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Interview with William Rauscher (Night Plane, CCC)
Interview with William Rauscher (Night Plane, CCC)
I’ve decided recently to start doing some interviews with artists & musicians who I personally like & respect. My goal is to get into the brains of these people & find their creative approach. In my opinion, understanding how a person thinks creatively is much more important than learning a production technique alone. There will always be new techniques to explore (and I will certainly share plenty more) but approaching things from a “mindset” point of view seems that it would give more long term benefits and also deter the “copycat”approach forcing people to find their own creative way.
My first interview is with William Rauscher, who I originally came across through his fantastic remix of a band called Warpaint, which as of this writing is about to be released on Warpaints label Rough Trade (probably best known for signing The Smiths). As I dove deeper into his body of work, I really connected with his psychedelic vibe. He has a solo project he works on under the name Night Plane as well as a group effort under the name CCC. Both have a strong sense of who they are and what they are attempting to invoke in the listener. Links are both below and throughout the interview. I highly recommend giving the linked songs a listen to get a better idea of what we are discussing. His songs are made on a PC in Ableton.
Originally this interview was recorded as video screen sharing but was unfortunately lost due to a rendering error. Thankfully he was kind enough to answer some of the main topics in text format. Below is that interview. Enjoy!
1. You have great warm sub bass in your songs. I’d love you to walk me through how you’re getting these results.
A lot of credit for that goes to Hector, the CCC Roland Juno 106. All the hardware in our studio is named – there’s also Jojo the Jomox 888 and the two 707s, Selena and Esteban. For subby warmth Hector’s hard to beat, especially if you only use his sub and turn everything else down.
2.You have a certain way of cutting up vocals & layering vocals that creates a very dreamy vibe. How do you like to approach vocals when working on a new song?
I like approaching the human voice as an instrument. I’ll usually try to find a brief loop first that can function almost like a chant in the background, that can fade in and out in a sort of ghostly manner, and then build on that. On my remix of Warpaint, I first made a very filtered-out vocal loop that is off-time, it’s like two and a third bars or something, so that when it plays over the percussion it sounds extra trippy, like you’re spiraling down a rabbit hole. It’s also good to pair off different phrases that can form a kind of call-and-response effect when they’re placed next to one another. On “Parallel Lines” I composed the vocal line so that it repeats certain words or phrases to make the whole sentence more rhythmic, so I had Eric and Heather sing the vocals as if they had already been cut-up. Lyrics are important to me: they should appear to be indicating something universal but in an oblique way, so that anyone can project their own interpretation on them – I wish there were more songs about geometric shapes – I composed “Parallel Lines” in part because I liked “ target=”_blank”>Parallelograms” by Linda Perhacs so much.
3. What elements do you feel are necessary for a great club track?
The great thing about club music is that once you pay a certain price by obeying certain strict rules, you can do whatever you want. That functionality is very liberating. As long as your track is of a certain length, a certain speed, and has certain frequencies in it, you can do whatever you want, it can be composed of any sound in the universe. In CCC we adhere to the Law of 32: intros and outros must be 32 bars, because that’s about the amount of time that a DJ needs to mix from one track to the next. A great club track only needs what’s absolutely necessary. In general, the more elements I can remove from my tracks, the better they get. Pacing is everything: remember that a club audience will hear your track in a certain state of distraction. It’s not a concert where everyone is listening in rapt attention – they’re zoned out, dancing, talking with friends, so the music should be way more repetitive than something designed for home listening. I know that might sound like a bit of a no-brainer but it bears repeating.
