Original subtitles

The opportunity and and and

these devices exist to go and try and do

truly wacky things

and truly wacky things.

And I think that's actually unfair.

But it's it's a tool. It's a tool.

Just like a violin is a tool or, you know,

if you want to get more basic.

I think the thing

that most kids at one point or the other get to play

with a sick offender Strat, Fender Stratocaster, everybody's got one.

Everybody knows somebody who's got one.

And here's the amazing thing about the Fender Strat

it's just a plank of wood with some strings attached to it.

It's.

But it's such a great design that

Stevie Ray Vaughan will sound completely different from Jeff Beck

will sound completely different from Eric Clapton guitar, and it amplifies.

The you know, it somehow

amplifies the DNA of the human being, the musicality of the human being.

And that's that's what you want the stuff to do.

You don't want it to be in the way you want it to.

Become expressive and you just need to break through the

myth, the myth of the elite system, that unless it's the side

where you can't play music on it, you know, I'm saying

if it's a laptop, you can make music on that.

And for instance, I use

I'm surrounded by synthesizers,

but if it really comes down to it,

I use very few and I just try to get really,

really, really good at them.

because

the wealth of possibilities is there

if you learn how to use it.

And it's not like, you know,

if you approach it as a musician, then learning is a very

the word

learning isn't so difficult because musicians play.

So if you're playful about the thing and actually becomes fun to experiment

and it takes you on journeys and it takes you places

you never thought you would get to,

and once you know it pretty well.

You can direct where the journey goes.

And I think that's important, you know?

Don't let the machine control you.

You have to be able to control the machine.

So all these computer programs, it doesn't matter if it's Cubase

on logical ProTools that Ableton Live,

you know.

The best one is the one, you know,

and it's, you know, there's no favoritism.

You know, I work on Cubase because I've always worked on Cubase.

And the other advantage I have that everybody has this

talk to the guys who built this thing,

talk to them, you know, and tell them,

you know, how your workflow is sound and, and and

sometimes I'll very often

you, you get them to change it

or you get to get them to improve it.

I remember sitting there was the, Cubase guys years ago

and coming up with this very elitist statement, which was something like,

but you should talk to me.

I'm a professional composer.

And they just went, bullshit.

You professional composers, you just have this paradigm of how you work.

You always think the same way.

You know that the interesting ideas come from

some kid in a garage in the Bronx who doesn't

play keyboards, and he's going to come up with, you know, he doesn't think.

And and the fixed metaphor of, you know, the keyboard and the classical way,

he's going to come up with a tool and an invention that is,

revolutionary.

And, you know, I have to sort of agree with that,

because

most of most of the advances that I've seen happen in musical

technology is from people who love music but aren't musicians themselves,

and they think just slightly differently.

And they they make you think in a slightly different way.

I never use presets on synth.

I always start off.

I have a I have an idea for sound in my head,

and I start with a

like a clean blank patch, because if

as soon as I hear a preset, as soon as I hear a different sound from a preset,

it sort of blunts the memory of the sound I'm trying to have in my head.

You know? It's a distraction.

It's like when you're trying to write a tune that somebody walks by whistling.

yeah, yeah.

Tune's gone.

and so for me,

it becomes, it just becomes second nature.

I hear something in my head and I sort of know how to build it,

you know, might be a bit of a struggle.

And but part of it is it's just to to remember what that thing is in your head.

And you can just train yourself to, to memorize the thing and, and,

and figure out how to get there.

let me see if I can.

There's a thing I've been playing around with.

I have to just find these guys.

I love the idea of that.

You hear that?

You know, just before you get slapped.

That way, you hear the wind.

So just adding a little bit of that stuff.

Intent of something

scary could be, you know, something.

Something not quite healthy could be happening to you.

let me see if I can.

I mean,

that's the opening to interstellar, which is.

I just wanted to play,

You know, it's very descriptive.

I. Let me see what this is.

I want to

I want to big waves, you know?

So I made them, you know.

But then, of course, you can do things.

Hang on.

Oh, yeah.

That was the.

Because I was using so many organs in the score.

And there's certain things real organs can't do.

I just had to, you know,

see this one?

They can't really come from nothing

because it's either on or off,

you know? So.

this one.

Here.

The problem is, because I don't use presets,

they're just used for that one project, and then I forget what they're

named, and I forget, you know, I never use them again.

The great thing about synthesizers is

you can have a completely fresh palette for every project you work on.

