Jon Hopkins

Classically trained pianist and producer Jon Hopkins has one of the most respected résumés in electronic music. Danny Turner locates the sound design craftsman in his studio to discuss his fifth album, Singularity

Having collaborated with the likes of Brian Eno, Coldplay, David Holmes and Imogen Heap, award-winning producer Jon Hopkins has been one of electronic music’s leading sound designers over the past two decades, producing a stream of complex, interconnected releases.

Often shunning clinical digital processes in favour of analogue hardware, Hopkins has an uncanny ability to capture the essence of his conceptual themes through a meditative approach and insatiable appetite for experimentation. From beautifully-realised debut album Opalescent in 2001, through to organic, techno-embodied albums such as Insides and Immunity, Hopkins now returns after five years with latest masterpiece, Singularity.

What have you been up to since Immunity?

“For the first two years I was touring the album quite brutally. We did approaching 200 shows, which was exhausting. That took us up to Glastonbury’s The Park stage headline and Brixton Academy, which was about as far as I could imagine getting. I did do one soundtrack, for a Barbican production of Hamlet with Benedict Cumberbatch. I’m not really into the theatre world, but I was convinced by the director Lyndsey Turner to do it, and she’s amazing.”

How different was that process compared to the world of soundtrack, for example?

“Well, I was sitting in the rehearsal studios with people acting their hearts out right in front of me, writing there and then, taking it home and polishing it. Luckily there was a very experienced theatre sound guy available who could take my parts and turn them into something they could actually use live on the night. We never did a soundtrack album; I wanted it to be purely for the live experience. That took me up to July 2015 and around that time I made the big decision to start learning Ableton, because I’d used it live but never got beyond the surface of it.”

That learning process must have interrupted your workflow?

“Well I contacted Ableton and they sent a really nice trainer to teach me how to get started. I spent a day with him, which was enough to get going, but the problem was I had to work on that for a good six months before my work sounded as good as it did on Logic. It’s almost like going back to square one because you don’t know all the tricks yet, which is quite disheartening at first until you reach this amazing milestone moment when you realise you’re starting to beat what you did before, along with all the added benefits of using that program. Then I spent a bit of time in Los Angeles to recover from all the touring and get some vitamin D. Every release you’ve ever heard from me was done in this building, so starting the biggest album yet under the same roof didn’t feel right. I did some sketches in LA and lived a different life for a bit. The first sounds I made that survived – and were good enough – for this record were made at the end of 2015.”

Did playing live for so long help you get creative in a different environment?

“Yes, it did. So much so that I’m actually looking forward to playing live more next time. Back then, I hadn’t yet learned Ableton properly. I was alternating between big chunks of audio and clips, but wasn’t doing very detailed live stuff – I was either playing things on top of or disrupting the performance using Korg Kaoss Pads. This time, having written everything on Ableton, it’s going to be way easier and more fun to perform with.”

You were using four Kaoss Pads on stage, which sounds a bit excessive?

“I was using the Kaoss Pads, Ableton, a Livid controller and a Pioneer desk. The drums were going into one Kaoss Pad, which then went into another, so I had two layers of processing. Then I had another one for riffs and one for all the atmospheric sounds, with all the separate outputs coming out of a Motu interface. I learnt a lot about how to write for the live situation, which was reflected back into this album.”

So when you’re writing, you project the idea of what the tracks will be like live and that’s reflected in the production process?

“I do now because it certainly brings an exciting layer to the writing process when you think something’s going to sound great live. I was doing that a bit with Immunity, because I’d done 60 or 70 shows for the previous album, Insides. But it’s equally important for me that things work at home on headphones or speakers, because not everyone’s out at clubs. The idea is to have a different kind of tour next year. There will be mostly festival and headline shows later in the year, and those will be quite upbeat and ravey, but next year I do want to do a concert hall tour of some sort.”

Have you done those before?

“I did The Royal Festival Hall, Brighton Dome and an improvisation in Berlin with Nils Frahm with a grand piano, guitarist and two string players and thought that was a really nice experience. There are people out there who wouldn’t come to one of the normal shows I do and prefer the quieter side of my material, so I’d like to do some shows for them too.”

Does the title ( Singularity) point to a concept?

“They all do to some extent. I had the title idea for this back in 2005, but wouldn’t have had the ability to write this album then. It begins with this one really simple tone, almost a sine wave that I actually got from a piano string, and from there it goes into this very destructive and heavy first half, and over the course of an hour comes full circle. The last track is the opposite of the first but ends at exactly the

same point. The story of the universe is the singularity I’m talking about, the Big Bang and the expected contraction – a microcosm of that. I’m not remotely mathematical, but it’s a beautiful word that follows on from Immunity and ties the whole album together.”

Do you need to have a concept to make music?

