Let’s start at the technical beginning. How did you get into tracking music on computers?
Kind of chance I guess… a boring summer, an internet connection and I knew about modules. I had this friend. Once, I came to play at his home and he made me listen to some modules. I didn’t care back then about composing, I was just listening at them. Then, summer 99, I had nothing to do at home, decided to download a soundtracker.
So we’re talking Impulse Tracker?
Well, for me its been IT2 for some months then FT2 then going back on IT2 :)… IT2 at first looked scary to me, but then, I noticed that it2 > ft2. (anyone can say so… its something well known even if some others wont admit it)

Did making the switch to Renoise open the creative floodgates for you?
Hmm not necessarily. You know the deal - when you’re used to make music in ONE AND ONLY application, it’s getting hard to switch to an other one. I was so much used to IT2 than anything looking differently was a mess to master. I had to figure things out… struggle with it. But then, after that, the possibility to use VSTs opened gates to me. Weirdly, it also gave me headaches
Too many choices?
Yes, that too.

Was most of this album made on Renoise?
All composed in renoise 1.2 (no, not kidding, 1.2).
So that’s a while back now, 2004?
Indeed.

Renoise was somewhat ‘young’ back then, still morphing into the stable machinery we have now. Did you find any limitations working to your favor?
At that very moment, not at all… how could I’ve been finding them? I mean… I had new things to discover: synthesis, “mastering”…

Was the music heavily produced, or was it something that flowed out easy for you?
Well, I have to explain the situation back then. I was living far from my girlfriend, far from my family… Well.. Not so far. But, far enough not to be able to see them when I wanted too. And I had this job, working as an architectural modeler… With heavy hours… So each moments I was feeling “okay”, I was making music. Some beers helped me a bit. I can’t really remember if it flowed that easily. I remember I was in front of my keyboard, making the bleeps
So it was more of a slower sporadic cathartic process?
Indeed. Completly cathartic. Thats when I started to express my sadness through a “fake joy”, if I can put it that way…

Musically speaking the speaking the album has a lot of delicate ’small’ sounds on it, was this a conscious choice in honoring the tracking heritage?
Actually, no. An old habit To make everything out of small pieces. Of course - it comes from the tracking heritage! But it’s not made to honor it.
More of an efficiency thing?
Just an old habit

Stylistically your music has had the tag ‘naive’ put to it, and it certainly seems to be the case here on this album. What’s this whole ‘naive’ thing about for you?
It’s about a different way to compose music, just not formatted to be “mainstreamly accepted”. Working on progressive ideas…

Why pink?
Because it’s the best color to express the “naive feeling” ? Because it’s cute… Because I like pink …and why not afterall?

I’ve heard people refer to your music using that troublesome genre name of IDM. Most artists who get this description tend to be dismissive of it. Is this something you’ve had to deal with in sharing this music?
Everyday. I just somehow hate it to be considered as IDM.

There’s a tasteful sprinkling of glitched percussion throughout the album. Unfortunately, many of the enthusiasts who collect non-mainstream music move in collective taste fads. Glitch as a sonic element seemed to be very fresh and prevalent around the turn of the century, but now people are moving back into nostalgic revisions and mutations, for example breakcore and dubstep. Is this a concern for you?
Well, the glitch comes from the tiny pieces of sounds. (explain more your question plz :D)
Well I’m trying to imagine people listening to this for the first time, and it would be a shame if I saw people going ‘ah this is glitchy, I’m so over glitch’.
AH yeah, these people. If they enjoy following whats “fresh” and “not fresh”.
Does that bother you?
Of course it does. I can’t understand people who are just not considering a moment - it’s MUSIC AFTERALL. A music is not GOOD because its ACTUAL. Its GOOD because IT IS. For example, breakcore is old as hell. So what? They should be over it as well. But NO, someone said its fresh so now, it’s fresh again. And maybe glitch will be fresh again in 2 years. To be said - it’s not really important.

Why has it taken so long to get this work out there?
You mean, to get this album released?
Yeah.
Ho well, regarding the name of the album - it wasn’t making sense if it had been released right after I finished it - it had to get older… Ok. I’m lying The label is having trouble to see its path through this hard world that is the music scene. The label owner, Vincent, is a great guy… He’s believing in any of the artists of Apegenine, but it doesn’t mean people will follow. And thats great, he wants to release the music he likes and not the music that will be liked! But so what? You have to find money, make choices… Some releases had to be released before mine… It’s like that
So you were OK with waiting?
I was.

