Tide Pool Interviews: Robsounds

Fractal · Site Admin

In our effort to conquer the Internet in entirely new ways, Tide Pool is pleased to present the first of hopefully several interviews with our delightful artists, beginning wih Robsounds. Rob did tdpl3 for us, which you can check out here, as well as contributing the Sandra Collins supported 'SCSI Liquid' to tdpl11. To say we're hoping to pin down some more of his work soon would be something of an understatement.

Outside of Tide Pool, his tune 'QF376' is attracting all sorts of attention from all sorts of labels, and he's gotten play from people like James Holden and Jondi and Spesh.

So let's talk: who are you? Where do you come from? Where are you now? Where are you going?

I'm Rob, I'm originally from the Isle of Man, I'm now living in London... where am I going? Um who knows, I am not very organised. Hopefully to Melbourne to catch the boxing day test match and get some sun.

On music: what do you write / produce / construct music with?

I use Cubase for pretty much everything now. I started out using Buzz, which I still love for it's quirkiness and the insane things that you can do with it, but I started to switch to Cubase for its sequencing and editing functions and now I find that I can do everything a lot quicker in Cubase.

Do you ever go back to Buzz at all? Either to bounce stuff out or to sketch sounds and pieces out, or just to do an entire song?

Yeh I still use Buzz sometimes, you can get a lot of really interesting sounds and effects out of it, once you get your head around the interface. The drum machines in Buzz are also really good (the 909 emulator has apparently been banned for sounding too much like the real thing) so I sometimes sample those or make loops with them.

More on music stuff: Do you sit down with a particular sound in mind, and then work towards it? Or do you start from scratch and see what happens?

Every track starts differently, sometimes I'll have a riff or melody in my head and work from there, sometimes I'll just be playing around on my guitar and something will emerge, and sometimes I just have an idea.

Do you play any thing other than guitar? And where did you learn to play guitar, for that matter? In terms of writing and direction, do you ever find yourself trying to start one sort of track and then ending up with another?

I play lots of things, but not that well. I can play drums, piano and trombone at a very basic level, I play bass guitar and guitar a lot better, I find guitars a lot more intuitive for some reason.

As for writing and direction, that again varies from track to track – if I have started a track with a clear idea of the sound and feel I want, I aim to get as close to that as possible, whereas if I just have a riff, it's a case of just developing it and seeing what sounds best. Though obviously everything can change, writing music is an organic process, as they say.

To say the least, yeah. Is the stuff you write mostly "dance music", whatever that means? To paraphrase, do you have any desires / plans to write really ambient or downtempo stuff at all?

I have done a couple of slower tracks, though I wouldn't really call them ambient. More like ideas that work best in a less dancefloor-orientated form.

All the tracks on Tide Pool 3 were about 5 minutes long, and I think because of that I associate you with shorter tunes. Do you generally write stuff to a specific length? Or was it just a coincidence that I happened to hear all those tracks at once?

Haha no. I was told that Tidepool was about tracks that were less than 5 mins or over 10. So I went for 5. It was a good learning experience though, as I had to force myself to make the point quickly and consicely. Which is what it's all about, as any History graduate knows.

On the subject, do you find that "electronic music" tracks tend to lag in terms of point-making? Or that they focus on a single point for too long? And are you a history graduate?

No, not if they're good. I think it's more about the execution of the point, you can have tracks that are the same note for 6 minutes and they can be amazing. And yeh, I am - Robsounds MA, BA (hons).

In terms of sound generation, do you find yourself going back to any VSTs in particular when you need a certain sound? What about effects & compression and the like?

I normally start off with Cubase's A1 synth as it's really simple to use. It does really nice subs, really nice twinkly sounds, really nice dirty sounds... I use Battery2 in every track, it gives you an amazing amount of control over the samples you use. As for FX, I use Waves a lot too - esp the C1 and Renaissance compressors. Tweakbench, Ohmboyz and DestroyFX make some really cool things for messing up sounds too.

Talk to me about Battery. And where do you use the C1 and Renaissance compressors?

I use the C1 and renaissance compressors everywhere. They are both really good at shaping sounds, which is also why Battery is so useful. I've not really scratched the surface with Battery, but I find it to be really well designed, and simple to use. Things like being able to modify a sample's envelope are great for getting the right sound, from things like being able to remove some of the decay from a kick to being able to chop up samples to get those sort of clicky glitchy noises.

If you'll pardon me being really geeky, can you go into more depth about compression? For example, what do you hit with the C1 vs. the Rennaissance?

That's very geeky. The two have different qualities; C1 is a lot cleaner, whereas Renaissance makes things very loud but has more of a dirty sound. As a consequence, I think that it makes more sense to use Renaissance on things like bass, and crunchy lead sounds, it fattens them up and gives them warmth, but it can sound rubbish on things like hats. That might just be because of the way I (mis)use them though.

I know you DJ as well, as the sets you post on the BC forum are all kinds of solid. Who do you admire on the DJing front and how have they influenced how you play?

There's a massive amount of mediocre DJs around but there are also a fair few that are very talented. Those that have really influenced the way I think about DJing are James Holden for his sense of music and dynamics, and the way he is able to find something in tunes that other people just can't, The Glimmers for their willful eclecticism and ability to throw together anything and make it sound like acid house - there aren't many people who play with that same sense of fun, and Michael Mayer for showing that peaks in troughs in a mix exist in more than 2 dimensions - ie you can put together a mix that twists and turns all over the place and it can still be as coherent as one that just builds in ebbs and flows.

Can you talk more about "a mix exist(s) in more than 2 dimensions" - I think you're talking about what I think you're talking about, as it were, but I'd like to hear more.

Hmm it's actually quite hard to explain, when I heard Mayer's Fabric mix CD for the first time it was just really cool how he managed to put in such a range of music and how the mood of the mix would veer off in one way then suddenly change and go off somewhere else. It's full of contradictions yet it all makes sense. Mayer seems to have a perfect understanding of the music and how it works in context, and that's something that I tried to take on board, to think about how mixes can work in more terms than just having them build upwards.

I think we're thinking of the same thing here, yeah - the sense of migrating between types of sounds, while keeping the same overall feel?

Kinda, it's more about shifting the moods in ways that make sense. And not being afraid of doing so.

Thanks very much for your time sir!

For more about Rob, visit http://www.robsounds.co.uk
For his complete works on Tide Pool, visit http://tide-pool.ca/releases/artists/robsounds.php
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"basically"

russian linesman · Posted: Sat Sep 02, 2006 10:43 am Post subject:

awesome interview, it was like a masterclass in a geekonomics. still love eep. hope that is a bottle of water btw.
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c79 · Posted: Sat Sep 02, 2006 10:38 pm Post subject:

good show~