0:01

Francis, welcome to the show again.

0:03

Great to have you. Great to be back.

0:06

It's been a while. Yeah, a little bit.

0:08

I still think you're one of the most frequent guests here.

0:13

So it's nice to have you back and catch up with you.

0:16

You're doing awesome stuff as always.

0:19

Congrats on the new Serum models.

0:22

That's the newest release. And I got to tell you, like listening to your video, demonstrating it, I would have

0:30

thought these are samples. These were realistic instruments there.

0:33

And it's, it's just another testament to your

0:37

your prowess as a synthesis, a sound designer and really cool stuff.

0:43

Can I ask you to share a bit about that?

0:46

Yeah. The concept for the pack came out of a conversation.

0:56

I was at a conference. There were quite a few engineers there.

1:00

Some of them were physical modeling engineers and I had already been doing a

1:05

lot of pretty significant physical modeling recreations.

1:10

Like I had a Tabla. coming out of Ableton just using a noise burst and the Ableton Echo device.

1:18

Because the filters on the Echo device, if you play with them while you've got the

1:25

feedback really high in a very short delay, I was able to get this sort of

1:30

tabless sound out of it. And I've always like, to give some props to where a lot of physical modeling comes

1:37

from, back in the late 70s,

1:41

really early 80s, Kevin Carplus and Alex Strong were doing experiments with delays

1:48

and they stumbled across, in the same way that John Chowning stumbled across FM

1:54

while he was playing with a modular, they stumbled across the fact that a quick

2:00

impulse, noise burst hi -hat, that sort of thing, is going to give you the sound of a

2:06

plucked guitar. And...

2:10

the sound of a comb filter is almost identical to a delay.

2:15

So I was at this conference and I was showing some of the stuff and an engineer

2:21

at the conference and I were talking and I made the mistake of saying a lot of

2:27

physical modeling is just smoking. Hehehe.

2:31

And I got in a lot of trouble for saying that.

2:35

So he got very angry at me and I had to sort of show him the tabla and show him

2:42

some of the plucked string sounds.

2:45

So a few, you know, fast forward a few years, in January 2022, I guess it was, I

2:54

was visiting a friend.

2:58

in Mexico and that friend happened to be Steve Duda and we were talking about all

3:02

the different ways you can make serum sound not like serum because everybody

3:07

associates serum with these EDM sounds, these dubstep sounds, rhythm, a lot of

3:15

different, so many genres have come out of serum and I showed him a couple of things

3:21

I was playing with and he was like, that's really pretty freaking cool.

3:26

So, Two years ago, I started the project.

3:31

And between the inevitable imposter syndrome that no one will ever be able to

3:38

escape, between that, I just kept fiddling with it.

3:41

I know that the internet is a cruel, mean place.

3:45

So I had to make sure it was perfect and bulletproof and bulletproof to my artist

3:51

friends and bulletproof, not just to me.

3:53

Like I had to ask my... myself and my friends, am I losing my mind here or is this working the way I think it

4:01

is? A lot of the things with regard to the sound creation itself is it's not relying

4:08

on any oscillators.

4:10

It's relying just like most physical modeling synths on a noise generator and a

4:19

comb filter with some heavy processing.

4:23

There's a lot of flexibility in the comb filters inside Serum.

4:28

It's sort of absurd how much flexibility there is.

4:31

And then it's got all the effects at the end, and three envelopes.

4:35

So I really started tinkering with it for the first six months of 2022.

4:39

And I realized I had, basically I'd created my own initialized presets that I

4:46

could then modify further in either like the strings really came out of, out of...

4:52

me attempting to just get the sound of a violin or a viola.

4:56

And then I was able to create many more types of string sounds from that.

5:00

The plucks and guitars, through experimentation, I was able to create

5:06

different kinds of plucked instruments. There's a wonderful, I'm very proud of it, Coto in there, which has a little bit of

5:13

that pitch bend that we associate with the instrument.

5:17

And then again, percussion.

5:21

these sounds just started coming out of it.

5:23

So once I had about 50, 40 or 50 initialized starting points for myself, I

5:28

just took it further until I got to 100 and made sure that each one was

5:33

sufficiently different. I'm going to be a little long -winded here, but I guess we're here to promote in

5:39

some sense. So the macros, the thing about physical modeling is it's very, very, very

5:44

difficult. Even if you have a synth that's dedicated to physical modeling.

5:50

And since the filter is occupied doing the actual, creating the actual sound, I use

5:57

the macros for things like increasing the decay time or modifying the sound by

6:05

modifying the noise sources.

6:07

And then of course, like one for effects at the end.

6:10

So I made the macros actually all do something.

6:13

A lot of times I'll see serum presets from Nameless that have...

6:19

the macro is just not set to do anything.

6:22

And having worked for so many companies and they're always, make sure you got the

6:26

macros in there. I did the macros like I would if I was working for a client, which I've done with

6:33

all my, I've done four packs for XFIRS.

6:36

So, you know, I'm always making sure that the macros are really on point.

6:40

And that is the whole story.

6:44

So it's interesting that it's such a long process too, you know.

6:49

And I love that it starts out with a sort of foot in your mouth moment, you know,

6:55

kind of making a comment then it's like now you have to back it up.

7:00

Right. But it turns into a cool project like this.

7:05

was so happy with the way it started turning out, but the other thing when

7:09

you're making a pack, as you well know, is it's one thing to make the pack, but then

7:15

you have to spend another three to four months on your marketing.

7:19

And I'm just one guy.

7:22

So three to four, you know, so.

7:25

writing the press releases, working with a PR person to clean them up, having to do

7:30

the video that you see on YouTube.

7:32

That was, I originally started that in ScreenFlow, and then the PR guy jumped in

7:39

and made some really, really valuable recommendations.

7:43

But then you also have to create the demo music.

7:45

So I had my buddy Shadowstar, who's, I'd like to talk about him a little bit later.

7:52

really, really gifted techno producer and he's definitely going places.

7:57

So I asked him to do the techno stuff because he's better at it than I am.

8:01

So, but that whole process of the demo music, a lot of, I don't think people

8:05

really consider what goes into making a pack.

8:08

It's not just the sounds. You have to do the artwork, you have to do the video, you have to make the music, you

8:12

have to do any, you know, the description, you have to review that for a few weeks to

8:20

make sure that... that not just the description is accurate, but that it doesn't sound like hyperbola.

8:30

A lot of times I'll look at product announcements and you'd think there was

8:34

also like a cheese grater and a motorcycle in it.

8:38

And I really would rather, I really wanna stay true to the identity of the.

8:48

Yeah, I agree. I mean, that's a hard part.

8:51

Sometimes I don't even know how to present it.

8:55

You know, I, okay, I know I made this thing that in a certain way with certain

9:00

sounds, but what do you call it? What do you name it?

9:03

What do you, what kind of art goes with this?

9:07

And it's my least favorite part of the whole process too.

9:11

It's just all that stuff. And like you, I'm just one person trying to figure it out.

9:17

And. Just kind of pick something and hope it works.

9:22

And sometimes I think things I've done probably would have caught on better if I

9:29

had a different approach to that stuff.

9:32

I love this pack, but people don't understand it.

9:39

It's hard to convey why this is interesting.

9:42

Because you sort of need to hear it and play with it.

9:48

completely feel you on that and you've done some amazing packs the VHS stuff was

9:53

really really cool and in this particular case with this pack people don't think of

9:59

serum as a physical modeling synth and if I had released it last year I don't know

10:03

if it would have gotten any traction because there's this sort of wave

10:08

on physical modeling and everybody's releasing their own physical modeling

10:11

synth to something more modern because there have been several out there.

10:16

But the idea of just $29 serums of physical modeling synth have fun.

10:21

That was the goal there.

10:24

Well, I think even the concept, physical modeling, like what even is that?

10:31

What does that mean for so many people?

10:34

Yeah, you kind of said it a little bit, but maybe I can get you to just explain

10:44

that a little more. Because, you know, like a normal synthesizer, the sound generator is

10:48

usually some kind of oscillator that's repeating.

10:51

But... The physical modeling stuff is meant to like the most experience I have with

10:58

something like that is like Corpus inside of Ableton.

11:03

and you can pick like how you're going to strike the whatever medium it is.

11:09

You pick the medium. Is it a string? Is it a membrane?

11:11

And it's, I really don't understand what's doing any of that stuff.

11:18

I just, I'm just listening and using these weird metaphors that they have for these.

11:23

different parts of the sound.

11:26

In my current courses, I have an entire module for my Sound of the Line course

11:33

that covers what physical modeling is, and I use collision for that.

11:39

If you go into the mallet and it says noise generator, these impulses are

11:45

generally mallets and noise generators.

11:48

So what it does, let's just go back to Kevin Carr Plus and Alex Strong.

11:53

So Carr Plus Strong synthesis is what it's called.

11:56

If you take a hi -hat or kick drum or a snare drum and you put it into a delay,

12:05

now what a delay is, is something that obviously repeats something.

12:09

And if you have a 500 millisecond delay, it's gonna sound like an echo in a canyon.

12:14

And the amount of times it repeats as it gets quieter and quieter and quieter is

12:19

determined by the feedback.

12:21

Now, if you're using that same delay as a flanger,

12:25

you're gonna wanna use very, very short delay times.

12:28

And that's where Karpla Strong kind of came out of it.

12:32

Because when it's a flanger dialing up the feedback, you're gonna start to hear a

12:37

pitch. That's the sort of whooshy ripping sound of a flanger is the fact that it's a very

12:44

short delay. So if you start spending some time on the math in it, a short delay,

12:53

is like if you set it to one millisecond, that's a question I always ask my class,

12:57

if you set a short delay with high feedback to one millisecond, what's the

13:01

frequency you're going to hear?

13:04

And it's a thousand hertz.

13:08

And the reason being is that that delay is constantly cycling your hi -hat or

13:16

whatever your impulse was.

13:18

So you send the. a second.

13:21

Yeah, there are a thousand milliseconds in a second. And if you change it to two milliseconds, it goes down to 500 because there are 500,

13:29

like two millisecond intervals in a second.

13:35

So I really don't, I'm terrible at math, but I didn't know, so making this, I had

13:39

my calculator out the entire time I was doing this.

13:43

So I may have a culpa. But the, so as you, when you go to two milliseconds, it's 500.

13:48

When you go to four milliseconds, it's 250.

13:52

And it goes lower and lower and lower in pitch until it sounds like a rattle and

13:56

then it eventually becomes an echo. But when you can go shorter than that, it's really compelling because if you can

14:05

get it down to half a millisecond, now you're up to 2K.

14:11

So. What's happening there is if you take that flanger concept and apply it to a comb

14:18

filter, which is essentially a flanger, so you apply that to a comb filter and in a

14:25

comb filter you can increase the resonance.

14:28

When you increase the resonance on a comb filter, that's the feedback on a flanger.

14:34

So when you're playing with comb filters, and every company has comb filters, so

14:38

if... looking at the structure of the comb filter, whether it's, and in the case of

14:45

serum, it's called flanger, it's called comb filter, it's got negative feedback,

14:50

it's got positive feedback, there are some phasers in there, and they all do

14:54

something really interesting if you set the resonance to maximum.

15:00

So having worked with it for as long as I had, because it's like a little two -year

15:05

project, you find these sort of little,

15:09

shortcuts and back alleys where you can heavily modify the behavior of the comb

15:17

filter. So there was a lot of experimentation with that.

15:21

That took the bulk of a year up.

15:24

And really exploring what serums implementation of these flangers and comb

15:29

filters, et cetera. And every time I found something, save the preset.

15:33

Every time, this sounds like a horn, save the preset.

15:37

this sounds like a drum, save the preset.

15:39

Once you find enough of these starting points, as I was saying, then you start

15:44

working with things like the envelopes, because the envelope of, you can do this

15:49

in collision. If you're working in collision, you take the envelope, you envelope the noise.

15:55

I'm gonna take a minute to pontificate about the fact that it used to be a visual

16:00

envelope, just like all the other envelopes in Ableton, and now it just says

16:03

ADSR with some numbers. Makes it harder for me to teach.

16:07

I'm not complaining about Ableton.

16:09

but that user interface changed between 10 and 11.

16:12

And as a professor, it just makes it a little harder for me to teach because

16:15

you're looking for the shape of an envelope in the user interface.

