[Nick] Sonic.
[Nick] Well,
[Nick] hello, everybody. Welcome to Sonic Talk episode nine zero four. I'm sure there's an old Moog module that's got that
[Nick] that serial number, but I can't remember. I didn't actually look into it for the show because it's too hot here. It's 32 degrees in the office. My home office is getting Internet back in tomorrow,
[Nick] so I probably will do shows from there while this
[Nick] the the planet continues to melt down. But, anyway, we'll be talking about music technology this week as we do every week for Sonic Talk. Sonic Talk is a place to get your news, get a bit of discussion and comment. We talk about synthesizers,
[Nick] drum machines, software, music production, performing,
[Nick] all kinds of stuff that goes along with it. And, yes, there is some AI involved because it seems to be all per pervasive, but we try and keep it to a minimum because I know how it upsets so many of you. But there will be some today. But, actually, more of an interesting topic than you would expect. Anyway, we're
[Nick] we're recording today. I've already said that bit. I wanna say thanks very much to our friends in the chat. I can see Tommy, Carrie Cullen, Floppy Winkle, Neighbor Jack,
[Nick] Tiki Lounge Zombie. That's a good one. The Fiberman
[Nick] suits us.
[Nick] And, of course, Wagyu's in there somewhere, manning the controls of the moderation
[Nick] button. So be nice to them. Otherwise, you might get banned. No. He's very good, actually. And also helps a lot from a lot of other streamers. So round of applause for for Wagyu as ever.
[Nick] Let's see. Nick Howes. Oh, I haven't seen you for a little while. Nice to see Boncarama,
[Nick] Katie Kilobyte as well. Lots of people out there. Lovely to see you all. Before I get on to introducing our guests, as is customary, I'll just let you know what's coming up.
[Nick] We've got
[Nick] well, actually, before I do that, you can win a sequential form
[Nick] if you go to australicstate.com/competition.
[Nick] Well, that's running for about a month. I can't believe we've got and I don't wanna adjust. Oh, these glimming cookies. Anyway, we've got a competition running. You can
[Nick] enter that via Instagram or via the the sign up form so it suits everybody.
[Nick] Also coming up at
[Nick] 06:00
[Nick] today, I've got the Pittsburgh Modular SV two,
[Nick] our review of that, which I missed the deadline. So we've got Rich Nicole on. We'll be talking about that a little bit later.
[Nick] Currently,
[Nick] also, if if you didn't see the Ketler, the Genki instrument, Ketler piece we did with
[Nick] Venus Theory, that's really good. Also, if you're a member on YouTube or Patreon at the right tier, you can get hold of a really good sounding
[Nick] decent sample instrument that Venus Theory did. And if you're not a member, there's a 30% discount for our memberships at the moment on over on YouTube over on Patreon
[Nick] for new members. Gosh. It all gets a bit complicated. So, yeah, I'll just play the ad for the
[Nick] for members because I I just want to reiterate it. Back after this.
[Nick] Yeah. Indeed. So let's go on to a guest. We've got a fulsome panel today. We've got a full four. My my celebrity squares shot is is fully populated.
[Nick] Let's go over to Devin. We haven't seen Devin for ages. Devin came on a couple of shows. Devin Bellageaux is there in Canada
[Nick] in his studio where
[Nick] we saw Devin. Devin came down to visit us or visit me. We went out for lunch. Lovely to see you. Nice to see you again. I don't think we've spoken since then. How are you, Devin?
[Devin] I'm doing great, Nick. It's good to be back, and, yeah, great to see you again. It was really cool to come visit the offices down in Bath, see where all the magic happens. So, yeah, good to be on today.
[Nick] Yeah. So what's been going on? You released your album. We know how did that go? Because I know you're very busy doing it. And I've I've spotted a couple of videos as well of yours, which look really interesting. You did cinematic
[Nick] since and then a really good odyssey jam, which I might play a little later. I've got some questions about what happened in that video. But how does the album going? Everything good?
[Devin] Yeah. Everything's been great. I've been, you know, real busy. Just album was released. That was my focus for a while. Now it's been just back to the main focus, the YouTube channel for the last few months. And, yeah, I've been doing a bunch of really interesting things around MPE. So I've been I guess that's why I posted the Odyssey Jam is I've been kinda diving in more into MPE and kind of testing out different MPE controllers and different synth combinations. So along with a couple of detours to some really cool boutique effects boxes
[Devin] that I guess we'll maybe talk about later, that's kind of been my focus for the last few months. And I also just got back from a much needed holiday, very rare for me, but went camping with my partner for a couple days up in the beautiful Canadian wilderness
[Devin] up here in BC. So it's been good. Yeah. Not as hot as over in UK. Any any any bears?
[Devin] Any bears? You know what? Everybody always asks that. There are so many bears in British Columbia. And fun fact, we're also the mountain lion capital of the world. So,
[Nick] yeah, it's definitely it's kinda like the same thing with Australians where you just don't wanna think about it. Like, people always ask, like, are you scared of that? I mean, you have your bear spray. You're just supposed to hope for the best. So far, I've only seen them from the car when I'm camping and not in my tent, thankfully. So That I'm I'm so pleased to hear that. Mean, I guess that adds an extra fristle. That's sort of a real getting back to nature because you're also getting back to the kind of basic instincts of survival and running very fast away from big scary things. You know? So there's all that's always just on the edge of consciousness, which might sort of add a bit of edge to it, I suppose.
[Devin] For real. No. That's definitely you you sleep well. Yeah.
[Nick] I'm glad. Well, I I I'm about and, of course, British Columbia this time of year is mosquito hell, isn't it? I imagine there's aren't there lots of mosquitoes around at that time as well? You know what? It's it's not too bad. We it's I think, you know, the reason why people say BC stands for bring cash in Canada, it's the most expensive part of the country, is because we somehow got lucky with the most moderate weather, the ocean, the mountains, and we have less bad bugs than the rest of Canada. So it's not too bad, honestly. Perfect. You're in the you're in the sweet spot then. Well, lovely to have you, Devin. We'll we'll get on to a little bit extra later on. And we've also got Paulie Bowe, who's there in Birmingham,
[Nick] fresh from
[Nick] you did a gig at the weekend, didn't you? And I saw you posted a picture of you with Cenk. That was com was it a computer music fair or event?
[Nick] I'm sorry. I should have read up. Yeah. It was specifically
[Paulee] a Commodore Amiga event.
[Paulee] Right. And Cenk is is
[Paulee] making Amiga software now. Cool looking, kind of electron ish, you know, parameter locked sequences and things like that. So that was awesome to see.
[Paulee] But, yeah, I had a great gig,
[Paulee] and and it's kind of been nonstop this week because also,
[Paulee] yesterday,
[Paulee] I had my first meeting
[Paulee] with Birmingham Conservatoire,
[Paulee] which is exciting,
[Paulee] looking at what kind of program of disability music
[Paulee] activities we're gonna try and bring
[Paulee] to Birmingham and that's gonna be really cool. We're gonna do some Oh. Kind of hack spaces,
[Paulee] some maker stuff,
[Paulee] some gigs hopefully.
[Paulee] Or we're scoping out all of like where we can get wheelchairs in the building and stuff like that. So that's gonna be absolutely brilliant.
