Part 2

How would you describe the relationship between technology and creativity for your work? Using a recent piece as an example, how do you work with your production tools to achieve specific artistic results?

That's a great question. I've always based my creativity on exploiting technology. It's what I've been all about my whole career. I recently worked on a remix for an apaull track called 'Mush Mouth', where I spent a lot of time working on the parts that were given to me. But the fact that I had a microphone sitting in front of me inspired me to quickly drop in some sort of vocal recordings goofing around on the track. Immediately I was able to chop and do some fun things in the track with this. This is an example of technology sitting in front of me, waiting to be used.

That's why I spend a lot of time, maybe more time, setting up the layout of my equipment so that it's ergonomically accessible. If I immediately need, say, a bassline, I have a Moog Minotaur sitting in front of me. I'm sitting in my studio right now, looking at what I would be able to grab immediately. I have a TB 303 to my left at my hands reach, a Moog Minotaur and Dave Smith Mopho, which I sometimes use for bass as well, and a small Eurorack right in front of me. I can get these going within no time. Deploying these things quickly allows me to take advantage of my inspiration.

Inspiration is something that often evades us. It's here for a split second. I always say to my students when I'm talking about inspiration; imagine spilling a bit of alcohol on a desk and then going up to the kitchen to grab a rag to wipe it off, and by the time you get back, it has evaporated. This is the same thing with inspiration in the studio.

If I have to spend too much time with my technology, plugging it up together, getting it all set up because I have this idea, by the time I'm done, my inspiration may be gone and I can't get to it anymore. But if I have it already preset and ready to go, then the moment that I'm ready to get in there, I can because the setup is perfected and I can work.

Within a digital working environment, it is possible to compile huge archives of ideas for later use. Tell me a bit about your strategies for building such an archive and how you put these ideas and sketches to use.

This is more of a problem with digital music than anything else. Digital meaning computer-based, because I guess FM synthesisers are digital, but I mean computer music using a DAW and being able to store everything.

In the earlier days you just stored basic setups, but now you store your whole session and every little exact sound and thing you did is stored in there. With programmes like Bitwig or Ableton, you're able to jam and create new grooves really quickly, which is fantastic and wonderful but also a humongous pitfall. You end up in a situation where it's quick and fun to create these kinds of doodles, but it gets harder and harder to push towards finishing them. The work gets harder, so your proclivity or inclination is to stop and start a new project because it's much more fun starting from scratch. New things come in real quick.

I teach Ableton for a living, and Bitwig and production and so on, and one of the things that I've noticed from my students is that almost every producer has many, many, many unfinished projects, and the number of projects that are finished is less and less. This is a problem because we need a finished product to get ahead with what we're trying to do in the market, right? But when we only have these products that are just barely developed but fun, it becomes a pitfall. So the ability to store and archive things, to me, is a big problem.

I reached a point about 10 years ago when I decided to find a way to close down the ability to continue to create new things and then archive them. I gave myself a limit and called it my farm. I could say my farm has 40 plots, meaning I could only have 40 things that I'm working on at any given moment, and I can't start a 41st thing. Before I do the 41st thing, I have to finish one of the tracks I'm working on right now, pushing me towards completing more material. You have to come up with strategies to do that. And in the long run, I don't think it's a good thing to archive anything. To be honest with you, I archive less and less things these days. I try to forget and have projects in the moment in front of me, finish them and move on.

The same thing goes for hoarding sounds. I used to say I would have as many kick drums as I could imagine. 5000 kick drums later, I just have 5000 kick drums and don't know which is the right one to use. I got better at sound design to where I can now decide I need a kick drum and can make it from scratch to exactly fit my need. This is much better than hoarding all the sounds I could have. At one point, the hoarding surpasses your ability to ever even access them again because there are just too many. I'm at this point where I'm very against the archiving of material. I find it somewhat of an insidious practice that you think is good but don't realise it is not working out for you.

How do you retain an element of surprise for your own work? Are there technologies that are particularly useful in this regard?

I don't think my success with musical writings and compositions has been based on my musical prowess or imagination. Although I have a lot of that, or enough, I guess, I have also honed my sense of taste, meaning that I know what is good and what is not good. This is actually the best thing that you could do for yourself as a producer; to hone your sense of taste to understand what exactly is good and what you like, sort of like how a good DJ knows what a beautiful, great new track is going to be for the dance floor. This is a magnificent tool to use as a producer and composer.

One of the things that is a sort of hack I've used is to take advantage of features you get in electronic technology that depend on randomisation. Whenever I see a synth or pattern for which I can hit the randomise button, I love that! I'll sit there and hit the random button for a couple of minutes until I hit one that's like, whoa, that's amazing! And I'll recognise it as amazing, grab it, use it, and run with it. And I'm not ashamed of saying that I didn't actually write it from my imagination. I am proud that I was able to use my honed sense of taste to recognise it as great and use it.

So things like randomisation have been great for me. I know it sounds a little bit like cheating, but hey, whatever.

Production tools can already suggest compositional ideas on their own. How much of your music is based on concepts and ideas you had before entering the studio, and how much of it is triggered by equipment, software and apps?

It's an even amount, but not even the point being that you depend on all those things. Sometimes you have a very clear vision of what you want to create, you stick to that vision, and you know 80% or more is exactly that vision. Sometimes you have less of that. Sometimes you have a vision, but new possibilities arise through your experimentation in the studio. You know how much I like randomisation, for example, or just curating ideas that appear. And then you roll with that. That's also great.

I mean, your general purpose in the end, your general target, should be met. If you're going to the studio, looking to make a certain type of song that you have in your head, that's fine, but sometimes it can be just an overarching sort of concept, like a track that will move a dance floor for example. If that's what you're looking for, then you have a broader spectrum of what you could choose from to make that happen. And if that happens in your brain or because of experimentation, then whatever.

The biggest point is that you actually show up, sit in the studio and try to come up with something, whether or not it's something you've already worked out entirely in your head. I'm not that type of producer. I have some of that, of course, but I've met producers who have a whole plan in their head completely locked down. I don't get it. To me, it's so alien to be able to think that way.

Regardless, whatever you know, whatever your poison is, having that ethic of showing up, continuing to work and having an overarching target is probably the most important thing for me.

Have there been technologies which have profoundly changed or even questioned the way you make music?

Yeah, that's always happening, I suppose. A good new technology will be a disrupter, and a good user of technology can recognise a disrupter and quickly apply it to a new tune for new results. This is definitely something that I've been signed off on. I'm completely in with this concept.

This is what techno is all about, right? Using technology to bring things forward. So yes, it often happens that new or disruptive technologies will give another twist on things. As I speak of it, I think it may have been there all the time, as an underlying thread through all my work.

To some, the advent of AI and 'intelligent' composing tools offers the potential for machines to contribute to the creative process. Do you feel as though technology can develop a form of creativity itself? Is there possibly a sense of co-authorship between yourself and your tools?

Um, yeah, I don't know about this. I hear about AI making music in the future. That's interesting, but at the end of the day, it's not interesting to me. I am much more interested in humans and their expression through music. This is probably the reason why I listen to music or am involved with music; to have this sort of devotion towards exploring the expression of humans through alternate means, like frequencies, instead of actual stated concepts like text. Music and the way that it's used is about that for me.

And yes, I know I talked a lot about the randomisation buttons I love implementing in my sound. That's one thing, randomness, but when machines are programmed to create music outright, I'm not interested. I'm really not interested. I don't think there's anything I need to hear from a machine.

Maybe I'll be of a different mind in 20 years, I don't know, but at this point, all I'm doing is trying to hear the expression of humans through frequencies, the clever mathematical use of those frequencies and layouts, and what they can evoke in other humans. That's to me the whole game.

What tools/instruments do you feel could have a deeper impact on creativity but need to still be invented or developed?

I'll just get right to a low-hanging fruit, which would be the neural link development that Elon musk is working on, plugging your brain right into some computer power so that you can immediately think your music, or whatever really, into existence, containing it into some sort of digital form. That's probably the low-hanging fruit and the all-encompassing fruit that we can talk about at this point.

Am I looking forward to it? I don't know, maybe. As long as it continues to explore the expression of humans, I'm for it.