16:19

So now that I've said that, in the case of Serum, you've got all these envelopes that

16:23

you can clearly see what's going on. And if you want to do an instrument like a codo, as I was saying earlier, you're

16:29

going to have to put a pitch envelope on it to get that effect.

16:31

And if you want to control it by velocity so that the harder you hit a key,

16:36

the more that you get that pitch effect, which is the way most fretted stringed

16:41

instruments work, is if you really, really hit a note hard, you're going to get a

16:48

little pitch blip at the beginning of it. So that's an envelope tied to pitch controlled by velocity.

16:54

And you get deeper and deeper into it.

16:56

But it's really, there's so much experimentation when you have all these

17:01

filters out that it's like,

17:05

It's like the thing that I dislike about certain modular approaches.

17:10

It's like the mini finds something cool, save it, because you can use that as a

17:14

launch point for something else. So that's a lot of times, especially when I get a new synth or I want to do a lot of

17:21

experimentation, I just kind of let my mind go and I get into that sort of flow

17:27

state and I just save everything that's good and then I have all the good things

17:31

and I go back to them. And those are the ones I finesse and figure out what's doing.

17:37

So it was a lot more intentional. you don't save anything.

17:40

You're just, yeah.

17:42

yeah, and in a very good way.

17:44

I think the thing about modulars is that they're really good psychologically.

17:48

It's like, and you can create stuff that you would never have created any other way

17:52

because a lot of times you're blindfolded.

17:58

You know, you're just kind of like, what does this do?

18:01

What does that do? But so the Zen state that a modular creates, which I think is fantastic.

18:08

I know several friends with. and I love playing with them.

18:12

It's kind of like, you know those sand mandalas that are just like the Tibetan

18:20

monks use? They create these sand mandalas and they're intricate and they're beautiful

18:26

and they're complex and they take forever to make.

18:29

And then at the end, you wipe the slate clean.

18:33

Yeah, and that's kind of how modulars seem to work to me.

18:38

Hmm. you can get great results, but unless you record it or find a use for it

18:43

immediately, you're always gonna go back to square one.

18:48

So. Yeah, so it's really, it's a lot of physics, I guess, as is a lot of

18:55

synthesis, but especially here now we're really, the mathematics of it come into

18:59

play and just.

19:02

engineers, when they're making a proper physical modeling synth, they're creating

19:08

these things called waveguides.

19:11

And these waveguides are exactly what they do is they guide this pulse, this carplus

19:18

strong pulse or whatever it happens to be through these very detailed recreations of

19:25

an acoustic body. When you're talking about say something like an acoustic guitar.

19:31

or a drum, like in the case of membrane and collision.

19:35

And I found other ways to do it besides using waveguides that got identical

19:42

results. And the cool thing is the techniques that I was using since they weren't waveguides

19:47

are far easier on CPU.

19:52

If you look at a lot of physical modeling synths, they hit the CPU really hard.

19:56

And because I'm using serum and it's just basically a...

20:00

a noise burst and a comb filter, that's super easy on CPU.

20:06

So you can get a lot of polyphony out of it too.

20:10

So is it a matter of using the comb filters resonance to recreate the kind of

20:16

natural harmonics that creates a timbre of our instruments?

20:24

different types of noise are gonna give you different results and different types

20:27

of, whether you're using a hi -hat or a snare drum or whatever, that's gonna get,

20:31

like, there's so many moving parts, but once you get the hang of it, it would

20:38

take, like, it took me two years to make the pack, so it's, like, there's a lot of

20:43

that heavy lifting, it was two years of my own experimentation.

20:47

But if you stay with it, I mean, I just have 100 presets so far.

20:52

If this sells, I'll probably make a models too and take it further and even more

20:57

twisted. Or try it with a different synth, but serum is just so flexible that I end up,

21:03

every time I think of like, I wonder if it can do this? It does that.

21:07

So there you have it. Yeah, it's wild.

21:11

And if it took you two years to do it, I know you're a guy, I've seen your videos

21:17

and demonstrations of you teaching where you you're developing fairly complex synth

21:23

sounds in like 60 seconds.

21:26

Just because you know what's what's going to happen.

21:30

Yeah. My students are often startled by the fact that I have the ability to work rather

21:37

quickly with sound. But every time I create a sound, I'm like, these are the ingredients.

21:43

It's like a recipe. So what sound did I just do for my students?

21:49

I also did a 303, which is very straightforward.

21:53

I mean, it's never going to sound exactly like Roland's circuitry, so there is a

21:56

need for the model. But... making a 303 sound, it's like every time I hear a 303 I'm like, okay, well that's

22:02

either a saw or a square, one oscillator, cutoff, resonance, decay, there you have

22:09

it. Boom, make a sort of random -ish sequence and add some glide.

22:15

So some people are gonna be mad that I simplified it that much, but essentially

22:19

that's what's happening. So.

22:24

Once you've been doing it for something known as all your life, it's like

22:33

breathing at some point.

22:35

It's like you as a writer, because you're a very capable writer.

22:42

You don't have to diagram your sentences anymore, do you?

22:47

Well, there you go.

22:50

So there you have it. was not in the curriculum growing up actually.

22:56

But I get what you're saying.

23:01

It ingrains in you.

23:04

Even just maybe if you're playing guitar and the scales, just the repetition of it,

23:11

I'm not thinking. How does a painter paint?

23:14

I mean, it's like there, you know, you'll find some, the more experience you have

23:20

and the more you learn the craft, the faster it's going to be to get the results

23:24

that you're looking for. I have a friend who has a really wonderful, expensive, proper camera.

23:35

And because he's so knowledgeable and has so much experience with,

23:40

photography and the sort of how to frame a shot and different types of lenses.

23:47

He does fantastic work that someone, you know, I have another friend who's kind of

23:52

just, it seems like they're just picking it up and their work set side by side is

24:00

like night and day. So, yeah.

24:04

But they'll get it, they'll get it. They just need to put more effort in.

24:08

Yeah, just keeps showing up. That's like even like microphone choice and placement if you're gonna record a

24:15

drum kit. You know, I'm sure you could hand me the finest gear ever and I'll come up with

24:23

something but then somebody else that's in the studio every single day doing this can

24:28

take like two 57s and just make it sound like gold.

24:33

Well, it's the discipline and it's just, do you want to be able to manipulate your

24:38

sounds? And I teach these classes. So when I'm working with my students, I always have several classes where they

24:45

just give me YouTube links to songs they like and they'll time stamp it and they'll

24:50

say, what's that sound? How do you make that sound?

24:53

Sometimes I'll have to simply say, that's a recording of a grand piano played

24:59

backwards and transposed down by two semitones.

25:02

and then I'll actually have to do that and demonstrate that.

25:05

And since I don't have their sample, I can't recreate it.

25:08

Other times, it'll be like a...

25:14

chiptune kind of thing. I was trying to figure out what analogy I wanted to use.

25:19

And that's like always a square. That's like when you're listening to chiptune stuff, you're like, that's a

25:23

square. So just use a square, open up your filter.

25:27

So there are just some things that it's like, it would be difficult to make

25:33

authentic cuisines from around the world if you didn't have garlic.

25:39

But there are other cuisines that don't use garlic at all, like dessert.

25:43

So it's learning what the garlic is.

25:47

I use a lot of cooking analogies. It makes a lot of sense though.

25:52

I'm curious if you could, it's probably hard for you to do this since it is so

25:58

natural, but if you could sort of slow down your thinking when somebody presents

26:05

you with a sound like that in a class, how are you breaking this down in your head?

26:13

Like are you listening to the sound in stages?

26:18

initial attack to decay and I mean is there a kind of process that's going on?

26:26

Maybe it's happening so fast now that you don't even notice it.

26:29

I do try to slow it down.

26:32

Because I am going too fast for my own head.

26:37

It's like literally just, and that's not like a humble brag.

26:41

It's like I'm a college professor who's been doing this professionally for 20

26:47

years, 25 years, 30 years.

26:50

So I should be good at it, I hope.

26:53

So when I do it, I do explain it.

26:55

I don't do that magic trick.

26:59

until midway through the semester so that when I say that's a sawtooth wave, they

27:05

already know what a sawtooth wave is because that was several modules ago.

27:10

Or I'm using a low -pass filter to make it more muted.

27:14

I'm using a long release to give it a longer decay, reverie kind of effect.

27:22

And I've already taught them all of the basics of that.

27:26

They know what envelopes are. They know what filters are.

27:28

They know what oscillators. So the reason I put those in is not to be flashy, but to show, give them concrete

27:37

examples as to why they, what these tools do and how they can use it in their own

27:45

way. I'm not trying to tell them how to make music.

27:48

In their own way to make the sounds that they're hearing in their heads.

27:53

There was one student who gave me several examples.

27:56

It was a longer class and for some reason there were.

27:59

students missing that day. So I was like, give me more of these YouTube links.

28:07

And I was like, you just really like low cutoff frequencies.

28:12

So that was a huge, to me, that was a huge eye opening moment into what that person's

28:20

voice is as an artist.

28:23

And that is they like softer sounds with low cutoff frequencies.

28:29

And and longer release times.

28:31

There were a lot of road sounds, like real road sounds, and very muted sort of trip

28:39

hop and down tempo kinds of massive attack and thievery corporation.

28:47

Yeah, so pointing that out, a lot of times when students give me that, if I can get a

28:52

couple of sounds from them and hear what sort of music they listen to and what sort

28:58

of sounds they gravitate towards, then I can be an even better professor for those

29:04

students. I always try to customize my classes for the 10 different people in the room and

29:09

sort of like dial it in so it's almost like a private lesson.

29:13

by finding out what they like, what tonalities they like.

29:16

Again, with the cutoff frequency, it was a major insight.

29:21

So I'm always trying to find out what art that student is trying to create and give

29:30

them a little head start on.

29:35

And how would you recommend somebody work on this?

29:41

Suppose we've got someone listening, wants to start figuring out how they can create

29:46

sounds they hear. It's a lot like almost trying to play songs by ear off the radio or whatever,

29:54

but in this case, yeah.

30:00

People ask me about how I got into preset making.

30:03

My first synth was a Moog without presets.

30:08

So I would put on new order records with my little Moog and make Blue Monday.

30:16

And with regards to designing sounds, just to touch back on that.

30:21

It was a while before I learned that they used the sample from Radium by Kraftwerk

30:25

for the choir sound. But once I heard it, I was like, yeah, that's Kraftwerk sample.

30:29

So there are certain things that happen. Like when you hear a guitar, most people are not confused about the fact that they

30:35

are hearing a guitar. So you get this skill of being able to quickly go, that's a guitar.

30:43

that's a bass. that's a vocalist, presumably.

30:47

So you have this.

30:50

you get this sort of framework.

30:52

I think I lost the question a little bit there, but...

30:57

Well, just how you would start learning how to do this stuff.

31:02

get a synth that didn't allow you to save presets.

31:08

That was a thing. I had an SH -101 and the Moog Radio Shack one, the MG -1, which I still love.

31:18

Cherry Audio does a really, really good software version of it.

31:22

you have one? God darn it, that's...

31:27

It's funny too.

31:29

I got it at a, it was the Brooklyn synth something or other, you know, at a music

31:34

store. And I put the headphones on and played it for five minutes and an hour went by, you

31:41

know, just got sucked into it.

31:44

That auto trigger thing on it where you can like set the LFO to keep re

31:47

-triggering notes is like you become your own sequencer.

31:50

So it's all, everything's quantized for you as you play it.

31:54

But that was, yeah. with mine where there's that foam underneath it.

32:01

That was what is a synth from, I don't know, the year of it's sometime mid 80s,

32:05

right? I can actually tell you that it's gonna be 82...ish?

32:13

81 -82. Between 81 and 83.

32:15

Cause that's tight. in there turns to goo after a while.

32:20

And a lot of my sliders have these weird crackles and sometimes they just cut out.

32:27

But I kind of enjoy that about it.

32:30

It's a little bit alive.

32:34

enoey kind of...

32:36

he always seems to like the...

32:40

like a more practical not having to spend some money on repairs, you know, attitude.

32:48

But it is kind of cool that you're like, what's going to happen when I play with

32:51

this thing? Because, you know, you know what it's supposed to do, but you're also

32:56

collaborating with it a little bit.

33:01

to manufacturers, you know who you are.

33:05

Those rubberized pitch bend wheels that were all the rage about eight years ago,

33:10

you know, the sort of feels great in Guitar Center.

