I had been using a 4-track and a digital 8-track in the '90s, and it was this huge complicated thing. But GarageBand is right there.
'6 Weeks' is broken up into two sections; both sections use the same set of samples, just in different ways.
I was completely fascinated by the studio process and layering sounds and creating soundscapes out of layering massive squalls of sound.
When I was at the Group for Musical Research, with this idea of discovering electronic music, I quickly realized that that it was a very interesting and exciting approach to music, but I also saw that it was very intellectual and quite dogmatic.
All of audio as we know it is an attempt to be more and more perfectly linear. Linearity means higher quality sound. Hypersonic sound is exactly the opposite: it's 100 percent based on non-linearity.
The rush of creating sounds and mixing sounds is always an interesting challenge, especially for someone like me, who doesn't know about sound.
When I was a teenager, I got into four track recorders, drum machines, and synthesizers, and I started producing instrumental music.
When I write for an album, I'll always have about 30 different types of instrument around me. I set them up in a small room with my computer running GarageBand, which is always set to record.
I made a lot of different experiments with tapes at that time, until I finally realized around 1995, that sound is an interesting subject for me. Ever since then sound got more and more integrated into my art works, musically as well as physically.
I don't have session players come in and guitars, I'm doing the drums, I'm doing the scratching, I'm doing every sound you hear and that's always been my way. And not only that, I'm very meticulous about it just sounding right.
I know sound, and this is what I'm going to stick to: what I know.
I've got a canvas, I've got a scene, let’s fill that with sound.
The advent of electronically synthesized sound after World War II has unquestionably had enormous influence on music in general.
If I had a stock of fabulous sounds I would just always use them. I wouldn't bother to find new ones.
'Lemonade' is made out of bubbling, fizzing, popping, and 'Hard' is made from metal and latex - they are sort of sculptures in this way. I synthesize all sounds except for vocals using raw waveforms and different synthesis methods as opposed to using samples.
The first time I experimented with sound design was on 'Fruitvale Station,' where I recorded the BART train and manipulated it.
In some ways it's hard to see electronic music as a genre because the word "electronic" just refers to how it's made. Hip-hop is electronic music. Most reggae is electronic. Pop is electronic. House music, techno, all these sorts of ostensibly disparate genres are sort of being created with the same equipment.
The sound itself, the production, is of such great importance that it has become an integrated part of the composition.
Once upon a time, sound was new technology.
I conceived of an instrument that would create sound without using any mechanical energy, like the conductor of an orchestra. The orchestra plays mechanically, using mechanical energy; the conductor just moves his hands, and his movements have an effect on the music artistry.
I agree with the rest of the band, that a truly synthesized sound isn't really what I would want to go for.
We incorporate various electronic devices - the echo plugs and things like that. Actually, all we're trying to do is make that sound musical. As opposed to just making sounds, we do musical things with them.
I'm very interested in voice synthesis and vocoders in general.
It's great if you can afford to carry a string section on the road with you, but most people are used to the idea of just a keyboard player creating those string sounds.
All of those 10cc 'Not in Love'-type synthetic choir sounds on 'Replica' are all from the Omnisphere. We used a lot of that.