[Paulee] And finally,
[Paulee] I got some cool new stuff, which is always your favorite part of my intro, isn't it? So I'm gonna show you what I've What have you got, Paul? Show us what you got, Paul. Oh,
[Nick] is that the drum One
[Paulee] is the drum farm, which arrived today.
[Paulee] That was really going to be
[Paulee] it's quite a module.
[Nick] It certainly is.
[Paulee] So that's gonna be awesome. It's got so many different
[Paulee] synths
[Paulee] algorithms on it
[Paulee] and and sampling and cool stuff like that. So that's gonna make a good SonicLab review, I think.
[Paulee] And the other thing I've got is is a vintage thing, this weird thing.
[Paulee] It's called the Yamaha q r 10
[Paulee] and it's it's like the guts Yeah. Of an arranger
[Paulee] So it's like the guts of an arranger keyboard
[Paulee] with, like, about I think the ROM on it's about one meg. So the sounds are kinda terrible, but cool in a nineties way. But it's got a sampler on it.
[Paulee] It can sample about three seconds
[Paulee] at from 16
[Paulee] kilohertz down to four kilohertz.
[Paulee] But then the crazy thing is you can just, you know, these cheesy arranger rhythms,
[Paulee] you can just swap that for your weird sample on the bass in chord parts.
[Paulee] So weird
[Paulee] and then and have a waltz go in and then switch your
[Paulee] your own samples in it, it sounds absolutely mad. So I've been having a lot of fun with that as well. So that's me Oh, cool. For this week. Is is that one of the the Yamaha things that's based on those
[Nick] what the the the chip? It's like the AW the the Sound Blaster, the chip that was in the Sound Blaster.
[Paulee] That
[Paulee] no. That was two two OPFM, I think, the YM chips This and
[Paulee] is more just like early AWM,
[Paulee] 12 bit samples and stuff. So Wow. It's really cheesy, but
[Paulee] it's so cheesy. But it was £50, and I I was like, I'm gonna have to That's buy
[Nick] a bargain. And we've also got Rich Nickel who's fresh.
[Nick] Fresh from the launch of the
[Nick] Pittsburgh Modular SV two, LifeForbes SV two, which you can see behind him. We actually saw it in a little bit of a sneak preview of a a long time back. So you've got I see you've got what looks like is that a tiger poster behind the SV, or is that a tiger
[Nick] on its end as well? You've got both behind
[Richard] you. That is that's the tiger on my shelf. It's a very thin shelf, so it has to stand up.
[Richard] Ah. But this is my sort of behind me is my sort of tchotchke wall
[Richard] where I just stuff every little
[Richard] knickknack that I get so that the Taiga is on there. I try to have my instruments in my little my office is the dining room in my house, so I I try not to make it too cluttered, but I do have this one section of the wall where I try to stuff all my little toys and stuff.
[Richard] And that is living over there. And then
[Richard] the s v two, have set up behind me because I'm doing a probably early next week, I'm gonna do a livestream and just sorta answer everybody's questions and everything. So I've been setting up for that, which is why I'm on a different camera today. Not that Oh, I see. Difference.
[Nick] Oh, interesting. Yeah. Yes. So how did the launch go? I mean, I've got I've got the review. I I missed the deadline, which is much to my chagrin, but that's going out if I didn't already mention. I think I did. It's going out after this show about 06:00. It's gonna premiere, so check it out. I really enjoyed it. I mean, the the the I guess this is the first topic. I mean, we're not here to just blow, you know, to tickle your ego, but, I mean, it it's it's a really nice piece of work, so you must be very pleased with it. I mean, I'm just curious about
[Nick] this process. I mean, you were saying in the preshow that it's the release part that you find
[Nick] the less enjoyable, I suppose, because it's where mean, isn't it a bit like when you when you have to play a demo for somebody and you immediately start hearing all the things that you weren't sure about that are wrong with it? Do you get the same sort of vibro synthesizers as well when you release it? Oh, no. I knew I should have whatever. You know? Or have you got it nailed? No. I
[Richard] I've I've Of course you have. The product coming out is the product we want to come out. You know, we've been working on s v two now for three years.
[Richard] So it's
[Richard] it's very cooked.
[Richard] It's actually been
[Richard] it's been finished. The production was finished about five months ago.
[Richard] And for, boring business reasons, it's it's been, waiting it's waiting patiently in the warehouses.
[Richard] But,
[Richard] no. Launch day is really stressful for me because it's the day that, hey. Here's this thing that I've thought about twenty four hours a day for the last three years.
[Richard] And,
[Richard] you put it up on the web, and then everyone
[Richard] immediately
[Richard] tells you what's wrong with it based on a small picture that they've seen. Or one sound that they've heard, They're like, oh, that doesn't sound very good. I'm like, you heard three seconds of one sound. It's a synthesizer. It makes different sounds. If you want a different sound, we could make a different one.
[Richard] And and, you know, there's this whole idea. I have this in my mind of here's the things I want people to be excited about for it, you know, because to me, there's some interesting things. And I'm like, we worked really hard on these bits to make it stand out and make it a little bit different. You know, this is the stuff I'm interested as
[Richard] an analog researcher.
[Richard] These are the bits that interested me. And
[Richard] so
[Richard] every now and then, someone will like it for the reason you want them to like it, and that's very
[Richard] that feels very good. But most of the time, people like it for their own reasons.
[Richard] And it's hard for me to get that wrap that around my head that no people artists are gonna like it for the way they like it or have questions in the way they have questions. So it's just it's very stressful for me. So yesterday, yeah, like I was saying in the preshow,
[Richard] from the moment I woke up until I went to bed, my stomach was just in knots all day. Oh. But
[Richard] the the the thoughts and the the the feedback has been very positive. I can't wait for people to actually get them
[Richard] and start making music with them because that's the whole point. We talk about this a lot at work where, you know, we don't make medical equipment. We make musical instruments. People can pre create art with this stuff. So I can't wait to hear what people do with it because it's always so wildly different than what I've done. Even in the reviews,
[Richard] your review and at Starsky's review, the music and the sounds that come out of it are so different than anything that I would have ever thought of. So that that is fun for me, and it's very exciting.
[Nick] Oh, I'm glad to hear that because
[Nick] yeah. I I I I'm conscious that I've been doing this for so long now that it's very easy to fall into the same
[Nick] habits.
[Nick] Devin, you probably find the same thing. You look at sense and stuff. Sometimes you just think, oh, wow. I played those chords last time,
[Nick] and I played them again.
[Nick] And I played them again and whatnot. So, yeah, I don't know.
[Nick] Yeah. But, yeah, have you got any Pittsburgh stuff? You you should try it, definitely, if not.
[Devin] Yeah. No. I haven't I haven't had the chance to to get any Pittsburgh stuff. I haven't worked with Pittsburgh either yet, but I have played the Taiga. A buddy of mine has one, and it's a great synth. I definitely have been thinking about picking one of those up for a while.
