Aphex Twin Aphex Twin's mixing process/tools

[Chris Toffer]

Yep i don't think he built any of his own synths. He did paint synths that he owned though to look different and may have gutted synths and put them in different cases. There are various posts from the 90's in AH that may/may not be credible.

 

 

 

 

..There's also talk about his secret weapon being a Sequential Circuits Studio 440

 

[ZoeB]

I'm not sure what you could do with a Drumfire DF-500 that you couldn't do with an SH-101 or MS-20, besides record five channels of different sounds at once..?

Anyway, mucking around with the MS-20 clone A-106-1 filter (as close as I've gotten to an MS-20), I pretty much have to work hard to make it not sound like AFX. Especially his earlier work sounds like an MS-20, TR-606, sampler and sequencer. But then, I'm pretty sure that same combination was used by Mr. Oizo to make Flat Beat, which sounds reasonably different, so it really is about the techniques and ideas more than the tools.

 

So yes, it looks like he made very little himself, although given his love of sound and the fact he studied engineering at uni, I have to wonder why he hasn't made his own synths or at least parts of synths. Curious.

 

That description of recording the Analords sounds plausible, and remarkably similar to how Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross work. Still, the earlier, cheaper method sounds more fun and less musically limiting.

[soundwave]

if Richard could build his own synths then he wouldn't get someone else to fix/mod them (ahem)

[ZoeB]

if Richard could build his own synths then he wouldn't get someone else to fix/mod them (ahem)

 

That depends on how much he enjoys it. I think he can afford to pay other people to do things for him that would save him time if he'd rather spend that time on other things. But yeah, if he couldn't do it himself, that would certainly be another reason, but not the only one.

[Guest isaki]

"that u-ziq guy"

[ZoeB]

i heard he used a DX21 or something similar on the come to daddy EP (and possibly other stuff)

 

what did he use in terms of FM? surely he had a DX7 or two, right?

 

A DX-100 according to Drn. There are plenty of FM pads on his early releases. It's kind of an achievement in itself to use an FM synth and not sound cheesy and 80s, or like Mega Drive music.

 

He mentioned how he regretted selling a DX-1 and compared it to various other DX synths, so he must have at least used quite a few.

[ZoeB]

lol DX1 only afx would have the money for that. i read only about 150 were produced?

 

out of interest, what are some examples of fm pads on earlier works? saves me from flicking through winamp

 

Quite a lot of his first two proper albums.

[Lane Visitor]

Yep i don't think he built any of his own synths. He did paint synths that he owned though to look different and may have gutted synths and put them in different cases. There are various posts from the 90's in AH that may/may not be credible.

 

 

 

 

..There's also talk about his secret weapon being a Sequential Circuits Studio 440

 

 

Thank you for posting this, Chriss- fantastic insight.

[weakmassive]

Ok, I'm a dork and matched up the Firepower sound with Bucelphalus and it's pretty much spot on. It's exactly the same length too.

 

You can download the Firepower sounds individually from here.

http://www.firepowerpinball.com/downloads/FirepowerSounds.zip

 

I wouldn't be surprised if he used some of these other sounds as well. The FP02.mp3 in there sounds similar to some of the vocal-like sounds in Come To Daddy (Mummy Mix), like at 3:26. Maybe pitched up, idk.

 

Super catch Zoe!

[kausto]

 

lol DX1 only afx would have the money for that. i read only about 150 were produced?

 

out of interest, what are some examples of fm pads on earlier works? saves me from flicking through winamp

 

Quite a lot of his first two proper albums.

 

 

Pad at the beginning of Audax Powder is pretty much FM sounding for example

 

[kausto]

Some tracks on I Care Because You Do have percussive sounds with FM tricks utilizing fixed ratio carrier operator (The Waxen Pith).

[ZoeB]

Check out patches such as AuroraBlue, for example:

 

(3 mins 43 seconds in.)

If you wanted to sound like early AFX, you could do far worse than getting a TR-606, an MS-20, a DX synth, a sampler, a sequencer, a portable recorder for field recordings, and a cassette tape recorder for mastering. :)

[ZoeB]

Well you can always step sequence TR-606 samples and use an MS-20 clone. :) Personally, I prefer modules. The Doepfer A-106-1 and some TR-808 styled Analogue Solutions Concussor modules or Tiptop Audio ones would get you a nice array of those kinds of sounds and then some. (Listening to Blast Off! again, I've reminded myself how the SD88 is far more versatile than a real TR-808 snare, which in turn is more versatile than a TR-606 one...)

I guess being a musician can be cheaper than being a synth collector, if you care more about how useful a synth is rather than how historic.

[kausto]

 

 

hmm that's weird my tx81z doesn't have that patch, i guess it's a custom one then?

 

Judging by the prefix Ixy it is user bank, so yes it's custom one

[Guest chops727]

BTW the arcade game Defender has those same sounds, its by the same company 'Williams'

I'd wager it was this not from firepower as it has more and better sounds.

 

Sounds start at 1.20

 

He probably has one or maybe the cocktail version, well I'd prefer a cocktail version anyway.

[ZoeB]

BTW the arcade game Defender has those same sounds, its by the same company 'Williams'

 

Huh. It's not just from the same company, it's programmed by the same people, Eugene Jarvis and Larry DeMar. They also programmed Robotron: 2084. (Not Astro Blaster, though!)

[marf]

 

if Richard could build his own synths then he wouldn't get someone else to fix/mod them (ahem)

 

That depends on how much he enjoys it. I think he can afford to pay other people to do things for him that would save him time if he'd rather spend that time on other things. But yeah, if he couldn't do it himself, that would certainly be another reason, but not the only one.