4. Talk bit about the CCC collective and how that came about.
CCC is three of us, three Austin Texas boys to be exact – JM, Harry and me. It’s a multimedia project, so in addition to releasing records we’re in the process of printing a 100-page art journal about psychedelic drugs called On Acid: A Field Guide to Altered States. The performance division of CCC is myself and DJ Harry Bennett. Harry is the in-house decks captain and house music vet. JM is the designer and creative consultant. We’ve all known each other forever. JM and I met in physics class in the tenth grade, when he threatened to kick my ass if I didn’t stop playing this piece of shit acoustic guitar. I was fifteen and I was really into Beck. Later we became friends and nerded out over The Orb. We met Harry because he was living with Todd Ledford (owner of Olde English Spelling Bee label) at the time and we were using Ledford’s basement to record hours and hours and hours of drone music. CCC considers itself as continuing the work of groups like the KLF and Psychic TV: issuing mysterious transmissions, operating on the level of conceptual pop art, projecting an esoteric aura, treating the artistic process as an occult process. Every artwork is a religion of one person. “Vibrations” is probably the clearest case of sonic propaganda from CCC, as it’s composed as an aural equivalent to the brainwashing scenes from movies like A Clockwork Orange and The Parallax View.
5. What type of habits & mindset have you found important in building yourself from a complete nobody with no songs or DJ gigs under your belt to where you find yourself now?
You have to maintain a balance between listening to everybody’s feedback and believing in yourself. Everyone’s feedback is valid but in each case you should remember who you’re talking to – a fan, a promoter, a friend or a fellow DJ – everybody’s going to hear something different, which is fascinating. Everyone’s opinion is valid but nobody’s is the gospel truth. I was fortunate enough that after I interviewed Wolf and Lamb for Resident Advisor I became friends with them and Soul Clap who were extremely supportive of my work and instrumental in getting it to a larger audience. When “Str8 2 Ur Heart” got attention it taught me the importance of finding an overlap between what I liked doing
and what other people wanted to hear, and that in order to communicate with others through sound I was going to have to seriously streamline my compositions. I could keep doing dense, baroque explorations of sound if I wanted but that wasn’t going to flip many people’s wigs. When making deals I believe it’s important to be gracious but firm: courtesy and politesse are invaluable, but one should refrain from being obsequious. Standing your ground is a key to earning respect. Lastly, don’t look down on others for being opportunistic: the only way to get ahead is to ask for what you want. Also, if people don’t get what you’re about, fuck ‘em. Fuck ‘em but in a nice way. Keep your head down and keep refining your work until it is impossible for people to ignore you – everyone respects good work and eventually the people who are supposed to hear your music will find you.
6. What are some of the things that put you in an inspired & creative mood? How do you motivate yourself when you just aren’t feeling it?
If you’re a creative person you have to decide whether your projects are going to be inspiration-driven or labor-driven. Don’t succumb to the myth that inspiration only arrives like a gossamer angel that possesses you. I motivate myself because I treat my work like work, not like a fun-time hobby just to blow off steam. Turn on your gear and go to work – inspiration will come. It’s a variation on Pascal, who says “kneel down, move your lips in prayer, and you will believe.” Also useful are any kind of pre-work rituals that can get you in the mood and help to symbolize the transition into the special headspace you need, that headspace that’s somehow disconnected from the rest of the world. Weed can be good for this – not that you need weed or other drugs to be creative, but their effects can produce that feeling of transition into an altered zone where you are mentally free.
7. Since unfinished ideas get you nowhere, what are some of your shortcuts to getting your songs across the finishing line. Have you built “go to” kits or templates to get you moving?
I have a personal library of loops because I’ve taken every track I’ve done and broken it down into little parts, this is an immense time-saver, even if the loops are used only for scratch placement. I don’t really know shit about soft synths, I wish I did. I try to know where I am in the creative process: am I in jamming-out mode? Am I in editing mode? Am I working on the middle of the track, the “peak,” or is this just the intro? On several occasions I’ve found myself releasing that the outro should in fact be the main part of the song – I wish I could compose an album that was just an hourlong outro.
8. What is your musical background? What bands have inspired you most?
I started playing piano when I was six and for a few years my mom was my piano teacher, she was a gifted singer and pianist and definitely responsible for putting that inspiration in my life. When I was a teenager and in college I listened to a lot of experimental music, high brow like Stockhausen but also low-brow like The Dead C and Sun City Girls. I was greatly inspired by drone-y sixties minimalism like Lamonte Young and Terry Riley and musique concrete like Pierre Henry. I think listening to all that stuff taught me to focus on the materiality of sound, and to cultivate an experimental attitude.
