New EP, inspired by a lot of ambient and slow stuff in the world of 3XL, West Mineral, etc, plus the local beat and ambient scenes here in Chicago. I used to make dub techno (with a couple tracks on Traum/Telrae) and might get back to it one of these days - so that def affects the sound too.
Equipment
- MPC X
- Eventide H90
- Novation Summit
- SSL Big Six
- Foote P3EX master bus compressor
- No computer beyond topping and tailing the tracks in an editor + mastering. MPC does everything I need.
Process
Everything goes into and comes out of the MPC. I mix the 8 outs on my SSL, and use the cues and b-bus to route stuff around.
I started this EP with MPC OS 2.15, and I found arrangement a lot harder than I do now on OS 3. So the earlier tracks were made as a big (like 32-64 bar) loop that I then dub mixed with track mutes and live knob tweaks.
On OS 3 I now pre-arrange with the Clips and then do all the final polish in arrangement mode.
Everything is sampled and resampled. Lots of sampling stuff through the H90 and then processing it again with stuff like Flavor Pro. Lots of chops off of tracks from YouTube, Tracklib, whatever, that then get processed in the H90 or MPC.
I’ve had the Foote master bus compressor for over 10 years. I find there’s this subtle “groove” that I get from dialing in the attack and decay just right and a thickness from the output transformer. I love it.
Happy with this studio setup - it’s the most “stable” I’ve been in a long time. No casting around for different synths or FX or sequencers, just working within limitations and quirks of the MPC.
I def find that different gear has different affordances and directions it tends to take me in. When I made dub techno I used the Octatrack as my main sequencer and drum and texture machine, and I found the 16 step grid up front really took me in that direction. The MPC leads me into more live recording, more pushing stuff off the grid in the grid and list views, slower tempos, more chopping.
I’ll also say just pushing through on the MPC and trying to get better and better at it has really affected how I work. I used to get really focused on needing a new piece of gear when I got frustrated or it felt like work, but now I find there’s something meditative about sampling 64 bars of FX tweaks and slicing it up, or messing with note values in list edit in micro detail.