Would you change the album at all now if given the chance? Or does it hold up for you still?
This album is about my life at this very moment. If my life had been happier during the making of it, it wouldn’t have sound the same. I caught a moment, expressed it. Somehow, my music changed, but its still “about myself”.

In recent years the industry has been undergoing challenges to the old established system of making money. Do you think going with a Label still has good opportunities for an artist starting out?
Many people are confounding labels and majors. A label is a label is a label. I see it as a family. You make the opportunities… The problem is more on the audience side.

Do you think people are still interested in CDs?
Are people still interested in vinyls? NES? Old computers It’s fetishism. I know many people who still are enjoying buying an object.

A lot of your music is freely available online, including newer music that has an ‘updated sound’ to it compared to your album. Is this part of the marketing of Kaneel, or an unavoidable necessity that every artist faces these days?
Yes, it’s marketing. I’m releasing my music for free because it makes me look cool and generous. Because people nowadays tend to think that musicians doing glitch are not GENEROUS. Because they make their music weird so only esthet are listening and understanding it. (:DDDDDDDD°

Speaking of self promotion, it seems you’ve either actively or inadvertently made a minor celebrity of yourself in the Renoise community via some rather entertaining YouTube videos. Additionally you’ve been sporting an alter-ego named Monsieur Baguette who has a tongue-in-cheek breakcore comedic mission with a string of free releases. Has this all been a ‘bit of fun’ or part of a larger artistic plan?
“Bit of fun.” …Related to the Renoise irc channel. I had to do it

Where do you see yourself headed with your music now?
Completly nowhere of course. That’s frustrating. But it also opens a door. I’m free to do whatever I want with my music and whatever moves I want to promote it, make it evolve. So at the moment, I don’t have any label commitments, I AM FREE… (whoohooo)

Speaking of Labels, I see you have started your own - Petite & Jolie. This seems to be continuing the ‘naive’ theme but with other people’s music. What’s going on here?
That I want to make evolve as half-a-label/half-a-netlabel… Petite&Jolie is born in my head years ago. At first I wanted to make a compilation only about cute music, naive music. Pink? Kindergarten even… Anything that could be “CUTE”. But eventually it was aborted. And years after, it has relaunched as a netlabel, just because I think it was somehow “lacking”.
Is it going as planned?
It is. We got supporters, some reviews - we even made it on phlow (the official netlabel magazine) while it was our first release. So yeah, it’s going as planned, even better

What’s your message to the world?
Hmmm, there is this message on my website: “Make it happen, make it last, make it work and appreciate this moment because it’s already time to go back to real life work…” I want to remain young, as us all. But real life is trying to get me back to it. So I have to remain a kid inside my head and still, accept the real life how it is, be mature.
Duality.
Yap. You know I suffer from that

Anything I missed?
A beer.
* mr_mark_dollin slings kaneel a Fosters.
Ho and the veggie bbq.
Absolutely!

—

Get your copy of “I’ve Sketched It A While Ago” here.

Michael W Dean and Chris Caulder have put together useful free resource that beginner Renoise-users should have a browse through. Although there no references specifically to Renoise, many of the general production approaches apply. In particular, there are helpful sections explaining the ins and outs of computer hardware, as well as useful tips on establishing a web-presence to promote your newly created works.

So if you’re starting to get the knack of Renoise, but want to know what else you need to be looking at, this is a good place to start.

So I set out to try and fake the sound somehow using combinations of VSTs. Predictably, I couldn’t exactly get it, but during experimentation I developed some processes that really improve the ‘wet’ characteristic of delays and reverbs, especially with stiff repetitive input sounds. Here’s a summary:

Firstly, I really recommend EchoLIVE as a delay plugin, it’s probably the best free plug I have used for getting lush authentic analogue style dub delay. In conjunction with that I nearly always use Moneo for pre/post width and/or channel swapping.

What follows isn’t dependent on those two plugs, in fact just using Renoise’s native effects you can do wonderful things. To do this you have to use a send channel - in the ’send’ chain we are just going to effect the ‘wet’ characteristic of the sound. So if you’re using the native delay, click ‘mute source’, and in the mpverb mix the dry fader to 0%.

