Autechre Gear List

Originally from http://mikebaas.org/autechre
---------------------------------------------- 
Autechre Gear List
Future Music, 2003
http://www.maxmsp.ru/files/fizzarum/ae/fm1.jpg
http://www.maxmsp.ru/files/fizzarum/ae/fm2.jpg
http://www.maxmsp.ru/files/fizzarum/ae/fm3.jpg

Akai Z8 sampler & ADAT card 
AKG C1000 mic 
Alesis QuadraVerb GT effects 
Alesis Monitor 1 speakers 
Alesis MMT8 sequencer (x2) 
Analogue Systems RS8500 modular synth
with various modules 
Apple 7200 PowerPC 
Apple 9650 PowerPC 
Apple Airport LAN card (x2) 
Apple G4 dual 800 computer 
Apple G4 450 computer 
Apple G4 500 Powerbook (x2) 
Apple G4 800 Powerbook 
Apple Powerbook 1400c computer with Newertech G3/PB
1400 upgrade card 
Atari 1040STE computer 
Behringer Autocom 
Behringer Composer Pro 
Behringer Ultrafex 2 
Behringer Ultrapatch (x4) 
Boss RDD-10 effects unit 
Boss RSD-10 effects unit (x2) 
Calabash gourd rattle 
Casio FZ-1 sampler 
Casio RZ-1 drum machine 
Casio PT-7 workstation 
Casio SK-1 sampler (x2) 
Casio SK-5 sampler 
Clavia Nord Lead rack synth 
Clavia Nord Modular synth with
eight-voice card (x2) 
dbx DDP processor 
Digidesign 882 I/O interface 
Digidesign Disk I/O PCI 
Digidesign DSP Farm PCI 
DOD phaser pedal 
Dynaudio BM15a speakers 
Dynaudio M1 speakers 
Emagic AMT8 MIDI interface 
E-mu Esynth Ultra sampler 
Ensoniq ASR-10R Sampler (x2) 
Ensoniq DP2 effects unit 
Ensoniq EPS16+ sampler 
Griffin iMate adaptor 
Grundig tape recorder 
HHB CDR850 Plus CD recorder
(link is to the CDR830 Plus)
IBM 4.5Gb SCSI drives (x2) 
IBM ThinkPad computer 
Iomega Zip 100MB drive (x2) 
Iomega Zip 250MB drive 
Kenton Pro 4 CV/MIDI interface 
Korg Prophecy synth 
Korg MS10 synth 
Kurzweil K2500R synth 
LA Audio 4x4 compressor (LA Audio C400?)
Lexicon MPX1 effects unit 
Mackie 24:8 mixer with meter bridge 
Mackie CR1604-VLZ mixer 
Mbira with resonator 
Micropolis AVLT 2Gb SCSI drive 
MidiLink MIDI Data Extender
MOTU Fastlane USB MIDI interface 
Miny portable tape recorder 
MOTU micro express MIDI interface 
MOTU MIDI Express XT USB interface 
Nintendo Gameboy 
Oberheim DMX drum machine 
Opcode Studio 3 MIDI interface 
Panasonic SV3800 DAT recorder 
Peavey PC 1600X controller 
Philip Rees 5S MIDI switcher 
Philips oscilloscope 
Phonic MRT60 mixer 
PSE stereo spring reverb 
Pro Tools III PCI interface 
Realistic induction mic
Reyong 
RME Hammerfall
RME Hammerfall ADI-8 Pro audio interface 
RME Hammerfall Digiface digital interface 
Roland CR-8000 drum machine 
Roland Juno 106 synth 
Roland SH-2 synth 
Roland MC-202 synth 
Roland CR-78 drum machine 
Roland PMA-5 sequencer 
Roland TR-606 drum machine 
Roland R-8 drum machine 
Seagate Barracuda 4Gb SCSI drives (x3) 
Seagate Barracuda 9Gb SCSI drive 
Seck 18:8:2 mixer 
Simmons SDE drum expander 
Simmons SPM MIDI mixer 
Sony CRX 1600L CDRW 
Sony lapel mic (which one, we may never know....)
Sony MDS JE520 MiniDisc recorder 
Sony HR-MP5 effects unit 
Sony TCD-D7 Portable DAT recorder 
Sony DTC690 DAT recorder 
Symbolic Sound Capybara 320 
Tascam US-244 four-track recorder 
Tascam DA-20 MKII DAT recorder 
Tascam DAP1 Portable DAT recorder 
Tascam M2600 mixer
TC XII B/K phaser pedal 
Wacom A5 & A6 tablets 
Yamaha 4260TX CDRW 
Yamaha CBXD5 interfaces (x2) 
Yamaha CX5 M computer (x2)
(changed to M model, ok?)
Yamaha DX100 synths (x2) 
Yamaha FS1R synth 
Yamaha KX-W321 tape deck 
Yamaha NS-10M speakers 
Yamaha QY20 sequencer/synth 
Yamaha RY30 drum machine 
Yamaha SU10 sample

By Category

Digital FX
Alesis QuadraVerb GT effects
Boss RDD-10 effects unit 
Boss RSD-10 effects unit (x2)
dbx DDP processor
Ensoniq DP2 effects unit
Lexicon MPX1 effects unit
Sony MP5 effects unit

Analog FX
Behringer Autocom 
Behringer Composer Pro 
Behringer Ultrafex 2
DOD phaser pedal
LA Audio 4x4 compressor 
PSE stereo spring reverb
TC phaser pedal 

Computers
Apple 7200 PowerPC 
Apple 9650 PowerPC 
Apple Airport LAN card (x2) 
Apple G4 dual 800 computer 
Apple G4 450 computer 
Apple G4 500 Powerbook (x2) 
Apple G4 800 Powerbook 
Apple Powerbook 1400c computer
with Newertech G3/PB 1400
upgrade card 
Atari 1040STE computer
IBM ThinkPad computer
Yamaha CX5 computer (x2)

Analog Modular Synth
Analogue Systems RS8500 modular
synth with various modules

Synth
Casio PT-7 workstation
Clavia Nord Lead rack synth 
Clavia Nord Modular synth
with eight-voice card (x2)
Korg Prophecy synth 
Korg MS10 synth
Roland Juno 106 synth 
Roland SH-2 synth 
Roland MC-202 synth
Yamaha DX100 synths (x2)
Yamaha FS 1R synth 

Samplers
Akai Z8 sampler & ADAT card
Casio FZ-1 sampler
Casio SK-1 sampler (x2) 
Casio SK-5 sampler 
E-mu Esynth Ultra sampler
Ensoniq ASR 10R Sampler (x2)
Ensoniq EPS16+ sampler
Kurzweil K2500R synth
Yamaha SU10 sampler 

Drum Machines
Casio RZ-1 drum machine
Oberheim DMX drum machine
Roland CR-8000 drum machine
Roland CR-78 drum machine
Roland TR-606 drum machine 
Roland R-8 drum machine 
Simmons SDE drum expander
Yamaha RY30 drum machine

MIDI Interfaces
Emagic AMT8 MIDI interface
Kenton Pro 4 CV/MIDI interface
MidiLink MIDI interface 
Midiman Fastlane USB MIDI interface
MotU Micro Express MIDI interface 
MotU MIDI Express XT/USB interface
Opcode Studio 3 MIDI interface
Philip Rees S5 MIDI switcher 

Audio Interfaces
Digidesign 882 I/O interface 
Digidesign Disk I/O PCI 
Digidesign DSP Farm PCI
RME Hammerfall
RME Hammerfall ADI8 Pro audio interface 
RME Hammerfall Digiface digital interface
Yamaha CBXD5 interfaces (x2)

HDDs and CDRWs
HHB CDR850+ CD recorder 
IBM 4.5Gb SCSI drives (x2)
Iomega Zip-100 drive (x2) 
Iomega Zip-250 drive
Micropolis AVLT 2Gb SCSI drive
Seagate Barracuda 4Gb SCSI drives (x3) 
Seagate Barracuda 9Gb SCSI drive 
Sony CRX 1600L CDRW
Yamaha 4260TX CDRW 

DATs
Panasonic SV3800 DAT recorder
Sony TDC7 DAT recorder 
Sony TDC690 DAT recorder
Tascam DA20 MkII DAT recorder 
Tascam DAP1 DAT recorder 

MiniDisk
Sony MDSJE 520 MiniDisc recorder

Tape Recorders
Grundig tape recorder
Miny portable tape recorder
Tascam 244 four-track recorder
Yamaha KXW321 tape deck

Control Monitors
Alesis Monitor 1 speakers
Dynaudio BM 15a speakers 
Dynaudio M1 speakers
Yamaha NS 10M speakers

Mixers
Mackie 24:8 mixer with meter bridge 
Mackie CR1604 VLZ mixer
Phonic MRT60 mixer
Seck 18:8:2 mixer
Simmons SPM MIDI mixer
Tascam M2600 mixer 24

Mics
AKG C1000 mic
Realistic induction mic
Sony lapel mic

Sequencers
Alesis MMT8 sequencer (x2)
Roland PMA-5 sequencer
Yamaha QY20 sequencer/synth 

MIDI Controllers
Peavey PC 1600X controller

DSP Farm
Symbolic Sound Capybara 320

Other
Behringer Ultrapatch (x4)
Calabash gourd rattle
Griffin iMate adaptor
Mbira with resonator
Nintendo Gameboy
Philips oscilloscope
PT3 PCI interface
Reyong
Wacom A5 & A6 tablets

Sound on Sound, November 1997
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/1997_articles/nov97/autechre.html

Roland MC202
Roland TR606
Roland R8
Ensoniq ASR-10
Ensoniq EPS
Ensoniq DP2
Alesis Quadraverb
Kenton Pro4
Clavia Nord Lead
Korg Prophecy
Casio SK1
Casio SK5
Casio RZ1 sampling drum machine: "That's really old school. The sampling quality is crap but it sounds awesome."
Philips Oscilloscope: "We have a lot of problems with high frequencies, so we try and keep an eye on it. We also occasionally write tracks that look good on the oscilloscope. Unfortunately it tends to be really basic rave stuff."
Yamaha DX11
Tascam 24 channel mixer: "Fat as f**k. We like the range and flexibility of the EQ a lot."
Korg MS20
Alesis Point 1 nearfield monitors: "We replaced our NS10s with these because we thought our music was suffering."