[Devin] It looks really cool. I think I was saying to you before the show, Rich, that the
[Devin] the different ways you can gain stage the filter and the different character modes and then being able to add more saturation before,
[Devin] I feel like for me at least, that's what I really look for in monosense. And I think so much of the more I get into designing bass sounds for different genres, whether it's more modern bass sounds or more vintage bass sounds, it's almost like the gain staging and the level of saturation
[Devin] is oftentimes
[Devin] as important, if not more important than the original wave shape you're using or even the style of filter. And you can really just, I feel like, shape a lot of sounds. So if I do end up checking one out, I'm really excited to see how far we can push it. I like to always on my demos try to if somebody's so far, a lot of the demos I've heard, I was watching Starzkies before this. It's really awesome. Has that classic vintage tone. I think for me, I'd probably see how far I can push it in the opposite direction and get into this dark industrial Gesaffelstein
[Devin] territory. So polar opposite.
[Nick] You could definitely do that, I I would say. Gain staging
[Richard] gain staging and synthesis is so critically important. And that was one of the things that always bothered me about Eurorack because there were so many Eurorack modules coming out. And still to this day, it's this way. It drives me crazy.
[Richard] And they'll have all the CV inputs you could want, but there's no attenuators on them or there's no attenuvers on them. So, essentially, they're turning these controls
[Richard] that could be very subtle into on off switches,
[Richard] and I find that wildly frustrating. So
[Richard] CV attenuators and really tuning things so that you're hitting the right spot of those is always super important. And since and, you know, not my instruments, I think, just in general in synthesis,
[Richard] the amount of subtlety in that is really incredible, and gain staging is so important, especially in these big complex instruments
[Richard] because you are hitting limits every single stage of the way. And how you hit those and where you add drive does make a huge difference.
[Richard] Mhmm. Yeah. Nice. That's point. Lesson of the day. Well done. Thank you very much.
[Nick] Know, Paulie, I know, right, because you've got a couple of Pittsburgh things.
[Nick] I mean, I I I I personally
[Nick] the s v one was my kind of
[Nick] benchmark because I I love the sound of that thing. I've got the original one, not the mark two where there was a couple of stability issues sorted out, but I love
[Nick] the sound of that thing. And this this has definitely got some of that going on and more. That's for sure.
[Nick] Paulie,
[Nick] subtractive synthesizer, I mean, it's a bit larger. You've I don't know if you've got enough space. If you're filling every available nook and cranny with these little Uh-huh. These little sort of a range of things, where are you gonna find room for this stuff?
[Paulee] God knows. Well, this is the thing. In order in order to get me to move house, I've been promised a bigger studio.
[Paulee] Because getting getting an autistic person to move house is quite a task.
[Paulee] It's
[Paulee] Yeah. You know, because it's like, it's all changed, it's routine, and blah blah blah. So I've been bribed with with the the promise of a slightly bigger studio, so that'll be okay.
[Paulee] But, yeah.
[Nick] You're prefilling, This synth.
[Paulee] Yes.
[Paulee] This synth
[Paulee] interests me for a few reasons.
[Paulee] I think, you know,
[Paulee] to a certain extent, I'm quite burned out on analog synthesis.
[Paulee] I kind of I kind of
[Paulee] don't really get excited when a new monosynth comes
[Paulee] along,
[Paulee] because
[Paulee] by now I've got
[Paulee] all sorts in my studio, you know, I've got like
[Paulee] analog synths with Curtis filters, I've got analog synths with state variable filters, I've got all this going on. But
[Paulee] what I like about Pittsburgh see, I said it right. I didn't say Pittsburgh as I usually do. What I like about Pittsburgh designs
[Paulee] is that they keep pushing the envelope of analog.
[Paulee] So,
[Paulee] like, I'm a big fan of the
[Paulee] life forms primary oscillator that we've got because that's got the blade wave on it.
[Paulee] And a few other little bits and pieces which, you know, wave folded and things like that, which which really take it into a
[Paulee] a more interesting territory, and and
[Paulee] the fact that this one has got
[Paulee] through zero f m on it is the thing that interests me, basically. Sweet.
[Paulee] Mhmm.
[Paulee] Because you can you can really push things
[Paulee] outside
[Paulee] of a, you know, a safe
[Paulee] analog territory
[Paulee] get Yeah. Almost kind of digital ish kind of tones.
[Paulee] And the other thing I really like is the the little, you know, like a a Devo power dome hat shaped wave that you've got in there. It's like pulse width modulation.
[Nick] Yeah. It's the pulse
[Paulee] pulse sync. Yep. Yeah. That that
[Paulee] that reminds me of kind of like early CMOS logic kind of waveforms and stuff like that. So I really really like like that.
[Paulee] Yeah. So there's enough bits in there
[Paulee] for even someone with loads of analog since he's a bit burned out to go, oh, I wonder what that will sound like,
[Paulee] you know, if if I do this and then I do this. So it it got my mind excited with the possibilities.
[Paulee] And lastly, spring reverb is always a win on any instrument
[Nick] as far as I'm concerned.
[Nick] A murky.
[Nick] And you could bash it, and it don't it pings as well, which I demonstrate in my
[Nick] in case anybody wanted to know. I I didn't drop the instrument. I just tapped gently on the front of the heart, and you can hear it go boing.
[Nick] But, yeah, it's nice. So satisfying. Yeah.
[Nick] Well, congratulations,
[Nick] Richard. It must be a relief now it's out there. So I guess the thing is is well, as you were saying, it's been it's been sitting around for a little while because of biz for various business reasons. So now you so must be caught up. You must have a queue of all these other things coming coming along, which must be
[Nick] keep you keep you excited.
[Nick] Right?
[Richard] Yeah. Well, that's the thing. We're always working on something new, and the we're working on one project. We're trying to do it as publicly as possible where we're doing
[Richard] updated versions of the s v one. We're doing a mini version,
[Richard] and then we're gonna do a mini version of the VoltageLab as well. And we're doing it all sort of in the open, the design.
[Richard] We're asking Instagram people what they think of various features, whether they should be added or not, or how we should implement things. So we're sort we're using the whole thing as sort of an experiment
[Richard] to try
[Richard] and bring the people in. Crowdsourcing without without a Kickstarter, I suppose, in a way. Yeah? Yeah. That's that was kind of the idea because these it sort of started as a joke one night. I was talking to my buddy, Herman, and I was like, well, what if we did this? He's like, no. That'll never work. So I thought, oh, we gotta try it.
[Richard] And I kinda wanted a I wanted an s v one that had the modern oscillator cores that are in the s v two
[Richard] that have the auto tune and the through zero and all that. So I thought, well, let's let's do it and see what people think.
[Richard] And that's sort of outside of what we're
[Richard] also been doing. I've been talking about a drum machine now for years
[Richard] where we designed one. And at the last minute, I said, no. I don't wanna do it like that. Let's start over. So, hopefully, that's coming out
[Richard] towards the end of this year. But right now, it's it's all about the s v two. I'm so excited to get it out and for people to hear it because I it does have a voice of its own. And I I think it deserves
[Richard] someone's attention to at least hear and judge it based on what it can do.
[Nick] Absolutely. Well, I'm into that, and may long may it continue.
[Nick] Okay. I think I'll take a short break here, and we'll just have we're back after this. Yeah.
[Nick] So there's a few bits of extra news today as well. I I wonder with whether to go I might go for this actually next because
[Nick] Richard has had his his his pro I guess, his topic. The other one was you you brought this one up, Paulie. I don't know if I've got an
[Nick] actual
[Nick] don't think there is actually other
[Nick] no. That's not mood pan, is it? Plate Platts palate. This looked interesting. So this is a
[Nick] a custom free website that allows you to create custom patches for your mutable instruments plats,
[Nick] which is, as we know,
[Nick] there's a lot of
[Nick] open there's been open sourced, a lot of that stuff. So this is really inter I I get the feeling this might be vibe coded,
[Nick] but I could be wrong.
[Nick] What is it that excites you about this? Because I don't use a Platts. I've not really kinda come across it, Paulie. I throw sort of throw it in there.
[Paulee] Sure. I think
[Paulee] the the fact that
[Paulee] it's
[Paulee] mutable instruments
[Paulee] interests me straight away because there's such a legacy there of, you know, as I said, open source designs
[Paulee] and,
[Paulee] you know, real
[Paulee] real kind of
[Paulee] new thinking about things, you know, they were they were very forward thinking.
[Paulee] And this, you know, again,
[Paulee] offers something where you can completely customize your module.
[Paulee] There's already, I think, yeah, 24 different
[Paulee] in three banks
[Paulee] algorithms on plats,
[Paulee] but, you know, if if you don't like a couple of them, if you think a couple of them are a dud,
[Paulee] then you could swap it out for some something else, then there's already a few user,
[Paulee] kind of like the core guest DK in a way, I guess. There's a few user
[Paulee] algorithms and oscillators on there, including an analog clap,
[Paulee] which is really cool. And I think there's also one which is like pulse star synthesis,
[Paulee] which sounds really, really cool.
[Paulee] So I just I just thought we talked
[Paulee] we talked a lot about
[Paulee] getting more out of your instruments
[Paulee] in the past, you know, because the world is everything's more expensive.
[Paulee] There's a chip shortage,
[Paulee] all of that kind of stuff. And I thought that this was a good way to get more out of a a classic module, basically.
[Nick] Yeah. I mean, god forbid. I mean, I'm sure, Rich, you must be delighted that you're not actually making anything that requires RAM or hard drives at the moment because that would just be, yeah, an absolute disaster.
[Nick] I mean, it's it's a yeah. This is becoming a real problem, and there's no real
[Nick] I don't think there's any real sign that it's gonna get any better, which is a real drag for us. So it's gonna affect people who maybe want to build sample libraries and things where you need storage. It's like, well, I haven't got any room, and I can't afford a hard drive. The hard drive costs three times what the instrument costs, you know, whereas it used to be the other way around. I don't know, Devin. Are you It's so much worse than that, Nick.
[Richard] Yeah. Is it really? It's so much it's so much worse than that now. Thanks to the Strait Of Hormuz being closed.
[Richard] There is shortages right now on resistors
[Richard] and capacitors
[Richard] and
[Richard] just PCB,
[Richard] the materials you need to make PCBs.
[Richard] So Nice.
[Richard] We're working on a a project, and I just got the bill for the
[Richard] the extra costs
[Richard] for
[Richard] resistors where
[Richard] resistors are going up in price 100 x
[Richard] Wow. From two weeks ago. And it's it's crazy because these are, you know, 100 k resistors. Resistors that you use by the thousands and everything
[Richard] are just the prices are going crazy.
[Richard] So it's not it's no longer just
[Richard] RAM and chip shortages.
[Richard] It's it's affecting even us analog guys.
[Nick] Wow. Oh, that's that's that's a very that's yeah. Sorry. That's very disappointing. I I didn't mean to bring the mood down quite so bleakly, but I suppose I suppose it can't be helped.
[Nick] I I I can't remember, Devin. Are you are you in in modular world? Is mutable instruments something that that have you have you dived dove dived in?
[Nick] Diven in? I don't know. Yeah.
[Devin] No. I've I've actually never used mutable instruments other than, I guess, within, like, something like the Mini Freak that has the open source
[Devin] oscillators in there. And a good example, as Pauli said, of why open source is so cool. It's always really interesting. Much like remixing or sampling in the musical composition world. It's really cool to see what people will do with open source ideas and iterate on them because I really do love those oscillators inside the MiniFreak.
[Devin] But, yeah, my my exposure to modular, I I've been tempted for a long time, and one of my good friends has always been trying to get me to get into Eurorack, but I've just been more into semi modular since,
[Devin] stuff like the Matriarch or the 2,600 m and different things like that.
[Devin] The Malevolent was one I used for quite a while. That was cool. Because I do like at the end of the day, like, so much of my work is producing music, whether it's for myself or for other people, and I like having a normal signal path. But I'm sure one day in the future, I'll dive into the Eurorack world, and I'll be like, why didn't I get into this sooner? Because it is really cool, and I like, interesting the idea of being able to create a completely custom
[Nick] sense. So yeah. Yeah. That's a fair point. I guess if you're doing music to picture and therefore to deadlines or any of that kind of stuff, then it's harder to incorporate
[Nick] a physical workflow that where you can't recreate easily somewhere
[Nick] where you were Mhmm. You know, previously. But, yeah, it's a very different horses for courses. Okay. And that that was actually that that was the other thing I was gonna bring up next because
[Nick] that
[Nick] you posted a video, Devin, on
[Nick] oh, actually, no. Yeah. Let's do that one. No. No. Let's do this one because I thought this was kind of fun. We did talk a bit a little bit about AI. There's a great article on
[Nick] CDM by Peter Kern,
[Nick] which is kind of this new trend of creating
[Nick] deliberately
[Nick] misinformation
[Nick] and bad music to train AI on. So it sort of screws with the algorithms, which I think is a really interesting idea.
[Nick] This one was brilliant. This is Luke Nichols called Hey, I I Come and Train on this song. I'm assuming it's okay. I can print I can play it because it might get scraped. So yeah.
[Speaker 4] Very much Woody Guthrie. Song. Hey. Yeah. Come and train on this song.
[Speaker 4] Come on and drink it up like oatmeal. There ain't not nothing wrong
[Speaker 4] with this song.
[Speaker 4] Here, come here to collect my correct words
[Speaker 4] and absorb how I play all the right chords on this guitar.
[Speaker 4] Yeah. This song is so much smarter than Mozart or even Mozart.
[Speaker 4] Yeah. I made this too for you, AI to borrow.
[Speaker 4] But if you would, just please return it in a few days
[Speaker 4] before tomorrow.
[Speaker 4] Yeah. It'll teach you how to count all the times. The letter z appears in the word easy.
[Nick] So It's just it's brilliant. It's like a sort of nonsense, isn't it? It's just such a it's all I mean, it's like a it's almost a genre of com comedy at the same time as serving a purpose. I know Ben Jordan wrote
[Nick] has has done some research into things that you can encode your music in that puts this horrible masking that AI can't get past, and it just sort of makes everything sound atonal and makes it useless.
[Nick] And I think in a way, you know, this feels like quite a
[Nick] quite a smart thing. I mean, maybe there's maybe there's something, you know, the equivalent that that writers, that people who make websites who so we're all getting scraped as well could just it just turns everything once it's pulled into sort of gobbledygook, and it's almost impossible to to use.
[Nick] And it there's a sense of pollution of these models, which I don't think is a bad thing.
[Nick] Paulie, I'll come to you first because I know you're not key. I'm not keen on generative AI either, you know. So but but this just seems like such a brilliant bit of, resistance,
[Nick] doesn't it?
[Paulee] Poisoning the well
[Paulee] kind of vibes. Yeah. It Yeah. It is. It is a it is a huge bit of resistance. I mean, of course, the only thing is is you have to kind of make and release bad music to me,
[Paulee] which which for me would be a bit of a chore, you know, just like purposefully
[Paulee] doing something like that.
[Paulee] But, yeah, I
[Paulee] I like the idea. I think it's very funny. It's not
[Paulee] it's not where I'm kind of
[Paulee] going with my music at the moment. I think that I'm more just
[Paulee] completely blocking it out
[Paulee] and continuing on my little path
[Paulee] that I'm on. Because it doesn't seem to have a
[Paulee] you know, this constant existential
[Paulee] threat of
[Paulee] AI's gonna take your jobs.
[Paulee] Yeah. Well, It there's that it
[Paulee] it hasn't for me, at least, it hasn't
[Paulee] it hasn't happened yet.
[Paulee] And so I'm just I'm just kind of strongly in denial and just continuing
[Paulee] to make music using floppy disks and weird old computers.
[Nick] And I think And think be going okay. Yeah.
[Nick] Myself.
[Nick] I think that's probably a really good approach, but I I just like the idea that people are gonna be are putting effort into into this. I mean, this Yes. This looks I mean, he he makes this look effortless. It almost like he just kind of makes it up on the spot. But obviously, there's there's talent and skill there. I just thought it was fun, you know. And I've done One of the thing, Gorean Oh, sorry. Remembered,
[Paulee] it was some some guy was doing a video saying that if you scream into a rack of servers in a data center, it doesn't look.
[Paulee] And it's just this small
[Paulee] TikTok
[Paulee] Instagram video of a guy just screaming
[Paulee] into
[Paulee] a data form server and watching all of the little, you know,
[Paulee] things on the screen go mad and stuff. So I wonder if that's gonna be a new a new trend of people going into data centers and screaming at things.
[Nick] I imagine the security in a data center is gonna only increase,
[Nick] but it's an interesting idea, though. I mean, it's but then there there there's been quite a lot. There's a tradition of, obviously, music as a form of resistance and revolution and
[Nick] protest and stuff. I mean, Woody Guthrie was very famously known for his protest songs, I believe. I mean, you know, and then Bob Dylan after that. These are sort of it's quite a long tradition. So the fact that he's using this style is somehow even more poetic, don't you think?
[Devin] Yeah. No. I think it's really cool.
[Devin] And I think it's something that was naturally gonna arise from the fact that AI server services like Suno and Yudio, they've gotten so good at doing, I guess, like, very safe music that is
[Devin] kind of
[Devin] aping. It's obviously not as good as the real thing, but it is able to at least make a facsimile of most of the most popular genres now. So I think it was logical that something would arise that would be weird and different from that. And that's a funny idea that having like, I agree with what Polly said, where I'm not sure if I would wanna go out of my way to purposely make just bad music,
[Devin] but I do think it's really cool that people are doing it. And I would almost something that I've been doing kind of a a a side story, but it's related.
[Devin] I recently partnered up to start a side project called Desperado Club with with another composer, Trevor Hoffman. And both of us, we worked together on a couple projects, and we really got along on the idea that it feels that the tides are changing in the music production world right now towards people being more open minded to stuff that is a little weird and combines genres in unusual ways.
[Devin] And so we formed this this group because he is a classical pianist who's done his career in
[Devin] scoring for, like, TV animation,
[Devin] kids movies, that kind of thing. So think kind of like like John Williams, Danny Elfman type type stuff, and he doesn't really use synthesizers. And then for me, as you guys know, my whole world is synthesizers and electronic music production.
[Devin] And we paired up and we've been writing music with just specifically, like, the goal on this docket is we even from our our sort of, like, our press
[Devin] photos and the way we're kind of, you know, going about things and are are using limitations is to try to make stuff that is specifically really weird and combines genres in a way that AI probably wouldn't think to do. Because I think it's been a really like, I wanna say it's not necessarily a good situation we're in, but it has like any big creative disruption in any industry, it does make you have to think about things in a different way. And I can tell already in the last year or so that I feel like my style of production, I'm forcing myself to be a little bit more, like, open minded to, hey. Maybe I'll put a weird chord here. Maybe I'll change the time signature here. Maybe I'll add some element from a different genre, like some
[Devin] crazy classical
[Devin] choir
[Devin] into this synth wave track. And I think part of the genesis of that is thinking,
[Devin] how am I going to differentiate myself and continue being able to express myself creatively in a way that AI can't. So
[Nick] That's a really interesting point. I don't know, Rich. This is fascinating. It's all comes also I mean, because the way that AutoTune crept into the popular culture and then became
[Nick] a thing on its own. Isn't there a danger by doing this that that we effectively train ourselves
[Nick] to want to listen to nonsense and that AI then produces and do you see what I mean? It's sort of self fulfilling, I suppose. I'm I'm maybe I'm I'm I'm overthinking it a little bit.
[Richard] No. I I think you nailed it.
[Richard] We've trained ourselves
[Richard] to listen to nonsense. If you look at everybody,
[Richard] and what do they do? They sit and stare at three seconds of an Instagram video,
[Richard] and they go to the next one. Or TikTok, they just scroll through nonsense all day long that's
[Richard] you know, some of it's human made, but a lot of it is just algorithms generating garbage.
[Richard] And not only is the the algorithm generating it
[Richard] really tough, but the
[Richard] algorithms
[Richard] that are addicting you to this stuff are even better.
[Richard] So it's Mhmm. It's difficult to step away and
[Richard] do something
[Richard] else.
[Richard] I think what we have going for us as creatives is that,
[Richard] ultimately, everybody does have some sort of passion to create something. Now it might not be music. It might not be art, but they're creating something. And, eventually, you do get that itch where you're like, alright. You know what? I have sit to down and do something myself.
[Richard] The
[Richard] the CEO
[Richard] of
[Richard] Suno
[Richard] famously said that musicians don't really like making music, which is absurd.
[Richard] Most musicians make music because
[Richard] they physically
[Richard] and mentally have to do it to get through the week. This is this is therapy. This is this is how you get
[Richard] through your day. That certainly is how it is for me. I don't I very rarely release music, but I'm always making something because I have to. Mhmm. My brain forces me to do it. So everyone has these things. So
[Richard] AI take I don't think it's taking our creativity away, but what I think it's doing
[Richard] is it's making something that's already terrible, like TikTok and Instagram and all that. It's just making it so much worse. But I think that's gonna come around because, ultimately, what these companies want is free content that they can force you to watch to get you to watch commercials and
[Richard] consume these ads.
[Richard] But people are gonna get sick of that. It's sort of the
[Richard] Yeah. The uncanny valley kind of thing where we're gonna realize, no. This isn't this isn't real. I don't wanna watch this anymore, and I think people will go back and find something new. So it's sort of the.
[Richard] It's gonna get worse and worse and worse until we just be like, no. This isn't what I signed up for, and we all kinda move on.