Now try some of these send chains:

- Phaser —> Delay
- Flanger —> Delay
- Phaser —> mpverb
- Flanger —> mpverb

…And so on. The idea is to modulate the incoming signal in a way that makes the ‘wet ambiance’ echo out naturally, but uniquely each time there is an input sound. So even a stiff snare drum sample, for example, that is used all the time at the same pitch can have a echo or verb behind it that doesn’t sound stiff and machine like. This can make very ‘cheap sounding’ reverb plug-ins sound quite usable!

Naturally, each composer will prefer a certain sound governed by what they set the parameters for each plug. However I have a few recommendations. My stock standard usage usually ends up look like this (depending on the type of input sounds and the song’s mix):

For Delay:
- SEND 1-50% —> Phaser (500hz-3khz crossover, medium LFO, 50% effect, 0-25% feedback, 0-3% width) —> LP Filter (Moog No Rez, 1-9khz) —> Delay (all wet, length+feedback suitable to mix and instrument expression) —> HP Filter (Moog anywhere between 3-12khz) —> optional Phaser (lite) —> Width —> SEND 1-10% to Verb Channel.

For Reverb:
- SEND 1-50% —> Phaser (500hz-3khz crossover, medium LFO, 50% effect, 0-50% feedback, 0-3% width) —> LP Filter (Moog No Rez, 1-9khz) —> mpVerb (all wet, length+feedback+pre+cpu-quality suitable to mix and instrument expression, cutoff 2-5khz) —> HP Filter (Moog anywhere between 3-12khz) —> optional Phaser (lite) —> Width —> SEND 1-10% to Delay Channel.

See the example XRNS for how these sound.

Notice that I’m using a pre-LP-filter and a post-HP-filter either side of the ‘wet ambiance’ effect - this helps to narrow the echo into a sonic-region that sounds more authentic, architectural or distant. There’s nothing worse, for example, than an overly bright reverb sounding cheap; or, a delay or verb mashing up a mix with muddy kick drum and bass sound. Ambiance, especially when it’s long and deep, tends to speak best between 500hz to 12khz, but many genres, especially dub, get narrower than that again. Your tastes will reveal themselves with experimentation.

There are other optional and creative things you can obviously put in front of the delay/verb to get astoundingly cool spatial sounds. Easy good ones are: Leslie, Pitch modulation, Stretch, Buffer mashups, Reverser, Long delay loops, slow chorus, Formant filters, or anything that has workable modulation in it. You’re basically limited by your imagination and the plug-ins you have at hand!

I’m keen to see if anyone else is using this technique or anything similar to it, so post back here if you’ve tried it out. Otherwise, enjoy putting some ‘magic delay and verb’ into your songs.

Minimize VSTIs

Now don’t misinterpret this instruction as “DON’T use VSTIs”. There are decent ones that don’t use a lot of CPU power and are quite nice; Synth1 comes to mind. Preferably, though, you don’t want to corner yourself into having to replace a VSTI with a sample late in a song, so just assume you won’t use VSTIs from the beginning. When it comes down to it, most of the time, the only parameters you’ll use during a song is a filter. Render out some notes or even a riff or two instead of wasting CPU power on a VSTI that’s not sounding much different from pattern to pattern anyway. You’ll find out later that you have slightly ‘more’ control of the sound this way by way of the 09xx command. Avoid using CPU hogs ‘live’ at all costs (e.g. Crystal). Sample them ONLY!

Minimize Polyphony

After eliminating unneeded VSTs, don’t start running your processor into the ground with a plethora of instruments with long trailing times and and filter envelopes, because you’ll have just defeated the purpose of clearing out the VSTIs to begin with. Whenever possible, eliminate the filter envelopes as well. A simple sample with the filter in the track works just as good in many cases and allows you to use it across more sounds.

Reducing polyphony also goes for people that waste 15 tracks for drums - 2 or 3 tracks with a good majority of sampled and looped sounds will do the same job. Plus you can ‘glitch’ them up a bit when they’re sampled by using the pattern effect codes.

Minimize Effects

On my personal tunes, I always make sure that I’m able to run my favorite multi-band compressor and brick-wall limiter on the master track. If I can’t, I delete other effects. Try to find an effect or two you just can’t live without, even if it differs from song to song, and treat those as part of the song. Don’t get to crazy and start thinking that your chain of 50 effects is necessary to the song, though. When you start running out of CPU start thinking to yourself about other ways to do the delay (multiple notes on a track, oldskool tracking style? You bet!). Is the filter on this ‘backing’ track really noticeable behind all of the other sounds? If not, delete it.