“What’s most important to me is that it works as an album. I don’t like this idea of writing 70 tracks and choosing ten. I like a story if possible, and usually that makes itself apparent during the writing process. About ten months before mastering, I’ll usually have the track order in place and know what’s going where, and that affects the writing. For example, the end of track one on Singularity is very heavy and gets destructed and distorted, then immediately goes into a contrasting section with very fluid arpeggios and piano. Those two things are symbiotic; they massively affect each other and make each other stronger, so that concept is at work throughout. You can listen to tracks in isolation, but if you want the deepest experience it’s better to listen to Singularity as a whole.”

But you won’t write it in a linear way?

“It’s all so complicated [ laughs]. You know it’s going to end up in a particular shape, you just don’t know how it’s going to happen. All you can really do is focus on one step at a time. I started with the beginning sound on the third track and had the arpeggio for the title track recorded a couple of years earlier, so things just come from all over the place and the album eventually takes shape from all these disparate components.”

Has there been anything radically different about your approach to making this album?

“The process was different this time, mostly because of the technology. Ableton changes my process a lot. The song structures are much more free and open. For example, the second from last track, Luminous

Beings, begins in this chaotic static weirdness that doesn’t make sense, but then incorporates a string section and piano piece towards the end, at which point it’s completely different. That’s not something I would have written before, but Ableton enables this freedom of improvisation, whether that’s jamming arrangements or letting everything flow. In that way, it’s so different from using Logic.”

Has your soundtrack work made you more technically proficient?

“It’s interesting with soundtrack work. Take

Monsters, for example, which was the first soundtrack I did on my own and is something I’m very proud of. I had to write around 30 pieces of music in five weeks, which is ridiculous because there’s no room for sonic exploration. It was just me writing a lot of melodies very quickly and doing an incredible amount of programming and engineering with just one string arranger and an engineer to help me. It was one of the hardest projects I’ve ever done but also one of the most satisfying. So I guess in the sense that any hardship makes you better, I learned something, but it’s hard to pinpoint that style in my solo albums.”

Where does the compositional process start?

“There’s always a spark. It could be a beat or a melody, but it’s usually a sound that dictates the notes that follow. I try not to begin tracks on the piano unless they’re specifically piano solo tracks. That’s why I’ll occasionally get a new synth, because it’s very important to let sound suggest itself and guide the notes that are played.”

Presumably you prefer hardware for that, as the software realm is practically unlimited?

“Well it’s too unlimited, although I’m not referring to the band 2 Unlimited [ laughs]. I’m sure you could make everything I do with software, but it’s not for me. I remember sitting there trying to work out how to use Native Instruments’ Massive, but I’m way too impatient and didn’t like the sound of any of it anyway. I’m sure you can get really deep into software, but for me the most important thing is immediacy and being able to realise ideas very quickly. So as a starting point I’ll always turn to my Korg Trinity, which I still use for sketching even if I’ll replace the sounds later with something more interesting. I’ll also use the Korg MS-20 and, more recently, the Moog Sub Phatty. What I do a lot of, however, is processing, so I’ll use millions of plugins and chains of plugins in Ableton. That’s how I guide and shape the sounds.”

Have you created your own sound banks?

“I’ve been using Soundtoys plugins and Audio Ease for years and have got loads of my own sounds in there, but I like the fact that I’ve also got a bank of my own presets on the Korg Trinity and MS-20 that goes back 20 years. I like those as a starting point; you can go nuts with effects later. What I have noticed over the years is that whenever I get excited about an idea that I’ve had outside of the studio, when I come into the studio it sounds shit – even though that may trigger something that isn’t. So I’ve decided to stop doing any planning in advance or having any idea of what I’m aiming for and just follow a train of thought or idea, whether it’s a melody or a sound as a starting point, and be very quickly ready to put something else down. Ableton acts like an enormous notebook where you can fill more and more clip slots, make combinations and refine stuff until eventually you jam an arrangement – at which point I’ll go into much more detail.”

Many artists see Ableton as a bridge between creative ideas and the in-depth editing process. Can you complete an entire project within it?

“Really? That’s interesting. I did one track that way in my bridge period, it was a Disclosure remix. It was the first thing I started in Ableton from scratch and I was really happy with the energy that gave it, but I didn’t have the mixing ability to finish it in Ableton at that point so I finished in Logic. The goal has always been to use one program, because I spent years using a combination of Logic and Sound Forge from an old virtual PC. That has its benefits, but only because I didn’t know how to make certain

sounds in Logic. In Ableton, you can do everything if you spend time with it, and there’s always a workaround. I’ve never been happier with the mix on a record than this one.”

How much mixing is done at editing stage?

“It’s a mixture. If I’m not excited about a track, I’ll go into a bit of the processing. Sometimes if a drum track is sounding shit, I’ll resample it as one and put some amazing effects on it to see if that triggers something. What I’ll do right near the end of the production is more of the morphing type sounds that you hear bridging sections together; similar to drum fills except they’re effects fills. That can really bring the music to life, but I’ll only do it early on if a track is dragging in a section.”

Do you trust a mastering engineer enough to leave your music with them?