If you are a nerdy boy who plays piano and likes science fiction, like I was, then you will eventually discover electronic music. I’m always impressed with how inhuman electronic music can sound, and yet everyone wants to party to it. It comes from the future, it goes on forever, and it encourages revelry and ecstatic trances: what else do you want? I still am basically a rock person and the rock I like is all fairly trance-y – that strain of Velvet Underground, Spacemen 3, The Stooges, and so on.
9. You seem to juggle a number of projects. How are you able to keep everything in order without dropping the ball on quality work?
I love collaborating because it’s a way to get out of yourself and your own petty ego. At the same time I’m grateful I have Night Plane where I’m totally in charge of it. If you’re doing multiple projects, division of labor is important – make sure you’re not doing the same job all the time or you’ll get burnt out, and have a clear sense of what each project is offering to you and what you can offer back to it. After working solo on Night Plane for a while it was really weird to actually have to express my ideas in language when
working with CCC! Totally different experience.
10. What are some of your favorite tools when creating music?
Hmmm I use Albino softsynth all the time basically, and Izotope Ozone, which is
indispensable for mastering. I have a library of analog drum machine samples that I
put through Reason which is extremely helpful. I love finding weird ways of vocoding
things.
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Shared links:
http://pitchfork.com/reviews/tracks/12129-parallel-lines/
http://soundcloud.com/williamrauscher/night-plane-live-from-the
- we recently compiled all the CCC indie rock edits – we’re currently working on a future
release called the Liberty Lunch EP which will feature house covers of indie tracks like
Gold Soundz by Pavement and Gigantic by the Pixies. It’s named after the rock club in
Austin where Harry used to spin between acts.
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I’d like to thank William for his thoughtful and detailed answers. I hope you got as much out of this as I did. Until next time… Happy music making!
Jason
P.S. – Don’t forget to comment & tweet (down below) & “like” (up above).All your feedback & support is appreciated!
InKey Instrument Rack for Ableton. . Never hit a bad note!
InKey Instrument Rack for Ableton. Never hit a bad note again!
With this tool, you’ll be able to choose the key you want to play in and conform anything you play or ANY midi loop to that key! Best of all, this does NOT require Max For Live! This is a fantastic tool for playing Live, DJ’ing, Remixing or Producing. Imagine chaotic, out of tune parts transformed into beautifully harmonized music. This will be the most fun you’ve had in Ableton in a Long time! Will work perfectly with the “Mixed in Key” number system or by actual key name. Must have Ableton 8.1.3 or later. Check out the videos below:
Still unclear on how this works? Watch this:
P.S – Don’t forget to comment & tweet (down below) & “like” (up above).All your feedback & support is appreciated!
How Reverb works
How Reverb works:
I recently was asked to post something about reverb and how to use it best. I’m not going to claim to know all there is to know about reverb but I’ll do my best to share what I know. I’ll also try not to use too much geek speak when explaining things. let’s start by defining some of the most important features.
Reverb decay – This is how you control how long the reverb lasts before it fades out. Depending on what you are going for, this can be long and washy, or short and barely noticeable. keep in mind though that even though you might not immediate hear what a reverb is doing, the brain is exceptional at picking up these subtleties & can make a huge difference between a flat, sterile and lifeless sound & a realistic sound. By controlling these, it’s possible to use reverb rhythmically. You can have it fade after a 1/4 bar or 1/2 bar. Slightly adjusting this can create a bit of swing or groove to your mix.
Diffusion – Diffusion is created when a sound reflects off a surface. A flater surface will have less diffusion because it simply hits the wall and bounces back. If you are in a cave, the surface is going to have all kinds of angles causing your sound to bounce and echo in a more complex way, creating a reverb that is less like the original sound. Less diffusion will have a brighter sound while more diffusion will make the reverb darker.
Reflection – Reflection is similar to diffusion in that it has to do with the angle at which soundwaves bounce around. As soundwaves spread throughout a space and bounce off all the encompassing surfaces, they will undoubtedly bounce back into eachother causing the waveforms to change, phase cancel eachother out, or to double up and increase in volume. Each of these reflections hit the ears at different times creating the full effect.