How to Create a Good Jungle Loop

The original formatting was pretty F'd up so I've tried to clean it up as best I could. Enjoy.

By: Pedro (Submitted to the AKAI Mailing List)

Hope this ain’t just old news to you all...

I wont go into subjects like equalization, compression, and other
techniques to enhance your sound once you have it recorded. Mainly
cause I know jack sh*t about it (if it sounds good, I'll notice),
but also cause it ain’t really necessary since I'll be starting from
recorded loops, which should have been equalized, compressed and
professionally processed anyway.

Nevertheless, it isn’t hard to apply some fx to your drums: try a
small amount of distortion, delay, flanging, and of course resonant
filtering and see what you can get.

My goal will be to create a good loop. If it wasn’t a cool loop to
start with, you wont get much better results even with state-of-the-art
signal processing.

(1) Finding a loop
The first thing you need is a drum loop. Jungle is a genre which
was built over 70's breakbeats mostly. So, grab that dusty lp of
james brown, your daddy has stacked away in the attic from his wild
years, and find a section where the drummer is going solo. I also
do a lot of sampling from jazz albums, with a swing feel and
occasional odd-tempos, but lets keep it simple for now.

You can also get breaks from the net, or from sample cd's, but I
rather have acoustic drum loops to start with (something in the lines
of "vinylistics" or "on a jazz tip"). You can (aarrghh :P) get a
jungle-cd and use a preprocessed loop, which is definitely more jungle,
but also less fun, and you end up sounding like everyone else
(actually I use parts of well known jungle breaks, like the amen,
studio or rawthing, just as fill-ins, but who doesn’t :))

The basic rhythm you want your loop to have is the 1 bar classic:

Tempo    1 . . . 2 . . . 3 . . . 4 . . .
Kick     O   O               O
Snare            X               X
Close HH /   /   /   / / / / /   /   /

Note: the close HH track is normally made of a conventional 8th note
hi hat with another soft snare or side-stick sound, like this:

Tempo    1 . . . 2 . . . 3 . . . 4 . . .
Close HH /   /   /   /   /   /   /   /
Other Sn               #   #

Of course there is no velocity info to liven it up, but I hope you
get the picture. Its such a common rhythm that you must have heard
it sometimes. Not that its needed for the loop to have that structure
(anything will do), but since this is so common, there is no need for
anything more complex.

This loop will help me identify the basic components of a break, which
are:
- the kick
- the snare
- the shaking part, that in here goes from the middle of beat 2 to
the middle of beat 3, and can be just two closed hi hats, or a closed
hi hat and an 808 snare, a close hi hat and a drumstick... whatever
makes that characteristic rushing shaking 16ths sound prior to the
beat.

The shaking part (I'll call it "shakes" for lack of a better name
- you know what I mean) is very important, since that’s what is gonna
give the loop that jungle sound, and we will need to preserve the
exact timing of each bit since its that human feel that makes it
interesting (another reason to use acoustic loops).

Using just a one bar long loop like this, you can do any breakbeat
you like, provided the loop has the three components (specially the
shakes, so find a loop where that effect is present).

I assume you all know how to trim the recorded loop to make it
loop perfectly, so I wont go into that. Using recycle you can
easily set the loop later, anyway.

(2) Processing the loop
I usually change the tempo of the loop first, to fit whatever I have
in mind. Lately I've been using slower tempos, around 140bpm, but
that’s up to you. Just keep in mind that later you wont be able to
change the tempo that easily, so its better to time stretch the loop
first. Early breaks pitch shifted loops as well as a result of speeding
up, but nowadays just apply pitch correction if you like the sound of
it (I do, in moderate doses). Any other sound processing you want to do can be done now as well, cause later you'll be busy playing.

(3) Recycling and creating programs
Now we need recycle. Well, not necessarily, since all it does is
automate some tasks you can do by hand, but I at least NEED it
since I cant get mesa to work, and need something to talk to my s2000 So, lets load the loop in recycle and slice it. Since you can slice.
it several ways, I follow this rules:

1. I need at least one "clean" snare and kick sound, so don’t just make the whole thing a single slice.

2. The more you slice the more keys its gonna use on the sampler, but the more control you'll have over the rearrangement of the loop (just don’t wait till you’re MIDIing it to find out you needed one more slice).

3. If you cant use a slice independently (I mean clean), there’s no need to slice it (for instance, the closed hi hat sometimes stays just a few ticks behind a snare, so there’s no point in slicing it, just use the hat and snare as a single slice).

4. The shakes are best kept in 4 consecutive slices, but you'll need at
least to cut it in half (between the 2nd and 3rd hit).

In the above example here's what I might do:
(note that the slices will NOT stay on the exact beat or half beat: we want to preserve the original un-quantized timings!! - just place them immediately before the sound so that it sounds ok by itself).

Tempo    1 . . . 2 . . . 3 . . . 4 . . .
Kick    |O  |O  |   | | | | |O  |   |
Snare   |   |   |X  | | | | |   |X  |
Close HH|/  |/  |/  |/| |/| |/  |/  |/
Other Sn|   |   |   | |#| |#|   |   |
Slice # 1   2   3   4 5 6 7 8   9   10

This way I have isolated two kick sounds (1 & 2), one may have an open hi hat, while the other not, etc; the snare sound (3 & 4) which also need not be the same or played the same way; and most important of all, I have my shakes all split (slices #4 to #7 and eventually #8).

Now you’re ready to send it to the sampler: put the L and R markers where they belong, set "1 bar" and transmit with MIDI file. This midi file will be your way of preserving the position of the slices, so don’t loose it.

Recycle sets all mute groups to 1, so I have my own template with this off (no mute). Also remember that this is just a break, and a song may use several of them, as well as other sounds. My approach for using several loop drum programs (since I want all of them accessible at the same time) is to have all loop programs with the same number (to also use in single mode) and midi channel, but with different key ranges. If you change the key groups of a sliced loop like this one and transpose it up or down so that they don’t overlap some other program, remember to transpose the recycle midi file too. Later we will need other sounds, like hi hats, cymbals, other snares and special fx, so you may use your fave programs for that as well.

(4) Splitting into break components
Now lets load the midi file in a sequencer, the tempo should be right, so just play it. If everything is ok, you should hear the break in its
original form. If not, check midi channels, muted tracks, whatever.

First thing to do is to split the loop elements to individual tracks, so
just copy your midi info to two empty tracks, and then erase all but kick in one track, all but snare in another, all but shakes in the third. Play it - you should hear it just the same.

(5) The main driving structure
Now, its up to each person creativity, so just play around the keyboard with the kick and snare sounds (forget the rest for now) and try to record on an empty track, a loop with just kick and snare. If I were to suggest kick/snare patters, this would be even longer, so lets just say you have this loop that goes tum-tum-ta-tum-ta-ta-tum-tatata :)

The snare always stays either dead on the beat, or the middle of it,
so try different possibilities. Programs like hammerhead are nice to
give a sense of positioning, so that later you don’t have to experiment
to know how its gonna sound.

You can also use the tracks you made with just kick and snare as a
starting point, but I rather prefer recording it all real time myself

This is going to be the skeleton of the loop, so give it a solid feel (you
can quantize it, since this tougher sounds should not seem sloppy timed). Don’t worry if it still sounds empty. Its important that you have the kick and snare where they belong first of all.

(6) Fine-tuning shakes
In our example you will notice that the last slice of the shakes also
has a kick sound over it. Since I want just the shaky thing, its best
to replace that with a close hi hat sound (use one of the shake's slices). You may also want to experiment concatenating two shakes, since that can be very effective.

If the slices of the shake were A,B,C,D,E, with A to D being a beat, and the E the start of the new beat, you can concatenate it just:

4+4 : A, B, C, D, A, B, C, D, E,

thus making it last two beats of pure shakiness (the beats would be on
the A's and the final E - you have to take the E in the middle so that
it doesn’t overlap the 2nd A - am I making any sense?)

You can also leave a pause between the two copies, or just use a

2+4 : A, B, A, B, C, D, E

structure, which lasts a beat and a half, and starts at the middle of a
beat, lasting to the end of the next one.

These shakes, must be sliced so that they end before the beats, but
specially before the snare, or before the end of the measure. Some
examples of positions for it: (The 'x' are the slices of the shakes, but I've also placed some snares '#' so that you see the shake ends on the snare).

