, so either make softsynths or completely analogue ones, which is a shame... people need to team up more!) There'd have to be an advantage to making one over buying one though, something you wanted to do that the commercial ones don't allow. Though I remember reading he regretted selling his DX-1...

 

Just learning to patch an FM synth is probably skillful enough to allow you to find some unique sounds, yeah. :)

 

Yes, I read in an interview (I think with Mike Paradinas, but I could be wrong) that James just made up the making his own sampler thing and put some more-or-less-random electronics in a box for the photo in Future Music. This seems odd to me though, as his previous claim about making simple circuits that just make single sounds for later sampling sounds entirely plausible. Nina and I make our own music making equipment, and neither of us studied electrical engineering at university, so I'm sure he could do such things if he wanted.

 

Yes, if you have a single minded obsession with making music, or you're in demand, then it makes sense to farm out a lot of the more monotonous grunt work to other people, or automate it with scripts. (This is why I don't get some people's complaints here about BT and Hans Zimmer having alleged teams of people working for them. So what? If that's what you need to do in order to make such good music, go and do it!)

Anyway, making your own equipment can be fun, but at the end of the day, it's important to focus on inspiring emotions in people who listen to your work, in a unique and unexpected way. In that context, it's a means to an end.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

i read an interview where he says that he was asked to create presets by large companies for new synths. that's really all, no examples or more info than that.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

i read an interview where he says that he was asked to create presets by large companies for new synths. that's really all, no examples or more info than that.

 

Nice job that, just ask Eric Persing. If you do it right, you can practically create a whole new genre of music...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Again, this is probably reaching, but it's the right era and in fitting with his references to Pigeon Street and Fingerbobs: compare 16 seconds into the Rainbow theme video with 43 seconds into the Melodies From Mars track 3 video:

 

 

But what's much more interesting about this track and Logan Rock Witch is the instrumentation. Is he actually playing acoustic instruments, multitracking the performances up?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Regarding theory. Someone such as Richard who has learnt to make music on their own without traditional instruction, and has progressively pushed themselves and what is possible over many years, has obviously come to their own unique understanding of those same concepts. A hard-won kind of understanding of music is possible based purely on the experiences of trial and error, but which may be difficult to communicate to others.

 

As far as some specific speculations about gear. The recent Venetian Snares interview at Trash Audio http://trashaudio.com/2013/06/workspace-environment-venetian-snares was pretty awesome and I found what he had to say about the use of 1176 limiter/compressors really interesting.

I use the 1176s all the time to get things to sit back, sound forward. Fool around with the apparent loudness of a sound, all those fun little compression duties. They are magic. Simplest things but so useful. They add this kind of aroma I like as well. Transistors sweating perhaps. Really helps me to sculpt a mix with depth those things. Of course they are big fun to abuse as well, ramming the in or out to an extreme! Have a lot of fun with them making reverbs sound like they are swelling up in neat ways. Ive never tried the UAD plug version but word is its nice as well. Also been pretty into this Valley People Dynamite. Heard there is a plug for that but havent tried it either.

The reason I bring this up is that I think on the latest Last Step album Sleep, Aaron Funk has done a better job than anybody at channeling the thick, rich, expansive, dark, swelling, analogue synth-production sounds of the Tuss material. I'm not saying he is biting his style or anything, Sleep is definitely it's own sound but I think the influence is there.

 

I wouldn't necessarily say that this compressor is used on Rush Up Edge or that people should be seeking out these expensive, vintage compressors but the tonal qualities that these types of devices bring to the table should be looked into.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The reason I bring this up is that I think on the latest Last Step album Sleep, Aaron Funk has done a better job than anybody at channeling the thick, rich, expansive, dark, swelling, analogue synth-production sounds of the Tuss material. I'm not saying he is biting his style or anything, Sleep is definitely it's own sound but I think the influence is there.

 

I agree that Sleep was a big step up for AF's production quality, but he's still nowhere RDJ's richness, sense of space and subtlety.

 

Where is the interview where RDJ gave AF the tip of "learning synthesis", btw? From that recent studio report it seems Mr. Funk took the advice seriously and started hoarding synthesizer equipment.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest Diao

 

The reason I bring this up is that I think on the latest Last Step album Sleep, Aaron Funk has done a better job than anybody at channeling the thick, rich, expansive, dark, swelling, analogue synth-production sounds of the Tuss material. I'm not saying he is biting his style or anything, Sleep is definitely it's own sound but I think the influence is there.

 

I agree that Sleep was a big step up for AF's production quality, but he's still nowhere RDJ's richness, sense of space and subtlety.

 

Where is the interview where RDJ gave AF the tip of "learning synthesis", btw? From that recent studio report it seems Mr. Funk took the advice seriously and started hoarding synthesizer equipment.

 

Depends on when that quote is from, because Aaron's had loads of synths and stuff for a loooong time now.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

although I don't doubt Mr James has some basic competency in simple electronics the bullshit about building his own synths was a publicity stunt for NME and didn't someone say he made some fake contraption for an early Future Music interview?

 

I think his early days was mainly a lot of simple tricks and nonsense using basic FX pedals MS20 filters ect with some well put together distinctive sounds sounds later evolving into more complex arrangements using recycle, Logic and liveslice

 

the last I heard with analord/tuss is that he recorded jams on Nagra reel to reel then cut it up in Logic (or something) then mixed and matched the best bits with this meticulous sound process of vintage analogue sound keeping him a safe distance from the VST crowd

 

the hard time consuming work is the preparation of a large pallet of sounds, loops, variations and riffs done on hardware with hardware sequencers then the audio is on arranged on the mac which is how a lot of other electronic artists work

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue.