Photo by Brian Stevens

And now he’s making a Renoise album. It’s called The Inertials and is a collection of “shiny new techno/electro with many layers of rhythm programming, sound design and microdetails to surprise, freak-out and delight” according to Cristian himself. Another unique aspect of this album is that it’s fan-funded via PledgeMusic. Of special interest to the Renoise crowd should be that by taking part in this funding process, you can get your hands on actual Renoise XRNS files of Cristian’s latest tracks among other things.

Can you tell us a bit about what you’re up to at the moment?

Right now, I am getting together a new album of electronic sounds, leaning towards a more beat-driven style than my last full-length release on SubRosa.

It’s taken me a long time to figure out how to get back into recording and releasing material this time, as things have really changed a lot for me. I no longer have my own analogue studio, since the Station 55 studio in Barcelona closed down in 2010. I needed to come up with a way of raising the final studio mixing costs up front, so I decided to go for PledgeMusic, one of the fan-funding models that have sprung up from the ashes of the old style music business.

What made you decide to go for this approach rather than a traditional release?

So many reasons. Back in the mid-90s when I was part of the No Future collective in Brighton, I was always anti-music industry, we used to call it underground back then. I was into DIY culture, cassette labels, spread-by-mail, white labels… Generally trying to avoid what was already an artist-unfriendly situation with major indie labels and pressing/distribution deals. I chose PledgeMusic over the other options, because it was dreamed up by a UK musician, Benji Rogers. In my opinion, you gotta be an artist to know how tough it can be, so as to build something more fair.

PledgeMusic is based upon a simple idea. Instead of an artist or group investing their own money up front on recording and mixing, based on the vagueness of possibly recouping those costs from sales, this model tries to raise the money upfront, over a 60 day timeframe. Funds are pledged by fans, friends and family in return for exclusives such as signed vinyls, previews, even backstage passes, exclusive concerts, or whatever the artist wants to offer! In my case, there’s also Renoise XRNS files of the album tracks up for grabs.

Essentially, it hinges on the idea that if an individual would be interested to buy the record in the store when it comes out, then by the same initiative, they can pay for it upfront and wait until its made. This way they participate in its creation, the artist gets a much better income stream from their music vision and from their own creativity just when they really need it.

Also, the connection with the audience is no longer an imagined one. The support from the pledgers comes at a critical time, when an artist needs to be especially motivated, positive and strong – that is to say, during the creation period (I think touring is much less demanding than composing). And these days, writing and recording is a really tricky project to manage. You need months focussed on inventing great music. On top of that, its got to be up to the standard that demanding listeners expect! Without the budget for the equipment, time and resources – not to mention food and drink, I don’t know how anyone expects new music to happen! Thats why I think the fan-funding model is a really good idea, all round.

More here: www.pledgemusic.com/projects/cristianvogel

And for this project, you’ve made Renoise a big part of your working process. What attracted you to Renoise?

Well, like many others from my generation, I started getting really seriously productive on my Amiga using ProTracker. Back then, we traded floppies by mail, this radical idea of a software sound sequencer, from the people for the people. PT2.0 just popped through my letterbox one day – no user guide and plenty of vibe! I was hooked straight away. I waited for almost 20 years before someone built on that amazing legacy, and did it properly. So when I installed Renoise back in January 2009, man, I was hyper excited. Proper back to the future trip.

For what aspects of production do you use Renoise?

I stopped making music with trackers around my 5th album (All Music Has Come To An End on Tresor Berlin)… I went off and studied synthesis, mixing and modular thinking which led over many years to an object-oriented approach to composition and sound design. So, a big part of my compositional thinking happens in realtime code, using the Kyma music language. I see Renoise as more similar to a procedural kind of paradigm, sound events which are scheduled to happen on a clocked linear timeline. On the other hand, Kyma, SuperCollider and Max/MSP are more object-oriented where all manner of music objects can be invented, can exist simultaneously and exchange messages.

Basically, as some coders will tell you, a creator needs to be down with different approaches to design, in order to reach a good solution to a problem. In the context of computer music, the problem is compositional, and the solution is the sound of the finished piece.

So I use Renoise to arrange audio files and decide where to fix them in place on a quantised linear timeline. In other words, placing samples on ticks, patterns of samples in a sequence and so on. I also use Renoise for producing sound design elements, like rendered wavetables or audio prints for further manipulation in Kyma.