1 . . . 2 . . . 3 . . . 4 . . .
            x x x x x           original one
        #           #           example snare
1 . . . 2 . . . 3 . . . 4 . . .
                        x x x x 
at the end (leave 5th slice off)
        #               #       
can go with this snare (copter)
1 . . . 2 . . . 3 . . . 4 . . .
                x x x x x x x x two beats (4+4)
        #           #       #   try this one...
1 . . . 2 . . . 3 . . . 4 . . .
                    x x x x x x one and a half (2+4)
         x x x x    x x x x x x 
a complete beat, then pause then 2+4
x x x x x   x x x x x   x x x x this is jungle
#   #   #           #           with maybe this snare...
        #                   #   or this one...

Remember, the shakes create a tension before the snare, so they should end just before it (since I'm using a 5-slice shake here, the last slice is OVER the snare sometimes).

You just need to slide the shakes in multiples of a half beat (60 ticks in 120tpq time base). The goal is to preserve the human timing, so now you must slide it in "quantized steps".

By now I would have several tracks in my sequencer so that I can easily mute, experiment, slide, copy, paste, whatever.

Another thing: this shaking part is in all known breakbeats you can get
from the net or sample cd's, so if your loop lacks it, apply the above
method to any breakbeat and just use the shaky part! I have loops with 3 or 4 combined breaks, where I use the kick from one, snares from other, just a shaky part from another, a roll from still another....

(7) Where are the gaps?

So, now you should have something interesting. The rest is up to you. I have several sampled rolls from real players that I use as snare sounds (two fast to slice), and that I use with moderation to fit in some gap I have left. You will also need hi hats, rides and cymbals to add to the loop, since probably it had few.

From now on, its basic experimenting, adding sounds, fx, other snares, I dunno. I guess being very at ease when playing hand percussion, gives me a sense of rhythm that just makes this easy for me, but the overall rule I apply when programming drums is SURPRISE. If your snare is placed in the conventional 2nd and 4th beats, just move it elsewhere, and instead place a not so obvious sound where the snare would be (use a roll snare, for instance).

This is the basic formula, but of course there's so much more to it... even just in the programming field, besides from obvious rhythm notions, you need several loops, you need to be able to combine parts of one with another, layering them, time, patience, experimenting and dedication.

I know the minute I press "send" I'll remember some other thing, but I've already spoken too much. Hope this triggers a more broad discussion, since I want to know everyone's tricks of the trade too.

Daft Punk Scores TR2N Soundtrack

March 04, 2009 02:41 PM ET

David J. Prince, N.Y.

Daft Punk, the French electronica duo known for their robot personas, have been tapped by Walt Disney Pictures to compose the score for "TR2N", an update of the studio's 1982 science fiction classic "Tron", Billboard has confirmed.

The film, currently in production, is tentatively scheduled for a 2011 release.

The "TR2N" score marks Daft Punk's first foray into the studio since 2005's "Human After All." After an extended hiatus, the duo reemerged in 2007 for an extensive world tour, spawning the Grammy-wining live set "Alive 2007." The group's 2001 track "Harder Better Faster Stronger" was adapted by Kanye West for his single "Stronger," and the pair appeared on the 2008 Grammy Awards with the rapper.

The musicians, Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo and Thomas Bangalter split their time between Paris and Los Angeles, where they have have assembled a new recording studio for the TR2N project.

Daft Punk have worked in film before, most notably as directors of their feature "Electroma," although that film used none of the group's own music. As Banglater explained to Billboard in 2007 about the pair's next musical project, "The cool thing is that we're always trying to do something that hasn't been done, or ultimately, that we aren't doing ourselves yet. It is challenging to get back in the studio and work with ideas we haven't expressed before. Some ideas take time, but some just take a few weeks, so we'll see."

The original film, which pioneered the use of computer graphics, was scored by Wendy Carlos, an electronic musician and composer whose "Switched on Bach" album was one of the first to highlight the Moog synthesizer as a musical instrument.

Comment:
Mikael Carlsson comments:

March 05, 2009

Cool. And here is the actual origin of this scoop: http://upcomingfilmscores.blogspot.com/2009/03/daft-punk-tron-20.html :-)

arcDev Noise Industries Site Decoded

If you have ever tried to enter the arcDev website to download VST's or VSTi's you may have found it to be slightly confusing if you are unfamiliar with the command prompt system. This site has such fantastic free resources it would be a damn shame if you gave up due to frustration. So my goal here is to tell you exactly how to get where you need to with the path of least resistance.

To get VSTi's (VST Instruments)

1. Open a new tab and go to http://www.arcanedevice.com/
2. Type "open 1" This will open the directory for VSTi's.
3. Choose which VSTi you would like to download.
4. Type "get # (type the number to the left of the file and description).
5. A prompt will pop up asking you if you would like to save the file you have chosen.
   

GO BACK TO THE MAIN DIRECTORY
TYPE "BACK"

To get VST's (VST Plugin Effects)

1. Type "open 2" This will open the directory for VST Plugin Effects.
2. Choose which VST Plugin you would like to download.
3. Type "get # (type the number to the left of the file and description).
4. A prompt will pop up asking you if you would like to save the file you have chosen.

Glitch (History, Origin, How -To, Analysis)

Wiki Entry:

Glitch is a term used to describe a genre of experimental electronic music that emerged in the mid to late 1990s. The origins of the glitch aesthetic can be traced back to Luigi Russolo's Futurist manifesto The Art of Noises, the basis of noise music. In a Computer Music Journal article published in 2000, composer and writer Kim Cascone used the term post-digital to describe various experimentations associated with the glitch aesthetic. Glitch is characterized by a preoccupation with the sonic artifacts that can result from malfunctioning digital technology, such as those produced by bugs, crashes, system errors, hardware noise, CD skipping, and digital distortion.^[2] Cascone considers glitch to be a sub-genre of electronica. ^[3]

History

Glitch originated in Germany with the musical work and labels of Achim Szepanski^[4], who later gained popularity through the collaboration with Sebastian Meissner under the moniker "Random Inc."^[5]. While the movement initially slowly gained members (including bands like Oval)^[6], the techniques of Glitch later quickly spread around the world as many artists — including bands such as Kid 606, Team Doyobi and Autechre — followed suit. Yasunao Tone used damaged CDs in his Techno Eden performance in 1985. Trumpeter Jon Hassell's 1994 album Dressing For Pleasure — a dense mesh of funky trip hop and jazz — features several songs with the sound of skipping CDs layered into the mix.

Oval's Wohnton, produced in 1993, helped define the genre by adding ambient aesthetics to it^[7]. Though the music of Markus Popp's band (Oval) may be the first in which the techniques of Musique Concrete were applied to the subtleties of Ambient, glitch is also informed by techno and industrial music. Turntablist Christian Marclay had been incorporating the use of scratched or otherwise damaged vinyl records into his sets since the 1970s; it is the rapid advance in technology and expansion of thought behind music that has allowed glitch to adopt this "broken" sound and use it as a stylistic marker.

Production techniques

Glitch is often produced on computers using modern digital production software to splice together small "cuts" (samples) of music from previously recorded works. These cuts are then integrated with the signature of glitch music: beats made up of glitches, clicks, scratches, and otherwise "erroneously" produced or sounding noise. These glitches are often very short, and are typically used in place of traditional percussion or instrumentation. Skipping CDs, scratched vinyl records, circuit bending, and other noise-like distortions figure prominently into the creation of rhythm and feeling in glitch; it is from the use of these digital artifacts that the genre derives its name. However, not all artists of the genre are working with erroneously produced sounds or are even using digital sounds.

Popular software for creating glitch includes trackers, Reaktor, Ableton Live, Reason, AudioMulch, Bidule, Super Collider, FLStudio, MAX/MSP, Pure Data, and ChucK. Circuit bending -- the intentional short-circuiting of low power electronic devices to create new musical devices -- also plays a significant role on the hardware end of glitch music and its creation.

Sub-genres

Glitch Hop

Glitch hop is a relatively new sub variant of the glitch form, and shares the name click hop, blip hop, downbreaks and break hop. Aside from the obvious lineage of hip hop and glitch this genre tends to borrow from the IDM and minimalist genres as well. The music is marked by the DSP laden sonic tapestry and twitchiness of glitch with a more hip hop style framework. The beat tends to follow hip-hop's break-derived conventions, falling into a range between 85-100 bpm. Instead of using just traditional drum kits, glitch hop's "nerdified drums" are augmented with clicks, bent circuits, and sometimes the cut up vocals of the MC. Swedish producer Andreas Tilliander's landmark Cliphop and Plee albums (released as Mokira by German labels Raster Noton in 2000 and Mille Plateaux in 2002) are considered by some as the blueprints of the genre.

Notable groups of this genre include the L.A.-based production group The Glitch Mob, other artists include Prefuse 73^[8], Machinedrum, Dabrye, Kid 606, Jahcoozi, BreakBeatBuddha and Edit, who published glitch hop tracks as part of larger glitch albums. Cex and MC Lars also sometimes perform glitch hop material. CanopyRadio.tv is a well-known collaborative project that mixes jungle and glitch hop together into podcast form.

Popular Electronica act Autechre also experimented in a more instrumental style of Glitch hop, notably in more recent years.