Another way you can do this is make use of the sends tracks. Don’t use a different style reverb for every track: just make one reverb and set the send slider to it differently for each track. You can even switch on and off things like Flangers by way of sends meta devices by keeping the source and setting the sends accordingly. It takes more work to decide what to do in each song and each situation, but generally in my experience, you shouldn’t need more than 2 delays, a reverb, 3-4 filters and 1 or 2 gratuitous effects like Lo-Fi and Distortions per song when you get to the core of the music you’re working on. On a side note, working like this will sometimes help you view writing music differently, relying less on VST wizardry and more on tracking itself.

Minimize Sample Rates

You can get a speed boost here and there by putting less demand on the RAM. If you’re not an audiophile and don’t mind 16bit samples, then export your rendered samples and convert them into 16 bit. Less sample data in the RAM = more room for your wisely chosen effects to process data.

Examples?

Well, here’s one… Maybe it’s not everyone’s style of music, but, it runs on the aforementioned LifeBook just fine, maxing out at about 30% CPU usage. Yes, even the end patterns. NOTE: Example uses Karma FX Filter, BuzzRoom GranComp3 and MDA Dynamics (in their Effect Pack).

Less is More

All in all, conserving CPU is a hard topic to explain, but once you get in the swing of things, you’ll notice that you’ll use Renoise more like a “powerful tracker” with a few chosen effects and synths - rather than Renoise as a pure VST host, which is the quickest way to get that dreaded ‘Maxed-Out CPU’ message and skippy audio. “Render Selection to Wav” is definitely the most used feature of Renoise and the most versatile. If you ignore it, you’re headed to a low CPU ceiling headache.

Seriously though, nobody ever asks me that. And yes, I know my sense of humor is dry and unfunny. However, I do have a few tips on getting a nice clean mix that can actually make track sound more aggressive. (Keep in mind these tips are probably useful for non-aggressive music too):

• Avoid redundant compression

  When using breakbeats or pre-recorded loops, stay away from compressors. Breaks are already compressed, and using compressors on them will only take away from their dynamic range.

• Gate breakbeats

  Instead, use gates to make them more punchy. Renoise’s gate is a brick wall gate, but there are gate VSTs out there that have a gradual threshold. Multiband gates are particularly nice, as you can to things like gate the bass to get rid of muddiness, then amplify/eq the bass to get the punch back, whilst not gating the mids and trebles.

• Try gating other instruments

  Use gates on other channels too! Gating synth hits and such will get rid of the reverb tail that tends to raise the noise floor. This may sound nuts, but it makes a huge difference when you’re trying to make your mix sound big and angry. If you still want that air in between the hits when the beat’s not playing, then you can turn on some reverb, or kill the gate for a pattern or two.

• Avoid too much reverb

  Avoid putting reverb on everything. Reverb is the number 2 villain in regards to muddying up a mix. Beware too, because many synths have built in reverb and echo. It may sound cool by itself, but when placed in a heavy mix, it can be disastrous. Gates can be used to clear this up.

• Take advantage of the power of silence

  Use negative space to your advantage. Keep in mind that for a song to sound heavy, sometimes you need to consider what’s not playing. The human brain gets used to stimulation very quickly, so sometimes you need to take a break before you attack it again. This is common knowledge among professional torturers, and now you know it too =D

• Apply Volume Envelopes to shorten tails

  The Instrument Editor’s Volume Envelope in Renoise is great, because it allows you to create a short hit region on drums and such, fading out the reverb trails quickly. This is especially important on those amazingly long 808 kicks that never cease to plague the low end of my mixes.

• Gate at the front of the DSP Chain

  Gates should come before every other DSP in the chain, ESPECIALLY DISTORTION. Gating after distortion is pointless, as the sound data the gate uses to trigger(ie: volume threshold) is lost with distortion. If a break you’re using is already distorted to all hell, don’t be afraid to chop it and envelope the volume in the instrument editor.

Well, that’s about it for now. I often spout off about how gates kick ass, and how compression tends to just muddy up mixes more than everything, so I figured I’d write an article on it. From now on, I’ll just link to this when people ask about how to clean up their mix *Heh*

By the Smasher of Bytes