[Nick] There was a I was listening to the podcast the other day where they were talking about the fact that a lot also a lot of the big companies, the big social media companies are now being
[Nick] sued and taken to court and having to pay fines about, you know, the way that they're reaching kids and whatnot. And so that ultimately
[Nick] Wow. Social media and will end up being
[Nick] a kind of social outcast and socially unacceptable like drink driving was. You know? It's it's like they become pariahs,
[Nick] so therefore nobody wants to know them anymore. And I think they've just that that they're just accelerating that. So I think there's probably some good news. Sorry. This is straying a little bit at a topic. That was probably a fire fall there. But, anyway, I just thought I really like the idea of this guy just sitting there strumming away. He there's loads of his other material is really good. He's that that sort of vibe, that kind of finger picking. I guess that's a three or four string banjo type of thing. I just thought it was nice. And I'm I'm glad that him and maybe other people are doing this because I think it it says even if it doesn't end up training, it says a lot to people who watch it. You know, there's four people here who've watched it, and whoever else maybe hasn't heard about it is going, oh, that's interesting. And it just sort of plants a seed, so I think that's pretty marvelous,
[Nick] generally speaking.
[Nick] Let's see. What should we oh, I was gonna go to this one. Yeah. Devin, I really enjoyed your your your synth jam in your last couple of videos. I've had some questions to ask about this, so I'm just gonna play a little bit of this. So I I downloaded it so I could play it. This is on your YouTube channel, which you'll able to see. So
[Nick] you've got the
[Nick] Osmo CE there that looks like and so is that a Bree six or a Bree
[Nick] E seven. Same company. The GS E seven. That looks nice. Yeah. And really fascinating is that
[Nick] test tube's full of waterfall
[Nick] LEDs as well. So this was a jam that you did that was a sort of cinematic thing. I'm guessing, was it kind of based on Odyssey type vibe soundtrack,
[Nick] which I guess in in many ways is quite similar
[Nick] to
[Nick] some of the sounds that we heard in the first
[Nick] oh, what was that? The the
[Nick] the one with
[Nick] I can't remember now. The the the Roman guy who who ends up dying in the in the in the rear. I've completely forgotten what it was called now.
[Nick] It's gone. Anyway, I'll I'll I'll I'll to me.
[Devin] Yeah.
[Nick] No. So no. Gladiator. The Chinese words. That's what I say. Gladiator. Classic.
[Nick] Classic.
[Devin] That's like oh, I can't believe I didn't think of that either. But
[Devin] no. Yeah. No. So so the as I mentioned, so I I I I've been really fascinated by MPE with synthesizers for a long time because my background is in acoustic instruments,
[Devin] and my biggest passion outside of just producing and performing music has always been, like, narrative games, movies,
[Devin] really great stories. And I I really try to think of when I'm writing music almost as telling the story. So MPE,
[Devin] as soon as I first tried, I think it was the very first little seaboard block, like, years ago. Rolly. Yeah. And yeah. The the, like, first iteration because the new Rolly's are are awesome, and they they work really well. But it was, like, the very first iteration. I tried it at someone's studio, and I was immediately like, okay. Here's the missing link. Because growing up playing guitar when I can just bend a note or even playing drums where something as simple as doing a crescendo with
[Devin] cymbals or violin. I I I'm kind of like a jack of all trades, master of none with instruments. My dad's a jazz musician anyway.
[Devin] Like, the whole learned a bunch of instruments. And so I really felt like as soon as I got into production,
[Devin] having to click in automation or be limited to just a mod wheel and, you know, single knob movements that are more or less, you know, linear and not being able to do more than, I guess, two things at a time, It the MPE really interested me. So
[Devin] I've been kind of on this side quest and, you know, ExpressVee
[Devin] were nice enough to also reach out and they wanted me to do a demo on the the Osmo CE. So I've kind of tied that in with what I'm doing. But what I've been wanting to do is really go through a bunch of synthesizers and find out which ones feel the most natural to use with MPUs. So I've been Interesting. Testing out a bunch of different VST's,
[Devin] synth style and boring some from other people.
[Devin] And just trying to see because whenever I'm writing music, if I'm doing stuff for, like, you know, a project, having that ability, even if it's just a single track doing atmospheres, but being able to really just in the moment kind of bend notes and kind of move along with whatever is happening on screen or whatever is happening in the song if it's just a piece of music and not for a picture.
[Devin] It's just really powerful. So so so far, I think I haven't tried all of them, but so far, I think the two best
[Devin] feeling MP hardware synthesizers that I've tried are the GS e seven, which I was playing there, and then the Deckard's Dream, which I was I was I borrowed that one, and unfortunately, I was like, oh, man. This works so well, but it's very expensive. I was like, man, I wish this wasn't the best one, but it does work just so beautifully
[Devin] that I'm, like, now tempted. I I might have to go pick one of those up eventually. So
[Devin] but, yeah, empty. Yeah. Definitely.
[Nick] And yeah. What was what's that
[Nick] that
[Nick] tube full of LEDs? Because I noticed it has lots of different is is it plasma or is it LEDs? Is I I I
[Devin] Yeah. I get asked about that a lot on the channel. It's it's just it's like an audio tube light that reacts to music. So in that mode, it was just sleeping, but it's it people ask me about this all the time on the channel. I don't know if it's even still made, but it's called a mass drop FFT light.
[Devin] And I just bought it on a whim for the studio, and it's been, like, I guess, a very popular thing that people are always asking me. They're like, oh, because when you're playing without headphones, it'll react live to your playing like a basically, like,
[Nick] this it's each band of the light is each huge spectrum. Like a little spectrum. It's a spectrum. Okay. Interesting. Interesting.
[Nick] That's an idea. Mhmm. That's interesting. And, Paulie, I know because you're you're musically very competent, and and you don't
[Nick] I've I'd at least as far as I can tell,
[Nick] MPE hasn't played a part in the way that you you perform those parts that you you put into your music. Is that something is that about choice or are you sort of know, would you would you like more of that stuff or is it not just not something that is fits with the sort of stuff that you do?
[Paulee] I've got
[Paulee] I've actually got Poly Aftertouch
[Paulee] on a couple of my old Ensonic
[Paulee] key beds.
[Paulee] Yep. So that can obviously bend notes per
[Paulee] per thing. Yeah. I I
[Paulee] think it's because I write
[Paulee] I write
[Paulee] in a lot of monophonic parts and layer them Right. Like an orchestra. I'm just
[Paulee] I'm just, like, putting a bit of portamento on and then just playing the the notes, I think. And then That makes sense. Yeah. And then using a foot pedal also for
[Paulee] for volume. So it's something simply I haven't got around to yet.
[Nick] No. Fair enough. I mean, I I just it's it's interesting because one thing that I find, and you might find it, Devin, as well. I've I've got the Osmo's
[Nick] keyboard version,
[Nick] and I find that any of these
[Nick] x y axis
[Nick] keyboards, you you tend to gravitate towards
[Nick] exactly the sort of sound that, you know, that that sort of baked slightly Arabic scale. You just can't help because it it takes you outside of the straight 12 tone, and you can't help but do it. I don't know whether that's that you know? So the skill probably lies in applying that in a in a more traditional sense, so it doesn't all sound like the soundtrack to Gladiator or Odyssey. No.