33:13

got this sub fatty.

33:17

You can't even touch that thing.

33:21

names because many of these companies are my clients.

33:24

I can, I love them still, but my subphotony is sticky.

33:29

And you'll find it on knobs as well.

33:32

You'll find that some of the knobs are super rubbery.

33:35

And there's one synth that is literally in my garage right now, and I wish I could

33:41

use it, but I can't because of all the degraded plastics and rubber, because they

33:46

sweat. And even if it's not in my garage, I have just sitting in the room over time, this

33:55

plastic rubber sweats. So don't call anybody out, but everybody when you see one of those be aware.

34:02

Yeah, it's a shame. I've been looking for maybe like some wood sides or something for this particular

34:11

one, but who knows?

34:14

It's hard to predict that stuff, I guess.

34:20

But you reminded me of when I first started playing guitar and how different

34:26

music sounded to me.

34:29

As soon as I started playing guitar and then I'd be like, that's the acoustic

34:33

guitar. That's electric with distortion or that's the bass.

34:38

It used to just be music, maybe drums I could differentiate, but music, drums and

34:46

voice. That was the three things that were in every song.

34:49

as far as I could tell. And then the dimensions just open as you start learning an instrument and what they

34:56

sound like. and close, because I really envy people who can just listen to music.

35:06

I really, really envy that state of mind where you're not, for me it's subtitles, I

35:15

always refer to it as subtitles, I can't turn it off, I listen to every track I

35:19

listen to, it's... This synth with this, like the preset just appears in my head.

35:26

Like, and I'm not saying that to brag. I'm just saying I have lost some magic.

35:31

I suspect a fairly large amount of magic in learning how the soup is made.

35:39

And I miss just being able to go in there with that level of innocence that you can

35:46

just enjoy music without.

35:49

unintentionally and automatically constantly picking it apart.

35:54

Yeah, I get that too.

35:56

Sometimes I hear songs and I'm like, that's the one five, six, four.

36:00

There it is again. And, but then I'll listen to songs that I loved and realize, my God, that's the one

36:07

five, six, four progression. It does, it, it distance you from just the straight feeling of the music.

36:18

that's why, there's a certain logic to the fact that I never learned music theory

36:26

properly. And I spoke to one of my colleagues many years ago and I was like, I feel like I

36:35

should take some of our school's music theory classes.

36:37

How do you feel about it? And this is a music theory teacher.

36:40

And he said,

36:44

that your specialty is technology.

36:47

My department is called Audio Technology and Industry.

36:49

That's my department. There's a music department that's the department he was in.

36:55

And he said, it's like the difference between speaking a language and writing a

37:00

language. And if you're capable of speaking, which you obviously are capable of because

37:04

you've had so many releases and you're able to teach at a high level the

37:09

synthesis stuff, If the music you make is the music you like and you intend to make that music,

37:17

then you should relax because if you look at how many major artists are not trained

37:26

in music theory, they picked it up through being around other musicians.

37:31

A really good example of that would be Prince.

37:36

There are countless musicians who...

37:40

picked it up because they picked up their instrument and just wrestled with it until

37:46

it started doing what it wanted to do.

37:49

I had a really interesting experience with Robert Plant on this topic, this very

37:53

topic. I was at South by Southwest and a colleague of mine was like, look, it's

38:00

Robert Plant. I know him. Would you like to meet him?

38:02

I was like, hell yeah.

38:04

So we went over and...

38:07

and she introduced me as this is Francis, he's an editor at Keyboard Magazine.

38:12

And he's like, you write for one of those magazines that teaches you how to play

38:18

your instrument. And it was like, it was such a, you know, I wasn't angry.

38:26

It was Robert Plant. I got to talk to him, you know.

38:28

So for me, it wasn't, I didn't feel like I was dismissed.

38:32

But there's, you know, there you have it, that a lot of, so many musicians are self

38:39

-taught. And that's what our music theory professor said.

38:42

If the music you're making is the music you want to make, and it's credible, and

38:44

it's good, and it sounds like what you want it to, you know, you should learn the

38:48

basics of music theory. And that's what I did. So I got the basics in so I can tell you what chord and what key I'm playing and

38:54

what key I'm in. So I think that's really important.

38:57

I also think that so many musicians learn by playing by ear.

39:01

So many musicians. So anyway, my specialty is technology.

39:06

Paul McCartney said something along the lines of not wanting to learn that stuff

39:11

to not lose the magic of it a little bit.

39:15

He clearly understands it.

39:18

Just listen to what he does. It's a weird feeling because it's kind of exciting to identify it when you hear

39:28

something interesting and learn what's happening to make that interesting thing

39:33

happen. But then it...

39:35

does run the risk of just becoming this technique instead of this.

39:40

Even like synthesis as I started learning synthesizers, to me synthesizers were more

39:45

like spaceships and you know, like star sparkling in the sky.

39:50

And then they become like arpeggiators and they become, you know, like you said, like

39:55

just that's a sawtooth wave with the resonance.

40:00

There's a temptation to want to learn how it's done.

40:04

And I think I'm trying to more and more like when I make sounds, I think in these

40:11

abstract terms first.

40:14

And then what do I need to do to get there?

40:18

It's, that gives you a lot of trial and error.

40:22

I didn't have, you know, when I was a teenager listening to New Order, I didn't,

40:27

Keyboard Magazine of all things was how I learned.

40:30

I would read articles in Keyboard Magazine and I ended up writing for them for 20

40:34

years. And that was like a real honor because I was meeting all of these cult heroes that

40:41

no one knows unless they read bylines.

40:44

And I read bylines as a teenager.

40:46

So when I started, When I started working for the magazine, I was like, my gosh, I can't believe I'm

40:52

meeting you. And they're like, what are you talking about?

40:56

So yeah, it went full circle.

40:59

And then I started getting a little bit more of an education on it.

41:01

But there was really no place you could go to learn synthesis in this era.

41:08

And I'm really glad that I'm able to impart the knowledge that I've gained from

41:11

that. So. Yeah, it's great.

41:15

I mean, so much cool stuff.

41:18

Let me ask you, you mentioned the circuitry, like of the 303, for instance,

41:21

but what kind of role is that playing in a lot of this stuff?

41:28

Like, cause you've got now digital recreations and the computer and it's all

41:34

that stuff minus the circuitry.

41:38

What do you think's going on there sometimes that's giving these synths their

41:43

sound? have two totally different opinions that conflict with each other.

41:51

And that's every software piece of software, piece of hardware has a

42:00

different... Hang on a second.

42:04

Someone's contributing to the conversation.

42:07

take your major third someplace else.

42:12

So, yeah, we're hearing, yeah, we're hearing, yeah, it sounds like a major

42:19

third. A lot of car horns are major thirds, so you need to take that.

42:23

Usually a sawtooth and whatever.

42:27

Anyways, so getting back to the topic, there's...

42:35

Each soft synth has a completely different sound from every other.

42:42

So if you go get a ton of different soft synths, even if they're analog

42:46

recreations, they're all going to sound different and they're all going to have a

42:50

vibe. One of the reasons that Serum had such traction for so many years, it's been a

42:56

decade. So the reason Serum has so much traction is because...

43:02

the aliasing is so low and everyone's like, it sounds too clean and clean is a

43:08

good thing because you can always add dirt later.

43:11

So, but that was one of the reasons it became such a staple in certain kinds of

43:14

dance music. So, serum has very, very, very little.

43:20

to give us a aliasing proper definition?

43:27

Aliasing is when the, like, I'm gonna, this is just, I'm gonna give a very basic

43:34

definition of it, because honestly, I don't know that I can get into all the

43:38

mathiness of it. But aliasing, you can hear in a DAW, if you have Ableton, just go look for the

43:47

Bitcrusher, and you will find, you'll be able to add aliasing to your track, or a

43:53

form of aliasing, one of the many flavors of aliasing.

43:57

If you're using phase plant, there's a filter in there called quantize, which

44:00

doesn't sound like a bit crusher, but it is also quantizing the signal.

44:03

So whenever the signal gets quantized, that's not the only way.

44:08

It usually has to do with the combination of bit depth and more importantly, the

44:14

sampling rate. If we talk about the Nyquist theorem, gosh, you pushed me down this hill.

44:20

So if you talk about the Nyquist theorem, then the...

44:27

The highest frequency in your sample has to be, it has to be, I wasn't thinking

44:37

about this right now. The highest frequency in your sample has to be half of the sampling rate.

44:42

So if you're recording at 40 kilohertz or 44 .1, which is what a CD is, the highest

44:50

frequency is gonna be 22 .05.

44:53

If you go higher, then you're really not gonna hear, but then aliasing kind of

44:58

transfers back down, which isn't good either.

45:00

But the sampling rate has to be twice the highest frequency in the synth.

45:05

That's aliasing. But in a synth, it means that there are aspects of the internal clock that have to

45:13

be running even faster so that the frequencies that are generated within the

45:21

synth, are also adhering to this Nyquist theorem.

45:27

So that's the short and wonky version of it that doesn't have a slide deck.

45:34

And I'm sure people are gonna complain that I didn't get it right, but that you.

45:38

But that sparkly sound you get when you turn the bit crusher, that kind of twinkly

45:45

thing. Yeah. that's like, the sample, there's a knob called sample rate.

45:49

And what you're doing is the DAW is operating at the correct sample rate, but

45:53

then you're taking that specific track and you're making it operate at a sample rate

45:58

that is lower than the highest frequency.

46:03

Twice the high, it's because it's gotta be twice the highest frequency.

46:07

I'm not sure if this is the same, but I've always equated it to really low bit rate

46:12

MP3s, how they have that kind of funny sparkly thing going on in the high end.

46:20

Is that a form of aliasing, due to that?

46:23

believe so. It's also a form of the way MP3s compress.

46:26

And don't ask me that question.

46:29

But the interesting thing is that what we're talking about with low bit rate

46:34

MP3s, whenever I listen to these stem separators, I don't know if you've

46:40

listened to them. The best one for me is like the Apple one is the one that the best one that I've

46:44

heard so far. I haven't heard them all.

46:46

I haven't done a shoot. what they used to call a shootout where you have 10 and you're comparing them.

46:54

But the ones I have heard, once you've separated out the vocals from the drums,

47:00

from the bass, from the music, et cetera, everything sounds like a really, really

47:07

low, low, low bit rate MP3, which tells me a little bit about how they're doing it.

47:13

It's all Fourier transform stuff, which is probably happening in a very high sample.

47:17

So, there you have it. all what transformed now?

47:22

Fourier transforms. If you're familiar with Apex Twin.

47:29

I'll give you an example. It's like a weird left turn that I just made.

47:32

So what a Fourier transform is, is ultimately every sound is made up entirely

47:37

of sine waves. White noise, as they call it, is all sine waves at equal volume.

47:44

That's one of the ways it is described.

47:47

It can be made many, many other ways.

47:49

I'm not saying that that's the final word on noise.

47:54

but it's all frequencies at equal amplitude is a very common definition for

47:59

noise. All frequencies, an infinite number of frequencies at equal amplitude.

48:06

So every sound, the sound of my voice, the sound of your voice, the sound of a guitar

48:11

is going to consist of harmonics, but also in harmonics.

48:16

If you wanna make bell sounds, because bells are not mathematically perfect

48:19

objects, you're going to get frequencies that are not mathematical.

48:23

relation don't have mathematical relationship to the fundamental the fun

48:27

now I'm talking too fast the fundamental yeah well there's the harmonic series but

48:33

then there are things called in harmonics which are not related to the harmonic

48:39

series and when you combine like but by combining them you get the the actual

48:46

fingerprint of all the sine waves that are used to make up that sound

48:50

But then you also have the phases of the sine waves.

48:53

And then you also have the envelopes for each individual sine wave.

48:57

Anybody's ever used the envelopes in operator for the harmonic series, you can

49:03

combine them in different ways. Serum has a beautiful harmonic editor.

49:07

Beautiful. So what an FFT is, the more complex the FFT is, as I understand it, because I'm

49:16

winging it when it comes to physical modeling, you gotta remember that.

49:19

So. as you make a sound, it's going to have frequencies that are both harmonic and

49:26

inharmonic. And they are going to change in phase and amplitude over time.

