IN THE STUDIO WITH: AFFKT
One of the best producers to emerge from Spain in recent years, Marc Nadal (aka AFFKT) is also a mixing and mastering engineer for numerous Dance labels including his own Sincopat. Danny Turner picks up some tips
We pick the brains of mixing and mastering wizard AFFKT to discover his studio secrets for the best sound
Valencia-based Marc Nadal moved into production as one half of Drum ’n’ Bass outfit Malsum and the hypnotic Techno project Renace before releasing Punto 0 in 2012 under the pseudonym AFFKT. On his second AFFKT album,
Son Of A Thousand Sounds, Nadal balances his love for the dancefloor with a moody yet uplifting Electronic Pop aesthetic.
With his yearning for technical perfection, aside from his solo work Nadal found mixing and mastering for other artists a natural progression. Initially working with his Sincopat label mates, his services soon became sought after by a host of renowned labels including Mobilee, Buzzin Fly and Skint. Five years down the line, and with thousands of credits to his name, Nadal is ready to reveal some of his studio secrets. FM: I understand you run a mixing mastering facility in Valencia. What does that involve?
AFFKT: “I have been a big fan of the sound engineering side for a long time. I always thought that when I got older and had no interest in doing music anymore I would be doing mastering, but everything came before I thought. It started in a very natural way; I started mastering for my own label Sincopat because I thought that the mastering I was doing was almost as good as what I was getting from other mastering companies. From mouth to mouth, it became bigger and bigger. That was five years ago and I’ve done thousands of mastering and mixing sessions. Right now, there are four people in the company as I realised I could not do it on my own.” Is the leap from mixing to mastering beyond most people? “The problem is that the ‘minimal’ sound was really important in Dance music, but I get the feeling that sound itself was not important. Now, sound, or how the individual mixes, is really important. You can have an amazing track, but without the proper sound it will probably not sell much or be played by the right people. I find that a lot of people have some knowledge and are doing great mixes, but during the mastering stage most of them do not have the right speakers or their room is not set up properly. Too many people spend a lot of money on equipment and speakers but work in a square room without proper acoustics, which is worse than having a good pair of headphones. I find that some people working with headphones really know how to reference how their music sounds outside, in cars or in clubs, and sound much better than people who have really good speakers but not a proper room.” Would a good starting point be to compare your mixes to other artists you admire? “I am normally working with Dance music and find that mastering for Dance music is a bit more primitive than it is for Pop, Rock or other genres. In terms of referencing, all my experience of mastering comes from working for three years in a club, so I was able to check my music. Being able to play around the world in different clubs gives you a lot of expertise. Mixing and mastering is all about having perspective and imagining how the music is going to sound in a club, on MP3 or wherever and then finding the right equilibrium.” When mixing for others, can you adopt the same principles from one track to the next or do you find that every track requires an individual approach? “When we do mixes for other people, I don’t think we just go in one direction. In fact, when we start mixing for someone we always ask for five reference tracks because I know that I’m not going to mix the same from one artist to the next. I would not mix the same for an artist doing Techno or House compared to someone making electronic music that is just for listening and not dancing to. It’s like being an actor, you try to play a role and I try to get into the mind of the artist. You learn mix by mix, so it’s about confidence and takes time.” Presumably, through mixing other artists you learn a lot yourself just by analysing and dissecting their arrangements? “Exactly, I always say this. I have learned a lot about production and mixing because it’s such a good way to get into an artist’s mind. When I look back, it’s amazing that we’ve already done such a large portfolio of work, but I am still learning about mixing and production all the time.” For people entering the world of production, what gear would you advise they start on? “If you don’t have a proper room, I think a good base would be to invest in a good pair of headphones and spend some time understanding how the music you make translates to other places. That way, you will also understand your headphones much better. Also, it’s important to try and find your own signature, not just in music but everything you do. Nowadays a lot of producers are just copying others.” Software is usually cheaper than hardware, but would you advise people to get a little outboard? “I think it’s great to use Ableton Live, Logic or Cubase and develop things, but I always recommend buying synthesizers or hardware. When I buy a synth, first I have to be sure it’s something I really need but I’m not going to buy anything else until I learn to use it really well. It’s better to not get too much, but buy something of really good quality and spend a lot of time with it. When I get to LA, I always go to a super big shop and spend a couple of hours testing a lot of synths, but there’s also a lot of information out there. When I started doing Drum ’n’ Bass, it was so difficult to know how other artists were working or what they were using, but nowadays there’s so much information.”
