z very rapid non rhythmicized tremolo
<<<<----
pendulum piece was extremely rewarding, i was asked to pick a steve reich piece by european culture of congress in poland to work on so i picked his pendulum piece, i loved the idea but didn't think the result steve got was very good and could be taken MUCH further.
I asked steve what determines the pitch of the feedback, he said 'physics' im still waiting for the answer to that, anyway I originally was going to put all the feedbacks through banks of frequency shifters but in the end realised you can tune the feedback signals with parametric eq! it kind of tracks the harmonic series, so i was able to get all the different pitches.
Reich loved it and said it was like i had all the different parts of the orchestra as feedback tones. He wanted to release it on nonsuch but i never got around to sorting the masters out, still havnt, rather do another gig.
Had an amazing setup on a midas matrix monitor desk whereby i could control the gain of each of the 17 different microphones[for vari sound] via analogue faders and also group vca faders controlling groups of the seventeen mics and seventeen wedge monitors, one big fuck off mixing desk instrument.
Those matirx desks are perfect for the job and you find them quite easily live gig equipment world.
dave: yea the pendulum version, u sent me youtube link a while back, this :
got very nice tones. pls send some soundfiles! oooh, thanks!!!
rich: swinging piano, nobody would lend/hire me a disklavier for the gig, i wonder why?
so realised 2 weeks b4 show i had to use mine and transport it to london, 1 week before piano wasnt working, i realised mice had eaten through all the fibre optics inside! cost me £5k to fix it, then had to reienforce the piano frame with steel to hold it together.
the whole point apart from the spectacle was to get the dopplereffect on the strings and nobody knew if it would work, it turned out to be the most trippy amazing pitch effect ive ever heard, it couldnt really be recorded, you had to be on the stage, even in the audience you couldnt really appreciate it , would love to do it again whereby evryone can walk around the piano as its swinging.
its like you could almost see the pitches in the air all spread apart and then all come rushing together, un-fucking believable, i wrote the piece specially for my wife :) and didnt tell her before that i was going to use the track i made for her at this gig :)))
got some other juicy cool ideas like this swinging piano, taken to next level!
heres a mockup track i did before the swingpiano to see roughly what a piano would sound like with dopplereffect, made it in maxmsp and its a diff version of avril 14th.
The crew in poland were astonishingly good but they couldn't swing my disklavier from the roof in the amazing venues they had there for different reasons, which is other reason i knocked up this little track to play there.
So huge respek to all involved at the barbican gig4 making it happen.
Its so funny when you suggest these kinds of things especially with my rep to people, they just don't know how to take it, ah man the things that could be done, i can't think too long about it...
but usually the idea is the way easy part , making it happen is the fight, you have to be so single minded to make it happen and everyone just looks at you like a cunt UNTIL it works then its like ah yeah we knew it was going to be good all along.
But you gotta start off small and then hopefully build it up if and when it works...to get funding and trust.
photo: jamie Harley
photo: jamie Harley
photo: jamie Harley
photo: jamie Harley
i used to live nr turbine hall at the tate and have got some mega ideas for that place but u have to kinda shmooze with all the right people to make it happen, i just didnt have the stomach 4 all that, mabe another time.
dave: u told me a while back u still have a setup in your bedroom so u can work on tracks whenever u get the inspiration. how does your missus feel about having synth clobber in the bedroom? do u have synths in the bathroom??
rich: ha bathroom, funny u say that, as i rek is only room in house without equipment, of course I've used it as a reverb in the past :) not in this house though[scotland]
my missus is sooo understanding, she doesnt mind if i turn light on etc when she is sleeping she is the best, totally lush she is.
though she says i wake her up tapping on the circlon keys too hard! i can go bloody fast on that thing these days!
bedroom setup is currently now a buchla 400 +two dynacord add one's+four marshall time modulators[diff models] ! yer usual kinda bedroom setup :)
dave: speculation abounds regarding follow up releases, the watmm forum already has a thread going about it :
http://forum.watmm.com/topic/84612-as-syro-is-pretty-much-clear-lets-speculate-about-eznzea-and- xbpi/
are the titles accurate? what sort of new material can we expect from u in the future? do u have any hints or timeframes for other releases?
rich: no, fuk knws where they got that from, yea well loads planned hopefully i wont get sidetracked, more experimental stuff and robotic/electro mechanical stuff, its all pretty much ready to go, so just got to master it.
syro was like the friendly easiest listening selection, although it is most of my fave unreleased tunes of last 10 years, so its no cop out.