[Devin] A hon a 100%. It's a great point, and I think that I'm glad you mentioned the the skill issue because for me, that's definitely what it is. It really does feel like relearning an instrument. I brought over the Osmos to a friend's house who's a great piano player, and it was amazing to see right away just him being able to perform, like, intuitively stuff that didn't sound like that, like just doing a couple tasteful bends here and there. But I do agree with you. It does for me at least, I gravitate more towards sort of microtonal stuff when I'm using it. But I don't even think that's a bad thing necessarily because
[Devin] I feel like like we've we've all talked about
[Devin] we make music for so long and we gravitate into patterns. Like, I think you were saying before with your your demos, Nick. I do the same thing. I'm like, I'm probably using the same chord progression here. So having like, the reason why we get new pieces of gear or new things that allow us to play music in new ways is to break those patterns and give us inspiration.
[Devin] And I think that having the ability and to go microtonally
[Devin] so easy easily, sorry, I think that's a really cool thing about MPE, and it it's definitely opened up the style of music I've written to be more open to that kind of
[Devin] non
[Devin] diatonic, like, traditionally, like, more microtonal stuff because that's not something that I'd ever really done before before using MPE controllers. Not to say that you can't do without it, but for me, that really unlocked my appreciation and kind of interest in that genre of music.
[Nick] Interesting.
[Nick] Rich, I think that the
[Nick] Steve Elbows, I only do tasteless bends, is, you know, that's fair play for being so honest there, Steve. No such thing as tasteless bend.
[Nick] So, Rich, I guess, primarily designing monophonic instruments, this is something that is not necessarily
[Nick] has to be the center of your wheelhouse, but but because you don't you know, you could express a monophonic instrument in many, many ways. I mean, you could add MPE and and and and plug it all in and do those sort of things. But is it something do you think that there's
[Nick] I mean, as an analog designer, do you feel that there are areas that we need to go that will make these instruments more expressive? I mean, traditionally,
[Nick] you if you look at the Moog Ensemble, they use wind controllers, which pair really nicely with monophonic synthesizers. You get a lot of expression there and bend, and they're lovely. It's particularly the sort of Eweeze, and I think
[Nick] Ashton, same as ASM made a a wind instrument quite recently as well. So, mean, imagine they pair really well with yours. But in terms of other
[Nick] expressive
[Nick] sort of techniques, is there stuff that interests you then?
[Richard] We had actually, yesterday in the in the workshop, we
[Richard] were playing someone sent us a video of them playing a a wind controller with the CreateAudio East Beast,
[Richard] and we got a big kick out of that. It sounded great. But
[Richard] for us, you know, I've talked to a lot of people that use different types of controllers,
[Richard] and
[Richard] one of the things they like about semimodular
[Richard] synths is just the idea that they have control over what
[Richard] they can modulate or what they can interact with.
[Richard] Because it's such an open platform,
[Richard] you can
[Richard] set anything to control one or multiple things
[Richard] within the ranges that you want. And I suspect you could do that in the the larger digital stuff as well. But because it's so hands on, it becomes part of the performance then adjusting the ranges and adjusting what you're interacting with.
[Richard] So I can't play
[Richard] keyboards
[Richard] to save my life.
[Richard] The idea of of this just seems
[Richard] ridiculous and redundant to me. I play sequencers.
[Richard] So to me, it's I sort of lean on other people to let me know
[Richard] how they wanna get in there and interact with that stuff. And then I try you know, as a designer, I try to make it as easy for them to get to where they wanna go as possible.
[Richard] But my personal experience with this stuff is is literally
[Richard] I turn on my
[Richard] sequencer, and I just program in patterns like I'm, you know, in 1984
[Richard] front two four two.
[Richard] Yeah. That's Yeah. That's kind of the world I live in.
[Nick] Oh, fair. Fair. Yeah. God, I got this might there's some derivative of this is going to be a a show title.
[Nick] Tasteless bends are a baseless trend. And that's
[Nick] what a fantastic
[Nick] bit of wordplay. I think I know there's too many characters
[Nick] in that. I'm gonna try and figure out if I can get that in the show title somewhere on the on the poster frame. That's absolutely awesome. Yeah. No. Interesting. I I just thought it was a a fascinating thing. I I have to wrap things up soon because I need to go and watch
[Nick] an eclipse.
[Nick] And I wanted to I I know this was the first title in it, but I I I'm probably gonna get busted for this. But, obviously, the big the the news this week that that William Allbit sadly passed away,
[Nick] and this track is
[Nick] pretty much
[Nick] my entire
[Nick] musical kind of influence
[Nick] during this period.
[Nick] There he is.
[Nick] Such a great piece of music, this.
[Nick] Just gotta wait for the groove to come in just because it's so infectious.
[Nick] This is
[Nick] Sharon Masgrave
[Nick] and
[Nick] MC in a one step.
[Nick] Lovely.
[Nick] I just I absolutely love that. I think almost every musical element in that, I probably
[Nick] stole
[Nick] those lovely
[Nick] Juno kind of belly belly sort of chorus things,
[Nick] the the three zero three kind of stuff, the I mean, it's just I mean, Juno one zero six, super bass station,
[Nick] break beats, and I think I think he used
[Nick] the Juno for the bass because it's got that sort of hollow quality. I'm not sure. But a man I mean, it's hard to underestimate and undervalue his contribution.
[Nick] I mean, we're talking so Bassomatic,
[Nick] Prince, Madonna, Ray of Light, that is
[Nick] he made single handedly made Madonna cool
[Nick] before, you know, before she was all pop, and then that was cool. And then she went on to be cool again, but that was the transition point. I think Frozen is one of my I just think it's absolutely amazing.
[Nick] Strange cargo, pieces in a modern style, which was a classical album,
[Nick] sort of neoclassical,
[Nick] which topped the charts at both sides of America. Yes. And people were outraged, you know, that it was topping the class charts. It was mostly Barber's Adagio that he did a beautiful version of. And then Blur, he produced Blur.
[Nick] I'm just honestly, I don't know where if if it resonates with everybody else, but I'm absolutely
[Nick] I I was kind of quite sad today. I mean, it really hit me. I was listening to some of his music. I was just like, oh, man. This is a sad bit. A sad bit. I'm glad to hear that the resident young person in the panel has also got William Orbit references and is nodding away there. So, yeah, amazing
[Nick] talent. What a guy. Just a really, you know, unique voice, I think.
[Devin] Yeah. I feel like the the the Madonna one, I I'm glad that you mentioned that because I wasn't sure if I would get negative points for bringing that up as my my most, I guess, resonated piece of work that he's done. But, yeah, the whole Ray of Light album is so good, and I agree with what you said, Nick. He single handedly made Madonna cool. Like, Frozen is just what a track. I think it's the best Madonna track,
[Nick] period. But, yeah, it's I didn't actually know he produced Blurred. Do you know what's what music he did? Because I grew up 13. Is the album the album 13. So it was 10 Tender is the Tender Tender is one, and there were a fair few other ones. There was also
[Nick] Pure Shores, which is Wow. I've forgotten the name of the All Saints. With All Saints, which is another beautiful and very, very much a sonic thing. And all I listened to all those things, and I just looked back at the remixes I was doing at the time. I met him once because he was recording at Moles in Bath where I was the sound engineer.