Do you need to use as much effects processing with hardware synths? “I find that hardware synths are more real, but there’s not really a big difference whether I’m using a Dave Smith synth or Omnisphere. Some synths, like the OB-6, have a lot of personality and are really powerful, so you don’t need to add much more, but I think there are very powerful soft synths like Reaktor or Diva. Years ago there was a big difference, but not nowadays. I’d say there are five or ten really good synths in the box that are so powerful and rich they can be compared to hardware. And if you’re working with plug-ins, if you mix on an analogue mixing console you can get the analogue sound you are looking for, just like you can use hardware synths and add tape saturation.” What tips do you have for people looking to create an outstanding mix? “Some things we normally find when mixing for other people is that most of them do not care about bass frequencies. Most tracks have sub bass frequencies that you don’t need. The first trick would be to kill all the bass or sub bass frequencies that you really don’t want. If you have hi-hats, you probably don’t want the bass frequencies. Just by doing this and making a high-pass filter on most of the elements, your track will sound much better. One thing I learned a long time ago from Abbey Road Studios is that they normally cut the send reverbs, bass and high frequencies above 10kHz. I never thought this would work, but it really does. It makes the mix much clearer and helps to add a feeling of bigness.” Can you provide any tips on panning and achieving separation of sounds? “It’s interesting to talk about panning because we find that when we mix other artists’ music, many times they are panning too much because their speakers do not have the proper distance. They try to pan too much, and when we listen to it in the studio we find the sounds are too much on the right or left. So my advice is not to pan so drastically and listen with headphones. I always mix drums the old way with the snares a little on the right, hi-hats further on the left with the kick in the centre. Also, keep your kick and bass in mono because it gives the mix a better build. With Dance music it’s hard to hear panning in a club anyway. If your music is more listening-oriented, you can go further with panning.” What’s your attitude to compression, and how would you advise people achieve the right blend of loudness and dynamics? “When we listen to masters from other companies, some labels are going too far with compression and totally killing the dynamic of the track just because they know they are going to sell more. This is because the music is going to Beatport and people are listening on laptops, so they have the feeling that because the music sounds louder it’s better. Louder is not better, it’s just louder. When you play those tracks at a club they sound too crunchy and have no dynamics or soul. If DJs want to go louder, they just have to go to the gain on the mixer, but if something is over-compressed, you can go down with the gain and it won’t correct anything. In
Too many people spend a lot of money on equipment and speakers but work in a square room without proper acoustics
Dance music it’s better not to compress too much. Normally, the master is already extreme, so if you compress too much it will be fried. It’s better that you really understand how to use a compressor. Sidechain compression is great for the bass and the kick. We don’t compress too much; just the kick, normally using a Fatso compressor plug-in.” Is it important to balance everything as you go or do that at the final mixing stage? “That’s a really interesting question because a long time ago I was making music and mixing at the same time and sometimes I was missing out on the artistic side because I was afraid to do things that went against what ‘should’ be done. Nowadays, I think it’s really important to separate these two phases. The mixing and mastering world is full of things that you should not do, but when you are making music, those things are often the most interesting, artistic and sometimes even magical elements. So for me, it’s important to separate the artistic and creative elements before mixing the track. I’m not really taking care of the technical side until I export the tracks out of Ableton and into Cubase, where I make groups, mix the track and have my pre-master.” You mentioned that you’re using a combination of Ableton and Cubase? “I use Ableton for production and Cubase for mixing because I get the feeling that it sounds different when you bounce sounds in Cubase. But the main reason for working with Cubase is that I don’t find that Ableton is very well-prepared when it comes to listening to a mix. With Cubase, you can arrange the mixer as you want and you have much more possibilities. It’s easier to group everything, so it’s just easier and faster. But the good thing about Ableton is that it’s really creative. Sometimes I’m adding so many elements that I end up with too much, but you can work with audio much faster in Ableton than you can on Cubase.” You’re known as a House/Techno producer, but your album Son Of A Thousand Sounds is a lot more eclectic. It’s surprisingly quite Poppy… “I find that my music is influenced by many different sounds. My story of being a Techno/ House artist is a bit different to others because I don’t have a big knowledge of those scenes. I come from a Drum ’n’ Bass background and listened to a lot of Electronic Rock and Pop music in my adolescence. So for me it was important to create an album that would show all of my eclecticism, and right now I feel I am at a point where I can really express myself.” The track Flashcrash pays homage to Chemical Brothers, and you’ve nailed it really. In what way have they inspired you? “The Chemical Brothers have always been a big influence. I never planned to sound like them, but I suppose I probably have the same tastes so it’s not something I can fight against. For me, Flashcrash is more Primal Scream than Chemical Brothers, but I probably have a similar way of working to them. For example, I used a lot guitar distortion pedals on that track – even though there are no guitars in it. I’m a big fan of distortion; it can come through pedals or the Roland Space Echo with the feedback turned up, and I use Guitar Rig a lot too. I remember your interview with Future Sound of London many years ago, a band I really love, and they were
Louder is not better, it’s just louder. When you play those tracks at a club they sound too crunchy and have no dynamics or soul
putting synthesizers through a lot of pedals. It’s something that really stuck in my mind because I realised there were different ways to add effects to synthesizers and the result is more unpredictable than with normal plug-ins.” You can definitely hear some juicy analogue synth sounds in many of the tracks’ lead lines. Which ones did you use? “I used the Dave Smith Pro 2 a lot; it has a certain colour and a really powerful sound. It sounds analogue but also digital, and in a really interesting way, but the OB-6 is totally different. I also used the Moog Sub Phatty instead of the Sub 37 because you can create something really fast with the Sub Phatty. Because it only has a few elements, it’s like using a real instrument. I used pedal delays from Boss and Electro Harmonix, and because I thought I needed some keyboards, the Nord Electro 5, which has some really good piano and Rhodes sounds. The Leploop V2 is also an interesting instrument – there’s nothing like it. It has a bass synthesizer and two oscillators, so you can make these crazy synth layers.” The Roland JU-06 looks like it’s probably an interesting synth…? “It’s the new Juno – like a boutique Juno. It’s difficult to find a good Juno; they’re quite expensive, always have problems and they don’t have MIDI, so when Roland released the JU-06 I thought it’s probably not the same but will sound good anyway. I actually think it’s really great for strings and some lead pads that remind me of movies from the ’70s and ’80s. The only thing I don’t like is that it has a mini jack output. I don’t know why that has become a normal thing to do nowadays.”