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Aphex Twin Speaks to Tatsuya Takahashi (2017)
- jdietrich 8y agoThis isn't just any old ex-Korg engineer; Tatsuya Takahashi is arguably the most influential living synth designer. https://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2017/12/22/569092364/analog-for-the-people-synth-master-tatsuya-takahashi-on-engineering-fun https://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2017/12/22/569092364/...
- zengid 8y agoI didn't realize how big Takahashi was. Thanks for the article!
- moretai 8y agoI've heard a few of Aphex's stuff. How is he live? Perhaps I'm not musically apt to fully get it, but I would like to.
- kodisha 8y agoNot every song of his is like that. Mano of them are soft and nice. https://youtu.be/z56OiPR4r2s https://youtu.be/z56OiPR4r2s
- d--b 8y agoLive is awesome. It can get very intense though. I guess a good starting point is girl/boy song on Richard D James. It's 90s drum n bass that was pretty new when it came out, but sounds quite mainstream nowadays. It's typical Aphex Twin with pretty insane drum machine supporting a slow-moving melody. Many many many variations within the same track. Drukqs, and the later stuff (syro, collapse) are quite mature, more rhapsodic (like with very different moments within the same track) with an emphasis on non-standard scales.
- dnos 8y agoTo be honest, I think he is more of a musician’s musician and a bit hard to “get”. Outside the artistic creativity itself, I find his music more enjoyable by recognizing the craftsmanship and musicianship required to create his unique sounds and rhythms. Once you realize it’s not just random noises, perhaps some of the songs may speak to you like I found. If you have ever tried creating electronic music with drum machines, synthesizers, midi loopers, etc, it would be a lot easier to appreciate his music I think. Maybe similar to say, free jazz? If you don’t appreciate or understand the nuances, I doubt you’d enjoy listening to it. I’m on mobile or I’d research, but I’m sure there are some great videos on YouTube explaining some of his or similar techniques?
- icelancer 8y ago> I think he is more of a musician’s musician This is the best way I've seen it put.
- king_panic 8y agoI'm not a musician, but I love `Selected Ambient Works 85–92`. It sounds way ahead of its time.
- mruts 8y agoBest EDM album ever, I’d say.
- dkdbejwi383 8y agoEDM isn’t a catch all term for all electronic music
- shams93 8y agoYeah he's IDM not EDM, IDM is a older term from the 90s they called it "intelligent dance music" because it uses the tools of dance music but just like you could dance to Duke Ellington but nobody danced to Charlie Parker you can't exactly dance to music as complex as his but it enjoyable listening for sure.
- glitcher 8y agoLive shows are amazing! Saw him in 1996 in Seattle, and in 2003 at an All Tomorrow's Parties festival in UK. The latter was absolutely incredible, curated by Autechre. Boy I feel old ;)
- efm 8y agoA good overview of his music is this top 20 article on the 25th anniversary of Selected Ambient Works Volume II https://www.theguardian.com/music/2019/feb/28/aphex-twin-best-songs-ranked https://www.theguardian.com/music/2019/feb/28/aphex-twin-bes...
- thinkalone 8y agoHis current live show is a bit intense: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fj9URI2aKgM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fj9URI2aKgM But it's also very rare for him to tour
- meko 8y agoHe was really ahead of his time in terms of the electronic music sounds he uses. He was also known for unique methods of sound creation (like programming... A toaster? Stuff like that... Can't recall specifics atm). It takes careful, perhaps repeated listenings. My favorite time to listen to his stuff is while tripping though. From his 'weird' bleeps and bloops emerge something new entirely.
- meko 8y agoWhoops, misread previous comment as "how does he live", as though he 'didn't get' rdj's music, and couldn't fathom how he made a living... Ha ha...
- consumer451 8y agoRegarding Aphex and unique methods of sounds creation, check out his midi-driven robots. “Hat” : https://logosfoundation.org/instrum_gwr/HAT.html https://logosfoundation.org/instrum_gwr/HAT.html “snar_2” : https://logosfoundation.org/instrum_gwr/snar2.html https://logosfoundation.org/instrum_gwr/snar2.html He also has a full drum kit with actuatated drumsticks on each surface. I can’t find that online, but I saw it in an interview in his home studio.
- inspector14 8y agoseeing him live was both a a highly transformative and personal experience for me
- moretai 8y agoHow so? I know those terms get tossed around with a lot of musical acts, but what did it for you? Would you equate it to a religious experience? If so, what do you think that is?
