At the round table

As multifaceted as Ambient and its subgenres like Psybient sound, the influences, inspirations and musical approaches of the musicians who have dedicated themselves to this style are just as varied. Reason enough to ask genre pioneers and current innovators to the round table. And so the interviews with Banco de Gaia, Ian Boddy, Carbon Based Lifeforms as well as Solar Fields are not only about the best synthesizers and effects as well as proven production methods, but also about walks in the forest and musical journeys of discovery, dream work and inspiration as well as the painting of sound pictures.

Beat / What combination of synthesizers, samplers and instruments and effects do you use to create your signature sound?

Carbon Based Lifeforms / We use some poly synths, like the Dave Smith Prophet 12, Moog One, or Spectrasonics Omnisphere 2. We usually make short sounds that we trigger pretty quickly and randomly, but they follow the basic chords. We develop these specifically to go through big reverbs. Our goal is to use the sounds to trigger certain colors or timbres in the reverbs. Another important part is using a lot of filter modulations, both randomly on each trigger of a note and in larger sweeps. A common setup for a Carbon-Based Lifeforms texture consists of a polyphonic synthesizer, followed by Soundtoys EchoBody, Filterfreak, ValhallaDSP Shimmer and Valhalla Room.

Banco de Gaia / In the 1990s, I used Roland samplers and Jupiter-8 and Juno-6 synthesizers and a Korg M1. That was the core of my sounds, along with 808 and 909 drum machines. These days I use more software than hardware, although I‘ve recently started playing with the Juno 6 and my Roland SH09 again. But I still resort to software versions of analog synthesizers to create many of my sounds. Samples from field recordings as well as human vocal sounds also play a big role.

Solar Fields / A sound is a sound, and where it comes from is irrelevant to me. Analog or digital, software or hardware doesn‘t matter. I work a lot with layering sounds from different sources, and it‘s the combination of everything that creates what you hear. So sometimes a pad sound can include sounds from five different sources. But sometimes a pure sine wave is enough. One of my trademarks is big layered pads with distortion, delay and reverb.

Ian Boddy / In the many years I‘ve been composing music, I‘ve used all kinds of electronic instruments, from software to hardware, and they‘re all equally valid. However, because of my musical heritage, true analog modular synthesis is very close to my heart. For me, music is all about emotion and how the composer or musician conveys it to the listener. My favorite solo instrument is the Analogue Systems French Connection Keyboard, an analog recreation of the playing style of the Ondes Martenot. By moving a ring up and down in front of the keyboard, you send pitch CV information and can create beautiful slides that are impossible with a regular keyboard. There‘s also a toggle switch for the other hand, which is normally used to control volume and timbre via VCAs and filters. This means I have total control over the sound and can put so much feeling into my playing. I often use the Make Noise 0-Coast synthesizer as a sound source, as it‘s easy to place on the keyboard.

Beat / How do you find ideas and inspiration and how do you start a new track?

Solar Fields / It can start with a tiny sound or emotion, and when I get into it, the flow comes naturally. I compose a lot with headphones. Sometimes I put them on the floor to listen to music. When I do that, I can‘t really hear what‘s going on, but my brain tries to figure it out anyway, and then I hear new things that aren‘t actually in the composition, which is pretty funny (laughs).

Banco de Gaia / Sometimes it starts with an interesting sample, sometimes I have an idea for a chord progression or a bass line, or it can be a concept that I then try to translate into sound. For example, my last Banco de Gaia album, „The 9th Of Nine Hearts,“was about different relationships

I‘ve had, so I started by thinking about the most important aspects of each relationship and then thought about how I could translate that into music. But my collaboration with Andrew Heath began with a series of field recordings, which then determined how the music unfolded.