49:36

So when I say, just thinking about the sibilance in the letter S, and that's

49:44

going to be, that's really white noise through a high -pass filter coming out of

49:47

your mouth. So you've got,

49:49

all of these frequencies, if you, so a proper fast Fourier transform is really,

49:57

when you want it to sound amazing, it's gotta have so much detail in terms of all

50:05

the frequencies that are available.

50:07

And then what MP3s do is something very similar to that, but then they rely on a

50:13

technique called masking to get rid of all the frequencies that you're not actually

50:15

hearing. Because when two frequencies share overlapping, when two sounds share an

50:21

overlapping frequency range, the loud one, the louder one is going to obscure the

50:27

quieter one. Gosh, this is getting really sciency and I'm like super.

50:33

happens in mixing, where you have two sounds, say, in a certain frequency range,

50:40

and then they're fighting with each other.

50:42

can't wait to see these comments. I'm really looking forward to seeing the comments on this.

50:46

Well, actually, Francis, so you gotta remember I'm winging it.

50:52

I don't have my speaker's notes with me.

50:56

maybe because your understanding of this stuff is so up here, but someone like me

51:03

can talk about this stuff way down here and I don't get the same kind of blowback

51:09

as he doesn't know he's talking about.

51:12

it's like the thing is attached to the thing which is connected to the thing and

51:18

then it does the thing, you know, the Framestad is connected to the

51:22

Contrabulator. It's what a lot of this stuff ends up sounding like.

51:26

But with regards to the MP3 artifacts.

51:31

So when I was talking about, so people are gonna say, okay, get back to, I can follow

51:34

my own breadcrumbs, get back to Apex Twin.

51:38

Apex Twin has a track. It's often called equation that is off of the I think is one of the b -sides to the

51:46

to the window licker single and I was actually writing for quite a few magazines

51:53

I was writing for two magazines at that point in time so I didn't I had reviewed a

51:57

product Called medicine that you can still buy META sy nth which has a huge Fourier

52:07

transform inside it you can make a very very large

52:10

Now the interesting thing about that is you can visually represent a Fourier

52:15

transform. It's like that sort of spectrograms that you see in isotope, the different colors

52:20

when you see these things sort of blended and like brightness is loudness.

52:26

So amplitude is covered by how bright the pixel is.

52:31

So medicine had this ability to take.

52:38

A JPEG, I think it was actually, it had to be a different format, but you would have

52:45

to feed it a file and it would be able, it would take that visual, that image, it

52:52

could be a cottage in the woods, it could be an animal.

52:59

And in the case of this track by AFX Twin called Equation, it was his face.

53:04

It was the famous sort of...

53:06

Leering evil -looking a Richard James affix to an face And using medicine

53:14

Because really the only tool that could do it using medicine.

53:17

He put his face into the fan the the Fourier transform which was extraordinary

53:24

At the time if you had met if you if you didn't have medicine, but if you had

53:28

medicine, it was like three clicks So I got in trouble for pointing that out once

53:34

But he's still the innovator.

53:37

I'm not saying that he's not a genius.

53:39

I'm saying he's a genius. Please don't bury me in the comment section.

53:43

I'm just trying to explain how it was done.

53:45

So if you put it in medicine, you can take the image and transform it in just with

53:51

like, say take this graphic and turn it into a Fourier.

53:56

And that's what the sound you hear in the track called equation is actually.

54:02

the result of transforming his face into a Fourier.

54:05

The interesting thing about Serum, while we're gonna do this little graphic

54:09

tangent, Serum allows you to turn images into wavetables.

54:16

And the things that work particularly well are mountain ranges.

54:21

And I did, I don't know if it's still on my blog, it might be.

54:26

But years ago, like less than 10, because Serum's only been out for 10.

54:31

But... I used that tool to, I made every popular emoji black and white because it tosses

54:40

out the color. And I put it in the format for serum, I think it was PNG, but I did every emoji.

54:47

And I played with inverting the gray scale and so on and so forth until I made valid

54:54

wavetables out of every emoji.

54:57

It's on my LinkedIn page, it's the background on my LinkedIn page.

55:01

But Serum will allow you to take an image and convert it into a wavetable.

55:08

And that's a really fun trick, too.

55:10

It's all experimentation. It's like, does it sound good?

55:14

So. There was a Max for Live device that did that for Ableton's wavetable, too, I

55:20

believe, where you could drop a photo.

55:23

And, yeah. I wanted to make a pack of, I think, like my dog or something.

55:31

I'd never got around to that.

55:33

The dog would be a perfectly fine pack for wavetable or any number of others.

55:40

Yeah. But it's, you know, that's a way to bring in some of that fun, I guess, right?

55:47

That exploration where if you're afraid you're losing that by getting too

55:52

technical, now you're kind of letting some magic happen again.

56:00

I'm sitting here beating myself up for not getting bitcrushing right.

56:04

So I got it mostly right.

56:09

cool. I just wanted some clarification in case anyone was a little off on like, what?

56:19

Because sometimes some of these terms, like you said, it sounds like.

56:24

Yeah, it's really detailed, very specific mathy stuff.

56:29

And I didn't have my speaker's notes.

56:31

So, anyway, apologies to the comments section.

56:35

it's all good. It's all good. But I wanted to get you back to the circuitry thing with some of the analog

56:43

synths. every piece of software is gonna sound different.

56:47

And every piece of hardware is gonna sound different.

56:51

So I really like hardware for analog because...

56:59

Analog sounds like analog and I really like software for things that are going to

57:02

be digital. Like for instance, Korg has a wonderful recreation of the M1 and Roland has a

57:09

wonderful recreation of the D50.

57:11

So since those synths were truly digital to begin with, they sit really nicely on a

57:21

computer. That's not that I'm saying that virtual analog isn't cutting it because the

57:25

processor speeds are so fast, right?

57:29

that there are just wonderful, wonderful recreations of analog that aren't just

57:37

like playing with the pitch or something like that.

57:40

So. I think there's a certain amount of it that gets into like cooking competition

57:49

stuff. I'm always gonna use these cooking analogies.

57:53

And is this apple pie better than that apple pie?

57:58

And if so, why?

58:00

And I think a lot of it has to do with your ears and again, your personal tastes.

58:07

A really good example would be the role in system A, which is...

58:12

You know, it's been around for quite a while and it can load some of the synths

58:17

from Roland Cloud and its analog emulations are actually quite good.

58:22

The Roland boutiques are another example of digital synths that sound quite analog.

58:27

So those are great.

58:29

Korg has done some wonderful stuff in that territory as well.

58:33

We've reached the point where processor speeds and digital to analog converters.

58:41

which are the tools that go in your audio interface so that it can actually create

58:48

electricities for your speakers.

58:51

So the...

58:54

With regards to like the quality of it, you go back to the beginning of this.

59:01

I don't know if you remember, now we're gonna do a little history lesson.

59:04

Do you remember a synth called Neon?

59:09

You're having a different sound.

59:12

Is there like a tornado coming your way?

59:14

that's I got a window open. I forgot to shut.

59:17

That's the fire stations kind of siren.

59:22

That's the thing that my dog realizes it's dinner time at six o 'clock, but it's

59:28

going off for some reason now. But it sounds like some kind of sine wave of sorts going up in the pitch.

59:37

brain is trying to calculate the waveform, which feels very sawtoothy, but also

59:45

because of the distance, like the scapes project that I did, because of the

59:48

distance, there's some filtering on it.

59:50

And the weirdest thing is even though you're outside, you're still gonna get

59:53

some kind of reverb just from the fact that there are buildings and objects out

59:57

there. So you are gonna get this kind of reverb, and there's a pitch envelope.

1:00:00

do hear almost like a delay.

1:00:02

It almost sounds like two, you know, because of some sort of echoing going on.

1:00:07

There's gotta be, yeah, there's gotta be, there's gotta be like a real.

1:00:11

across the streets. There's a lot of space and I think it's bouncing off all of that, but it does

1:00:17

sound like this sort of like two things happening.

1:00:20

You hear it. very scary things that are happening.

1:00:24

So those always sound so, they just always sound like doom to me, but.

1:00:29

Yeah, it's dinnertime for my dog.

1:00:33

so what I'm thinking, like, just to wrap this up, because I think we should, like,

1:00:37

so back to the original, now that's going to be in there, back to the original point

1:00:44

is, there are some fantastic recreations of analog synths out there.

1:00:50

So I'm never, ever, ever going to say that software can't do it.

1:00:53

Software can do it.

1:00:56

It's a bit like being...

1:01:00

you know, like, kind of like you're being a little bit of a snob about it.

1:01:06

Because you, especially when things like Rolling Cloud and the Korg Legacy stuff,

1:01:11

which I've worked on all of it, I used to own a Polysix, I had the MS -20, I've used

1:01:16

all these synths, and when I go back and forth and back and forth, it's really,

1:01:19

what's it gonna sound like in a mix? That's the thing that everybody forgets when they do the side -by -side comparison

1:01:25

and they've got the tweezers out.

1:01:28

and they're looking at Ableton Spectrum and they're like, I hear a little thing.

1:01:34

Are you going to hear it in a mix?

1:01:36

Are you going to hear it in a mix?

1:01:38

And the answer to that... is that subjective.

1:01:48

But my personal opinion is no, you are not going to hear it in a mix.

1:01:53

But I also understand that that is subjective.

1:01:56

So I'm going to say that.

1:01:58

So with regards to soft synths versus analog.

1:02:01

But I do like my analog synths.

1:02:04

I have a couple of, I've got a couple of sequential.

1:02:08

I've got the OB6.

1:02:11

I just worked on a bunch of really cool.

1:02:15

since this year, I, let's take a break and come back.

1:02:22

Cool? All right. All right.

1:02:25

So we're hitting pause.

1:02:29

Well, this is, you've got a lot, are you gonna do cuts?

1:02:31

Cause this is a really long podcast so far and I don't want people to get bored.

1:02:35

And I really, honestly, that whole bit crushing thing, you really threw me a

1:02:39

curve ball when I was not thinking about bit crushing.

1:02:41

So no, it's okay. good explanation though.

1:02:45

It was helpful. It has to be perfect.

1:02:47

It's like, that's why it took two years to make the serum pack, so.

1:02:50

Well, that's why I'm kind of laughing at you a little bit that because you're up

1:02:55

here with it, you know, like you, you just.

1:02:59

Yeah, but so are all of your other guests.

1:03:03

All of your other guests are really, really top notch too.

1:03:05

So I don't want one of your other guests who may or may not be a client.

1:03:09

I'm being really, really protective of my clients, am I not?

1:03:14

I just wanna make sure I'm not pissing anybody off, okay.

1:03:18

Except for the rubber modulation wheels.

1:03:21

Yeah, well, that's, I think that was more of, like, just a trend in a lot...

1:03:27

I have a lot of things that do that.

1:03:29

Not just synths. There's things around the house.

1:03:33

Tools and handles on things that are just...

1:03:37

It's worth mentioning that no Dave Smith since has.

1:03:47

My Korg Prologue doesn't have it.

1:03:49

It's really just a mo -

1:03:54

I tell you, like, I don't even like touching it.

1:03:57

Arturia has some of that, that sexy rubber vibe.

1:04:03

I wonder what my Roli controller is gonna be like in another.

1:04:08

Yeah, interesting. They probably don't know, right?

1:04:12

Like, you kind of just... Yeah.

1:04:15

Just sit still for a bit. All right, so I'm gonna recharge my AirPods.

1:04:18

I'm gonna go get myself another cup of tea.

1:04:20

I'm gonna use the restroom and we will come back.

1:04:24

All right, all right. Rogan can do it so we can too.

1:04:27

All right, bye. I'm still here.

1:07:01

I can't have a costume change mid -season.

1:07:04

Let me look at...

1:07:11

Okay, yeah, I want to check my percentages on my AirPods.

1:07:19

Can you hear me still? Where do we go?

1:07:26

I cannot hear you.

1:07:29

What did I, is this still connected to?

1:07:32

I think that might've been it.

1:07:34

Yeah, no, I'm on Hurrah. That's what I call my AirPods because of Star Trek.

1:07:39

I can't hear you.

1:07:42

Yep, I see everything. Why isn't, it's probably.

1:07:56

Huh. same thing.

1:08:04

Weird. What about the phone?

1:09:34

Let's see, did that work?

1:09:38

Yep. Okay.

1:09:41

All right. to... I'm just quickly see if anything urgent came in.

1:09:45

Nothing urgent came in. All right.

1:09:49

So back to do not disturb.

1:09:51

Do not disturb.