- hermitdev 8y agoI haven't seen Aphex live, but other ambient artists around 1999-2001 (Luke Bubert & BJ Cole amd [Greek letter mu]ziq. The shows were awesome and pretty chill. No one was dancing, just hanging out. Some drinking and ecstasy, probably more weed than anything. People sitting or laying on the floor, sitting on the stairs leading to the floor. It was fun and, though the music was "loud", you could still have a conversation without yelling.
- EamonnMR 8y agoI just went to one of his live shows and would definitely recommend it. He spends a good amount of it messing with his modular rig, doing crazy rolls, etc. For a music nerd it's pretty great.
- clydethefrog 8y agoRecent review from a performance in 2018. https://www.residentadvisor.net/reviews/23229 https://www.residentadvisor.net/reviews/23229
- aasasd 8y agoOne surprise for me regarding idm live was how Amon Tobin's ‘nice soft electronics for listening in your room’ turned out more like eye-popping industrial hardcore when played on a club's huge speakers.
- aasasd 8y agoAnd btw, Richard has said in an interview that he knows how many of his tracks sound nicer when slowed down to 33 rpm instead of 45, and that you could just listen to the “RDJ Album” on 33 so you get ‘an album of standard length’ instead of 30 minutes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWqf17mUyoQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWqf17mUyoQ Turns out, plenty of IDM, breakcore and other electronic music sounds excellent when slowed down, e.g. the entire genre of Belgian new beat is slowed down acid hardcore: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yBvP3616Wc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yBvP3616Wc Hard house turns into pleasant groovy house with harder sound. But you'll need speed adjustment that doesn't adjust the pitch (i.e. like vinyl but not like Youtube's speed control). VLC can do that if the time-stretching option is disabled in advanced settings under ‘audio’. The sox console program can do that in batch (ffmpeg botches the audio for some reason).
- GorgeRonde 8y agoRDJ drops a link at the end of the article. If you've ever studied phonetics, you need to check this out: https://dood.al/pinktrombone/ https://dood.al/pinktrombone/
- dwaltrip 8y agoThat is super cool! With some clever keyboard controls perhaps one could learn to actually "talk" with it?
- whenchamenia 8y agoGoogle the 'Voder'. A speech synthisis keyboard from 1939 using the concept you describe. There are some great demo videos of it.
- andai 8y agoVoder (1939) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TsdOej_nC1M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TsdOej_nC1M IBM 7094 singing Daisy Bell (1961) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41U78QP8nBk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41U78QP8nBk
- egypturnash 8y agoTry it on a tablet; it supports multitouch.
- snazz 8y agoIt got some HN discussion too: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18912628 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18912628
- flycaliguy 8y agoGreat read, although I feel Like RDJ is being funny and intentionally sounding like an infomercial. I guess he did work on it enough to want to see some units move.
- zandorg 8y agoSeen him live in Leeds in 1998. Sat in the cubicle he vacated when he left the place at a Rephlex gig he didn't play at in 2001 (At the Leeds Brudenell Social Club). And I played live at the same venue as a previous Rephlex gig in Edinburgh (the University) in 2001.
- glitcher 8y agoI thought I had seen this article before. The discussion is much more lively this time around, but for reference here is a previous HN post from 2017: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14771533 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14771533
- zengid 8y agoI'm stoked to see that others are interested in the article! The important bit for me is Richard D. James's interest in promoting microtonal music, and that Tatsuya and Korg were cool enough to implement it in a relatively cheap synth. Microtonal music is a vast landscape that I feel has so much left to uncover. I hope that tools like Korg's *logue line of synths will get new folks interested in breaking out of the limits of 12 tone equal temperament.
- hrnnnnnn 8y agoI recently made a couple of microtonal pieces on the monologue. It was a really novel experience and led me in directions I wouldn't naturally have gone.
- Mediterraneo10 8y agoIt is sad how pop music on a Western model with its 12-tone equal temperament (or an East Asian model with pentatonic equal temperament) has, in the course of invading the whole world, gradually marginalized many local traditions that are microtonal. If those local traditions cannot manage to recover on their own, maybe some openness to microtones among Western pop music would help non-Western microtonal musics get more of the limelight. Unfortunately, as with the highly complex rhythms that RDJ employed in some of his work (e.g. the "drill-and-bass" style), microtones are likely to entertain only a relatively small demographic of anoraks while striking the mainstream as too “weird”.
- sarosh 8y agoFor more information on microtuning and MIDI https://en.xen.wiki/w/List_of_Microtonal_Software_Plugins https://en.xen.wiki/w/List_of_Microtonal_Software_Plugins
- 8f2ab37a-ed6c 8y agoI'm obviously a few decades late to the party, but I've been obsessed with analog hardware synths for a few years now. There's something magical about messing around with a sequencer/arpeggiator, mixing together a couple of VCOs, changing their wave type, detuning them, modulating filters, amplitudes, rhythms. The sonic options are staggering, you can sit there all day turning knobs and stumbling upon interesting and quirky ideas. Part of me thinks that "it's all been done before", yet there's joy to you doing this yourself from scratch, even if you're not the pioneer.
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- FiddlyPack 8y agoTake heart! All culture, and especially music, is about retracing steps. “Pioneering” in music is about capturing the Zeitgeist in just the right manner and with extraordinary expertise to be undeniable, which then creates a new normal. That’s not exactly pioneering, it’s standard setting. The perfection of a musical meme is retroactively confirmed by virtue of its proliferation. It’s genius, while undeniable, as a strong relationship with luck.
- 8bitsrule 8y agoTakahashi at the Granular Convolver Lecture (Berlin 2018).Discusses convolution & SuperCollider. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMXpJY2ilIs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMXpJY2ilIs Article with more info: https://daily.redbullmusicacademy.com/2018/09/the-granular-convolver https://daily.redbullmusicacademy.com/2018/09/the-granular-c...
- dreamgt 8y agoAnyone know what keyboard he’s talking about here? An omnichord? That’s all I can think of, but it doesn’t have an actual string... “RDJ: I’ve got one Japanese keyboard, Suzuki, which has got some Japanese tunings built in and a little string on one end that you can plucK”
- chillingeffect 8y agohttps://www.matrixsynth.com/2018/07/suzuki-waraku-iii-super-japanese-koto.html https://www.matrixsynth.com/2018/07/suzuki-waraku-iii-super-...
- tquinn 8y agoIf anyone is looking for an accessible Aphex Twin track, I would give “Alberto Balsalm” a try. One of my favourites on my University radio show. (That no one listened to back in the early 2000s. :)
- Theodores 8y agoThey use the very early Aphex Twin works on TV as background/intro music. Millions get 'ambiently' subjected to what started out as far from 'accessible', i.e. 1000 white label pressings on his original label Rabbit Recordings. I am impressed that Warp are still going, there is and was something magical about seeing that logo majestically spin round at 33 rpm. In the days before the Internet you only found Warp records in independent record shops, the High Street majors were hiding the good stuff from you. Plus the BBC banned dance music back then. You had to be a true 'raver' and into the music to hear Aphex Twin, it slotted in to the 'chill out' part of the scene. This is why I find it so funny when I hear a little bit of Aphex Twin, Autechre or other Warp stablemates such as Sabres of Paradise as the backing track to a BBC documentary about serious stuff. Imaginably anything is 'accessible' given enough time. The audience are always playing catch up with an innovative artist.
- bgeeek 8y ago"In the days before the Internet you only found Warp records in independent record shops" ? Are you sure about that? That's not really true in the UK, both HMV and Virgin stocked early Aphex, and I think my Selected Ambient Works came from Our Price of all places on week of release. You couldn't get more mainstream where I lived. I wouldn't say the Beeb banned dance music, either. I first heard LFO's LFO on radio one, which is synonymous with WARP. As for Sabres - Screamadelica won the Mercury music prize with Weatherall in charge. It's not like they were off the radar or anything. Autechre started out quite normal, but have morphed into probably the most complex out of everything that you've mentioned. They're well-known, but their music is anything but mainstream today - it's a running joke that they used to make music :)
- Graham24 8y ago
- aasasd 8y agoNoob here. If anyone could translate as to what technique they're talking about for circumventing the lack of velocity on Volca fm, it'd be super nice.
- uryga 8y agoa very low-tech solution: set a kind-of slow attack. holding the key for a short period of time (< the attack) gets you a "low velocity" sound because it doesn't reach the maximum volume; longer periods (>= the attack) give you the full velocity. it's dumb but it works!
- aasasd 8y agoSo apparently, “motion sequence” is Korg's term for automation—i.e. you fiddle the velocity slider while playing back a loop instead of putting the velocity in when playing the keys initially.