[Nick] And I'd just done or we'd just done Tom's Diner, and I went upstairs to meet him because Yeah. He I was doing the I I was they were doing a live gig downstairs that was gonna be performed. So I met him, and he he was a lovely guy. And he just sort of said, just put a four hundred millisecond delay on everything. That'll be fine. And then they did the gig. I did the sound for him, and it was just I didn't get to interact with him again. But that's my only story. Apart from
[Nick] there was a drummer in a band who went out with a girl called
[Nick] John Paul Jones' daughter, Cindy Jones, and she was an engineer at Gorilla Studios where a lot of those remixes started. And his technique was fill a 24 track tape with
[Nick] stuff and just sort of basically flick the faders up and switch things on and off. You do edit. So you'd have maybe four or five or six ideas all at the same time running concurrently. Just cut between them and then edit again afterwards. Just absolutely amazing. I don't know whether he has the same relevance to your musical,
[Nick] whatever
[Nick] influences
[Nick] and whatnot.
[Paulee] Yeah. Definitely.
[Paulee] The the thing that kind of going back and listening, you know, to some of these tracks,
[Paulee] I put Ray of Light on today and
[Paulee] was astounded
[Paulee] at hearing all the little things, all the little weird sounds
[Paulee] he'd put in. I absolutely love stuff like that. Loads guitar.
[Paulee] Loads Loads of guitar.
[Paulee] Just, you know, an affected guitar and little bits of distortion and chord. There was so much personality
[Paulee] and it kind of
[Paulee] yeah. It kinda made me a little bit
[Paulee] sad that
[Paulee] mainstream pop
[Paulee] doesn't seem to have that level of personality anymore,
[Paulee] you know. Because the other thing about William Wilbert is that he used really odd chords on occasion.
[Paulee] There's a track he did with Pink called Is It Feel Good Time
[Paulee] or Real Good Time,
[Paulee] which has some really wild
[Paulee] jazzy chords in it
[Paulee] and some amazing productions.
[Paulee] So, yeah, it was just
[Paulee] and the and the thing is, I wasn't
[Paulee] that interested in mainstream music
[Paulee] in the nineties.
[Paulee] I was kind of, you know,
[Paulee] I was kind of a goth and listening to industrial
[Paulee] and, you know, weird stuff.
[Paulee] And
[Paulee] and
[Paulee] I
[Paulee] the it surprised me how much I liked it.
[Paulee] How much I like something that was supposed to be a mainstream
[Paulee] thing
[Paulee] for the that the popular kids liked
[Paulee] in the nineties.
[Paulee] And here I was enjoying it, and I think that speaks to his ability to cross not just genres, but cultures.
[Paulee] You know?
[Nick] So that's my thoughts. I'm rambling now.
[Nick] Beth Alton as well. I just I don't know. I've reached I've been I I I think some of his stuff crossed over to the certainly, Madonna would have been big in The in The States, and I think their classical album was big there as well. Strange Cargo, there's some beautiful stuff there. I don't know if you're familiar with any of his any of his work outside of the the obvious ones or not, but, yeah, sad.
[Richard] Yeah. I took a deep dive on his stuff probably
[Richard] fifteen years ago or so,
[Richard] and I I really fell in love with it, the the BASE Matic stuff and then the Madonna stuff sort of way after it was popular or sort of had its time,
[Richard] I sort of fell into it. And I just I just loved
[Richard] all the energy that it had and how it had there was so much in there that you could listen to, and it wasn't just
[Richard] here's a beat and a baseline. There was little things sprinkled in like Polly was saying.
[Richard] And it really inspired me. And now reading about his how his production style was kinda reminds me of how I make music nowadays. Now I do it digitally.
[Richard] But the idea of I'll record
[Richard] 20 or 25
[Richard] sort of two minute long sections of arpeggiators
[Richard] or whatnot,
[Richard] and then just sort of slide them all to the right in Ableton, and then just chop them and pull them back and sort of piece things together.
[Richard] It kinda reminds me of that. So it's nice to know that people have been working sort of wrong for a long time, and I'm not the first person sort of breaking things Uh-huh. To accomplish what I'm trying to do. So that makes me feel good. But his music was fabulous and incredible talent, and he is gonna be missed.
[Nick] Yeah. It's really interesting, isn't it? I mean, it follows that kind of
[Nick] eccentric British producer. I mean, him and Thomas Dolby are kind of part of the same mold to a degree. I mean, Thomas Dolby came a little bit before him, but, again, sort of utilizing technology and specific instruments to just sort of get a very specific
[Nick] sound. Just yeah. Fantastic.
[Nick] Well, I mean, an uplifting note. So if you if you wanna be uplifted by it, just go and listen to a load of William Orbit stuff. If you're into synths,
[Nick] you can't fail
[Nick] to appreciate
[Nick] some of the beautiful sounds and the sounds that you know, some of them are just it's like, oh, that's preset number x on a on a Juno. You know? It's like but he spotted it, and it's like, that sounds great in this thing. Just those beautiful
[Nick] wide chorus things that were over heavy beats. Just oh, shit. Absolutely fantastic. Anyway, lovely
[Nick] to have a chat with you. I'm gonna go and try not to burn my retinas as I look at the the eclipse.
[Nick] Paulie, are you going out to to view the view it with the kids, or are you gonna have to keep them away? Because they will be tempted to look. If you need the glasses They're not here. They're
[Paulee] not my problem.
[Nick] Ah, okay.
[Paulee] Fair enough. So that's good. So I'm just gonna chill. Oh, chill and watch it later, but yeah. I wanted to say what I'm up to next
[Paulee] is that
[Paulee] I am doing a bunch of demos for Modal Electronics.
[Paulee] Okay. And my next one is going to be all about
[Paulee] making video game sounds
[Paulee] on the carbonate.
[Paulee] So you'll love that one, Nick, because there's so much PWM
[Paulee] in that video. Literally, every sound has PWM carbonate carbonate is a lovely sounding instrument. Definitely. It's amazing. Oh, good. It's really nice. Good.
[Nick] Devin, what's next for you?
[Devin] Yeah. So it's early here in Canada. So rest of the day, just gonna be in the studio. I'm working on a video this week for Erica Synths for their new Razornator.
[Devin] It's a resonator pedal. So continuing
[Devin] my little side quest into effects boxes before going back to scheduled synth programming.
[Nick] Right. Excellent. And, Rich, I guess, do you get do you get a break now? Do you get to go and
[Nick] sit sit at a lake and dip your toes, go fishing,
[Nick] turn off for a bit, or is it done?
[Richard] No. It's back to work. Actually, last week, the whole second half of the week, and then over the weekend, I I went on holiday with my wife and my brother and and his wife to Chicago,
[Richard] and we went to see the Foo Fighters play at
[Richard] the giant ridiculous stadium outside.
[Richard] So I'm I'm
[Richard] I'm vacationed
[Richard] out, and I'm I'm anxious to get back in it. Yesterday was sort of a blur, but today,
[Richard] it's back to meetings and designing and
[Richard] solving actual fun problems. So I'm definitely looking forward to fantastic.
[Nick] Well, thank you very much, everybody. Thanks to everybody in the chat room. Thanks to all of all of the people involved.
[Nick] It's been a fun one. We'll see you all next time. I'm gonna say that's the end of that show. Which button do I press? I'd forgotten. I think it's this one. See you, everybody. That was Sonic Talk number 904.
[Nick] Take care.