MAKE DECISIONS EARLY

“Having near infinite computing power, sound sources and processing tools leads to creative blocks. Often, I’m my worst enemy, when I start second guessing everything. To prevent just that I started committing to audio very early in the process of composing: recording a synth part with effects like compression and delay printed on it, say. Or freezing a MIDI instrument track to audio so I can’t go back and change the chord voicing all the time.

“I keep saving incremental versions of my sets as I go along, so nothing is truly lost, but the thought of having to scavenge for the unprocessed version of something is not only enough to prevent me from doing it, but it also pushes me to come up with creative solutions. As an example, I might chop the samples of a synth part around instead of re-recording it – that will possibly make it much more interesting.”

Set random limits, create conditions for beautiful mistakes

“This one takes inspiration from Eno and Peter Schmidt’s Oblique Strategies. I like to impose arbitrary restrictions on what to do, as it often triggers creative solutions. For example, create all sounds for a track from one single sound source, eg a mono synth, a white noise sample.”

Create a safe environment for ideas to flourish

“When working with other people, I try to check my ego at the door. The whole reason why I like to collaborate is because I believe someone else can change my music for the better. So, there’s no wrong ideas in a session, there’s no pressure, there’s no expectation. I think only then beautiful things occur.”