Further reading

• Andrews, Ian, Post-digital Aesthetics and the return to Modernism, MAP-uts lecture, 2000, available at authors website.
• Bijsterveld, Karin and Trevor J. Pinch. "'Should One Applaud?': Breaches and Boundaries in the Reception of New Technology in Music." Technology and Culture. Ed. 44.3, pg 536-559. 2003.
• Byrne, David. "What is Blip Hop?" Lukabop, 2002. Available here.
• Collins, Adam, "Sounds of the system: the emancipation of noise in the music of Carsten Nicolai", Organised Sound, 13(1): 31-39. 2008. Cambridge University Press.
• Collins, Nicolas. Editor. "Composers inside Electronics: Music after David Tudor." Leonardo Music Journal. Vol. 14, pgs 1-3. 2004.
• Prior, Nick, "Putting a Glitch in the Field: Bourdieu, Actor Network Theory and Contemporary Music", Cultural Sociology, 2: 3, 2008: pp 301-319.
• Thomson, Phil, "Atoms and errors: towards a history and aesthetics of microsound", Organised Sound, 9(2): 207-218. 2004. Cambridge University Press.
• Sangild, Torben: "Glitch — The Beauty of Malfunction" in Bad Music. Routledge (2004, ISBN 0-415-94365-5) [1]
• Young, Rob: "Worship the Glitch", The Wire 190/191 (2000)
• Noah Zimmerman, "Dusted Reviews, 2002"

See also

Noise music

Microsound

Lowercase (music)

Clicks & Cuts Series

Minimal techno

Microhouse

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All Music.com Definition/Statement:

As computer-aided composition slowly eclipsed the traditional analog approach to crafting electronica, the palette of possible sounds soon widened immensely, resulting in the advent of the glitch style in the late '90s. No longer was the artist confined to sequenced percussion, synth, and samples, but rather any imaginable sound, including the uncanny realm of digital glitches -- a possibility that was quickly exploited by a generation of youths with the means to create entire albums in their bedroom with only a computer and some software. Where early-'90s analog-toting pioneers such as Aphex Twin and Autechre had envisioned the quickly diminishing areas of electronica that had not yet been explored, and simultaneously, another insular group of pioneers led by Robert Hood and Basic Channel stripped away the elements of electronica that had ultimately become little more than ineffective cliché, a second wave of computer-armed protégés studied these aesthetics and used software to create microscopically intricate compositions harking back to these pioneers. First championed by the ideological German techno figure Achim Szepanski and his stable of record labels -- Force Inc, Mille Plateaux, Force Tracks, Ritornell -- this tight-knit scene of experimental artists creating cerebral hybrids of experimental techno, minimalism, digital collage, and noise glitches soon found themselves being assembled into a community. Though artists such as Oval, Pole, and Vladislav Delay, among others, had initially been singled out by critics beforehand, Mille Plateaux's epic Clicks_+_Cuts compilation first defined the underground movement, exploring not only a broad roster of artists but also a wide scope of approaches. The artists on the compilation, along with a small community of visionary artists in the software-savvy San Francisco/Silicon Valley area of California led by the Cytrax label, soon found themselves as the critically hailed leaders of yet another electronica movement. It wasn't long before the glitch aesthetic began being crossbred with existing genres, resulting in endless variations on the aesthetic, such as MRI's click-driven house and Kid 606's noise remix of N.W.A's "Straight Outta Compton."

Related Styles

Ambient Dub Ambient Techno Experimental Techno Experimental Dub Experimental Ambient

Glitch Album Highlights

Top Artists Click here for full list. Thomas Brinkmann Kit Clayton Vladislav Delay Oval Pan Sonic Pole Frank Bretschneider Sutekh Terre Thaemlitz Donnacha Costello Alec Empire Exos Jasper Komp Low Res Carsten Nicolai Safety Scissors Twerk

Top Albums Click here for full list. 1 Pole 94 Diskont Oval Aaltopiiri Pan Sonic Endless Vainio Väisänen Vega Multila Vladislav Delay Nek Sanalet Kit Clayton Ovalprocess Oval Approximate Love Boat Low Res Curve Frank Bretschneider Dok Oval & Christophe Charles

Top Songs Click here for full list. Berlin Pole Do While Oval Ele Vladislav Delay Fahren Pole Hapatus Pan Sonic Nuchu Kit Clayton Pohdka Tomas Jirku What You're Doin Soul Center Anima Vladislav Delay Trucker Terre Thaemlitz

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Editing Techniques for Glitch Production from Remix Magazine.com:

FRACTAL TENDENCIES

Aug 1, 2004 12:00 PM, By Jason Scott Alexander

Simply mention the words stutter or glitch among DJ and remixing circles, and you're sure to conjure a discussion revolving around artists such as BT, Hybrid, Aphex Twin and Autechre, to name but a few. Longtime pioneers of the two infectiously accidental-sounding effects, they have carved an entirely new style of production and musical arrangement, not to mention forged two new categorical subsets within electronic music. This article will take a look at how to create and incorporate stutter and glitch edits into your productions.

In its simplest form, the stutter has become so mainstream that nearly every DJ mixer, DJ software and even some decks now offer a one-button solution for the effect. Likewise, glitch-music production has moved from the progressive remix studio to the dorm room, where students are using their PCs and off-the-shelf tools to disintegrate Top 40 hits into rhythmically and melodically unrecognizable piles of cuts.

These simple (some would say rudimentary and old-school) variations of the stutter and glitch edit are not what this article is going to examine. A stutter edit in today's terms isn't merely a case of repeating a slice of audio or MIDI-retriggering a sample at 16th- or 32nd-note intervals. Nor is it simply the sound of a CD skipping or of a gated pad — both common misnomers. The most complex stutter edits of today take on a decidedly more musical and melodic character. They are typically handpicked arrangement elements that get sliced and diced at such tiny, tight intervals that the end result ring modulates and creates its own pitch. Although standard tools such as Propellerhead ReCycle, Sony Acid and Bitshift Audio Phatmatik Pro are used to prepare audio for stutters, the expert artisans all agree that it's much, much deeper than simple beat slicing and beat mangling.

The discussion herein will comprise general ballpark guidelines, not rules. This is not a tutorial on using specific software tools, either. Remember, no single technique is the right technique; no single tool is the right tool; and no amount of theory can ever replace intuition or those funny-looking flaps on the side of your head. Be forewarned, though: Performing extreme stutter or glitch edits can be an insanely time-consuming endeavor, sometimes taking days or weeks to complete just 10 seconds of finished product — much like a cartoonist drawing animation cells. It's also a 99 percent trial-and-error process requiring lots of experimentation, tons of patience and a pretty good dose of fearlessness to boot.

ANATOMY CLASS

Describing the makeup of a stutter edit is extremely challenging, as it can literally take on any one of hundreds, if not thousands, of forms. A stutter is typically, but not exclusively, derived from the isolation and repetition of a plosive or attack transient in a vocal or primary percussive sound within a track. This isolated section, or slice, is usually an eighth note in length at its largest and falls precisely on or around the beat to form a strong rhythmic progression across several beats. A glitch, on the other hand, is usually a momentary eighth- or 16th-bar blistering of extremely minute slices of audio, a 64th note or smaller, often being derived from sustained sonic elements containing rich and complex harmonic textures.

Another key difference is that a stutter typically progresses with rhythmic shifts, or changes in note intervals and subdivided accents, whereas a glitch occurs so quickly that the slices of audio create a static, tonal or buzzing sound. Stutters most often occur at builds, transitions and breakdowns or anywhere you'd classically think of using a drum fill. Glitches, as their name suggests, are not used to emphasize or reinforce rhythm as much as they are sprinkled about at odd rhythmic intervals to jar the listener into taking notice. They artificially induce a momentary rhythmic change to the track by breaking up the monotony.

Oftentimes, stutter effects get blended with or dissolve down to theoretical glitches. That is, the individual audio slices, or elements of a stutter, can be reduced to 64th- or 128th-note values (or smaller), at which point they are no longer audibly stuttering but creating tones. You can see how this is a pretty gray science.

That said, with MIDI's timing being about as accurate as a sundial, trying to pull off sample triggers smaller than a 32nd note will sound like hell. Although it's still an often-used trick for some producers to automate and adjust the sample start point (on samplers that even have this feature) and have a number of notes firing off rapidly one after the other while sweeping the sample start knob, today, it's all about slicing up audio and manipulating each individual slice in your DAW. With sample-accurate timing, working with audio inside of a workstation allows total freedom of the resolution of your stutter spacing — not to mention all of the cool things you can do to each of the individual slices once you have them all spaced and lined up.

But what about source material? What's a prime candidate for stutters or glitches? The easy answer, of course, is anything. Practically speaking, though, for your stutters, look for rhythmic elements that already stand out in the mix: drums loops, lead vocals, vocal hooks, percussive synths, rhythm guitars and so forth. Elements like these that are already telling a story or keeping the rhythm moving are ideal. Stutters can be performed on individual tracks, such as the lead vocal, to accentuate a lyric or phrase; on stems, in which you can process a group of sounds together; or on the full stereo mix, which provides the greatest impact. Glitches are rarely administered to the full mix, unless, of course, you're aiming to break up the rhythm of the track; they're more like overlays, little decorative ticks and flicks that are surrounded by a solid backing.

PREPARATION, NOT PERSPIRATION

With the possibility of having thousands of 128th-note audio slices littering your arrange page, it's best to do your homework and get a grip on the audio you've decided to treat. Your first step is to decide if the section you wish to apply the stutter to is more of a sound-design element or an arrangement element. If you're intending to create a hook sound from a rhythmic element, such as a complex stuttered percussion loop with lots of processing, it's probably a good idea to take it outside of the arrange page and into a dedicated audio editor and preprocess the entire section with any tonal effects that you're considering. Then, you can take it into a transient-detecting loop-dicing tool, such as ReCycle, and slice it up there.