And for me, in a funny way, you know, sometimes

I just sit there making sounds and it's it's it's a sort of,

sideways way of thinking about what the tunes are going to be,

as opposed to sitting there and confronting the beast head on.

You know, it's it's quite,

you know,

it's sort of weirdly little meditation going on.

Oh, I'm just going to go and make a little wind, you know, out of that wind,

a tune is going to come.

Okay.

So I start where?

You know, it's this is where I usually start.

It's like my my stupid hands to start a patch

which has nothing in it other than.

You know,

the sound of a weaselly, horrible oscillator,

you know, and I don't know, let's let's go and make a bass sound. So,

Well, what do I need?

I need to get rid of the weaselly, horrible quality of the chop.

Right?

So you shove a filter onto it, you know, stop this from sounding so boring.

Let's put a bit of life into it.

it needs to have a bit of a shape.

you know,

things need to move in in time, right?

So you can go and say, this is a plucking sound or it's,

and a lot of plucky songs, you know?

So Haggard was sort of already

getting somewhere that's.

I wanted to last a bit longer at the end.

I think it'd be nice

if it could do a bit more than that.

let's say we want to go.

And do this sort of thing

just because it's easy.

So now.

It's playing by itself.

Of course, it'd be much more fun

if that's something.

I'm not saying that was particularly good, but,

you know, it's like, instant something, you know?

I mean, it's just, like, two seconds or whatever.

How long did it take?

you know, it's not supposed to be anything great, you know?

But it's just.

It's just a

one, two, three, four modules, and and you've got something

you've got you've got at least something to start with.

I usually play with one hand because,

I just find a long sound.

Because

part of what real instruments do

you know?

They have a lot of expression.

I mean,

you know, the whole point of,

you know, that's all you get in Pac-Man, right?

So it's it's all about two notes, but the amount of expressiveness

you could potentially.

so there's a lot that can happen within a note

just from them playing very, very quietly.

To say,

you know, something fairly.

Opinionated. You.

Know. You.

It it's figuring out how much expression you can get with within the note

where things start to become interesting and musical.

So just a single note, right?

And what can happen with that?

The note starts

getting more and more unstable.

Yes. I wanted to blow up.

One of the things which is confusing right now,

I'm so used to working at, like, a set volume in this room.

I never change the volume.

Which is?

You know, the cinema 85 DB.

So you know that when you're writing or when you're making sounds, it's

the the appropriate volume for the picture.

You know, it's it's it's like if you give yourself those restrictions

and you're not going to move the volume and that you're just going to

write at the volume of the movie,

it's one less thing that can go wrong later on.

And now, because of our conversation, I am down considerably in volume.

That's

so let's say on one note,

I know that this guy makes things

wobble up and down a bit.

This guy's move up.

This guy will introduce a.

Bit of, instability to.

So that this at all gets a bit.

The sound is just about things being unstable.

And then this was just the idea

of giving the the stuff up.

I mean, they're just abstract sounds.

So? So, I mean, you can specify each, you know,

which I sort of did in this case, you specify each fader for what it can do.

I mean, you build an instrument, you build an abstract instrument.

it's a bunch of all of us in here,

being very,

you know, with controlled randomness and it's a bunch of if you,

if you look in here,

down there, there are all these little,

you know, wobbly things that, you know, just just randomness.

But, you know, made randomness.

I mean, like, this guy here,

he's that

that clock that does that makes sense.

And then the big, Hang on, what's the big swoop?

Okay, so then you can see that if I.

So this is the shape of the

filter opening.

And it's just just in a cycle, you know.

While this guy,

he's actually he's just a subtle,

you know, it's just a subtle, very.

The timbre going on.

And this.

This just speeds the whole thing up or slows it down.

I just want things to be unstable

in time and and pitch as well.

But the.

But the idea that you just have one simple sound

and it can become more unstable as it goes.

And what is this other thing?

First?

Little things I am.

Oh, the big time for like.

Second, what?

So these are all sort of of a family

at the moment.

So I can have more reverb or less reverb.

I can make it more and more unstable. I.

It doesn't help that new people have stolen

my sustain pedal.

Now we're scaring the children.

So you know, within one sound

you can create all these different textures and these different worlds.

And you can, you know,

rather than playing a keyboard, it's fun to go and just wiggle faders around.

It's just a different it's it's it's more the way a string player

would move the bow across the string.

So you don't have to limit yourself

to just being a rock and piano player.