Predelay – This is the time between the original sound playing and the reverb reacting to that sound. Adding predelay can help the attack of a sound come across much cleaner as it’s not yet effected by the reverb. A longer predelay can create a short echo or a slapback type effect.
Types of reverb -
Plate reverb – A plate reverb is named that way because they used to send sound to a “plate” of metal which it would reverberate off of. It doesn’t take up as much dimensional space & thus doesn’t bury & blur sounds in the way other types of reverb do. It tends to blend with the sound more and helps give sounds more impact. It’s a cleaner reverb in that it doesn’t take up as much space. It can be great for a smooth sounding vocal that doesn’t get lost in the mix. Although plate reverb is great, you will want other reverbs used to add depth and dimension to your mix.
Gated reverb- This isn’t really a type of reverb, but more the effect that is put after the reverb effect. This allows you to make a sound bigger but not have a long tail (or decay). This effect was used a lot in the 80′s (some might say overused). By setting a gate effect after your reverb, you can adjust the gate to silence your sound once it goes beneath a certain volume. This effect can be used to clean up your mix so it doesn’t get too muddy. Too much reverb used in the wrong way can drastically lower the quality of your mix.
Spring reverb – This type of reverb was popularized in guitar amps. The sound is created by metal springs and gives a vintage feel to some instruments. Great for a more lo-fi vibe. It’s not smooth like other reverbs, but can add a different character to instruments.
Hall reverb – Adds depth and dimension & fills in gaps in the mix but keeps in the background where it doesn’t clutter the mix. Using a large room size but a shorter delay time can help with a cleaner mix (even though it is not a natural sound found in the real world). Using too much can push important sounds to the back of the mix, but can add further thickness and space to sounds with long decay like pads or piano. Slower songs can typically handle longer reverb times.
Room reverb – Similar to hall but typically has a shorter decay and smaller size than hall reverb. Good for guitar or drums to give it a realistic space in your mix. A realistic space can be important when using acoustic instruments.
Convulsion reverb – Imagine if you wanted to “sample” the reverberation of a specific location, be it a stadium or a bathroom. Convulsion reverb makes that possible. This can give you some very interesting options. Perhaps adding the space of a wooden barrel or the inside of a metal pipe. This could be a powerful asset in creating both real world environments or alien environments & can be a sound designer’s best friend. Since this reverb is essentially sampled and then applied to a sound, there isn’t a whole lot of flexibility to a specific reverb setting but can offer results unavailable any other way.
Chamber reverb – Also known as an echo chamber, this reverb was created by sending a speaker into a specially designed room and a microphone strategically placed to capture the reverb effect and added to the original signal.
Reverse reverb – This effect is where you hear the reverb effect before the original source sound. Used a lot as a vocal or drum effect. This can be accomplished pretty easily in the digital domain by reversing your original source sound, adding reverb to the reversed sound, rendering the results and once again reversing so that the reverb plays in reverse while the original sound plays forward.
Reverb tips:
In most situations, you will want to set your reverb at the end of your effects chain. Basically you’ll want to dial in your clean sound before smoothing it out with reverb. If you are wondering whether to add reverb or delay last, I’d suggest reverb. This will give you the most natural sound and make it easier to get the effect you are looking for (unless you are going for something unusual). In some cases I will add a compressor after the reverb to boost it’s effect.
Reverb on send/returns – By creating a send track you can set up 2 or 3 reverb types and assign a specified amount of any or all of them to whichever instrument you want. Not only will this save CPU on your computer, it is great for placing multiple sounds in one space (like your drums). Since all your reverb will be sent to your send track, you will have more control of it’s overall volume & eq.
I personally like to eq out reverb frequencies below 120hz. Sometimes higher depending on the instrument.
Another use for a reverb send is to switch it to mono and pan your reverb just like you would an instrument. You can keep it in one spot or automate your panning. You can do this with more than one reverb send if you like. this should give you some interesting results.
Using more than 1 reverb on a sound can give you more a realistic effect at times. this would typically consist of a short reverb and a long reverb.