How do you perform live at the moment? Have you managed to work Renoise into it somehow?

I use Kyma live, a sound I have been developing for about 6 years called “The NeverEngine” with which I can improvise techno in realtime. I use some sounds from Renoise sketches, as source in there. I am considering presenting the new album live in Renoise, as its less about improvisation… Stay tuned for that!

Certainly will, that sounds very exciting. Any particular feature requests for us devs?

Well, the new 2.8 beta has pretty much got it all covered. You guys are doing a great job!

Thanks for the nice words! What about Kyma, how did you get into that, and what does it give you that similar tools don’t?

Sound quality primarily. DSP hardware that is only concerned with music making and sound design, no mouse or email or graphics…

I needed to push past a kind of “modular” way of thinking, so that’s how I got into it. It’s a difficult learning curve though, I had to dedicate a number of years to reach the deeper levels of what’s possible. Which has been great fun!

Do you work mainly with software these days, or does hardware feature to some extent?

Apart from the Pacarana (Kyma’s dedicated hardware component) and the MacBook, it’s all software. I design in code and in the tracker, but I also have many years experience with outboard, mixers, dynamic processors and so on. So I try and always get out of the box, and dig some studio time… Hence the PledgeMusic project! >>Nudge<<

What technology have you used throughout the years, and what’s been your favourites?

I loved the EMS Synthi, sadly had to sell it off. I love the colours of analogue processing equipment, especially at the mastering stage. It’s another universe of sonics, and they combine well with digital sounds.

What was your involvement with the film Enter The Void from a couple of years ago?

Cool movie. They used a track I made in 1993, Cancion Sintetica in all the club scenes. Thomas Bangalter used some of my more up-to-date sound design amongst the layers of that incredible 2 hour sound mix that accompanies the film from beginning to end.

So it was more a case of them using your work after the fact than you being actively involved in shaping the soundtrack?

Yes, Gaspar Noé (the director) wanted that track specifically. Just goes to show how you can never predict what will happen in the future with the tunes you make now, so make them robust enough for the long term!

To finish off with, who would you say have been your biggest musical influences?

It’s so tricky to say definitively, but I’ll just drop a few… Howlin Wolf, Rhythm & Sound, Talking Heads, Drexciya, Charlie Parker, Bo Diddley, …And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead, Burial, AtomTM, Tod Dockstader, The Young Gods, Night Of The Brain, Fog, Black Dice, Tortoise, Sonic Youth… Well, you get the idea – all the mavericks!

www.pledgemusic.com/projects/cristianvogel

Who are you and where are you from?

I am a producer, programmer geek, design nerd, and occasional DJ attempting to do far too many things simultaneously, from the UK.

Taking your name from the classic Commodore tape drive, I’m guessing you must have been an avid C64 fan as a kid?

Yeah it was amazing at the time, and the SID chip still stands up as a fine synthesizer. I suppose the first ever real synth I ever heard ‘in the flesh’ was the SID. Previously, all the computer music I’d heard came from crappy monophonic beepers so hearing the title music to ‘Midnight Resistance’ for the first time blew my tiny mind to bits.

Do you ever use a real C64 for your musical endeavours?

A few of my older tracks feature the C64 cartridge ‘Electrosound’, others have samples from simple BASIC programs, and the Elektron
SIDstation features in quite a few tunes. But in recent years generally I just stick to a choice handful of VSTs for the bleepy stuff.

I’m guessing you got into trackers that way and that Renoise was a natural progression?

I never actually used a tracker on the C64, none of my C64-owning school friends were aware of ‘scene tools’ back then. The first
tracker I used was ProTracker on the Amiga in around 1994. I’ve got a drawer full of disks of utterly shit techno and breakbeat MODs from around that time, all with useful filenames like AAAA1B.MOD, or the unforgettable classics A1NEW7.MOD and NEWNEWNEW.MOD.

When my family got a ‘mega turbo multimedia PC with twin speed CD-ROM’ (66MHz whoo!) in around 1996 I somehow got hold of FastTracker II and promptly filled up the whopping 500MB harddrive with tons of crappy jungle tracks. Even after I’d moved out and gone to London I still had that crap old family PC running FT2 up until around 2001.

Around then I thought that in order to make ‘proper music’ you had to be using hardware, so I forfeited proper food for 7p tins of tomatoes with stale bread and spent my student loan on an AKAI sampler and some outboard FX. The only MIDI sequencer I could run on that old machine was Cubasis, which is a wretched piece of filth that nobody should ever have to use. The computer was barely functioning by then so I had to move the mouse pointer around with the numpad. Funtimes.