The other stuff ,got to be in right frame of mind to hear it.
dave: what's the current situtation with rephlex? are there to be any new rephlex releases by u or other artists?
rich: nope rephlex has come to an end, end of an era, all rights given back to the artists, I dont know if I will take part in another label, Im all up for suggesting things to other people to chase up and release though like , lets have a herbert eimert compilation!
dave: with all this music making its a wonder u get any time off. how do u manage to juggle a successful career and a family at the same time?
rich: its very hard but possible, its like constantly juggling, i enjoy the challenge...but sometimes its a bit like this
dave:how accurate is the gear list on syro?
rich: definitely not 100% and there are 1 or 2 mistakes, like i think it says i used a vocoder on the piano track , dot in wrong place or i prob did it wrong, it is mostly right though but misses out a shit load of outboard as i couldn't remember every eq etc in my lodge.
There were a few plugins used but hardly anything and not worth mentioning really, it is 99.9% hardware not that it matters just sayin.
Plenty more eurorack modules as well obviously but i think i put down the main ones i could remember.
Actually the whole equipment list is pretty weird choices on there actually pretty normal/odd for me i think, its definitely not showing off when u take into account what else I've got! just so happened those particular tracks used those things.
the birds on that piano track by the way were picked up by the mic's at the same time, i angled them slightly towards the doors to pick it up, the birds hear what I'm doing also !-)
program it pretty much in one go, not quite but almost, it was never an ambition actually, it just happened that way.
Most people I know who heard it think its played, which is a really nice complement, coz every little timing imperfection in that is purposefully programmed in...i find it very mediative doing such tiny little things, tempo is regular though so it could be mixed with amen break :)
dave: is there any country u've not performed in yet that u want to?
rich: not really, i dont really like thought of traveling that much, id rather stay local .. I've never felt the need to go anywhere that far, once im out the door its a different matter though, so id prob say antarctica or north pole.
I think I'm always just happy wherever i am. Me and rus [russell haswell]
http://haswellstudio.com/
used to talk about doing a gig in Svalbard, id REALLY love that, check it out on a search, what a place.
Me and him played on a little lsland off the coast of norway once, was fucking intense total laff...i think that was mainly the acid though...oh god.., all they had to eat there was whale burgers or whale soup, although a mate of rus's came and brought his harpoon gun and caught a load of fish!
the hardest part was being totally off my face and then the sun comin up at 2am, [coz its so far north]..ah it was intense...[grits teeth]
everyone was drinking as if it was their last day on earth, they do that over there.
dave: its great that you've been a champion of the vinyl format. what do u think is the secret of vinyl's longevity?
rich: exactly that, its the longest lasting format and when it does deteriorate it does so in a pleasing way .
It has a sound, well it has lots of sounds, depending on who presses it etc etc but it sounds a certain way that suits some things and doesn't suit others, simple as that, like tape,
id love my own lathe so i could bounce things to vinyl and then resample, I know people who do that, I've got some other weird devices for that though anyway at the moment to keep me happy.
but if you want to archive your music for longest period of time, vinyl is the one..
so weird to think of all the cd's ,tape &and vinyl in the world today in few hundred years time, none of it will work anymore, all hard drives etc will be fucked in 10 years.
i bet usb sticks don't last long, I've no idea, not looked into it but bet its hardly anything and nowhere ask long as vinyl.
How about people who store music in a stupid sound cloud? ha what a joke, like leaving all your records around someones house you never met and expecting them to be there still when you get back, :)