CURRENT VALUE
The neuro DnB don discusses his sound design philosophies, his new favourite powersynth… and ‘working deaf’!
After 20 years in the DnB scene, Tim Eliot has seen and heard it all. Whether he's jamming out the hardest neuro bangers as Current Value, or going modular with Dean Rodell as Machinecode, Eliot's an elite synth tweaker with the creative philosophies to match.
Last time we caught up with him, Tim gave us a serious schooling in 225's Producer
Masterclass video, building a whole track from the ground up using only Ableton's Operator synth. These days, Tim's a massive fan of Xfer's Serum, so he's certainly played the field where synths are concerned.
: Back in 2015, we covered how you made an entire track using Operator. FM synths are notoriously abstract to program – but how did you come to know it so comprehensively? Tim Eliot: “[Because] I‘ve always been a sound creator – starting off as a child. It's in my veins to dig deeper, and that has meant creating sounds using synths since the early days of Current Value. I used various Yamaha FM synths in the beginning, such as the TQ5, as well as additive synths like the Kawai K5000 and modulars like the Nord Modular series (I still own the Nord Modular 2 keyboard). So I had, and still do have, a lot of experience on how to get certain sounds out of those synths in both hardware and software forms.”
: How would you go about ‘spicing up' a synth you'd become a little bored with? TE: “There‘s tons of ways to spice things up! EQ, distortion, and lots of others ways to manipulate the signal… but they can get boring after a while. To me, it's about trying new instruments – to not get stuck on one thing. Although Serum is an exception to that, maybe, as it‘s simply beyond good!”
: What are the underrated synth functions you use to squeeze out a bit of extra sound design power?
TE: “For me it's in the little things. Synth modes such as FM, RM, AM, wavetable systems, and combinations of all of them can offer more than a classic synth can. However, I totally understand why producers prefer classics, and most importantly, their character.
“But then there's the issue of timing. Serum defines a new standard of timing accuracy, to the point that it can be used for any sound a tune consists of – in real time. For example,
BiggerPicture and Scalar from my 31 Recordings release are 100% real-time MIDI Serum.”
: How have your synthesis and sound design habits and processes changes over the years? Or have they not changed at all? TE: “I wouldn't say that my habits have changed much. Back in the old days, there was the problem of CPU power, of course, and you had to do a lot of rendering to get it all going in a project. With the arrival of softsynth sound design, that got a lot more intense for me.”
: Are there any real-world considerations that you've found can make an impact when programming synths? TE: “I go over my material critically whilst being creative, and vice versa, when creating the song idea in my head. The faster, the better. This means that my musical sketches have to almost be the final result.
“Quite often, I work on things ‘deaf' – mouse clicking them together. Ten minutes might pass until I first hit play! This is the best way to harmonise your imagination with what you create; this is what gets you skills and hearing.” : Any final sound design advice? TE: “Do what feels and sounds good, and make it your science.”