At this point, you want to make sure that your audio file is looped nice and tight, and remove any pops at the ends of your slices by manually or automatically applying minute fades to the front and back of each. These slices won't be your actual stutters, but rather starting-point elements from which you pick and choose and fine-tune the repetition and spacing of once you import them back into your DAW's arrange page.

Another cool trick is to first bounce your selected section of audio several times, each time applying different effects plug-ins, EQ settings and so on; then, take all of your bounced audio files and identically chop them up into small slices in ReCycle. Then, once you bring them back into your DAW and start building your slice edits, you'll have time-exact variations of your cuts with which to drop in and out of, similar to subtractive mixing.

If your stutter is going to be applied to already time-aligned elements, such as vocals, in a rather hit-and-miss fashion throughout the song, your best bet is to perform the slice edits within your DAW. For this, zoom in on the section of audio that you're interested in, set the grid to a desired resolution — say, 32nd notes — and perform a slice-to-grid command. Slicing the audio to smaller divisions is not terribly advantageous at this point unless you're intent is to dissolve a stutter into a glitch. Remember, you can always reduce your working grid to a finer resolution later and selectively reslice your chopped-up bits in half, quarters or whatever. Again, fading the front and back of certain slices may be necessary to remove unwanted pops. As you will see, using this method and saving your effects processing for application to the individual slices later on allows you greater freedom and control of the dynamics and motion of your stutters. Next comes the extremely laborious task of spreading everything out.

BARS AND BEATS

Once your initial slices are created and imported back into your DAW, it's time to start granularly piecing together the edit so that it stutters or glitches and sounds cool “in time.” Right now, the slices play through as normal. A cleverly performed stutter or glitch is not blind repetition or constant equal-interval cutting. It is for this reason that generic chopper tools, plug-ins or gate effects cannot possibly produce an authentic-sounding complex stutter sound. Those tools don't have the ability to think like a musician. Stutters aren't just effects; they are a form of 21st-century composition.

Take a look at a fairly basic one-bar stutter that will rhythmically repeat at eighth-note intervals over a straight four-on-the-floor pattern. You've lined up the group of stutter cuts so that the first slice containing the initial attack transient of the loop, or whatever you have, is sitting right on the one count of the bar in which you wish the stutter to begin. Next, copy and paste this slice every eighth note for the length of the bar, shifting all remaining slices to the right a full bar. These slices can either be left to play through in succession without stutter or manipulated later. Through experimentation, you will find that the duration of each stuttered slice need not necessarily be a full eighth note in length and often sounds better if you trim back the slice durations, dependent on the source material. Take a listen — it sounds basic and bland, right? You've just discovered the first key to making an interesting stutter: variation. Stutter variation can either be time variant, tonal variant or both. Time variation can come in many forms, including slice positioning, duration and relative spacing. Tonal variation can be the result of effects processing, variations in source material within a stutter sequence, induced pitch from extremely tight stutter spacing and so on.

Going back to the one-bar example, if you copy the last four eighth-note slices and paste them a 16th note to the right, you have a one-bar section containing four eighth-note slices for the first two beats and eight 16th-note slices for the second two beats. Just that slight introduction of variation to the stutter makes it more interesting, but it's still nothing to write home about.

A classic stutter build might take this example a step further by continuing the stutter across the following bar for two or three bars, reducing the stutter intervals to 32nd notes and eventually 64th notes across the final beat. But what could really add some life to the party is the introduction of some compound rhythm.

SYNCOPATION NATION

Shifting the beat emphasis from the usually strong beat to the beat that's usually weak is an important tool in making stutters stand out. Different syncopations can build tension and make for the rhythmic shifts caused by the imposition of compound meters. Consider a four-bar transition that takes you out of a steady kick-driven groove with a lead vocal over the top. You want to drop down to just a vocal stutter of the hook for the first bar and let the vocal line continue on with a pad, no beat, but reintroduce rhythm over the fourth and final bar of the transition, using the vocal itself, before you come back in with an explosion of the full mix.

You've chopped the four-bar vocal hook at pretty ruthless 128th-note intervals and brought it into place near the first beat of the first bar of the transition. (A tip: Slide the entire section of slices to a muted holding track directly above or below where you're working — it saves having to scoot everything over as you build the stutter.) Now, you don't want to start right on the first beat of the transition; rather, drop the first slice squarely between the third and fourth beat of the bar just prior to the transition. This syncopation will allow you to do something very cool next. Thinking in terms of eighth-note chunks for the next little while, you'll stutter the first 128th-note vocal slice for the duration of this pretransition space; then, starting on the first beat of the actual transition, you will repeat 64th-note slices (or two consecutive 128th-note slices butted or pasted together) for the first eighth of the bar. So far, it should sound like a fishing reel being cast out: a high-pitched buzzy whir in two pitch increments.

Now, as you increase the size of the slices, to not lose the motion of the lyrics, you'll want to advance through the slices over time. There is no set rule as to how to perform this; it's really up to your ears and acquired skill. However, a simple rule is to look for places that the syllables or vowels change in the lyrics.

Okay, now that you're sitting on the anticipated second beat, you're all lined up to drop in four 32nd-note slices of the progressing vocal hook for another eighth of the bar. Move ahead, and insert two 16th-note slices for another eighth of a bar and one eighth-note slice for another eighth of the bar. Now, you're two full beats into the transition, and it's time to let the vocal fly as normal. If it isn't already obvious, you'll want the vocal to come in at the right time, so some fudging with stutter slice elements will be necessary. This is why it's extremely helpful to have the intact audio waveform sitting above or below for reference.

For the end of the transition, you need to reintroduce the rhythm over the fourth and final bar using the vocal itself as your rhythm element. Because vocals typically are sustained notes at the end of a hook, it doesn't really make sense to use an attack transient for this. Instead, search out a cool-sounding section of the held note to stutter. Often, truncating the vocal tail just prior to where you start the stutter gives the brain room to breathe and builds greater anticipation for the stutter. Here, you could drop 32nd-note slices across the first two beats and shift from simple to compound time for the rest, inserting stutters in stairs of 32nd, 64th and 128th notes. Really, stutters and glitch edits are all about rushing and dragging time and then catching up right on the downbeat. So feel free to try out all sorts of crazy meters, syncopations — whatever feels right.

CAUSE IN DA EFFECT

The secret weapons of the pros in achieving the coolest stutters, though, is their arsenal of hundreds, if not thousands, of plug-ins. It's common to hear of producers performing multipass preprocessing treatments to prep their audio, even before a single slice is ever made. Likewise, smearing an effect across a final stutter sequence can help smooth things out and remove any harshness that may have cropped up. The types of effects they use range from the garden-variety stock plug-ins to extremely esoteric and complex “math music” applications.

Filter and phase plug-ins such as Sound Toys FilterFreak and PhaseMistress are notorious favorites among the stutter pros for their ability to deftly sync to and follow rhythmic material such as drum loops, breaks and guitars. Distortions, decimators and vocoders are another set of preprocessing tools that do wonders on lead vocals and drum loops. Distortion, in particular, is awesome for making stuttered vocals and beats sound really cool. And don't be afraid to go outside of plug-ins. Look to old, crappy stompboxes and overdriven economy mixers; sometimes, they're the rawest and coolest-sounding. It's all about adding the right coloration to the material while it's still intact so that you retain a smooth flow to the stutter once it's chopped and spread. Throwing ramped or envelope-modulated pitch- or formant-shift effects can really make a vocal stand out, too. Combining these in carefree, mad-scientist fashion is the only way to go.

Stepping it up a notch, you have such interesting processes as granular synthesis, sample granulation, spectral analysis and spectral morphing, resynthesis and cross synthesis. Typically, these are found in specialty apps and plug-ins like Yowstar's G Audio (incorporates former products Girl and Cosmetic); Tom Erbe's acclaimed SoundHack Spectral Shapers collection of timbral morphing tools (including +spectralcompand, +binaural, +morphfilter and +spectralgate); Native Instruments' Reaktor modular synthesis, effects and sound-design studio; GRM Tools; DFX's Scrubby, TransVerb, Skidder, RezSynth and Buffer Override; U&I Software's MetaSynth; Ross Bencina's AudioMulch; Cycling '74's Max/MSP; and Applied Acoustics' Tassman 4. And for the truly brave, there are such math- and code-heavy sound-design programming tools as Miller Puckette's Pure Data (PD), Barry Vercoe's C-Sound, James McCartney's SuperCollider and Symbolic Sound's Kyma system.

Those latter four are what many call math-music programs, or programming languages dedicated to manipulating audio in real time. They've each been around for many years, largely on the open-source Unix platform, and do take some time getting used to. If you wish to be on the leading edge of sound design, though, learning one or more of these environments is a must, and you won't regret the time spent.

Now, if you're a true glutton for punishment, you'll dig in and treat each slice individually. There, personal discretion and lots of free time come in really handy. By treating and processing your stutters a slice at a time, you can dramatically alter their dynamics and sense of animation. These individual treatments will be clearly noticeable in the eighth-to-32nd-note range, and you'll really get a charge out of the results. Then, try some postprocessing with flanged reverbs and retro tape delays if the stutter needs to sit back in the mix.