1:09:53

This one gives me the better one.

1:09:56

All right. So how we...

1:09:59

And we're back. that we're back.

1:10:03

We are recording still, okay, cool.

1:10:06

All right. So segue.

1:10:09

How do we segue? Where do we segue? What do we segue?

1:10:12

Well, I guess we could talk about some of the, you mentioned some of the stuff

1:10:17

you've been working on since.

1:10:19

this is actually a really good pivot because I did a bunch of stuff for Roland

1:10:24

and some stuff for Korg and they're across the board, analog and digital.

1:10:29

So, happy to talk about my lovely and wonderful clients who make great products

1:10:35

because they are great. So, all right, let's do it.

1:10:39

All right, cool. So we'll be back.

1:10:43

So you've done a lot of nice work with, I feel like I actually want to call this

1:10:49

podcast maybe. You know, like you talking about coming up with titles for things and things, but I

1:10:55

was thinking about it today. I was like, maybe this should be called like the man and your synth.

1:10:59

Because you're pretty much have your hands on like the sounds of all, like almost

1:11:05

everything that comes out.

1:11:08

was once referred to as the ghost in the shell of synthesis.

1:11:15

Which is one of my favorite compliments.

1:11:18

That's cool. That's how it feels.

1:11:20

And you know, you sent me over a list of some of the things you've done just this

1:11:23

year. And it's like all the cool stuff that just came out.

1:11:27

It's why I love it.

1:11:30

I get to go, I get to do the stuff and then go to school and teach the stuff that

1:11:35

I just did. So it's always keeping my content as a professor really fresh.

1:11:41

But when you're working freelance in this world, just life in general can be really

1:11:49

hit or miss. Like you can have, you've got to be really good with money if you're gonna work

1:11:53

freelance. And you know, some years are better than others.

1:11:57

And this year was just off to a roaring start in December.

1:12:00

And I just couldn't believe how many things came in.

1:12:05

I do a ton of work for Roland Cloud.

1:12:07

I just did a new pack for the Zonology Pro.

1:12:12

And that Zonology Pro is a really, really cool synth that I think some of the more

1:12:20

EDM crowd kind of missed out on, but it's a very, very...

1:12:24

complex synth, because it's basically four synthesizers layered.

1:12:28

So it kind of takes the concept of the JD -800.

1:12:32

So I did a bunch of packs for, I did a Zonology Pro Pack for Roland.

1:12:36

I did the Jupiter Pack, like Tail -End of last year, I did a bunch of stuff.

1:12:42

So Roland Cloud is, and that's a really good example of virtual analog, that

1:12:49

sounds incredibly realistic.

1:12:52

So it's... the six of one half dozen of the other.

1:12:57

Korg, I got a call in December saying, hey, are you free in January?

1:13:02

And I was like, yes, of course I am.

1:13:05

So I was like, what's the project?

1:13:09

And it was the MicroKorg 2.

1:13:13

And that synth hasn't been updated in like 20 years.

1:13:17

It's such a mainstay.

1:13:20

And I looked at the new architecture.

1:13:23

And the new architecture, you know, was so much deeper and had a lot more complexity

1:13:28

to it. So I worked with Korg very closely on that and several iterations of the, the

1:13:36

firmware. So that was a thing about the MicroKorg.

1:13:39

I especially love hardware projects that I know are going to be around for a chunk of

1:13:45

time because hardware is kind of forever.

1:13:49

And a lot of people never change the factory presets or only edit them a little

1:13:52

bit so that they customize them for their music, which is totally fine.

1:13:56

And working on the Korg MicroKorg 2 was still like it's right in the other room.

1:14:05

It was just an honor. It's always an honor to do a project of that magnitude.

1:14:11

I also worked on another project for Korg that I cannot talk about, which was a lot

1:14:16

of fun too. So...

1:14:19

And then Oberheim. So the new Oberheim TE -05, I have the OB -6, I did the OB, the OBX8.

1:14:31

So the, and I did the take five.

1:14:34

So the TE -05, and I'm not the only person doing these sounds, just to be clear, I'm

1:14:39

on a team. So, but doing the TE -05, or TE -05 as it's often called, because T -O, Tom

1:14:47

Oberheim. So the TO5 has, is actually almost in a weird sort of way better than my OB6 and a

1:14:59

little bit less. Sorry for saying that, but I hope they sell a ton of these.

1:15:04

And working on that, what I do when I'm designing is I always try to make useful

1:15:11

and timeless sounds, but this won't surprise you when I say I always try to

1:15:17

find the edges of what that synth can do. do because most people are going to make, you know, their saw plucks.

1:15:22

It doesn't take long to make a saw plug.

1:15:24

So for the sounds that are, that are, are really detailed, what I'm going to do is

1:15:31

I'm going to try to make the synth not sound like the synth and play to its

1:15:38

strengths and find these, these, like I said, these strange sort of edges where

1:15:43

I'm making it do things that wasn't designed to do.

1:15:45

I love doing that.

1:15:47

And, There's a sound that I always test.

1:15:51

So many synths have a sound, like one of my tests as I'm designing for it is the

1:16:01

D50 had a sound called Fantasia, which I've always loved.

1:16:05

So whenever I work on a synth, I make a patch called Fantasia, which is me trying

1:16:10

to make that synth sound like a D50.

1:16:12

And just the process of doing that teaches me where things are on that synth and what

1:16:18

it sounds like. this is what it's gonna sound like when it's doing that patch.

1:16:22

And a lot of times when I'm making patches, I'll give patches the same name

1:16:27

across synths.

1:16:31

So that came up in a very interesting way with a client that won't be named today.

1:16:37

There's a sound that I've made, I'm not gonna name the sound either, that the

1:16:44

client was like, we see this sound in a bunch of other synths.

1:16:49

What is this name trademarked? And I'm like, no, I just did that sound for a bunch of other synths as well.

1:16:55

So there's a certain kind of sound that is reminiscent of the old Oberheim Expander,

1:17:01

which is one of my favorite synths of all time.

1:17:03

And the Oberheim Expander had this sound, it was called S .GENVIV.

1:17:16

And if we're gonna do,

1:17:18

deep cuts in 80s music, it's the sound that made the primary lead in a Jody

1:17:26

Watley track, if you remember Jody Watley from the 80s.

1:17:31

So I always loved that sound, and I used it actually in several tracks for my new

1:17:37

wave band at the time. But having listened to that sound so many times, I know how it's made.

1:17:43

So that's another sound that I sort of...

1:17:47

I add to different synths.

1:17:49

Of course I'm going to make sounds that are like, like I said, I'm already doing

1:17:52

all the edge work. So making really distinctive sounds, but then there are just these sounds that

1:17:57

everybody needs. It's like every synth needs a saw pad.

1:18:03

That's not in question. Every synth needs like a resonant, funky bass.

1:18:09

That's not in question. So all of these sounds that are sort of classic and everyone needs,

1:18:15

Alrighty, in the synth. So I'm looking at the edges and then I'm sort of doing these deep cuts into the

1:18:21

history of synthesis and really famous synthesizers.

1:18:24

Synthesizers I have known and loved.

1:18:26

So that's one of the things that I tend to do and it's how I test a synthesizer.

1:18:34

So I've done Oberheim this year, a bunch of stuff for Roland Cloud.

1:18:38

I've also done some tutorials. That's another thing that's always kind of...

1:18:42

Roland has had me do quite a few tutorials and that's obviously my preferred media

1:18:46

format because I'm a writer. So I've done quite a few tutorials for Roland's articles.

1:18:55

If you're going to add links to this podcast, there's one in there for you.

1:18:59

all of that stuff will go in.

1:19:01

I do about between like two to four a year.

1:19:09

And it's really enjoyable because it allows me to take my teaching skills and

1:19:15

apply them in a different way for a company whose products I love.

1:19:19

I'm not saying this because I have to say this.

1:19:24

I'm saying it is an honor to have the collection of companies that I'm currently

1:19:29

working with. because they're like Roland corks, Quenchell, Oberheim.

1:19:35

It's like, this is to me, you know, Xfer.

1:19:40

It's just to me, it's just so meaningful and I'm so grateful.

1:19:46

I never ever take it for granted because this is what I wanted to do when I was 14

1:19:53

with my Moog MG1 copying new order.

1:19:58

You know, only I get to do it.

1:20:00

you know, as part of my living.

1:20:04

Yay. Do you ever think about how much music your sounds are making it to?

1:20:10

It gets released every day.

1:20:13

Do you ever listen to stuff and be like, I know where that sound came from.

1:20:18

Every once in a while I'll hear a sound that sounds like something I would do.

1:20:20

I'm definitely gonna say that. I'll hear a track and I'll be like, mmm, that sounds like me.

1:20:26

But more often than not, I sort of turned that part of my analysis off because I

1:20:36

wouldn't want it to go to my head. It would be very, very bizarre for me to say, all of these songs were made possible

1:20:42

by Francis Pro. That's not.

1:20:45

you in the liner notes. not the way my brain works.

1:20:48

So I don't really do that, but every once in a while I'll hear a sound and I'll be

1:20:52

like, hmm, that sounds like me.

1:20:54

So it's strange.

1:20:59

A lot of times, even for me, songs start from the sound sometimes.

1:21:05

You get inspired. It makes you play something.

1:21:09

And it wouldn't happen on a different sound.

1:21:12

It's because that's got that whatever it is, the personality, something that

1:21:16

communicates an emotion. a goal.

1:21:19

That's always a goal with my sounds. I try to make sounds that are really, really timeless so that that synth will

1:21:24

still make sense 10 years from now rather than you sometimes you'll get a synth and

1:21:29

it's just a little too...

1:21:33

And when you listen to that, I mean, it'd be great if you want that vintage sound 20

1:21:39

years from now, but more often than not, people want things that are going to make

1:21:44

sense all the time, because it's a big investment to buy a piece of hardware.

1:21:48

It's a big investment to buy a piece of software sometimes.

1:21:52

So I wanna make sure that my company's clients are getting their money's worth.

1:21:56

That's obviously the case. Another thing, with regards to do my sounds appear in other people's songs,

1:22:02

I was once referred to as the Tom Ford of presets because my stuff is so timeless

1:22:10

and I guess that person thought it was elegant.

1:22:14

I'm not that into fashion, but I know who Tom Ford is.

1:22:20

So I thought that was a really interesting compliment.

1:22:23

So I've always sort of held that close to my heart.

1:22:28

Are there certain, like, there's so many synths that come out and a lot of it's, I

1:22:39

guess like, is a lot of your job finding the personality of the synth?

1:22:44

Because if we were given some of these synths with no presets, that, you know,

1:22:52

what is the character of this thing?

1:22:54

What is it going to be used for? I guess like, like that's how you're getting them, right?

1:23:01

There's, there's nothing on it yet.

1:23:03

So you're, you're, you're playing a big role in figuring out what it can do.

1:23:09

Well, that's what these patches like, you know, the S -GenViv and Frantasia, and I

1:23:17

have a couple of others that I use when I'm just testing the synth out.

1:23:21

But these are sounds, like again, these are sounds everybody needs.

1:23:25

So, and every synth is going to do that sound differently.

1:23:28

It's really important to emphasize that.

1:23:32

Each of these sounds are not, it's gonna sound different on an Oberheim than it

1:23:37

does on a Roland than it does on a Korg, but they're all like sort of necessary

1:23:42

sounds. So just because I designed sounds that were inspired by other sounds that I

1:23:46

designed doesn't mean that I'm just phoning it in and making the same sound.

1:23:51

I really wanna be clear about that. But what I do when I do that is I'm finding out what the personality of the

1:23:58

synth is. And sometimes I'll find a synth that just can't do that sound.

1:24:02

I'll be like, okay, what can it do? What other experiments can I do to find out what the personality of the synth is?

1:24:10

Generally, I get that one right.

1:24:14

So I have enough repeat clients that I would think so.

1:24:17

But the point is, yeah, every synth has a personality and part of that personality

1:24:22

is the presets. There's a really interesting story about the Prophet 5, the original Prophet 5 from

1:24:28

1978. And that is the Prophet 5 was...

1:24:31

the first synth, we could say the CS80, don't say CS80, the Proficy was the first

1:24:39

synth with digital memory for presets, polyphonic synth, let's get that one

1:24:43

right. So it's the first polyphonic synth with digital memory for presets, to my

1:24:47

knowledge, and I'm pretty sure I'm right.