Ian Boddy / It varies from track to track for me. Often I‘ll experiment with the modular system, and then I might design a soundscape that I like and focus on that. Sometimes I just sit down and play a virtual piano patch and improvise chord structures that I might want to use. Other times I‘ll use an analog sequencer and let chance take its course. Sometimes I have a specific idea of the mood I want to create, and I often work with more unusual scales and modes like the whole-tone scale or Messiaen‘s modes to give the whole piece a certain timbre. I believe that you absorb everything you do and see, and how that translates into new music is a mystery I don‘t think I know the answer to.

Carbon Based Lifeforms / Johannes usually starts working on the tracks by designing sounds on a synthesizer. While he‘s tweaking the sound, he tries out different melodic patterns to see what lines work with that particular sound. Daniel usually starts with bass and rhythm and builds a track from there, which means we work in opposite directions most of the time. Once one of us has made a piece, usually a few bars long, we sit down and go over the rough ideas, and if we both like what we hear, we start working it out into a full piece. Inspiration can come from anything, songs we hear, video games, movies, walks in the woods.

Beat / Your music is very cinematic. Do you think in images when you work on new music?

Banco de Gaia / Definitely. It can be an image that inspires the music, or it can be that the music inspires the images, it depends on each piece. I love Francis Dhomont‘s idea of „cinema for the ear“: music that stimulates the imagination in the way that strong images can.

Solar Fields / I tend to think a lot in terms of colors, shapes, forms and emotions. For example, the color brown sounds different from green, it‘s complex and hard to explain. I am also closely connected to my dream work, I dream a lot and remember everything.

Ian Boddy / Sometimes I think in images and sometimes in moods. Often the music leads me on the path it wants to go, and sometimes I have a specific goal in mind that I might reach, or a new path opens up. I often compare this process to a walk through a beautiful forest. There are well-trodden and familiar paths that you use often, but sometimes you discover a small, hidden path off to the side that you can explore if you want to. It can lead to a dead end or open up a whole new world. There are no limits and no end to your musical journey of discovery.

Carbon Based Lifeforms / We used to be very visual when we wrote music, but today it‘s a little different. When deciding which tracks to finish, we use what we call „Gåshudstestet“, which means that we both get goosebumps when we want to keep the track. So it‘s more of an emotional than a visual process.

Beat / Ambient and related genres are all about atmosphere. What tools and techniques do you use to create this atmosphere in your tracks?

Banco de Gaia / I like to use field recordings, especially from nature, as I find this is a very effective way to evoke an atmosphere and a scene, to transport the listener to a specific place, with the emotional impact it can have. However, I also like to use abstract sounds, perhaps part of a recording taken out of context, to convey a feeling or mood without tying it to a specific environment. And then there‘s the distortion of time, a bit like slow motion or fast motion in Fine Arts, which can draw the listener‘s attention to a particular sound or mood.

Carbon Based Lifeforms / We usually work with several layers. A couple of synth layers, a layer of organic sounds, which are usually field recordings of animals or a synthesized version of those sounds. The trick is to make it sound organic. And filter sweeps are also a must, to emphasize build ups and drops etc. And last, but probably most important tons of reverb.

Solar Fields / I don‘t have any special tools to create atmospheres. Distortion plays an important role, though. However, I don‘t use it to distort signals, but to amplify frequencies that play a big role in a sound.

Ian Boddy / We all know that with sequencers you can produce these cool Berlin School grooves that repeat endlessly, which is great, of course. But in the last few years I‘ve been experimenting with how to bring variability to it. So I often use systems that give a chance for an event to occur or not. One of the simplest systems for me is the Hermod sequencer, where I can set the probability of a trigger being sent or not, which in turn means that a certain sound will play or not. In addition, I can also control the voltage, so that sometimes the sound is almost always played and sometimes it is almost not played at all. This means that by subtly patching and linking sources of tension, I can create atmospheres that seem repetitive but never actually do. I often compare this to watching a stream flow by. It kind of always looks the same, but in reality the particular pattern of the water at any given time probably never repeats exactly.

It can start with a tiny sound or an emotion, and as I go into it, the flow comes naturally. « (Solar Fields)