Overall, the best piece of advice is to use everything you can get your hands on, and keep your sound-generation possibilities wide open. Tons of freeware and open-source tools are out there to pick up on. The unique combination of your editing style and the sound-design tools you choose to use will set you apart from the rest of the pack, so listen, experiment and then listen some more. And remember, be fearless. There are no rules.

HYBRID IMPLEMENTATION: MIKE TRUMAN TALKS SHOP

What sonic elements seem to tickle the ears when stuttered or glitched?

Usually drum loops and percussion or anything rhythmical works best. Long pads, vocal washes, et cetera, that are stuttered end up being lost in a mix, unless you want that mid-'90s progressive-house vocal gate effect. The rule of thumb is that if you can't really notice the effect in a track, don't bother doing it. Otherwise, you're wasting loads of time on a programming trick that you'll be very proud of when it's soloed but will make absolutely no difference to the track on a club sound system. Go for big sounds pushed high in the mix to edit if you don't want your valuable time wasted muddying up a mix.

Is it true that the modern stutter concept has left the MIDI space and has nothing to do with retriggering samples anymore?

Not entirely. If you listen to our mix of Jeff Wayne's “War of the Worlds,” there are stutters and edits all over the beat programming, and it was all done using an Akai S3000 and MIDI. Loads of producers have been doing similar tricks with Akai MPC drum programmers for ages, but editing in audio onscreen is just so much easier.

What about sound design — do you leave your DAW for specialized processing?

We definitely go outside of Logic to process the sound files. The best technique we've found is to take one loop and process it through loads of programs and then chop sections out of the processed loops to generate the edit in an arrangement. We use Peak for Premiere plug-ins, Metasynth, Thonk, SuperCollider, Reaktor and a ton of little shareware programs that only do one effect well, but you use whatever program suits your idea. SuperCollider, for instance, was used for the granular drum effects in our mix of Sarah McLachlan's “Fear,” the really metallic smudges on the snare and kicks.

What's your processing trick du jour for treating stutter elements?

At the moment, we're messing about with specially edited Reaktor delays, feedbacks and granular synthesis. Most techies will have noticed loads of GRM Tools effects in our current tracks, as it's got a less-digital feel to it. We're trying to move away from the very robotic edits and put things through guitar amps and rerecord it to smooth things over a bit. Phase is a good old favorite on tightly looped edits. It just takes away some of the harshness. Also, it's a good idea to toy around with delays and reverbs to give a sense of depth to the chops.

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The Aesthetics of Failure: Glitch Music, by Kim Cascone

The Aesthetics of Failure - Glitch Music

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Academic Work Promotional culture Culture-Music

Great paper on Glitch and computer generated electronic music.

Dust Brother's Interview (Sound on Sound May 2005)

The Dust Brothers

Sampling, Remixing & The Boat Studio

The Dust Brothers changed the course of record production with a new approach to sampling. In their first ever in-depth technical interview, John King and Mike Simpson explain their unique way of making records and open the doors of their remarkable LA studio, The Boat.

Paul Tingen

Photos: Mr Bonzai The Dust Brothers: John King (left) and Mike Simpson.

In 1989, the Beastie Boys' Paul's Boutique single-handedly redefined a whole musical generation's approach to sampling. The musical masterminds behind the album were the Dust Brothers, two hitherto unknown college whiz kids who had created the musical backings from collages of their favourite recordings. Paul's Boutique was awash with innovation — it reputedly featured the first recorded instance of intentionally added vinyl crackling noises — and it turned the Dust Brothers into the Godfathers of sampling.

Since then, Mike Simpson and John King's career has taken in a diverse succession of projects including Technotronic's Trip On This (1990), the Rolling Stones' Bridges To Babylon (1997), Hanson's Middle Of Nowhere (1997), Santana's Supernatural (1999), Linkin Park's Hybrid Theory (2000) and Tenacious D's eponymous album (2002). As a staff producer for Dreamworks, Simpson also produced Eels' Beautiful Freak (1996). Perhaps the most influential and artistically successful of all, however, was Beck's 1996 album Odelay. Simpson and King later contributed to the same artist's Midnite Vultures (1999), and their relationship continues to this day with the brand-new Guero, which appears to set them on course for another round of limelight-hogging in 2005.

Meanwhile, the Brothers have also been developing a state-of-the-art recording studio. The Boat was opened for commercial use in 2003; based around a vintage Neve 8028 desk from 1969 and a Pro Tools HD3 system, it has become one of Los Angeles's most happening studios (see boxes).

Early Beginnings

"My musical background came from collecting records," recalls Mike Simpson, "and sort of studying the sounds and arrangements and the way they were recorded. I grew up in New York listening to black music, and I was there for that famous summer in the mid-1970s when hip-hop started. When I moved out to California in 1978 there was no hip-hop or rapping culture here, so I lived on cassettes sent to me by friends. In 1986 I enrolled in a local community college, where I did a class in electronic music. That was my first opportunity to really do computer sequencing and work seriously with samplers. I'd been doing a college radio show since 1983, during which I played hip-hop music, and I began playing the music I was putting together in class on the radio show. I met John in 1985, and he joined me in putting on the show and putting together tapes."

King and Simpson's hip-hop radio show caught the ear of rapper Tone-Loc. He had just signed to the newly formed record company Delicious Vinyl, who in turn were busy setting up their own studio. Tone-Loc and Delicious Vinyl invited Simpson and King to help out producing records and setting up the company's studio. When their name was about to appear on a record sleeve for the first time, on a single by Young MC, the duo decided on the name the Dust Brothers. Reputedly it's a reference to angel dust, the drug, but this turns out to be only an aspect of the truth.

"King and Simpson are pretty common names," explains the latter, "and we decided that we'd better come up with a cool name. At the time we were bringing back music that no-one was listening to any more, so we wanted the name to be an anachronistic reference to things of the past. While we were working for Delicious Vinyl, many people had been describing our music as 'dusted,' and that's where we took the name from. The state of hip-hop was pretty minimal at the time, and we were doing these very textural, tripped-out, almost hallucinogenic remixes of things. Angel dust was just an additional whacked-out reference that also fitted with what we were doing."

Boutique Sounds

During these first years in the recording studio, the Dust Brothers were predominantly engaged in dusting down, or perhaps dusting up, old favourite records, and giving them new leases of life. They applied their sampling skills with considerable success on Tone Loc's Loc'd After Dark (1989) and Young MC's Stone Cold Rhymin' (1989). Then they hit upon a project that became the landmark Paul's Boutique. Did the duo actually set out to change the music industry, or did they just stumble into prominence? The latter, claims Simpson, with estimable modesty.

The Boat's impressive list of outboard equipment includes a mouth-watering array of vintage mics, preamps and compressors.

"Sampling was just a hobby for us. It was just something we did for fun while we were in college. John was destined to become a genius computer programmer, and I was going to enrol in law school. We never had any intention of making records. I didn't even know what record producers did at the time. In the course of doing samples for Delicious Vinyl Records, every once in a while we put something together that seemed just too dense and too busy and too crazy for a rapper to rap on, and we put these tracks aside as instrumental Dust Brothers tracks. Then the Beastie Boys wandered into the studio, and heard one of these tracks, and they loved it. That's how the album got started.

"Up until that point in hip-hop, people had been using samples very sparsely and minimally. If anything, they would use one sample in a song and take a drum loop and that would be the foundation. But what we were doing was making entire songs out of samples taken from various different sources. On Paul's Boutique everything was a collage. There was one track on which the Beastie Boys played some instruments, but apart from that everything was made of samples. But we never had a grand vision of trying to make groundbreaking music. We just enjoyed making music in a way that was an extension of our DJing, combining two or three songs, but with greater accuracy than you could do with turntables."

The significance of Paul's Boutique is illustrated by a web site (www.moire.com/beastieboys/samples) on which fans have collaborated in spotting all the samples on the album. For the track 'Shake Your Rump' alone the web site lists samples taken from records by Sugarhill Gang, Funky 4+1, James Brown and Afrika Bambaataa, Bob Marley, Paul Humphrey, Led Zeppelin, Harvey Scales, Rose Royce, Ronnie Laws, Foxy and Alphonse Mouzon. ("I think they got all of them," says Simpson.) Yet most of the samples used on Paul's Boutique were cleared, easily and affordably, something that Simpson says would be "unthinkable" in today's litigious music industry. The album will, therefore, always be unique.

In the early 1990s, with anti-sampling legislation and attitudes tightening, the Dust Brothers were mainly busy remixing, while cutting their teeth on engineering, composing and producing. Their increasing fame offered them lots of opportunities to apply these skills, but Simpson admits that they spent several years climbing a steep learning curve.

"It was tough. People asked us why our stuff from the late 1980s sounded so good, and we said that it simply was because the original recordings that we sampled sounded so good. After Paul's Boutique we signed a publishing deal that gave us some money to live, and we took the opportunity to buy a house and build a home studio. We spent three or four years there learning how to record and engineer stuff. Paul's Boutique and Odelay were sort of the crowning achievements, but there were a lot less great records in between."

