Skinnerbox
Berlin electronica eccentrics Iftah Gabbai and Olag Hilgenfeld tell us about the thrill of improvising dance music on stage, and their Max for Live gadgets that make it all happen
: How did Skinnerbox form?
Olag Hilgenfeld: “We met at a house party 15 years ago, and had one of those typical jam sessions – playing instruments, making silly songs.”
Iftah Gabbai: “There was a rave renaissance going on in Berlin back then, and we built ourselves a portable PA system – a car battery powering a speaker, and me with a laptop. We became more and more ‘four-tothe-floor’, playing more clubs, and one thing led to another.”
: What is it about live performance that appeals to you both?
IG: “It’s our fascination with music in the moment. When we improvise on stage, the music is alive. For it to be improvised, it has to be alive. It’s our obsession with the idea of being completely flexible. ”
OH: “We like to create in the moment. It’s not only about the tones we play – it’s also about the atmosphere in the club. People demand more of the moment, and we can give it to them, and they appreciate it. You can feel that. If I play a loop with my right hand, and they want more, I can intensify it by opening the filter, for example.
You can’t do that with a ready-made recording.”
IG: “Also, every live situation is delicate. You may be turning up at a party that’s been going on for 48 hours, and you want to integrate. There’s a certain mood, and you don’t want to come with something too planned and out of context – you
could, but it’ll only work in some situations. So you want to blend in and be flexible.”
: What about the tools you use?
IG: “I primarily use Ableton Live – the ‘mainframe’ – for my part of the set. And there’s a lot of DIY action going on. I have a self-made MIDI controller that I made back in 2010 – I wanted something sturdy with a lot of controls.
I’ve got a lot of software and devices connected to it – there’s a lot of personalisation.”
OH: “I have my Minimoog Model D, which isn’t too flexible, but is a great-sounding synth. I run it through Ableton Live for EQ and delay, but that’s it. I have my laptop there with the lid almost closed – I don’t need to watch it, but it’s running – and I have a MIDI controller for the effects.”
: So two separate laptop/Ableton Live rigs?
IG: “Yes. We output two independent stereo signals. No summing compression or limiting; just two channels on the mixer, constantly open. The volume control happens manually – we use our ears – and I don’t control dynamics, I just filter things in and out.”
OH: “I have two volume controls: the level of my Minimoog, and the other over the effects chain and my main output. Depending on where my left hand is, I can control either. This stops my hands from spending too much time travelling around.”
: Tell us about the software you’re running inside Ableton Live.
IG: “Drums are being sequenced by a patch I wrote in Max for Live, which is a TR-505-style step sequencer, where you can tap in steps and loop in real time. I have key combos assigned to my Monome, to flam steps and other things. I have one button that does ‘four-to-the-floor’, so if I mess up or play a weird break, I can always press this button. If I’m building tension, I can easily release it all.
“For basslines, I currently use a [ Moog]
Minitaur, but sometimes a modular. I also use a custom version of a Max for Live device called
“It’s not only about the tones we play – it’s also about the atmosphere”
Sting, an acid bassline generator. I have complete control over the root note and parameters, for generating random bassline riffs on demand, in key.”
: And that assists with your ‘random’ approach to performance?
OH: “It’s about constrained randomness. If any note is random, but there are certain probabilities where certain notes should be the same, then you have a melody.”
IG: “Then we have our own curve device which allows us to input a linear MIDI control and output different curves, so we can get the most out of our MIDI controllers. That means we can do a lot of things throughout the range of one macro knob. I specifically only want to use one MIDI controller – I only have two hands, and need easy control over things. The curving is essential for this. Then there are many, many smaller, custom-made devices.”
: For those of us that haven’t thought about playing live, how can we get started?
IG: “Lose your perfectionism! Just make improvised music – it’s really fun. Know and learn your instruments and controllers as though they’re an extension of yourself.”
OH: “Once you decide on what you’re using, instead of changing things here and there, try to learn to use what you have. A pianist has to learn their instrument! Stick with what you’ve got, and improve your connection with the gear. People think new plugins will give them inspiration, but this isn’t the most elegant route to creativity.”
IG: “This is off topic, but I think people are constantly seeking new gear and requesting new features to unconsciously set themselves obstacles. Making music is scary! Take Overbridge as an example: people were asking, ‘when’s Overbridge coming out? I can’t make music unless I can record eight channels of audio!’ It’s being afraid of getting on and doing it, and hiding behind excuses.”
OH: “How did musicians do it back in the day? With tape recorders, bouncing down to fourtracks – doing all this work, then more bouncing. We don’t have those limitations any more. We can have a zillion tracks open in Ableton, but the more tracks you have open, the more lost you get.”
: Many are afraid of making mistakes…
OH: “It’s about embracing the fear of things happening that you didn’t intend. You don’t have to be exceptionally brave – a mistake is just something you didn’t mean to happen, not necessarily ‘bad’. You have music running from your setup the whole time. It’s not like a band. The rhythm is running, and if you do nothing, the music doesn’t change. You’re just there to induce change in the music. You can’t do much wrong unless you hit stop, or pull out the plug! So leave the music playing, calm down and decide what you wanna do next.”
: You’re known for creating Max for Live devices. What does that involve?
IG: “Our policy is to make things out of necessity. Like [ Skinnerbox’s Max for Live devices] Time and Timbre – we created those when we were writing our second studio album, and were trying to make different drum sequences. We came up with tools that allowed us to polyrhythmically and polymetrically sequence drums with very weird swing, make Africanstyle rhythms, and so on.”
OH: “Sometimes I want to write in quintuplets. Why can’t I easily divide the bar into five? Same with tuning: sometimes I have a need to break up this equal-temperament tuning that everyone uses. If I want to change tuning easily, I want to do that globally with a click of a button, and not fiddle around with external plugins.”
IG: “Our last big project was CV Tools. It was different from our other projects, as it was a joint venture with Ableton. Back in 2014, I’d got into Eurorack, and we released two free devices to help the computer communicate better with CV. You could always send CV from the computer to a modular system, but I wanted it the other way around, too. These devices allowed us to send CV to Live, converting it to high-resolution control, and also clock Live from modular.
“For CV Tools, we came up with a list of devices with Ableton, but we all agreed that we wanted to avoid really weird sequencers and complex devices – just basic, well-functioning devices that could be combined to do more complicated stuff. So, for example, a MIDI to CV with envelopes, with an amazing tuning system that can give you up to eight or ten octaves of perfect tuning with any analogue oscillator.
“They’re simple, but you can do really complex things once you chain them together – like modular systems in general. They’re building blocks.”
: We hear you have some Skinnerbox hardware on the way…
IG: “Yes, we’re on the verge of releasing our first hardware product. The prototype is here, and we’re just finalising things.”
OH: “All we can say is that it’s a device made for a certain purpose, and doesn’t exist in this form yet. A tiny box, input, output, with control.”
IG: “We’ve always been building hardware, but this is the first time we’ve tried to build something for mass production. It’ll be the first of many more – we have a lot of ideas, and it’s naturally what we want to do.”
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