1:24:50

And there were 32 patches in it, or was it 40?

1:24:55

I can't swear by that number.

1:24:58

But I will say, that it's a famous story that the Prophet 5s, if they needed maintenance or repairs

1:25:05

when they were sent back to sequential, had the factory presets in them unedited.

1:25:14

And I thought that was fascinating because that made me wonder one of two things.

1:25:18

Did people erase their own original presets so that, you know, as sort of like

1:25:24

trade secrets or were people only using presets and maybe modifying them by

1:25:30

changing the cutoff or the release time?

1:25:32

No way to know, but it was, it was a, it was known at the time that a significant

1:25:39

number of profit fives came back.

1:25:42

And we're talking, this is like 1981.

1:25:44

So there really weren't synthesis experts the way there are today.

1:25:50

There weren't synthesis experts. So it would make a lot of sense if like a rock keyboardist is going to pick up a

1:25:57

synth, they're gonna, you know, I need a saw pad.

1:25:59

There you have it. So you need the saw pad and that's the Prophet 5 saw pad.

1:26:04

So, or the hard sync sound that was like now just more old guy deep cuts about new

1:26:11

wave, but the cars. One of the big hits was a track called Let's Go, and that was made with a Prophet

1:26:17

5 preset that uses hard sync.

1:26:20

So that iconic sound from that track was a Prophet 5 preset.

1:26:25

So that's the weird thing is when I hear presets from bands, synth pop bands that I

1:26:30

really admired, and I find them now because you could never afford a Fairlight

1:26:35

before. You know, they were $30 ,000 back in the day.

1:26:40

But you can get an iPad version. So when I got the iPad version of the Fairlight, I kept stumbling across these

1:26:49

sounds that I thought my heroes were making from scratch.

1:26:55

And I'm like, no, that's a preset.

1:26:59

Yup. And same thing with that. There are sounds in the PPG that are so a lot of these synths were so expensive back

1:27:07

in the day that they were made out of a kind of unobtainium.

1:27:11

sort of thing. So, sure you're not going to get busted for that preset you used on the $50 ,000

1:27:18

synth. Of course not. Who's going to ever discover that?

1:27:21

Well, fast forward 40 years, and it's the iPad version.

1:27:24

You're hearing all of these iconic sounds, and like soft synth, and soft, like

1:27:31

whether it's a VST or...

1:27:35

Hmm. Well, I mean, that makes a lot of sense to me that, I mean, people do that with other

1:27:43

instruments and, you know, I, like a piano you could look at as a preset if you want,

1:27:49

you could look at an acoustic guitar.

1:27:53

Yeah. like, you'll see on reverb that some synths will go really, really, they'll

1:27:58

skyrocket in price because some artist mentioned that that's the synth they use

1:28:04

and now everybody wants that synth because they want that sound.

1:28:07

So that's another weird trend that sort of dominates the used gear industry.

1:28:16

I think there are so many sleepers out there.

1:28:18

I think there are... so many great vintage synths that people haven't really noticed that are really,

1:28:27

really cool sounding. Yeah, I'll say some of them.

1:28:31

I used to own most of them, so I know.

1:28:34

And you can always get the Arturia version, which is actually quite good.

1:28:41

The Ensoniq, it was pronounced a million different ways.

1:28:46

That synth... was the SQ80.

1:28:50

And it's really, really cool because it's oscillators that have aliasing, three of

1:28:57

them, but they could be synced and do all these other tricks, but followed by a

1:29:01

Curtis filter. And the Curtis filter, what was in the Prophet.

1:29:06

So you've got these three oscillators that are kind of wonky going into a really

1:29:14

creamy, actually analog filter.

1:29:18

and you can still find them for like 600 and they are so...

1:29:25

But there's also the Arturia version, which is also excellent.

1:29:28

So those are the kinds, like what other sleepers are there?

1:29:33

A lot of Korg stuff, like the DW8000, DW6000.

1:29:37

I'm waiting for somebody to make the Poly 800 popular again, simply because that's

1:29:45

another one of those synths that has really unique tone generation, because I

1:29:50

believe it's all kind of based on square waves and pulse waves.

1:29:55

So I haven't, I was in a band with a guy who had one, but I don't have one in my

1:30:02

home right now, so I don't want to be too concrete about that.

1:30:06

But there are these synths.

1:30:08

I was super excited when Korg released their virtual version of the Prophecy and

1:30:15

the Z1, because they had things like physical modeling.

1:30:19

And this is all the early 90s, and it was just like, it was too much synth.

1:30:24

for that you couldn't quite get into it with the fact that there weren't that many

1:30:30

knobs on keyboards anymore. But the software version, you can get at all of these parameters that you never

1:30:36

used to be able to get to without using the LCD.

1:30:39

So there are a lot of sleepers in that sense, because the software version is

1:30:44

actually better. It's a digital synth. There's a software version.

1:30:47

Both the Z1 and the Prophecy are real sleepers up from the cord line.

1:30:53

and you can get the VSTs. I'm not trying to sound like an ad for Korg, but I am saying that there are these

1:31:00

undiscovered vintage synths.

1:31:02

Yeah. But that's a good point, like, because some of it's really hard, especially like

1:31:07

those membrane button things that they were doing for a while that were felt

1:31:12

futuristic in the 80s, but are really annoying looking back.

1:31:17

That... Bob Moog Foundation, to their full name, the Bob Moog Foundation actually did a

1:31:24

raffle for the source, the Moog source, and that's sort of like membrane buttons.

1:31:30

But by many people's estimation, the Moog source, which a lot of people didn't want

1:31:37

because it looked like it was kind of digital when it was, people don't

1:31:41

understand the Moog source, but it's still all analog just with a cool membrane.

1:31:46

interface that just happens to be the Moog that sounds the closest to the Mini Moog

1:31:52

that isn't a Mini Moog. So if you want a Mi - you know, something that's very close to an actual Mini Moog,

1:31:58

the Vintage Moog Source, it was like when I saw that raffle, I, you know, I entered

1:32:02

it myself, although I'm technically not allowed to win because I'm on the board of

1:32:06

advisors, but I would have given it to my school.

1:32:11

Yeah, there are these sleeper synths and the membrane switches,

1:32:16

Yeah, on the Moog source, it was just an amazing synth.

1:32:19

I used to love going to the music. Yeah, that's cool.

1:32:25

It's nice that we've got access to that stuff in, you know, more, you know, easier

1:32:33

to use ways, even things like a DX7, like FM synthesis that you can not have to deal

1:32:41

with that. I have one and I think now the battery is dead and I almost don't even care.

1:32:46

It's like, it's so hard to get into it.

1:32:50

That came up in class, the DX7 presets came up in class, an operator this week

1:32:57

because a student was talking, I was talking about the DX7 and I was talking

1:33:05

about how one of the sounds that the DX7 is most famous for is the Taco Bell sound.

1:33:12

Yeah. The bell, yeah.

1:33:16

preset in the DX7 tubular bells.

1:33:19

And I was, my students were like, can you make that sound?

1:33:24

And I went over to operator and I was like, there you go.

1:33:28

I couldn't believe that my muscle memory allowed me to get operator to cough up the

1:33:34

exact DX7 tubular bell sound.

1:33:36

It's like a two to one ratio, but you set the fine tuning to like 700 or something

1:33:40

like that. And then next thing you know, it -

1:33:42

sounds like the DX7. I'm surprised there's not a, maybe there is, I'm not aware of it, but like a DX7

1:33:54

pack four operator.

1:33:56

So you can just kind of call up some of those really classic, you know, like those

1:34:03

electric pianos and...

1:34:05

I did, I did, like, SampleSound has my, like, FM collection, which are some

1:34:10

samples from the DX7 and the TX810Z, which I owned, and then I threw in an operator

1:34:18

pack in there. I'm not exactly sure.

1:34:21

It's been, like, seven years since I've done it.

1:34:24

But so whatever's in that pack, there's like, there are audio demos on the

1:34:28

website. But yeah, DX7 pack for Operator, I'm sure after all this time, you know, I was using

1:34:35

Operator in 2004 when I was, you know, so I'm sure there's got to be an Operator

1:34:42

pack that's all. Yeah, but if not, you make one in an afternoon.

1:34:50

not, take a little bit more than an afternoon, but yeah.

1:34:53

Well, because I'm just so, I have to do marketing, so.

1:34:57

Exactly. The fun stuff, the stuff that, we've all had to learn getting into all the funny

1:35:06

things you get into music.

1:35:08

Music gets you into that.

1:35:14

You've, you talk a lot about the teaching, but you've got some, you mentioned in your

1:35:19

email, some success stories from your students.

1:35:21

That's gotta be, I always joke about teaching because.

1:35:26

It's one of those jobs you do and at the end of the day, you're just kind of like,

1:35:30

I hope I did my job. I hope they learned something.

1:35:33

Like my classes leave and no one looks any smarter today.

1:35:37

Whereas if I cut the grass, the grass is cut.

1:35:40

I did that. I can tell I did that.

1:35:44

It's it. that teaching is cumulative.

1:35:47

So... day to day, you know, at the end of the day, you can quantify it with so many

1:35:55

other things. Correct.

1:35:58

I've had...

1:36:01

I've... and I want to be very clear about...

1:36:06

Because when I gave my talk at Ableton Loop, I said this very thing.

1:36:11

It's like, I feel like teaching is like gardening.

1:36:14

I'm not the DNA, I'm not the seed, I'm the water and the sunshine, and that is it.

1:36:23

They are the ones with the perseverance.

1:36:25

They are the ones who are cultivating their skills long after they've left my

1:36:30

classes. It's like, I'm in charge of lighting the fuse.

1:36:36

And that's what, that's my, I will take credit for that.

1:36:41

But they, I do not want to take anything away from any of my students.

1:36:47

They are doing the work.

1:36:51

But I've got some, there's an incredible number of students who have come just from

1:36:59

the program. So it's like, there are multiple classes.

1:37:01

I'm not the only teacher. This isn't like School of Francis.

1:37:05

So there are a lot of teachers contributing to these students' success

1:37:10

and knowledge and experience. So I just want to be very clear about that as we go into this topic.

1:37:19

I have... that one of a student I had.

1:37:27

Pre -pandemic, so we're talking like 2017, 2018, is now one, she is now one of the

1:37:35

biggest techno DJs in the world.

1:37:39

She was just on the cover of DJ Magazine, DJ Mag.

1:37:45

Full cover story, full interview.

1:37:47

She actually gave me a shout out in the interview, which made me feel.

1:37:56

And her name is Sierra Landry and she has, she's there.

1:38:01

She did the things she wanted to do.

1:38:03

And, you know, we were just texting on Instagram and I'm actually gonna send her

1:38:08

the serum pack. She wants to hear it.

1:38:10

So, just an amazingly gifted woman.

1:38:14

So cool and just happy to see her success.

1:38:19

Also in the DJ world, there's an...

1:38:23

an artist who is on his way up and he's going to go there named Shadowstar.

1:38:29

And he just opened for Deadmau5 at one of our major venues, which is a really prized

1:38:37

gig. And he's had tracks on Mousetrap, Deadmau5's label, and he's had a bunch of

1:38:42

releases. His name is Shadowstar, S -H -A -D -O -W -S -T -A -R.

1:38:47

And he is definitely on the way up.

1:38:53

And he's driven. He's really committed to the process, which is why I think he's going to get

1:38:58

there because he doesn't give up. His perseverance skills are amazing.

1:39:03

And he's arguably one of the best engineers in Austin.

1:39:07

Another really great engineer in Austin, who's more of a friend of mine.

1:39:13

I sort of may have mentored him like 15 years ago.

1:39:17

His stage name or his artist name is Shredward, but his actual name is Edward,

1:39:23

and it's because he played guitar, and it's like, you know, it'd be like me being

1:39:27

called Keys. But his name is Shredward, it's a cool name, he's been around.

1:39:33

He's a Swiss Army Knife.

1:39:38

He's on tour with the B -52s a lot, both as their keyboardist.

1:39:44

Nice. as their keyboard tech.

1:39:46

It depends on what's needed on the tour.

1:39:49

He's worked in all of these different areas of touring, but he's also a really

1:39:55

in -demand engineer in Austin, and he's won like BMI awards, and he's working for

1:40:04

a company called Liquid Cinema Inside Tracks doing like sync libraries for them.

