The joy of recording with analogue synths
“There is a track on the new album called House On A Feather.
It’s based on a simple sketch that I made on the OB-6. As you know, it’s an analogue synth and sometimes the tuning is not so perfect. Basically, you need to calibrate it… tune the oscillators.
But in this case, I actually chose to keep it in this detuned state as it has a special atmosphere. It turned out to be quite a challenge to record the song because we had to tune everything else using Melodyne and by ear. The results were very surprising. I was fascinated by how the voice can so easily adapt to different tunings, whereas the piano and bass guitar weren’t so happy in this new setting. I really like the slightly different colours of this track. It’s like looking through a stained-glass window.”
original music feel more cohesive; after that process, we really started to think about how the orchestra could be used to help add support or colour.
“Karsten [Fundal] was very important at this stage. He had the ability to keep hold of the initial spirit of the album, but still add something from the orchestra. He didn’t just say, ‘OK, this is the album, here is the sheet music. We’re going to perform Parades with some big strings and that’s the whole story’. He completely understood that we wanted to create something new.”
: You mentioned Pro Tools earlier. Is that still your main platform?
MB: “The first DAW I ever used was Cubase when I was at school. It was still very limited back then. I seem to remember difficulties with the amount of audio you could record and the latency was out of this world. Then I bought Pro Tools LE. Why Pro Tools? I honestly don’t know. I think it was a simple case of going into a music shop and some guy telling me that Pro Tools was pretty good. When you’re 18, you think that all the grown-ups who work in music shops know what they are talking about.
“As it turned out, Pro Tools has been perfect and, yes, it’s still the one we use most. We have got others loaded on to the computer – Logic and Ableton – but no one has been able to give me a good reason why I should change to a different platform, so I can’t see that happening any time soon. OK, there were a few logistical problems with Pro Tools in the early days, but we’re now at a stage where technology is no longer seen as a hurdle. It’s all designed to make it easier for us to make music.”
: Even though you’re often seen as an ‘electronic’ band, there always seems to be a strong human presence in your music. It’s hard to listen to Efterklang without a vision of people standing around in a room, playing
instruments. Was that something that just happened naturally or did you plan for that all along?
MB: “Right at the start, we were a normal band. We were people playing instruments. Then, we discovered all these great machines that could help us make music and we started looking at ways we could integrate the machinery into our band. It was always meant to be a collaboration… we didn’t want the machines to take over.
“But finding the exact point where we could join those two ideas was quite difficult. In the early days, we just ended up sounding like Radiohead. All our music could have been taken from OK Computer. For the next two or three years, we started investigating different ideas and different bits of equipment. Sometimes, the technology would feel too powerful and we were out in the cold. Sitting in the corner, looking at the computer, thinking, ‘Hey, what about us? Can you give us something to do.’
“The key that finally opened the door was the MPC2000. It was an instrument that allowed us to make machine music. We could use it to sample and create sounds… we could build songs. In a strange way, it allowed us creep into the electronic world and find a place that was comfortable for us. Maybe it was the fact that the MPC doesn’t use a mouse. Even today, clicking a mouse feels like an odd way to write music. I have to use a mouse, but the less time I spend with it, the happier I am.
“I think you can see that quite well in my choice of synths.”
: All analogue?
MB: “Mainly. The Sequential OB-6, Elektron Analog Keys and a modular synth based around a Furthrrrr generator oscillator. They’re all constantly hooked up to the computer, so they are available for me immediately. Some people say, ‘What’s the point of using analogue synths? You have to print them anyway, so they still end up in the computer’. That’s true, but it just feels better for me. I like the fact that I am being given a limit and I have to make a decision.
“I do use Max MSP, which you could call a software synth. But MSP is different because it doesn’t offer instant gratification. You try this bit here and maybe it works, maybe it doesn’t. OK, so let’s try something over here. It’s the complete opposite of the instant preset mentality. You have no idea what you’re going to end up with and you can easily spend a whole morning creating something that has no use whatsoever. You need to have patience and you need a particular kind of mindset; a bit like building something out of Lego.
“I will admit that I have used a couple of actual software synths. There’s one called LION by Unfiltered Audio. As soon as I heard it, I liked the way it sounded and the minimal interface, but it wouldn’t let me save anything, so I ended up having to use it like a hardware synth. Maybe it was a message from the synth gods… do not rely on software.
“I guess that is the big dilemma for musicians today. How deep do you dive into software? How big do you want to make your music? Ideally, I would only ever have 24 tracks of audio. You try to set limits, but, in reality, that never happens. You try to leave a few accidents and errors in the music, but it is so easy to fix any problems.
“As a musician in 2021, you have to be very careful because you can just keep going… you can build your song higher and higher. You can make it all clean and tidy, with nothing out of place. Everything is perfect. Plus, you can build it so much quicker than you used to build it 20 years ago.
“But that’s when you have to ask yourself whether that will be the best song for you? Do you want to be surrounded by clean, faultless music? To me, that sounds a bit… boring.”
Efterklang’s new album, Windflowers, is out now