Part 2

In relation to sound, one often reads words like “material”, “sculpting”, and “design”. Do you feel these terms have a relationship to your own work and approach towards sound? Do you find using presets lazy?

Absolutely, especially the words sculpting and design. Design and sculpting go hand-in-hand.

Typically I have a vision for my project, or on a more micro level, when talking about one song. I may have been inspired by an experience, sound, or emotion which leads me to designing the sounds and frequencies around which way I want to tell that story sonically.

Design is always the first step, and sculpting comes after. I always take time to sculpt my sounds and project as a whole - taking advantage of the functions of your oscillators, envelopes, and modulation as a whole allows for expansion, upgrades, and evolution for the sound itself.

I think sculpting can refer to not just creating a sound, modulating a sound, processing a sound, mixing a sound, and automating a sound, but also sculpting can refer to sculpting the entire track as a whole, on a more macro level. The ideal goal is to have all elements of the track work cohesively together, to compliment one another. While making sure they do not over-power or take focus away from one another. Essentially, every element should have its place in the track, both creative and sonically.

On a sonic level, you want to allow the frequencies of each element, to have their place to shine, which is where “sculpting” I feel comes into play. Most use the term “mixing” these days but I feel sculpting is also applicable. Same thing. In order to give space for the important and powerful frequencies of each element to shine, every element has frequencies that need to be sacrificed, but in many cases those frequencies could just be taking up space, creating a muddy overall sound when all elements are played together.

Production tools can already suggest compositional ideas on their own. Which of these have proven particularly fruitful in this regard?

Well there is an overwhelming amount of “production tools” out there today. And yes, many of them offer a lot of ideas to assist in one's work flow.

With regards to composition, I can’t say I know of any production tools that assist with composition, as I define composition as “writing melodies” and that is something that I enjoy doing myself. I was composing melodic progressions and acoustic piano pieces long before moving over to digital music production and pursuing electronic music professionally.

The only thing I would say I am familiar with that assists with compositional ideas is the ability to convert a certain piece of audio to MIDI - whether that be a drum pattern, a harmony or melodic progression. So that does help a lot when one is trying to be creative or play around with an audio recording.

For example, if I am playing around with one of my synthesizers and recording audio out into my session, later when I go back to edit that piece of audio and decide I want to modify the melodic progression, I can easily convert that audio to MIDI. It's rarely ever precise, but then, you can manually adjust each MIDI note and then modify as much as you like. So there’s a lot there, and that's something that I do use within my creative process, oftentimes.

Sometimes I'll be in a flow and record audio and then later decide I want to modify the melody. I already have the patch saved on my actual synth, but what I can then do is convert the audio to MIDI, then modify the MIDI and then send the MIDI back out back to my synth, and then re-record the audio out of my synth back into my session, in which case my analog synths audio will be recorded without my having to play it again. I love that.

And again, thanks to my MIDI interface, that has made this exact process even that more efficient.

To some, the advent of AI and 'intelligent' composing tools offers potential for machines to contribute to the creative process. What are your hopes, fears, expectations and possible concrete plans in this regard?

I have a lot of mixed feelings about this actually. I am scared of AI. I have hardly tampered with it. My partner is a product manager for a tech company so he’s been able to educate me more on the development of AI. Truthfully I feel AI is a threat to everyone in the entertainment industry. It can be used as a TOOL, but once it's no longer used as a tool and simply relied on, that's where I feel the problem starts.

I was told that artists are able to use AI today to replicate existing singers' voices and use them within their music. Now, this is not only a threat to the singers themselves, and could potentially affect the fair distribution of royalties, but above all, this loses its human-ness, and its real-ness. The human voice carries frequencies that are so powerful, so real - and in my opinion, if replicated, it could potentially not carry the same emotion, true essence and healing capabilities of its very human nature.

With that said, I understand that AI can be an incredible tool used to allow artists to generate and create with assistance. To be honest, it's all so new to me and I really have just been hearing a lot about it this last year. Perhaps over time, this will become a part of all of our realities which we cannot deny.

For now, my favorite part about creating music is the ability to be hands-on with all of my hardware, analog synths, piano, and to be physically active in the process of recording, composing and producing my music. This is what I love, and what makes me feel connected to creating and my craft as a whole. As someone who’s a classically trained musician, using AI for “compositional’ work as you’ve mentioned would completely defeat the purpose of why I am doing this in the first place.

However I am open to using AI as a tool in other ways. I am just not sure what that looks like yet. I have barely dipped my feet in the water with that one.

Technology has continually taken on more steps of the compositional process and "creative" tasks. From your point of view, where does "technology" end and "creativity" begin?

I am not familiar with the technology that is assisting with composition, although I think it's a wonderful tool for producers who do not have a musical background whether it be classical training, or playing an instrument.

With that said, I do think that technology can be a threat to the creatives who are doing the hard work to write and compose original pieces and melodic progressions, because that requires a lot more time, energy, focus and overall hard work. Technology might be allowing for more short-cuts and perhaps that’s why the music industry (especially electronic music) is becoming more and more saturated.

At the end of the day, I am a firm believer that authentic, true, real, ART is the art that makes a true impact, and is the music that will be received by the masses. That music is the music that makes an impact and transcends, lasting a lifetime. Resonating with many around the world. Technology cannot create the pure emotion and sonic stories that humans are able to create, because technology is not able to feel.

So that which comes from a human, a soul who has experienced and felt the large spectrum of emotions we all experience during our time on this earth. Those are the melodies, frequencies, and sonic stories that will stand out and make a difference.

If you could make a wish for the future directly to a product developer at a Hard- or Software company – what are developments in tools/instruments you would like to see and hear?  
 
Oh, I have a big wish actually. My wish is that there will be an EASY and QUICK way to transfer all of my plug-ins and licenses from one computer to another without having to re-download, re-install and input a bazillion different license codes to have them operating functionally on my new laptop.

I will say that I love that many software companies that are manufacturing multiple different types of plug-ins and synths are creating desktop apps where one can download all the products purchased from that particular company, update them and access their license codes. So that’s great. But still, there are SO many different companies, softwares and installation processes.

It would be so great to have one, consistent, easy process or formula for all of them to be downloaded and transferred if in any situation one gets a new computer.