1:40:14

He can do it all. He plays guitar, he plays keys, he's using Ableton, he's using Pro Tools.

1:40:20

He's also works for XFert, doing support.

1:40:25

It's just amazing the sheer range that he has.

1:40:32

I think that, yeah, he's like 10 people all in one.

1:40:39

And then I have, I wasn't a student.

1:40:42

actually one more student. His name is, it's pronounced Chocolaty, but his name is CHKLTE.

1:40:50

And he was many years ago, many, many years ago.

1:40:53

And he's getting residencies in Ibiza and really he does this sort of minimal stuff.

1:40:59

So these students, you know, it's like, I'm just lighting the fuse.

1:41:03

I'm not doing anything more than saying, this is what the knobs do.

1:41:07

And they're making their art with that.

1:41:10

So we created a discord group with...

1:41:14

Shadowstar, ShredWord, and a good friend of mine named Josh Davidson.

1:41:21

And he's one of the, he's the lead audio tech, he's really major in the audio.

1:41:30

I apologize for not getting exactly right off the top of my head.

1:41:35

He's for Gearbox, the video game company.

1:41:40

And he really knows his stuff.

1:41:43

And he's managing the team that's making all the sounds and sound effects for the

1:41:50

Gearbox games. So we have this little thing, it's called the professionals.

1:41:56

And it's like, it's Shredward and Shadowstar and Josh and myself.

1:42:04

And we're just, really, we're just like sharing each tracks that we're working on.

1:42:08

We're like, hey, what do you think of my mix? Does anything need to be changed?

1:42:12

I just started this track. What do you think?

1:42:14

Or asking technical questions like we're, because Josh obviously is building his own

1:42:18

PCs. So he was talking about the arduous process of making the best PC in the world

1:42:23

for him. So that's kind of, so that's sort of like the, you know, the network.

1:42:28

A lot of, a lot of times these students just go on to bigger and better things and

1:42:31

they just wave goodbye. And I'm like, I've got, I've got to make more.

1:42:36

I got to make more. So here I am teaching.

1:42:40

but it's always wonderful to see. There are no words for it.

1:42:44

Yeah, I could imagine. I mean, when you see that with a student, it's just, you don't usually get to find

1:42:51

out what happens when they leave for the most part.

1:42:55

So to see that is cool.

1:42:58

I like that you, yeah.

1:43:02

I like that you keep this, I can tell you are probably the type of teacher that

1:43:08

learns as much as if not more than your students learn.

1:43:11

every time. And it seems like you maintain that with them to keep learning.

1:43:17

What do they have to teach? What can you pick up from them?

1:43:20

There's so much to learn.

1:43:24

And I'll get random text messages, because students are allowed to be my friend after

1:43:30

they graduate. So sometimes we'll trade numbers.

1:43:33

So students who have already graduated, we can be social.

1:43:36

And I'll get random text messages from other students, like Edward Chapa, who's

1:43:41

on tour with the War on Drugs, which is a...

1:43:46

pretty major tour and Adrian Benavides who runs a he does backline Ableton for like

1:43:53

Smashing Pumpkins and and Dautry and Charlie XCX and he's running you know

1:43:59

Ableton behind the scenes he's also a great producer who happens to work with

1:44:02

his idols who are all like guys from King Crimson it's just like it's and and I like

1:44:09

if they want to stay in contact with me I am here I'm totally here if

1:44:15

if you want to reach out.

1:44:17

So a lot of my friends in Austin actually are former students.

1:44:21

They're all like in their 40s now. So I'll have students who are like in their, you know, their mid 30s, late 30s,

1:44:28

mid 40s, just because they've been teaching for so long.

1:44:31

And we can talk about adult topics.

1:44:35

So that's, you know, that's some just turned into friends.

1:44:40

as well as being successful. notice anything in them?

1:44:46

Can you see in your classroom before they start moving on into the world?

1:44:52

Do you pick up on certain traits about certain people that you can recognize,

1:44:57

like they have potential, they're going somewhere with this?

1:45:00

They all have my eyes. No, I can, there's a, everybody's got a vibe.

1:45:08

Everybody's got a vibe. That was a weird joke, but still.

1:45:11

They all have a vibe and they're like, I've got a pair of students who are

1:45:17

really, it's all, for me, it's about the passion.

1:45:21

Because the passion comes from the, like,

1:45:30

I forgot exactly who said...

1:45:35

But if you take a very intelligent student in a given art form, and you take a really

1:45:46

passionate student in that same art form, the passionate student is the one who's

1:45:53

gonna have the career. Because it's, I'm still here.

1:45:59

I mean, you know, I hate saying this, but you know, I'm in my 50s.

1:46:05

So I like, the only reason I'm still here and the reason I've had such a colorful

1:46:12

career is because I didn't give up and I was passionate.

1:46:16

You know, I had my new wave band in the eighties that was moderately successful,

1:46:20

but you know, I went on to become a producer.

1:46:24

And then I became a graphic designer for seven years.

1:46:28

And then I was, then I slipped.

1:46:30

It's all slipping on banana peels. I'm always telling students, go find a banana peel to slip on because that's

1:46:36

where the magic is.

1:46:39

Like writing for magazines was a banana peel I slipped on because I was at a

1:46:43

conference and I was talking to the editor, David Bettino, of a magazine

1:46:48

called Music and Computers. And he gave me my first gig.

1:46:51

And I said, I'm not a writer. And he's like, well, you know the topic and I'm an editor.

1:46:55

Give it a shot. And he was highly complimentary when I turned in the piece and he said, do you

1:46:59

want another? You know, 20 years later, I was still writing for the magazines back in the

1:47:05

print era. If you had told me that the most rewarding thing, like when I was 18 and just

1:47:14

determined to be in Depeche Mode, if you had told me that the most rewarding thing

1:47:19

in my life at this age would be a 28 -year -plus and going career as a college

1:47:28

professor, and a preset designer.

1:47:31

I would not have believed you, but somewhere in there I was a moderately

1:47:36

successful DJ. And it was, you just don't, you have to like let, you have to just be open to

1:47:44

everything and you've gotta just slip on a lot of banana peels.

1:47:47

And I think that that has a lot to do with the diversity of Shred's skill set, is

1:47:53

that he's really good at finding banana peels as well.

1:47:55

And then when you get the gig, you succeed. You make sure that...

1:47:58

that you make sure that there's no way to fail by doing the work and because you're

1:48:02

passionate. So it goes back to passion.

1:48:06

Yeah, I think especially in music, it's just, you have to be.

1:48:12

There's too many people, it's too many, it's too challenging to, yeah.

1:48:21

Right. lot of it's, it was fun being a writer.

1:48:25

I really enjoyed writing, but that's not the main medium right now.

1:48:28

Now the main medium is like TikTok and Instagram Reels.

1:48:33

And honestly, it's like, I'm going to, I'm going to, you know, at some point in time,

1:48:38

you've got to give it to the next generation.

1:48:40

So just going to college professor and preset designer.

1:48:43

That's, that's how I think I ride into the sunset.

1:48:46

Unless I... managed to make my dream synth that's been in my head for five years now.

1:48:53

So... I think you mentioned that the last time we spoke.

1:48:56

I don't remember if that was on air or not.

1:49:00

it's the windmill I've been tilting at for five years.

1:49:05

And by saying it, you know, if anybody wants to learn more about my synth, you

1:49:10

can hit the contact button on one of my pages and we'll talk.

1:49:15

But I'm not gonna tell you what it is, because it's pretty magical.

1:49:19

But that's, you know, but even if I was just a preset designer and...

1:49:23

college professor helping people get to their goals.

1:49:27

I'm totally happy. Yeah.

1:49:30

And that's something you need that passion for too.

1:49:33

You have to bring that.

1:49:35

You're not lighting a fuse without a flame or a spark, right?

1:49:39

So you need to really have that. I find teaching brings that out of me a lot too.

1:49:45

Whether it's, we might be talking about a topic in say my Berkeley class and

1:49:51

suddenly like, yeah, we could do that.

1:49:54

Check this out. And. -hmm. Next thing you know, I'm sitting there working on a song an hour later and just

1:50:01

excited. It's a great way to find that passion if you ever lose it, because when you turn

1:50:11

people on to something, it doesn't have to be in a classroom.

1:50:14

It could just be your friend that's curious about your Synth or whatever.

1:50:21

Sharing that experience reminds you, yeah, this is fun.

1:50:26

Check this out. Yeah, I feel you on that one.

1:50:34

I also teach a course in advanced digital audio composition.

1:50:37

We have one that's sort of getting the basics of Ableton down, and then we have

1:50:42

one that's more like how to apply it to making electronic music and warping vocals

1:50:48

and recontextualizing and kind of remixing in a way.

1:50:52

And it's weird because I designed that course for the three of the courses that I

1:50:57

teach out of the four courses I teach.

1:51:00

Three of them, like the school asked me to design courses for the Texas State School

1:51:06

System. That's another legacy on it.

1:51:09

But this one class, I do this one really simple game with groove because

1:51:18

understanding groove is like...

1:51:21

It's a feel thing. How do you teach feel?

1:51:24

How do you teach groove?

1:51:27

So I have a really simple experiment.

1:51:29

You just make a standard kick, snare, hat pattern, any BPM you want, but don't make

1:51:36

the beat too fancy. Make the beat very stripped down.

1:51:40

So it's kick, hat, snare, hat, kick, hat, snare, hat kind of thing, or just eighth

1:51:45

note hats, and then keep them low in the mix just so that they're kind of in there

1:51:49

as a reference point. So simplest beat possible, whatever drum kit you want.

1:51:54

And then you have one, two note events.

1:52:03

That if I did that's the that's the that's the Mac bullet like I think this does

1:52:10

something like fireworks or something. Yeah, anyway, so Macintosh Yeah, you have to make a certain hand gesture and it'll

1:52:18

happen. So the I have to rewind for a second groove so I so you make a bass sound and

1:52:30

you pick a note E or F is a good, like a low E or F that's in the cool bassy range.

1:52:38

And just make two 16th notes that are both playing the same note.

1:52:45

Got it? So you're looking at, you fold it, so there's one track, and you just put two

1:52:50

note events in there with your ultra simple drum pattern.

1:52:54

And I give them 10 minutes to just move those two of them.

1:52:57

They can't add any events, they can't change any notes.

1:53:01

It's gotta be one note, two events.

1:53:04

And I have them move it around. And they fall into a wormhole because it's so interesting to understand groove from

1:53:14

that perspective that you can have the absolute bare minimum kick, you know, kick

1:53:20

snare hat, playing the simplest groove possible, playing one note in the bass.

1:53:27

You just move them around and some of them feel great and some of them don't.

1:53:33

And just by moving those two note events around, they find their groove.

1:53:39

I'm not telling them what their groove is.

1:53:42

I'm just saying the things you like the most are going to be part of your voices.

1:53:50

So they're just deciding like where these bass notes are going.

1:53:55

And sometimes they feel good with the kick, sometimes on and off beat.

1:54:02

Sometimes that's cool.

1:54:04

And I love those kind of, those are academic exercises though, that you can

1:54:11

get really far with. Whereas sometimes when you're trying to compose, like you said, you want to make

1:54:16

this beat real fancy and I'm gonna just keep throwing things at it.

1:54:20

I need more notes. But when you give yourself some kind of limitation like that, then it's like,

1:54:26

okay, we got to really find it.

1:54:29

We got to solve this problem.

1:54:34

Yeah. like it's such a trope or a cliche that limitations are absolutely everything.

1:54:40

Especially now when you've got a piece of software like Ableton that just has a

1:54:44

million synths and a million effects and a million max for live devices.

1:54:47

It's like you've got to like where it's over.

1:54:50

If I were encountering it now for the first time, it would be overwhelming.

1:54:55

You know, I just got, I'm gonna be, we're gonna switch over to 12.

1:54:59

And I'm like, this is gonna be like, it's like, it's always overwhelming because

1:55:05

they add so many new features, you know?

1:55:09

And yeah, so I'm, there's some really great stuff in 12 though that's gonna help

1:55:14

my classes a lot. Like the ability to set, the ability to set keys and the generative stuff for

1:55:20

people who aren't like, are still getting the hang of making note, making music.

1:55:25

So being able to kind of collaborate with the computer without it just being AI and

1:55:30

writing your music for you. I think that's really a really healthy approach.

1:55:35

It's fun. I love it.