The Boat The Boat, in Silverlake, Los Angeles, was built in 1941 for live radio broadcast. The Dust Brothers acquired it in 1997 and proceeded to completely renovate it. The building looks like a boat — hence its name — and its striking architecture makes it a Silverlake landmark. A quick look at the lengthy equipment list reveals the old-meets-new philosophy behind the place. On the new side there's the Pro Tools Accel system and Pro Control console, Ableton Live software, and a list of Pro Tools plug-ins so long you can't even begin to shake a stick at them. At the same time, pride of place goes to the 1969 56-input Neve 8028 desk, with 1073 and 1066 modules and four built-in Neve 2254A compressors. There's also a vintage analogue MCI JH114 16/24-track tape recorder, and an astonishing amount of vintage and/or valve outboard gear and microphones. The list is far too long to reproduce here, but is available on the studio web site at www.theboatstudio.com. The Boat really does look like, well, a boat — right down to the portholes and gangway! "Combining old and new has been our goal as musicians and producers and now as studio owners," asserts Mike Simpson. "We've made our name staying abreast of the latest technology, but at the same time we've used that technology to sample all those brilliantly recorded recordings from the 1970s. As it got more and more painful to use samples, we realised that we were better off creating those sounds ourselves, and the way to do that is to get all the equipment it was originally created on." "I love collecting gear and have a ridiculous collection of outboard and microphones and instruments," John King fills in. "After I collected all the gear I could handle, I kept finding more, and that's how I started acquiring what we have at The Boat. The old gear has the aspect of a vintage car. It's beautiful, it's historic, there's a definite nostalgia to it." Yet nostalgia is not the Dust Brothers' driving force. Their bottom line is that analogue, vintage and valve gear still sounds better than even HD digital. What they aim to do with The Boat is marry the convenience and functionality of digital with the superior sonic qualities of analogue. "The new Pro Tools HD system sounds a lot better than the old system," opines Simpson. "But there's still a huge gap between analogue and digital. HD digital still lacks a certain emotion. The late 1960s and early 1970s probably saw the pinnacle in sound reproduction. The imaging and dynamics are just so much better. Also, I'm sort of a bass junkie. I like it when you can really feel the low end, and with those late-'60s and early-'70s records was the last time you really felt that, at least in the rock and soul stuff. Now everything is so thin and brittle, it makes me cringe when I hear snare and kick drums. Obviously the centrepiece of the studio is the wonderful Neve console. It's such a nice-sounding board. Being able to record and pump channels back through the console really makes a huge difference." The Boat also sports an impressive array of monitors: Urei 813C, plus Genelec 1031A, Yamaha NS10, Westlake Audio BBSM6 and 10, JBL 4408A, Tannoy AMS 10A and Auratone 2B monitors. All this combines to make it the ultimate mix environment, according to John King. "One thing is that the mixes we did here sounded fantastic everywhere else. I really trust the room and the monitoring, especially the Urei main monitors, which are great. The only thing we've mixed so far at The Boat is Beck's new album and I'm so happy with how that came out. We didn't really use much outboard during the mix, because it was already sounding so great. We used the SSL compressor pretty much on every mix. If nothing else it's a security blanket, and it lets you adjust the levels nicely as the mix is going back into Pro Tools."

The Benefits Of Sampling

The Dust Brothers' house was in Silverlake, Los Angeles. They created their studio in a spare bedroom and, pushing the angel dust reference, called it PCP Labs. The studio existed from 1991 to 2001, and sported a 24-channel Soundcraft Spirit desk. "We loved this board," says Simpson. "We tracked a lot of great songs through this board, including all the songs from Odelay." PCP was split into two control rooms in 1996, with two Yamaha 02Rs in King's room and a 64-input Amek Einstein in Simpson's section.

Despite the legal issues, substantial elements of the Dust Brothers' college-era collage approach to music continued to survive, and with Beck's Odelay they finally found the perfect marriage between this and their newly acquired engineering and production skills. Beck's attitude and way of working gave them a perspective on an additional reason why previous efforts had met with such variable success. The Dust Brothers found that musicians who were not familiar with the new technology often approached recording in a manner that was at odds with their way of working.

"We sometimes would record musicians the way you would traditionally record a live band, and then add samples," Simpson explains. "Not very successfully, I would say. Because for some of the more traditional musicians we worked with, the idea of sampling was sort of foreign, and they wanted to play things right. But we don't necessarily want you to play things right, we want you to play things cool. You play over a groove until you have a good bar, and then we take that bar and loop it. I always say that our best music comes from mistakes that happen. You're trying to do one thing, and then someone makes a mistake and that mistake ends up being the hook of the song, the coolest part of the song.

"Beck really understood the benefits of sampling from the beginning, and he understood all along what our goal was. It's a different mindset for a musician, and Beck really got that. He's totally uninhibited, and not necessarily trying to play it right. He's just trying to play it with attitude and flavour. That makes it easy for us, and it's why we have had such great success in working with him. He really understands the medium and what we do, and hand-delivers us these great out-of-control performances that leave us with tracks that we can draw all these great loops from."

Old Methods, New Tools

Guero is Beck's eighth studio album, and as on Odelay, Simpson and King worked on almost all of the album's songs. "Beck wanted to do more of a contemporary R&B record," says Simpson. "To me it picks up where Odelay left off. There's a little bit of everything: there are some rock songs, some great hip-hop songs, some great blues-inspired songs, some 1980s dance-inspired songs, and so on. It's a melting pot of all the types of songs Beck loves. Sometimes there will be a few genres within one song. But some songs that were more rock were left off because they didn't fit the mould.

"The way it started was that we had worked with Beck on some songs for Midnite Vultures, and we finished off only two in time to make the record. There were six other songs that were pretty well developed, sometimes only needing Beck to finish his vocals and some sprucing up here and there. Beck loved those songs, and wanted to revisit them. So we pulled them up and took some of them apart and reconstructed them. Pretty much the moment we came into the studio and heard the stuff, the feeling was 'Yeah, let's do new stuff too.' We began this the way we did with Odelay, pulling up loops or samples, pulling out records, saying 'Oh yeah, I want to do a song that sounds like that.' But whereas Paul's Boutique was made from samples, a lot of Odelay and the new record is more based on sound than on the samples themselves. We were after the sound and the vibe more than anything else.

The main live area at The Boat. Miked up at the front is a Fender Rhodes Suitcase piano.

"Our [non-record] samples come from years of tracking. Everything we ever tried or worked on, apart from the Stones' material, which we were forced to turn over, ended up on hard disk. When making backups we would pull out all the beats and other samples and put those on a separate drive. At one point we had one of our employees compile all the samples from throughout our history, and we now have one sample library called Dust Beats, containing all the beats in one folder, and there's a folder with bass grooves, and guitar grooves, and so on. Using Ableton Live you can so effectively scroll through these sample libraries, and see whether they fit."

John King agrees that "the creative process in making the new album was very similar to the making of Odelay," adding, "it was about Mike, Beck and me in a room, having fun, coming up with ideas, then embellishing and finishing them." Yet King quickly goes on to elaborate on the dissimilarities. "The major difference is that we're doing everything with Pro Tools now. For Odelay we used Studio Vision software and Digidesign hardware, with a two-channel interface, so we could only record or play back one or two tracks of live audio at the same time. I had to take everything that we did and convert it into samples that then could be played back with the Samplecell card, and make MIDI notes that corresponded with wherever I wanted the samples to happen. But for the new album we had many inputs and outputs and as many tracks as we wanted. We don't even use a sampler any more, because there are so many tracks. And so we got to layer more vocals and instruments, using multiple mics on instruments, which we couldn't do before.

"For this new album we began songs written from scratch in Ableton Live, running with Pro Tools. I love Ableton. It's a quick way for me to get the ball rolling, and quickly make ideas happen that Beck likes and then plays over. I get that going and then I set up microphones, like the SM57 combined with Neumann 47 or 47 FET for electric guitars — I tend to use 47s on almost everything — sometimes a Royer 122 ribbon mic, using an LA3A compressor, and a 47 with Royer for acoustic guitars, and so on.

"I record all that stuff in Pro Tools, and pick out my favourite things and cut and paste and create verses and choruses. Then I see what Beck likes and start some arrangement. We continue to go back and forth with each other until I feel the song is there, at which I hand things over to the studio's Pro Tools assistant, Danny Kalb, who continues to work with Beck on overdubs.

"On one of the songs, I think it was called 'Emergency Exit', there are all these strange digital artifacts and stretching noises going on that Ableton was making. I think it has some loops that went at half speed. The average person would say 'That sounds horrible, they need to improve their stretching algorithms,' but Beck was like 'Wow, that sounds amazing.' When he says that I just go with it. A lot of the exploratory nature of the work we do with Beck comes from his open-mindedness and eagerness to do new things. The same happened with several effecty plug-ins, like Sound Toys and some of the GRM Tools stuff, which I used for creating crazy, freaky effects. Beck always wanted me to record while I was doing that.

"In terms of the end result, there's more live playing, and it's thicker with sound, but the spirit is similar. One thing Beck remarked on was that we did everything so fast this time. He remembered with Odelay having a lot of time to sit around and write lyrics or melodies, while I was converting playing into samples and thinking about how to make it all work. By the time I was ready for him it seemed like he had a finished song ready to go, and we'd do a first take. But this time he had to sit and listen more to what we were doing, because we would accomplish everything so quickly."

