He has penned the seminal techno cuts Genesis and Force, collaborated with the the likes of DJ Rush, Dave Clarke and Joris Voorn, and scored two acclaimed albums with the third, Central, recently following suit. Technasia, real name Charles Seigling, is a man who lives and breathes electronic music – and with phenomenal results. Here he talks exclusively to Sounds To Sample about how he does his thing in the studio.
Loops? Or programming your beats from single hits?
I usually start with a loop then chop it up in Cubase, Battery 3 or Machfive and then manually trigger each element using a keyboard. This gives me infinitely more control over the different elements.
I prefer building my beats from loops rather than one-shots, as I find that single hits often seem to be recorded from different sources, so when you combine them together in a rhythm track they often lack sonic consistency. That’s why I prefer to work with chopped loops: you can rearrange them, remove unwanted parts or artefacts, control the transient of each triggered sample, and yet still maintain the same sonic feel at different BPMs.
Cutting up loops, and getting creative with them, allows me to inject some humanity and originality into my tracks. Small timing imperfections and intricate details bring a sense of life to tracks that increasingly complex digital algorithms have tended to kill off.
What is the key ingredient in a track? Breakdown? Style of production? Bassline?
Creativity and originality is key. With enough time and practice anyone can come become a reasonable producer, who is able to make nice sounding basslines, beats and breakdowns. But it’s too easy nowadays to end up outputting the same sounds as everyone else: using the same samples or plugins to produce music with the same defining characteristics.
Making productions that sound different is much, much harder. Real talent is about how a producer integrates and constructs elements in a new, special and personal way. Producers doing that excite me – and they are almost always the ones who excite the public too.
When building a track how do you normally work? Do you start with the drums and build from that?
I don’t start with the drums. I find beats easy to create, so I tend to leave it to the last stages. I usually start tracks with a sample, a loop, or a particular musical idea. When I’ve got something I like, I will build around it with other elements. Of course there’s a kick drum very early in the process, to hook the track to, but the kick I start out with is rarely the one that’s used in the final track. I usually spend a whole afternoon – and sometimes a whole day – testing different kick drums towards the end of the creation process.
When I’m happy with all these layered ideas I draw a sketch of the arrangement in Cubase. This is when I’ll start to see if certain elements are working or not. If they don’t work I bin them.
I believe the strongest, most memorable tracks, are simple and concise. I hear a lot of tracks from young producers that have far too many layers: they end up losing the essential essence of the track – the defining musical idea that gives the track its unique identity. In that respect, I believe stripping away ideas, and rejecting ones that don’t add to this essential essence, is a hugely important part of the writing process, however painful it may be to lose a part you’ve spent hours tweaking.
Do you mainly use analogue or digital soft synth sources? Do you think analogue makes a difference?
I’ve been using a mix of both since 1995. I love the special character that analogue kit gives to a mix, but it’s a nightmare working in an all-analogue studio. Digital effects and virtual instruments offer so much versatility that it makes sense to embrace them.
As far as analogue goes, I use a range of old drum machines, Focusrite analogue compressors and sometimes a few FX units too, but most of the creative process takes place within Machfive 2 or Battery 3. I’ve never been a huge fan of synths in general: occasionally I use the PowerCore Access Virus but for pads, stabs and basslines I tend to use samples.
Any advice on monitoring? Quiet? Loud? Do you prefer flat and boring speakers, headphones or big, phat and chunky monitors?
I monitor at a reasonably loud volume. I live in the centre of Paris but I’m lucky enough not to have neighbours close to the studio, so I can push the sound all night long! I think when making electronic music it’s important to have speakers that extend low enough to give you an idea of how your track will sound in a club; in the end that’s where it is going to be played.
I bought a pair of Opal Events a few months ago and they are extremely accurate. I have an old pair of NS10s that I use to check for ugly mid-range frequencies. For detailed mixing I use a pair of Sony MDR 7509HD headphones to check the mids and highs.
