Yesterday, Magical Properties musician Daedelus took to Reddit for an in-depth AMA session discussing several topics including production gear, sampling, editing software, EDM culture, his classical background, and being a frustrated orchestrator. There are some valuable lessons to be learned from this revealing Q&A, especially for aspiring producers and beat junkies. To pinpoint the highlights of this open forum conversation we’ve selected some of the most revealing quotes from Daedelus. Take a look at these valuable tidbits below and to heighten your production skills.
“MLR is a wonderful tool (I’d encourage any producers to take a look at it over at Monome.org, even if not using a controller it is a way of thinking about performance that is different then the more dominate paradigms) and as such I find it helps me get to my goal with out too much in the way.”
“Never sample what feels done. Songs that are so well known that you cannot possibly expect the listener to overlook their previous incarnation. I’m not a big fan of Mash-up for this reason, it is sitting on the hope that you’ll recognize the songs used rather then the other way around”
“I use Protools and enjoy how it deals with audio (showing how little I use midi). If I had started now I doubt I’d be using it, and probably find good reasons with ableton or even a tracker, but with my interests in treating all sound like samples it works well.”
“I believe current EDM culture is headed towards a crisis as it becomes more shock and awe-based rather then performance inspired.”
“I do think about BPM before shows, but mostly I just try to respond to the people dancing that I can see, and with my program pitch and BPM are tied together so it is a constraint and freedom. I only have up to 4 layers of audio at a time but feel like this is honest to my skill at manipulating audio, I don’t think I could contain more at a time.”
“Every element I’m putting into songs are asking questions of the listener, that’s what makes it so busy sounding to me. It wants your active ears. That is an aspiration I have for the audio. Nothing is simply rhythm, it’s all harmony and melody (drums especially)”
“Don’t hit your productions to hard, leave room for them to be inflated at the mix stage or better still mastering. Mono your low end around 90Hz or there abouts is typical (although I’m guilty of not always doing so) and even consider having your bass elements sound higher so they can play well on big speaker systems, sub energy does get lost sometimes.”
“Sometimes I find reselecting your audio interface in the the program to help smooth some of the crashing that MLR does with certain editions of the program (especially SerialOSc ones) not sure why this is but I used to do it before every performance to some effect.”
“I’ve a background in Classical music and I think always a frustrated orchestrator. I want to paint in those colors when I compose. Electronic music has a lot of frequencies to play in, and I think it is very similiar to orchestral composition, just for some reason most producers don’t use that body of samples or timbre of sounds.”
Some inspiring words from an inspiring musician. You can catch Daedelus performing live at the Spazzkid Record Release Party next Saturday at Los Globos!