1:55:39

It's like collaborating is a good word for it.

1:55:42

You're kind of, you have to still figure it out.

1:55:46

You have to still enjoy it. You have to still kind of cultivate it a bit.

1:55:53

You know, it's not just writing things for you, but it says like, Hey, what about

1:55:57

this? What about this? Try that.

1:56:00

There's a channel on YouTube called Weaver Beats.

1:56:08

These AI music generation tools, I like it because he's snarky and funny.

1:56:17

Yeah, he does like the news, yeah.

1:56:19

And there's a lot of personality to it, but I really like, I have subscribed and

1:56:25

liked. So... In one of the latest ones, if not the latest one at the time of this recording,

1:56:33

it's these AI music writing software companies.

1:56:37

This is one person sent in a letter or an email saying,

1:56:43

Every time I work, you know, I'm trying to work on this track, but it keeps eating my

1:56:47

credits because you have to buy a certain number of credits every month in order to

1:56:50

keep making your track. So what you're doing is you're constantly making these, you're making the AI make

1:56:56

the changes that you could know how to make, but you want the AI to do it for

1:57:02

you. But it's still taking the same amount of time as if you actually learned and made

1:57:09

the track yourself. So that's not what I'm saying.

1:57:11

I mean, everybody can be at their skill level that they want.

1:57:14

But what's happening is it's triggering the gambling addiction.

1:57:19

Yeah, right. you buy a ton of credits and then you start giving them your credits and just to

1:57:29

make changes to the thing, okay, I like it, but make it a little bit more this

1:57:32

way. And you're getting the dopamine hits just like you would for making any kind of

1:57:39

music. So that's how Facebook works, that's how social media works, that's how all of this

1:57:43

internet stuff works is by giving you little hits of dopamine.

1:57:46

And in this particular case, you have to pay for it.

1:57:49

So this AI songwriting tool is turning into a gambling addict.

1:57:55

Hmm. Yeah. Maybe the next one will be the one that'll be the jackpot.

1:58:00

That's funny.

1:58:04

I'll show you this thing I got recently.

1:58:07

Kind of the opposite direction.

1:58:10

It's a, it's the zoom R four.

1:58:14

It's a four track. It's, it's a digital four track, little bigger than your phone.

1:58:20

It's only thicker, you know, got built in mics, got.

1:58:25

mic inputs, and it even has effects, like amp modeling.

1:58:31

So you can just plug your guitar in. It's the fastest thing I've ever used as far as getting ideas down.

1:58:40

I don't know if you can tell, I got a drum set behind me and the guitar amps.

1:58:44

It's just pointed at the drums.

1:58:47

Move it over here, plug your guitar in.

1:58:50

Cause it's got the microphones, yeah. the simplicity of it though.

1:58:53

Like you're saying things get so complicated and it's making me, and I love

1:58:58

like the, I love all the new features in Live 12.

1:59:02

I'm enjoying the hell out of it, but there's this other side of me that's just

1:59:07

like, just record, just go as fast as I can do it.

1:59:11

And, I'm giving you a hard time.

1:59:15

It's probably really high, like 96k in Zoom, or 192.

1:59:21

I don't know if it is that high, but it does have the 32 bit float, which, and

1:59:28

they, the way they described is like, you can't overload it and you kind of can't,

1:59:32

it just sort of adjusts. You got all that head room.

1:59:36

So like, you're not going to really clip, you know, it's great.

1:59:41

It's fun. It.

1:59:43

really happy that you're...

1:59:46

You're a little too young to have had the four track experience, right?

1:59:51

You did? You had the cassette four track experience?

1:59:54

Porta Studio thing? Okay. Okay.

1:59:58

Yeah! Well, you're reliving it!

2:00:02

It's great! Yeah, it's a lot like that with just that having the microphone in there.

2:00:11

So I don't even have to plug in the mic and it's as fast as you can work.

2:00:19

And sometimes that's just, there's too much overthinking for me without a doubt.

2:00:26

Like just question everything. Maybe I should move that kick or maybe I should, no, I just played it that way.

2:00:31

That's what I got. Next.

2:00:33

Yep. There's...

2:00:38

There are all these delaying tactics is really what it comes down to is finding

2:00:44

excuses not to finish your track.

2:00:47

I mean, it's like, I know my computer has hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and

2:00:51

hundreds of tracks that never made it past 32 bars and I'll go back and I'll render

2:00:57

them out. Like when I finish it, when I put a track aside, I used to have this habit of just

2:01:02

rendering out like a 32 bar loop so that I had a thumbnail to look at.

2:01:07

rather than in like I had these little, yeah, these little dot wave thumbnails

2:01:14

rather than having to open up the, and then you have like, cause you've got

2:01:17

plugins that are no longer on your machine, et cetera.

2:01:20

And I go back and listen to these and going, I, why didn't I finish this track?

2:01:25

This track was so, had so much potential.

2:01:30

So one of the things I advise my students to do, and that's one of the things that

2:01:35

sort of has changed for me. is I do not render it until I'm about to cross the finish line.

2:01:44

Because I realized that what I did to suck the life out of all of my tracks was

2:01:49

render the two minute version that I did in the first week and a half and put it in

2:01:57

my car or put it on my iPod and listen to it over and over and over in this vaguely

2:02:05

egotistical way. And by doing that, I made myself sick of my own material.

2:02:13

So my new rule, which is kind of adjacent to what you're talking about with the four

2:02:19

track, is I don't, I like, if I'm not working on the track, I'm not listening to

2:02:30

the track. So eventually, you know, when we get to the mixing and mastering stage, it's like,

2:02:36

okay, well. have to listen.

2:02:39

Yeah, you've told me this before and I think about you a lot.

2:02:45

I don't remember if it was a podcast or just conversation, but I think about you

2:02:51

sometimes when I do this because, because, you have a point.

2:02:57

Sometimes you just get enough of a kick out of the track or dopamine, maybe we'll

2:03:03

say to not really need to cross the finish line.

2:03:08

And. The other issue is sometimes you just fall in love with the incomplete demo.

2:03:14

You get that demo -itis and you can never quite match it.

2:03:18

Even if it is better, you still kind of miss.

2:03:22

that's absolutely, because we have fantastic recording studios with like SSLs

2:03:27

and Neves and all that at school.

2:03:30

And one time I was like, I was determined to make this into a full blown track with

2:03:36

like a big recording studio. And it just like completely sucked the life out of the music I was trying to

2:03:43

make. So that was, yeah.

2:03:48

That's one of the things is don't...

2:03:51

Sometimes, you know, I love so much lo -fi that I should go a little bit easier on

2:03:56

myself, because I listen to so much of this sort of like, these basement

2:04:01

recordings that aren't particularly, that are like your four track recordings you

2:04:05

were talking about. I listen to so much of that music that I really shouldn't, I should just start, you

2:04:12

know, thinking about my own music that way.

2:04:14

I haven't made music in years unless a client asks me to.

2:04:18

I have a side project that I'm not talking about because something might lure me into

2:04:23

finishing tracks. But I don't want to say anything.

2:04:26

I don't want to say anything and then suck the life out of it or over promise and

2:04:31

under deliver or anything like that.

2:04:33

But there is a project that I'm working on that's that's kind of like making me feel

2:04:37

good about making music again. Most of the time it's just presets and teaching.

2:04:43

You're definitely a master of keeping your NDAs.

2:04:48

You never give away too much information.

2:04:53

Yeah. But sometimes too with that, you know, in this regard, if it's like a musical thing,

2:05:00

sometimes again, if you just talk about it, you sort of get the satisfaction and

2:05:07

the, yeah, you don't have to finish it.

2:05:12

Yeah. was, that with this, you know, with the serum pack, with serum pack that it was, I

2:05:22

couldn't tell it, you know, it's like, I'm like making serum do something completely

2:05:26

different and totally unique and very innovative.

2:05:29

And I'm the only person who can hear it because,

2:05:34

I don't, there's always, like whenever I put, there was one really crazy case where

2:05:41

a sound pack vendor, not maker, but vendor, accused, they said, you stole all

2:05:53

these presets and used them in this undisclosed, I won't tell you the name of

2:05:59

the company. You stole all these presets.

2:06:02

And I was like, These presets are from a pack that is time stamped on that company's website as being

2:06:10

at least a year before your pack.

2:06:13

So your person took my pack and made like maybe one or two changes and then told you

2:06:23

it was original. And that happens.

2:06:25

That happens a lot.

2:06:28

And yeah, presets are a dirty business.

2:06:32

There's something really weird about it.

2:06:34

But people will take your work. It's like that meme where it's like, I made this.

2:06:38

And then the next dig figure is like, I made this.

2:06:43

So that is, it's a real thing.

2:06:46

So I know, it makes me sad, but you know, it's like, I'm happy with my life.

2:06:52

I think that's probably like the only thing you can really use.

2:06:57

Yeah, even if that happens though, I guess in the long race, you know, you're just,

2:07:03

you'll outrun them, you know, you're just doing it and you're showing up all the

2:07:10

time coming back. That is a shame though.

2:07:16

Not right. It does happen.

2:07:18

So with this physical modeling thing, if you ever see another serum physical

2:07:22

modeling pack, it is absolutely going to be either inspired by or just mine with a

2:07:32

few minor changes. So, because the serum's been out for 10 years and it's taken me two years of that

2:07:40

10 years just to make this.

2:07:43

So, I'm not trying to... drag too much, but it's like no one else has done it in the past eight years.

2:07:49

So I'm excited about it. I'm excited for people to buy it, support it, experiment with it.

2:07:56

It's like, I really like doing, like we were talking about earlier, I really like

2:08:02

doing things for a large customer base and hopefully inspiring people.

2:08:09

Yeah. Well, you're doing plenty of that, man.

2:08:12

I mean, you're, like I said, the man in the synth.

2:08:16

It's really cool. It's fun to know that, you know, I'm hearing like your fingerprint and a lot of

2:08:23

these things when I play around with it.

2:08:27

And yeah, yeah, it's cool though.

2:08:30

I mean, you've accumulated the knowledge and the skill and...

2:08:36

You know, rightfully so. Who better to have behind these patches and behind the wheels here than you?

2:08:42

That's why, like you said, repeat customers, people calling you, because

2:08:46

they know how to get it done. Yeah, that's the other thing.

2:08:49

Be easy to work with, be really organized and hit the deadline.

2:08:52

That's really kind of what you have to do. Like if you do that and you're good, you're fine.

2:08:56

So it's like, there's that.

2:08:59

Anyway, the light is fading and Austin is starting.

2:09:04

Yeah, it's been this. Yeah, there's that.

2:09:06

Yeah, I could like turn on this anyway.

2:09:09

It's a little too intense.

2:09:11

So. I'm going to put links to everything.

2:09:16

So this will all be in the show notes. Check out the pack, your blog too, and you know, simple sound.

2:09:23

There's so much to investigate. So there'll be pretty robust show notes.

2:09:27

And thank you for also supplying me with a lot of that stuff.

2:09:30

Is there any place you want to tell people that might not go to these links?

2:09:36

You want to send them their way? place you wanna like.

2:09:39

the listeners that might not see him. go to the Serum Pack store.

2:09:44

That's like, just go to the xforecords .com Serum Pack store.

2:09:50

And that like, it's like right there, it should be prominently featured.

2:09:55

Like it's like, they rotate the featured packs, but like they're whatever the

2:09:59

newest ones are that they, you know, they rotate them around.

2:10:02

And like, it's like xforecords .com, which is the purveyor of Serum.

2:10:09

And then at the top of the menu bar, it says, preset packs.

2:10:13

And you just click on that. And it's only 29 bucks.

2:10:16

I didn't want to, like, I, you know, I see a lot of people do packs that are like 79

2:10:20

or 89 or this or that. And I'm like, I really, I'd much rather make more people happy and have them tell

2:10:27

their friends to go buy it. I want to make it, I want to keep the price low enough that people feel guilty

2:10:34

if they pirate it. So that's like, so you.

2:10:39

fair. And I mean, it expands the whole possibility of that instrument.

2:10:45

So it's a cool thing, man.

2:10:48

Very awesome. Thanks for sharing all that.

2:10:51

And thanks for all your hard work and inspiration.

2:10:54

I always love seeing what you do.

2:10:57

Catching up with you. Cool.

2:11:00

I'll see you in another three years. Hopefully not that long.

2:11:06

Take care. All right, we did another one here.