I should go to bed but just had another session with the OB6 where the knobs and dials might as well just have animal faces on them for all I know as I turn and push random things and it talks back to me with all these lovely noises and soundscapes and I have no idea what on earth I’m doing.
How often do you not have a clue what is going on and enter some weird fuzzy flow state where it works but shouldn’t and you feel micropossessed? And are you happiest at this point or does anxiety about not having a clue what is going on pull you back into the real world? What equipment is best for this?
I’d say I 30% knew what I was doing tonight and 100% will not be able to recreate it tomorrow.
Going to bed now but if you want to make me wake with something nice to read, please give me some honest percentages and vivid descriptions of music that you never recorded and always dream of getting back but never can.
I am a firm believer that a good deal of the greatest songs ever made were done so when people were fucking about aimlessly with no clue as to what their next song would be.
Ditto, I rely on scary amounts of voodoo magic with the Digitone.
I recently bought a device that is an antidote to “not having a clue.” The Woovebox. Over 5-6 weeks, I put in a serious amount of time learning the thing. Because there is only one knob, and because virtually all the settings are hidden at any point in time…that forced me to think very hard about what I was doing.
There can exist, I think, a inverse relationship between the ease of use of a device…and the depth of understanding about the music/sounds coming out of it. Back in the punch-card era of computing, I don’t think people were like, “Let’s punch a bunch of random holes in the card, feed it into the machine, and see what happens!” The process was, I’m guessing, more deliberate.
I live for it. Conscious thought kills authenticity for me. I want only to be a moth led to the flame of sick sounds.
Modular and samplers. Not necessarily hardware, and not necessarily together. Modular for trying to do one thing, getting distracted, making a big spaghetti mess, and reaching a point where I have no idea what’s going on other than a general idea what 3 or 4 controls are going to do, and that what they are doing is awesome. Samplers for loading up some garbage sample, using modulation and effects to try to turn it into something it’s not, failing hard, and accidentally turning it into something I’ve never heard before.
In his interview with Electronic Beats TV, Skee Mask basically said he’s not that much of a nerd when it comes to synthesisers, the knobs are there to be turned but there are also lots of wonderful presets which can be used as starting points. Sometimes it’s better not to know every function of a device, because the mystery fuels creativity.