Create great pad sounds with reverb by creating a long reverb of several seconds (even 10-15 seconds can sound good) and setting the wet/dry setting to 80%-100%. The reverb smooths out whatever sound you run through it. I like using a simple synth melody or vocals but have gotten great results from less conventional sounds as well.
Sidechaining reverb tricks – This is another widely used trick in dance music. For this effect, you would typically want to have a reverb send/return track and throw your sidechain compressor on the track. Sidechain it to your kick drum for that pumping effect or you can sidechain it to the original dry sound you are adding reverb to. This will push the effect down while the original sound plays for a cleaner sound and then the reverb will rush in after the original sound stops playing. You can get varying results by adjusting the threshold.
Accent your groove with Reverb - By adjusting the attack and release envelopes. You don’t have to just use reverb to add dimension to your song, you can have it assist the overall feel of your song by adding it to any instrument that could use it. You’d be surprised with the results you get when using this trick correctly. You can set your decay to fall to silence just before the next beat or bar or any multiple that works for you. I like 1/4 note or 1/2 note intervals. Making slight adjustments can give your groove a more rushed or laid back feel. By adjusting your predelay, you can change the groove as well.
Experiment and have fun with this wonderful but often misunderstood effect.
Happy music making,
Jason
P.S. – Don’t forget to comment & tweet (down below) & “like” (up above).
All your feedback & support is appreciated!
30 Day Ableton Music Production Journal
Welcome to my 30 Day Journal experiment. Below are 3 of the 30 videos available in my full Ableton video collection. Over the course of 30 days I forced myself to record at least 30 minutes of producing everyday journaling my full creative process for 2 songs and a DJ mix. I also show you how to take a song from within or outside of Ableton and prepare it for live performance.
Be aware that due to the volume of video material I’ve recorded (20 or more hours), there are no zooms or tricky video effects. I am also aware that there may be some imperfections & volumes may fluctuate with my voice from video to video. In this case I’m going for a wealth of content instead of perfection. It is recommended that you enlarge this video to fullscreen for best results. Enjoy and please share this with your friends through word of mouth, email, Twitter & Facebook. I’d like to share this free content with as many people as possible.
Day 1 (Song 1 begins)
Day 14 (Song 2 Begins)
Day 27 (DJ mix begins)
Download completed songs & the Mix at the links below(right click and save):
Jason Timothy – DJ Mix August 2010
Final thoughts:
Realize the songs & dj mix were not abandoned at the point of perfection as reaching that can require far more than 30 days. Also be aware that reaching a level of satisfaction instead of perfection may be just the discipline you need. I know many people who spend years on their work and by the time it’s close to perfect, they realized it now sounds outdated to them thus starting the cycle all over again.
At the end of the day, completing your creative works takes a level of skill, patience and most importantly confidence. If you can’t muster the confidence in your work, you’ll never be able to say “This is finished”.
I took a huge gamble when starting this 30 day video journal. I had no idea what I would accomplish, if anything. I had no idea if I would be well received as I stumbled through each day trying to share an honest reflection of my creative process. I knew I would be far from perfect and that I would have several of my weaknesses exposed for all to see.
For me, this was a test of will, persistance and courage. I completed the challenge and I came out alive on the other side. As a sidenote I’ve pushed my comfort zone out quite a bit and have become less resistant to facing my fears. I want to thank you all for the support and the positive feedback. I hope this process has inspired you to have the confidence to create and complete your work.
Special thanks to Nick from NicksTutorials.com for loaning me the space and bandwidth to make this possible. I highly recommend you stop by his site. His Ableton tutorials are fantastic and he has loads of free vids as well.
For those who are interested, all the songfiles, samples and final mixes of the songs available immediately if you decide to order this full collection (you’ll need version 8.1.3). The full collection will soon be priced at $79 but is reduced to $59 for a limited time. (Keep in mind that the songs used for the DJ Mix are not included due to obvious legal reasons).
I hope you enjoyed this 30 day experiement.
Happy Music Making
Jason
P.S. – Don’t forget to comment & tweet (down below) & “like” (up above).
All your feedback & support is appreciated!
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