By around 2004, even though I was getting some quite good results from the hardware and a better computer running Cubase with VSTs and stuff, I still really missed FT2. I tried Skale and Buzz for a bit but they were unstable, and pretty much abandoned by their developers. I discovered Renoise in 2005 and it just instantly felt right, solid, a piece of software you could trust™.

Do you produce everything in Renoise or do you only use it for certain aspects?

Renoise for all production. Then I usually do some light post-production in Audition, and use Ableton for live sets.

I suppose being a programmer I really appreciate that Renoise allows you to very quickly enter precisely what notes, drum hits or effect tweaks you want just by tapping out the rhythms on the qwerty keyboard. Trackers just feel more ‘open’, like all the parameters and innards of the synths, effects, and samples are exposed at all times, just waiting for you to mess with them. Sometimes when jamming with friends who use Logic or Ableton I get impatient – because although those programs have lots of good keyboard shortcuts to help you, you’re still pretty much entering notes with a mouse or trackpad, and it’s torture!

Any particular feature requests for us devs?

I’m one of those odd people who want a Piano Roll! Tracker patterns are great for most situations, but when you’re working with complex chord progressions it’s really helpful to have a visual overview of the notes, so you can easily see which inversions or transpositions might work without having to interpret all that note data in your head. A native arpeggiator would be amazing also!

Could you tell us a bit more about your musical career, according to Discogs, your first release came out in 2001, have you been continuously active since then?

Pretty much been making music of some sort since 1994. I’d probably go feral and end up living in a hedge if I stopped.

Do you find that your tastes have changed over the 15 or so years you’ve been making music?

It constantly shifts, I might think Prog Rock, or early Acid House, or Bach’s harpsichord fugues, or 60s garage rock, or incredibly naff 80s library music, or Trad Jazz, or anything else is the best thing in the world ever on any particular day. I can’t think of any single genre that doesn’t have at least one track that I don’t love – apart from Psytrance obviously. I’ve been fairly obsessed with drone music for the past couple of years though, I’d like to do a drone album at some point.

You recently played the UK’s consistently most interesting electronic music festival, Bloc. How did that go?

Yeah it was great, the room was packed out and people seemed to be into it. I had a problem with a dodgy midi controller and had to miss out part of the set while I remapped FX to the laptop keyboard but it still sounded good. I doubt anyone noticed at that stage of the festival!

How do you perform your live gigs? Have you managed to work Renoise into it somehow?

Renoise wasn’t really suitable for live work up until the last couple of versions, but it’s probably time for me to give it a try now, I know lots of others have got some interesting setups going recently.

In more general terms, do you prefer working with software or hardware?

10 years ago I would’ve said 100% hardware, 5 years ago I would’ve said the opposite, now I reckon a healthy mixture of the two is definitely the way to go. I only have a couple of hardware synths myself, but jamming at friend’s studios with huge piles of the things is ace. When you’re standing at a synth, you’re not tempted to look at Tweetdeck, or try out that new VST effect you downloaded, or mess around with your soundcard settings, you’re just playing an instrument.

Very true. You have released some pretty mindbending mixtapes on your website over the years, not least the magnificently titled Businessfunk series.

Hehe, mindbending is a great compliment! I tend to get obsessed about some particular area of musical history or other, so once I feel like I’ve sufficiently exhausted it it’s good to produce something to mark the end of that particular binge. With the Businessfunk stuff there is a lot of crap, I mean really awful stuff, so it’s nice to distil all that into a nice densely packed thing that people can enjoy.

How do you feel about the whole digital versus vinyl versus CD debate that many people seem to spend an inordinate amount of time occupying themselves with?

Meh. Vinyl distortion / saturation is evocative of a certain era in music history, and it sounds really nice. It’s an aesthetic, and that’s all there is to it really. When I hear people say things like “digital has got no bass extension, vinyl sounds really warm and fat” I don’t know how to respond because that’s complete bollocks on so many levels! A sine wave is a sine wave is a sine wave.

It’s true that vinyl can store frequencies up to something silly like 80kHz that only bats and chihuahuas can hear, but I don’t think that’s even what the argument is about. Hardcore vinyl purists have probably just heard too many digital DJs playing 128k mp3s ripped off MySpace gurgling horribly at the wrong speed through Ableton’s ‘Beats’ timestretch mode through a crap soundcard.

I do love records though, and sometimes it’s nice to go out DJing without a computer. Operating turntables is definitely more fun than hunching over a laptop, but as for sound quality you’re just as likely to hear a badly pressed record as you are a poorly equipped digital DJ.

You seem to keep very busy judging by your site. Any tips to us eternal procrastinators who never seem to finish a track?

Be harsh on yourself, if something in the track isn’t quite working just delete the whole channel and instruments completely, save it, forget about it and do something else for a while. Come back after a few days / weeks, if it still doesn’t work – just scrap the whole thing! It doesn’t matter, you probably learned something by failing.

What do you do outside of music? What about all the nicely retro-looking artwork for your releases and your site? Is that your own work too?

I work as a freelance designer / developer at a web agency, I’m also working on Flash / Mobile games as a side project (slakinov.com). Making games pretty much involves everything I’m interested in – programming, design, music, so I love it.

Record sleeves are just another part of the music for me, and I like to be responsible for that too whenever possible.

On the games side, you’re involved in something called Pixeljam Studios. How did that come about?

Pixeljam is a great pixel-style game company run by musician / programmer Miles Tilmann, pixel artist Rich Grillotti and musician Mark DeNardo. I put out some of Miles’ music a couple of years ago on the record label project I’m involved with (handsette.net) and we’ve since worked on a couple of music commissions together. We’re hoping to get involved with other game developers to do soundtracks – that would be the ultimate job for me!

I’ve actually just today launched my game Space Rubbish which comes with a soundtrack included (all made in Renoise of course). Along with Pixeljam, I think we’re the first people to ever sell downloadable games as hidden bonus features inside MP3 albums in Bandcamp.

To finish off with, who would you say have been your biggest musical influences? Those artists that you keep coming back to over the years and that have meant a lot to you.

Too many to mention, but for sheer synth wizardry I’d say Isao Tomita. The stuff he was doing in the mid 70s still sounds incredible. Listen to his versions of Holst’s ‘The Planets’ and Mussorgsky’s ‘Pictures At An Exhibition’ – amazing stuff.

An interesting choice. Synth wizardry indeed. Thanks for taking the time, really enjoyed your answers!

Cheers!

www.datassette.net
www.slakinov.com

Who are you and where are you from?

My name is Lauri Saine and I’m a musician from Finland. I currently live in the capital, Helsinki.

So your moniker Saine is actually your real name?

Yup it’s my surname, I remember just sticking with it for the simplicity, after figuring some more techy name alternatives might eventually turn out to be cheesy.

A lot of the music on your latest album sounds like it’s played live rather than sequenced – a case in point being the piano piece After What Seemed Like Forever – is that the case?

Yes that theme is 90% improvised live during one misty spring night/morning, although usually it’s a combination of both. Many of my tracks are 90% programmed as well and often the live-sounding things can have quite a bit of different takes and sequencing behind them. Also I don’t have the skills to just press record and spontaneously get to a finished result in one go, so I do edits afterwards. I like combining improvised, experimental things with surgically programmed elements and see how they work together.

Long Time No See by Saine

I think it’d be safe to assume that most Renoise users are not proficient instrumentalists, but rather more technically-minded music producers. How do you find working with live recordings in Renoise, as it’s not traditionally seen as one of its strengths?

A good question. For me personally, working mostly with shorter recorded clips and loads of them, it works well. I don’t end up with a messy audio pool filled with oddly named, often unneeded temporary clips taking up HD-space. Instead I get to keep the project neat and organized while I’m doing recordings and all the relevant files stay within reach. The way I look at it, there’s not a big difference between a live recording and other types of musical elements. Take sampling for instance: it often falls somewhere in-between to begin with, and I like to treat them as equal building blocks for new music.

If we were talking about regular multitrack sessions with a band where the drums alone can have a dozen mics, a traditional piano roll sequencer would surely suit the purpose better. For me as a sample-focused musician though, it’s way faster to work with a tracker interface, allowing me to visually line up all notes next to each other, while having the track commands and built-in audio editor/recorder near at all times. I do lots of spontaneous recording from anywhere I can think of, so it’s good to have these tools close by.

While a traditional piano roll view suits the recording of simultaneous tracks and moving these large chunks of audio around, working with shorter samples, it’s a different story – trying out combinations of different pitches and timings, it’s important to see those building blocks from different tracks constantly in front of you. Using Renoise I don’t have to think about how to overcome limitations such as not being able to put several different audio samples on top of each other on the same track at different pitches, giving each sample individual volume envelopes etc. Of course you can always find alternate routes for this type of thing, but instead of seconds it will take minutes – a lifetime when the inspiration is hitting and you just need to audition several different approaches quickly.

Pretty much any software can do amazing things in the right hands of course, but a comfortable workflow really makes a huge difference in terms of creativity. A lot of people are scared of the matrix-like tracker interface and I bet it can look intimidating at first, but to me it just means less annoying windows and not having to switch back and forth between tracks and views all the time.

How did you find out about Renoise and what attracted you to it in the first place?

I remember stumbling upon a screenshot around 2003 and got interested. I think there was a competition going on for the name of the software. I had used MadTracker for a couple of years. It was fast and stable, but seeing it fade away and become old-fashioned at the time, I started to do things with sequencers such as Logic Audio and Cubase. I was unable to find my comfort-zone though, even though these are powerful pieces of software. Again, these were great for some purposes or working with MIDI, but sessions often required a scary amount of setting up so you could no longer begin making music in an instant, templates or not. Everything was dependent on strict folder structures so projects were no longer easy to move around and every little thing seemed to require quite a bit of zooming views in and out, opening and closing windows.

So eventually I felt like that interface was initially built for different working methods. FastTracker II was my first love around 1995 so Renoise basically felt like going back home. The home was now pimped out with goodies like VST support, so it fit like a glowe.

The album is very organic-sounding, and despite the range of styles on offer, sounds very coherent. Do you have any special tricks in terms of post-processing to achieve that coherency?

When I first started sketching how this album ought to sound and feel like, I laid down certain guidelines for myself regarding processing. I was aiming for a dusty, nostalgic feel without ending up too retro/gimmicky and also maintain a sort of sparkling/fresh vibe in between. The album doesn’t have featuring artists or vocalists so I wanted to have enough “room” to maneuver between these realms soundwise – to make sure I’d get enough variation between tracks.

For some elements throughout the whole album, I used similar processing chains and techniques. Like with transients and exciters for drums, I used pretty much the same tools throughout the album – the sample material I used varies quite a lot between tracks so I figured this might glue it all together a bit. The album was mastered by Fabien Schivre, which also plays a part in the coherent end result. He really “got” the idea I was after very quickly and helped create a dynamic, creamy tone for it. We both agreed on dynamics before loudness.

I believe these subtleties of sound are an important thing, not mere nitpicking – and also a part of the actual creative process. A good dish wouldn’t work with the wrong seasoning. It’s all a “work in progress” for me of course when it comes to sound/mixing, and there are always so many things to improve on, but that’s what makes it so much fun.

Do you use any hardware or outboard gear or is everything done on the computer? And in more general terms, do you prefer working with software or hardware?

I use some hardware yes, but mostly I work in a small, budget homestudio with not that much gear. The reason is purely financial. I use a tube stereo compressor/eq frequently, some effect pedals here and there, running VSTi’s through c-cassette and such. Sometimes I like to record samples with a mic through vintage speakers, small things like that. But these depend on the situation and sometimes the simple approaches work best. Overall I believe people often focus too much on the gear used and specifically whether it’s expensive, street credible gear or not.

Of course it can be important to work with proper equipment and to have good AD/DA converters, good speakers etc – but in the end it’s still a relatively small fraction of the whole picture so one should at least not spend more time on that than on the actual music! It’s possible to get incredibly nice sound from just software alone, with a bit of enthusiasm – just like it is possible to make amazing things with say, nothing but a worn-out guitar.

I think it’s generally a good idea to embrace both side-by-side and just use what feels good – at least it would seem very silly to leave the other out completely, as both have their unique plus sides. An increasing amount of albums are being made completely in-the-box and the results can be incredibly good, even warm/analogue sounding. But I am a fan of the 60′s/70′s sound and it is still quite rare to hear that level of dynamics/warmth in electronic music. So if it wasn’t so expensive, I would definitely get some hardware gear around here, no doubt. Plugins are also getting better and better at an incredibly fast rate, though. Whatever suits your music best, I say.

I keep finding myself back in the 90′s when listening to your album, both April and Jetpack have a definite St. Germain or mid-90′s French deep house flavour to them, and in other places there’s quite a Mo Wax feel. Are these conscious influences and is this a period you feel some affinity with?

It’s nice you picked that out! The mentioned were some the most powerful sources of inspiration when I was first starting out, as well as mid-90′s hiphop. That era is when I got into this thing, so I guess it’s unavoidable that fractions of it remain. With basses especially, I wanted to get that fluffy roundness, especially on those beat-focused tracks. I like to keep a little bit of distance to the very trendiest and freshest things that are going on, they seem to fade out as quickly as they appeared.

Yes, you definitely nailed that bassy, murky, thuddy roundness that’s so characteristic of those records. How do you feel about the current climate for the type of music you produce?

Apparently these more “mellow” styles which I guess my music more or less represents, haven’t been very trendy the recent years, compared to more aggressive/masculine styles of electronic music. Perhaps due to the overload of triphop/nu-jazz after the turn of the millennium, they are often associated with cheesy elevator music. Which is funny if you think about it – a lot of that “powerful” stuff is cheesy as hell just the same, but you get away with it: it’s loud and impressive for a while. Long enough to move on to the next. This might be changing as we speak, though. I might be wrong but this whole techno/dubstep/grime cocktail does seem to have similarities to the drum and bass scene a little more than a decade ago: burning the candle at both ends leaves few surprises to expect. Still, let all flowers bloom, of course!

On the one hand we’re living in great times now, virtually anyone can get their music heard and have access to the tools and there’s always a very colourful spectrum of new music appearing in some corner of the world, it’s unbelievable really. On the other hand there’s so much of it now – the rate of new releases appearing is evergrowing while the attention span of the average, overworked person is that of a hummingbird, I sometimes feel like people don’t have the energy to really focus on things anymore. In my case I sometimes feel it leads to all the “bright” things that shout for attention getting noticed in an instant, while things that might require a bit more settling into, often end up being completely lost at sea. Like you observe a traffic sign each day on your way to work, but never once stop to look at the beautiful tree behind it.

Ah well, making music for the sake of music is more and more exciting by the year, I don’t seem to get bored of it, but in terms of really getting it out there or ever earning a dime for it, things are looking gloomy as ever. Overall I try not to think about that too much now hehe…

A good attitude to have. To finish off with, who would you say have been your biggest musical influences? Those artists that you keep coming back to over the years and that have meant a lot to you.

Such a tough question each time, from among a whole lot of different acts I’ll just say A Tribe Called Quest. I remember being really impressed by the way they used samples, back when I was 15 or something, and I still find myself going back to their records every now and then. Certainly an influence.

For more info on Saine, check out his website at www.sainemusic.com. The vinyl edition of Long Time No See can be ordered from cymbidium.highwire.com, and the digital edition is available from all the usual outlets.

Where does the name Hitori Tori come from?

Well, it’s a long story but I’ll try and keep it brief. In the late 1990′s my friend and I formed a tracker-based electronic band called finch. After producing numerous albums together, which we never released, we abandoned the project and I moved to Japan. I was producing a lot of music alone at the time and really needed an artist name for my solo stuff. Maybe something in Japanese? Maybe another bird reference? So, I chose hitori (which means alone) and tori (which means bird). Hitori Tori. This name just made sense to me at the time.

Can you tell us a bit about the Ohm Controller that you’re using?

The Ohm64 is made by a small company in Texas called Livid Instruments. I discovered it online while looking for something tactile to control multiple instances of Renoise. I had been using a smaller controller made by another company, but I couldn’t take myself very seriously when playing a live show with it – especially since its components kept breaking. From what I could tell, the Ohm64 looked pretty reliable and sturdy. I also wanted potentiometers that were not infinity knobs – because those can be problematic in certain situations. The Ohm64 is an easily programmable blank slate, and I guess that’s what attracted me to it.

What exactly do you assign the grid buttons to? Are they always set to trigger different patterns in Renoise?

In my current set-up the grid buttons are assigned to do either of 2 things. 1) To select patterns in the Renoise song sequence (usually containing offset sample elements), or 2) to juggle short vocal samples in the background while Renoise is playing, using a Max MSP application called mlr. In the latter case I typically assign all the samples to the same group; allowing for more random style cut-ups.

How do you handle multiple Renoise instances and how do you separate the MIDI messages going to the different instances?

Once assigned, the mappings stay locked to the songs. MIDI communicates with all Renoise instances simultaneously and there aren’t any issues of conflict that I’m aware of. Incidentally yesterday I had seven instances of the Renoise application open at once and everything was just fine.