“No, I’ll go there and always sit with him. I’ve used Guy Davie for 12 years now; he does most of the Domino roster and has an EMI TG12410 mastering console. Guy’s brilliant, although with this album and Immunity, he didn’t feel inclined to do any repairing, which was a massive compliment. It was more a case of refining the overall sound – a little more sub, treble and getting the volume up nicely. I’ve always loved the process because I can’t reproduce the sound of a perfectly conditioned EMI desk. It really makes a big difference, and I’ll leave room for Guy to do that. You can probably tell from listening to my music that I’m a massive control freak, so there’s no way anyone’s doing anything without me being there. Although for the first time with Singularity, I did involve someone else in the mixing process – a guy who’s been working with me as an engineer for many years. It was amazing because these songs were the most complex sessions by such a long way, some of them had 140 tracks! We bounced them into stems to get them down to 20 or 30 stereo pairs and he would take those stems and almost master them individually. So then I’d get back these stems, which sounded better, and the cumulative effect led to a much richer sound. The problem is, I did so much work on my own that I no longer had any perspective – it’s almost like I couldn’t hear the tracks anymore, so when the stems came back sounding amazing, I had it in me to take the music to the finish line.”

Can your laptop cope with all the complexity?

“Something like LuminousBeings is so long and complex, I’ll need to create whole other sessions for drums and strings. And I’ll use so many plugins, that even a really powerful laptop can’t run everything. Usually, I have to get everything sounding right, bounce it and bring it back in.”

Your music is highly layered and frequency driven. How do you ensure it all sits together?

“It’s all instinct and ear really, but there are certain plugins that are useful. In terms of actual frequencies, obviously I’ll use graphic EQs to get rid of any peaks that I don’t like. A lot of it’s about dimensional space, so I’ll use things like Altiverb quite a lot, but in quite subtle ways to make things sound behind something else, miles away or up close. I love playing with the stereo imaging as much as possible, which has a big effect in separating out sounds. I see the whole occupiable musical space as this vast dimensional area you can place things in, and plugins exist that make it really fun to do that.”

What plugins do you rely on for sound shaping?

“I use the FabFilter Volcano 2.0 plugin because it’s a really good filter and SoundHack Bubbler, which is freeware, but a really nice granular delay. Otherwise, Waves plugins, Soundtoys’ EchoBoy, which is a classic, a Pultec EQ, because it adds a lot of warmth and physical reality to sounds, and Slate Digital’s VirtualMix Rack to give things a bit more punch.”

Any unusual techniques for creating sounds?

“I’m always on the lookout for unusual sounds. I even sampled my microwave, made a little note out of it and put it on my keyboard. Sometimes I’ll make kick drums out of a lot of other kick drums, so they’re made up of lots of different components. You’re not always going to get separate control over

“I did so much work on my own that I no longer had any perspective”

the elements of one sound, so I’ll have five or six elements on a snare drum and add reverb to each, which is an important element.”

Recovery, is full of subtle environmental sounds. Are they deliberately added for texture?

“The way I have it set up, my piano has two Octava Mk 012-01 mics hanging down, so you’re hearing the sound from inside the instrument rather than above it, which creates this amazing, natural reverb. What you’re capturing is hammers on felt. I don’t think there’s any spatial plugins on that track, just some EQ, which is kind of the point of the track. After the amount of processing and sonic adventures that went into the other eight tracks, it’s good to end with absolute purity. One of the differences between Ableton 8 and 9/10 is that it sounds much warmer and less digital, so it’s a very digitally made album, but doesn’t sound that way.”

The piano looks quite a vintage one?

“I’ve had it since 1988. My parents bought it for me when I started showing a serious interest in the instrument. The thing about this piano is that you can play quieter on it than I’ve been able to on any other. It’s in amazing condition and it’s rare that I love an instrument as much as this, although it’s not the only piano used on the record. For the first time I used a Steinway Grand, and on the track Echo

Dissolve you can hear the combination of the two pianos. Everything that isn’t high frequency comes from the grand and all the trebles come from the one in my studio.”

What outboard do the piano mics run through?

“They go through a Heritage Audio preamp. I haven’t used much outboard on this album. I do like the Eventide Ultra Harmonizer DSP4000, as it’s got these famous crystallising reverb sounds, but I can beat that now with plugins. My main interface is the Focusrite Clarett 8Pre, so my synths go through there, into Ableton.”

You’re using the Livid CNTRL:R?

“You can assign anything to anything, so it’s brilliant to use as an Ableton controller by just assigning faders at random. I use it on stage too, as I’m already used to performing with it. The Drawmer Electronics Monitor Controller MC2.1 is also a great controller. I have Focal Twin 6 BE monitors, and if you can get the sound right on those it’ll sound right anywhere – the forensic level of detail I can hear has really made me up my game. That said, I’m not really that interested in speakers, I’d like to buy them and never have to think about buying another pair of them again.”