I am very careful when mixing the low end. Low end frequencies, if not mixed correctly, can poke awkwardly out of the mix when played on big sound systems, especially when the DJ nudges up the low-boost EQ. I am always careful to ensure that nothing in the mix – from bassline to percussive drum elements – sits below the kick drum in frequency space: this can really kill the dynamics of a track when played out loud in a venue.
In the end getting the low-end right is about knowing your mixing environment and having the best speakers you can afford. I always advise young producers to spend as much as possible on a good monitoring system: it’s better to make music with a shit computer and top-notch monitors rather than the other way round. Monitors in the £2k-3k price range are a good place to start.
What are the biggest barriers that new producers face?
The biggest challenge is getting your music into the hands of DJs and into the ears of the public.
Over the past decade the music software developers have made the construction of dance music so easy that everybody is able to become an electronic music producer. Cheap plugins, music creation software that automates almost everything, and a ‘drag, drop and play’ mentality have dumped more wannabe producers into the scene than ever before.
As a result, the market is flooded by thousands of new releases every week – almost all of them mediocre. The result is that nobody really cares about what gets released anymore, unless it’s by established (and not always talented) artists.
A by-product of this is that in order for new producers to get exposure and make a name for themselves, they end up having to focus on marketing rather than music production, which is crazy. And for some producers it seems like making quality electronic music is not an end in itself anymore, but rather just another tool for them to reach superstar DJ status.
As an industry, we have to get back to where we started: with the creation of a sustainable electronic music business based on the recognition of talented and skilled producers, rather than venerating the lifestyle of what I call the ‘Web 3.0 Sunglassed-DJ poser’.
How important do you think it is to have your music mastered commercially? Can you do it yourself as effectively and what tools would you recommend?
Professional mastering is essential. We’re told over and over that software plugins do the same job as a professional mastering engineer, but it’s not true. The result? Kids squeezing out over-loud mixes without a care about the fundamentals of mastering: transients, air, musicality and dynamics (look at the whole Nu-Rave/Ed Banger scene to see what ill-conceived mastering sounds like).
You can pre-master your tracks, of course, giving the mix the colour and dynamics you want, but it’s really important to let your track breathe and let the mastering engineer take over from there. It’s his job to make your track sound good in all contexts: on radio, on cheap hi-fi systems, in clubs or on headphones.
When it comes to EQ and dynamics, I use the ApEQ (now apQualizr) from theSwiss company Apulsoft. For compressors, the Softube FET Compressor is amazing for raw, overdriven, compressed sounds. I’ve also been using URS plugins for many years, particularly the Strip Pro. For limiting, the best plugin I’ve found so far is the Elephant limiter from Voxengo. It’s amazingly versatile and offers everything from beautifully transparent sounds to a heavily coloured brick wall-style response.
What’s your opinion on processing the mix bus? Leave it clean or drive it to the extreme?
I use three or four processors in the mix bus, but I don’t overload the volume: I like the mix to stay at between -15db and -10db RMS. In terms of the order of plugins, I usually start with an expensive sounding, slightly coloured, EQ that uses broad boosts and cuts. Second in line comes a bus compressor to glue the mix together. Next I load up a second EQ for surgical cuts and to clean up any detail. Finally comes a limiter to smooth out peaks that the compressor has missed. The limiter is only used sparingly – cutting at most 1-2dB worth of gain.
What do you believe is the secret to your success as a producer?
Flexibility. One of the things you learn with time in this industry is that trends only last so long. What’s hype one day is dead the next, and vice versa. So if you make the mistake of developing all your talents around one specific sound then you are going to go down with it when its time passes.
I’ve always tried to reinvent myself musically, to do what I wanted to do, regardless of whether it fits the global trend or not. Success as a producer is about staying true to yourself. You can play the hype game of course, and some producers get successful very quickly by trend-following. But their success rarely lasts long.
Any advice for aspiring producers out there?
Work hard and be patient: in the end, everyone gets their chance.