Once you’ve made a new track, how much preparation do you need to do before being able to perform a live set like the ones in your videos? In other words, how big is the step from finished Renoise track to live-performable Renoise track?

Actually, the funny thing is, it feels like less work is needed. I needn’t even finish the songs before performing these live sets. I usually play unfinished songs and just blend them into each other. If you’re like me, you’ve got hundreds of these ‘almost complete’ songs just sitting on your hard-drive that you don’t know what the hell to do with. Well, why not mix them into other unfinished songs and give them a better life, you know – instead of just letting them gather dust. Most of the tracks in my videos are incomplete sketches of songs mixed together to make complete songs. I just spend about five minutes before hand mapping out some faders and effect parameters, hit record on a video camera and then try to do everything in one take.

You seem to use different skins to colour code your Renoise instances. Do specific colours correspond to specific musical elements?

The different colours are used to help emphasize the different instances. That’s all – they’re purely aesthetic. For me those colours do not have any real relevance to song syntax. Perhaps for someone with visual synesthesia there are some deeper connotations.

All your projects seem to scroll by at a furious speed. What’s wrong with a nice and steady 4 LPB?

Well, I do like to be quite close to the canvas when I’m working on a track. After I get a basic workflow going, I’ll speed the song up drastically. It’s sort of like increasing the resolution of the track so that you can fit lots of tight edits into your patterns.

I’m finding myself less and less conscious of the speed I’m working at these days, but one thing’s for sure – my tracks keep getting faster. Speed! It’s like some weird addiction spiraling out of control. Maybe seeing those little numbers traveling upwards on the screen at that speed stimulates a part of the brain associated with visual processing and pleasure? I don’t know. Well, whatever the reason, the dizzying tempo helps me to stay on task and complete songs faster.

How did you first find out about Renoise?

For quite a few years I was running a sound tracker called Player Pro 5.9 on my Mac. This tracker was good, but had very limited tech support and eventually died a horrible death in 2002. Then I remembered my friend Dac telling me about a fast tracker type clone that was under development. He said that it would soon to be ported to Mac. I kept my eyes on the Renoise website and when the first version became available I downloaded it. I’ve been using it ever since.

What are your thoughts in general about using Renoise as a live tool?

Using Renoise as a live tool is getting easier by the day. I use it to DJ my tracker files. I like being able to drop out the drums in one track and mix in the drums of another. It’s certainly a step up from just mixing one stereo track into another one. Of course I’m personally waiting for the day that a proper XRNS file mixing app or console gets invented. I mean it’s not exactly practical having 10 instances of Renoise open simultaneously for your live set, but it’s definitely manageable.

While some creative thinking is involved, creative tweaking in Renoise is usually implemented pretty easily. The developers have made everything so intuitive and simple. I’ve never felt frustrated with mapping anything. I just push command ‘m’ and assign. By comparison, I was using the latest version of a popular DJ mixing program the other day and was totally put off by how outrageously annoying the MIDI configuration set-up screen was. I felt totally restricted. I couldn’t even use some features of this DJ program because only ‘sponsored’ controllers were allowed to use those MIDI assignments. Sponsored controllers only?! Ha. Ridiculous. Makes me proud to support companies like Renoise that are not exclusive to particular brands.

Did the 2.6 release with the new scripting support influence the way you use Renoise with the Ohm?

No. But, I think I’m heading in a different direction right now. We’ll see.

I like the Bird of the week feature of your blog. So, as a final question: what’s your favourite bird?

The Tawny Owl. Because it lurks ominously.

Hey, but before continuing, why don’t you start playback on the music player on the Renoise frontpage to listen to 3 songs from the album?

Fact 1) The album was written for the RPM Challenge. Each participant gets only 28 days to write and record a full length album. Hunz managed to finish it before the deadline, which is notable in itself. But to actually deliver an album of such quality, that’s truly remarkable.Would you have been able to tell it was made in such a short period?

Fact 2) Whereas most artists tuck away their project files, Hunz decided to release them for all to see to keep the demoscene spirit alive. You can open the XRNS files with Renoise to learn ninja tracking tricks, create remixes or inspect them for inspiration.

Download “Thoughts that Move” in XRNS format:
Hunz – Thoughts that Move (XRNS files)

Official announcement with MP3 and CD:
New Album is out now, it’s free! – hunz.com.au