 

 

 

there was a guy on gearslutz mentioned he did work for him at his studio and he said aphex doesn't know a thing about electronics. i bet he knows more about programming than anything. he did make some interesting stuff in supercollider.

 

Richard is an artist. He doesnt give himself enough credit. I dont think he needs to use the more obscure rare gear to separate himself from the others. He only needs to dream up one of his melodies and use his ears. He could use nothing but VST's and it would still be an aphex track.

[Nil]

RDJ would be a 100 times less productive as he pretends to be if he built his gear himself. I can't imagine how time consuming it is to design, build and fine-tune a really nice sounding, original synth.

[Guest chunky]

that post by tom middleton's brother, was probably a lie, at least you shouldnt fully believe he was telling the truth

in another post on that newsgroup he posted something untrue for rephlex, sort of propaganda advert

some early equipment was yamaha cs 5 and korg ds 8

as for some compressors or tapes or synths then it's just that aphex twin used probably nearly everything and has an atittude of exploration and trying new things

it would be easier to describe if someone brought up a specific track and asked what was used to make it?

 

for analord one question was "is art subjective or objective?" this was in the time of VST and DAW being the

#1 popular thing. anyone to mention analogue synths or recording was = crazy troll, shut up troll that will never happen etc ceephax sux etc typical dumb people. actually aphex and vs argued for subjective and defended it angrily but if you look at their actions in the last 10 years they have acted more and more towards the other direction of objectivity. it's not like you need to prove the argument one way or the other, you just need to get as close to objectivity as possible. like for example the music is just what you hear with your ears and brain/mind but the music/sound exists outside of that person(??) the synths/recording/ technology exists outside of yourself.... so here comes the aesthetic part... you can refine every objective element that you use to make the music, everything that exists towards making your music must be great... that means fuck VST and DAW and what is all shitty. like i said there aphex and venetian snares never actually fully accepted the argument but they just took what they wanted from the debate and look at all the benefits so far. in that way you can say there is like an analord 2.0 waiting to happen, because the argument of subjective vs objective hasnt fully been taken to its logical conclusion and nobody has come close to making electronic music with the perfect aesthetic. also too many thugs keep the idm fake genre alive, which is completely immoral and anti-art and anti-truth and anti-beauty and anti-sprituality. is it possible to make a real music as opposed to a fake imaginary music? haha !!! the better question than "how to copy aphex twin?" is "how to do something better than aphex twin?" that would be really funny 10 years from now when someone trumps that ginger bastard

[ZoeB]

I wouldn't say anything against DAWs. Being able to program in intricate (and, for that matter, not-quite-repeating) sequences is useful. Fenix Funk 5 is one of the better tracks in Analord, and I think one of very few that could only have been sequenced on a DAW rather than hardware. (Of course, the rest could have too, they just didn't need to be.) Then again, I still think MIDI is fine for real-world music, even if we have got tighter timings as shown on our oscilloscope using gate signals.

[marf]

how would a DAW be different to something like an mpc or rs7000? anything you might hear in the fenix that points to a difference?

 

Any more confusing analog synth interfaces than the ms-20 and the fenix? that ms-20 manual, boy oh boy

[ZoeB]

how would a DAW be different to something like an mpc or rs7000? anything you might hear in the fenix that points to a difference?

 

Any more confusing analog synth interfaces than the ms-20 and the fenix? that ms-20 manual, boy oh boy

 

In my experience, the kind of splitting, merging, copying and pasting of note groups of arbitrary lengths that you can get in most DAWs is much easier to work with than the similar but generally more primitive and fiddly implementation of patterns in most hardware based custom interfaces. You can see a visual overview of the whole song, and of the specific part you're working on, rather than essentially flying blind.

 

It also is a great help to have a single system working as both a sequencer and multitrack recorder.

 

If you want to make simple music like most of the Analord tracks, then hardware sequencers aren't that much of a handicap, but for more intricate works like Fenix Funk 5 in particular, they really slow you down.

 

As far as patching goes, you get a similar overview with modulars and semi-modulars, as long as they have a single knob or slider for each tweakable element. The only time hardware causes a problem is when you can't see everything at once. Hence why, for example, an MKS-80 is much easier to work with if you also have an MPG-80, and an MS-20 is easier to use than an MS-2000 (at least, unless you want to do something modern like save a patch or play several notes at once).

 

If you like the MS-20's manual (I love the cute little professor, hehe...), you should check out the GX-1's manual:

 

Just like human beings, sounds are born, reach their prime and die; but the life of a sound, from creation to evanescence lasts only a few seconds.

 

 

Wise words indeed. :)

[marf]

thanks for the nice reply..how do you suppose the 808 is controlled in fenix funk? you think it was sampled or do you think it was triggered to stop/play during the track? it comes in and out. Do you hear midi lag on the 909 part in fenix? i feel its not extremely tight (the 909 ).

[ZoeB]

I have no idea what he did use, and don't think it particularly matters. I know various ways you could achieve the effect, so I'm happy. Maybe he didn't program the track into a DAW and play it over MIDI, but if not, it probably took much longer to make than it needed to, for a barely perceptible timing improvement.

 

If you want some good TR-808 style sounds, I'd recommend the Analogue Solutions modules for their versatility (eg the SD88's decay knob). Whether he used those here, I have no idea. The noise sounds to me like a Doepfer A-117, but then again you can achieve a similar effect with Thor, or for that matter, using sample and hold.

[Guest skibby]

is it possible that there were internet knowledge bases in the 90's where he might have picked up some experience as an engineer?