Boat For Hire The Boat studio was originally put together for the Dust Brothers' own use, but in 2003, they decided to turn it into a fully commercial operation. "A year after we had The Boat up and running, we found that neither us of was using it that much," explains Mike Simpson. "Instead we spent most of our time at our own home studios so we could be closer to our families. So we decided that it was a shame to have The Boat just sitting there, and began interviewing studio managers." Enter Adam Mosely, an engineer and producer with an impressive track record in his own right. Cutting his teeth at the legendary Trident studios in the late 1970s, the Briton worked with greats like Phil Ramone, Tom Dowd, Mutt Lange, Steve Lillywhite, Ken Scott, Mike Stone, and many others, recording the likes of the Cure, Wet Wet Wet, Kiss, Rush and so on. "Adam really brought The Boat to life," says Simpson. "He had great ideas and started pulling clients in." Engineer and studio manager Adam Mosely at The Boat's vintage Neve desk. "I thought it was an astonishing place with the most incredible potential," enthuses Mosely. "The Dust Brothers had already bought the most amazing equipment, and would buy even more, and the Neve board was great. It originated in AIR Studios in London, where it had been the second board George Martin ever bought at AIR. Rupert Neve customised it for him. Then it travelled to Sweden, where it was more used in the dance arena. The Dust Brothers located it, bought it, and shipped it back to LA, where it was retro-ed back to its original state." The Boat was opened as a commercial studio in January 2003, and since then artists like Madonna, Avril Lavigne, Marilyn Manson, Lenny Kravitz, Don Was, and many others have explored its best-of-the-old-meets-best-of-the new characteristics. "I sensed that the industry was going back to a more old-fashioned approach again," says Mosely. "They are wanting to get back to a bigger sound, and away from the mid-range compressed sound. Seeing the equipment in the studio, the opportunity was just a no-brainer. The Neve has such a huge, warm, dynamic sound, it's phenomenal. Combined with the vintage tube gear and microphones, it really enhances Pro Tools HD3, which already has an incredible sound at 88.2 or 96 kHz, with things coming back exactly as you hear them. "A lot of modern boards don't have the dynamic range of the Neve, and there's a big difference between Pro Tools Sessions that have been recorded here, and elsewhere. But even when people have recorded elsewhere, when they put their tracks back through the Neve for mixing, the sound becomes so much bigger. So what we have done is set up a procedure that makes it possible for people to mix easily via the Neve and have recall. We didn't want to introduce total recall on the board, because of the sound, but I realised that we could create total recall simply by using the oscillator to align the monitor return faders. "What most people do is mix in stems, ie. mix in Pro Tools to stereo pairs, and send these pairs through the 24 monitor returns on the board. We then align the monitor faders at whatever level people want it to come out at, and they can come back a week or month later and do a recall. We also got the SSL X-Logic FX384 compressor, because it's such a recognised industry sound, and the GML EQ, which is probably the cleanest clearest EQ there is. With the rest of the vintage outboard, and us having every plug-in on the market, people have a complete mix solution here."

A Little Home Studio

With The Boat being almost constantly booked out, the Dust Brothers can hardly get into their own studio any more, and so both have their own, not-to-be-sniffed at home facilities. Their gear mania doesn't only cover "every keyboard ever made", it also extends to a huge collection of vintage and/or valve outboard gear. Much of it is located at The Boat, but substantial amounts are also in use at their respective home studios.

Simpson's "little home studio setup" contains a full Pro Tools HD3 rig, "with a couple of Neve mic pres and LA2A compressors. Basically all the stuff we have at The Boat, minus the Neve desk. I have probably one third of what The Boat has in terms of outboard gear."

Some more unusual keyboards in The Boat. The grey instrument at the back is a Mattel Optigan; at the front is a Wurlitzer organ.

"I have converted one of my two houses into a studio complex," King chips in, "where I have two studios. We moved here six months ago. I've always had a studio in my house, and in the last house I lived in we converted this huge beautiful living room into a huge studio [called The Medina]. I have Pro Tools HD3 at my current house, with Pro Control, so I can mix virtually. I also have various Pultecs, a couple of LA2A compressors, a couple of 1176s, LA4A, RCA BA6A, Neve 1073, 1076, Neve stereo compressor, Neve mastering EQ, Manley massive/passive, Manley DI, Manley mic pres, Telefunken V72, V76, Mastering Labs mic pres, Distressor, the SSL compressor and all the great microphones.

"And we use tons of synthesizers. You name it, we have it. They are all hardware synths. I don't like using soft synths. I like to have knobs. I don't really like presets, I like to be able to tweak things. We have every keyboard ever made. Many of them are in The Boat, but we also have them in storage. I have closets here at home that are stacked floor to ceiling with all kinds of crazy keyboards. We have all kinds of Moogs and I'm a big fan of the whole Korg line of keyboards, so I have Korg polysynths and Monopoly. We mostly bought them via eBay, and few of them are MIDI-fied. They are in their original state. I can play them well enough to get something into a computer and make it sound good."

Despite their avalanche of rare and vintage gear, the Dust Brothers wax most lyrically about Pro Tools and especially Ableton Live, repeatedly saying that they now finally have the equipment at their disposal that they have "always dreamed of". "Because of the way I produce things and create things with samples and loops," states King, "especially Ableton is what I dreamed of back in the mid-1980s, when I was using primitive software with numbers flashing across the screen. I had to program it all and it was just so complicated. I knew that the ability would be there to do what Ableton does, which is that you can work with loops and time-stretching in real time. If I have a beat going or even maybe just a tempo running, I can click on Files in my library and then on Samples, and audition beats or music or guitars or basses or whatever, and they will instantly play back to whatever I'm playing.

Wurlitzer and Fender Rhodes electric pianos in the main live area.

"In the past I had to pull the sample up, choose which one might work, trim it, tune it, sync it, and after a long process I could decide whether it really was cool or not. Now I just click and instantly hear things from my library playing in sync with the song. It's exactly what I need, and allows me to focus on the creative aspect and not get distracted by technical things."

"The very first sampler we had was a Roland F10," recalls Simpson, "and then we went with the Akai S900. Those were still mono samplers. Then we dabbled with the SP12, the predecessor of the SP1200, and then we had a Roland S770, which I think was the first stereo sampler. We did all of Paul's Boutique on an Emax HD, which was mono and 12-bit and had a 22kHz sampling rate. So we had plenty of experience of the primitive domain of early sampling: low bit rate and low sampling rate. But we've never been in love with the degraded sound of those early machines, we were always trying to make samples sound better. We had Pro Tools in our heads before it even existed. Since both John and I came from a computer background, we knew what computers were capable of, and we were kind of bombed that the samplers were still so lo-fi or hard to use.

"The sequencer we used on Paul's Boutique was very primitive software called Texture by a guy called Roger Powell. This was when computers still had no user interface, it basically was just a bunch of letters and numbers across a green screen. After that we used this very primitive sync box, the JL Cooper PPS1, that allowed us to sync the computer to tape. We also had an Allen & Heath console with very primitive automation with which you could create mute events. So we basically filled all tracks on a multitrack with loops, and arranged songs by using these automated mute things. It was such a painful process. I remember thinking 'God, why couldn't we just have a timeline across a screen and chunks for each sample and a visual representation for the waveforms across the time line? Why do I have to sit here and type all these numbers and MIDI times?'"

A Piece Of History John King and Mike Simpson are quite happy to see their old sampling and sequencing gear relegated to the dustbin of history, but they had to go back to their bad old Emax HD for a song called 'Hell Yes' from the new Beck album. "Beck was into a song that I had carried around on a cassette since 1989," King elaborates. "It had been composed on an MPC 60 and the Emax sampler, the same one we used on Paul's Boutique. At the time I had just bought some new records and had pulled a few things and programmed this beat. It was very hip-hop. "Beck and I decided to use it, and started working with it from cassette, while my assistants and I were frantically searching all storage areas for the original disks. When we finally found them I had to contact the Experience Music Project Museum in Seattle, because we had donated our Emax sampler to the hip-hop exhibit for its grand opening. They sent the sampler back to us, and I popped in the disk and lo and behold, it worked! We also managed to load the MPC60 disk into Mike's MPC2000, so we were able to get a more pure sound than we had from the cassette, which had a lot of hiss on it and didn't have a lot of dynamics." This might sound like a lot of trouble, but attempting to recreate the original from scratch would have risked losing the magic. "I certainly know better than to try to re-record or recreate things that sound cool," says John King. "Record companies used to do demos, and that's something Mike and I always fought against early in our career. When something sounds great, it's done. You don't want to go back and re-record something that sounds great. The way we recorded with computers in our history, the quality was always good enough. You don't want to repeat golden moments. We always felt like 'We don't do demos, we only do finished product.'" King still has an MPC 3000 and an MPC 4000, and remarks "It's more fun to have pads to bounce than mousing in notes. But to be honest, I rarely use it." "We'll do a bit of MIDI programming," Simpson adds, "usually to augment a loop. We may program in some 808 kicks or snares. We also use Reason sometimes to augment beats."

Things To Come

So if Ableton Live has finally made the Dust Brothers' dreams come true, what ambitions do they still hold for the future? Above all, it seems, they'd like to do an album as artists in their own right. One of their soundtrack albums, 1999's Fight Club, was released under the Brothers' own name, but John King stresses that "Fight Club is not a Dust Brothers album, it's a Fight Club album. It was music done for a film and not meant to stand alone. We've been working on a Dust Brothers album since 1987, but songs continually get given to artists we work with. And now we're both so busy with things we're working on, and we both have families, and there's life, that it's hard to get round to doing your own thing..."

Published in SOS May 2005