🧐 THE CLAMPS AMA

I was nearly 19, after few times going to illegal raves here in France.
I already played guitar in bands, mostly Punk/Hardcore/Metal, but I was very impressed by the new technology and I started to mix on vinyl and at the same time I wanted to create my own music. So I started to buy some Hardware stuff and this is it 🙂
I never stopped to be impressed by the art of making music and it’s an easier way to express myself. I think it’s very helpful for introverted people.

Since I started to make music, I always saw the music in term of physical thing, like matter that is created in front of me with all its volume. A bit like synesthesia but with forms, shapes and placement in space.
So when I’m listening music I see forms moving in the space. It’s like feeling the widening and tone of each sound like a pysical substance.
For example Camo & Krooked music give me a very nice visualisation in space.
Then I started to understand why I visualize sounds like this, why one is on the top, why the other is more under etc etc… and then I found my workflow with this, using widening effects, pitch shifting, asymetrical distortion etc etc…
I’m not always satisfied with what i achieve in my music, but for some of my tracks I’m really happy on how the sounds are shaped in space.

I felt in love with ‘Neurofunk’ near 2004/2005. I already digged Drum and Bass in general, but Neurofunk/Techstep was my thing. I loved that dystopian journey with emotive tensions blended fierce energy and strong sound design. And still nowadays.
I have my all time favourites or classic in my heart, but that brand new scene coming each 10 years is what it keeps me in love with this music.
I’m very hyped to hear what a new producer could write and the journey he could bring me.
The whole scene evolved a lot, sound design is very different from back in the days but I’m loving it. It’s an old style who stay alive staying fresh and young. Like an old person keeping his youth.

In term of sound, I think all the Music will be a kind of blend, which will allow to have interesting new story telling.

I used to make different kind of music, which allowed me to learn from my mistakes. After few years into 4×4 Techno and Hard stuff, I dove into Breakbeat and specially into Nuskool Break, which was very close to Drum and Bass in terms of energy, musicality, production. I enjoyed this era and I learned a lot in term of production. And it was during this period I started to do DNB.
I needed to relearn lot of things,like how to EQ drum with bass, compression, sonic perception etc, as BPM is faster. It was a time, even if some production ‘rules’ was already there, that allowed to go further trying/discovering new things. For example, sidechain was not super common at this time, and not easy as now to do with daw (and impossible with hardware if you didn’t have the good stuff).
But I never felt good enough. The only things who can confirm you’re in a good way is to finish your songs, make it listen to people, DJs, other producers and label owners and waiting their feedbacks.
Nowadays is quite easier for me as I created my kind of ‘brand music’, I know what I want to do, what the mistakes I must not do etc… But still I’m always in doubt and playing my music in front of people, checking their reaction is the last feedback that counts.
Sometime you spend months to work on piece of music with a big story telling etc etc, but at the end most of listeners create their own with the directions you put in your music.

The best way to learn is to finish your tracks. Analyse it, checking the ‘mistakes’ and learn about it doing a new track etc etc. It’s a never stop feeling which it’s very motivating.

Best way to do that is spending time to analyse your reference tracks, by ears and with spectrum analyser.

I love Ableton native Spectrum.
For my Kick most of the time the peak of low is close to -12db on Spectrum and for Sub/Bass is between -2/-6.
For Snare, depends if it’s strong ones or more clappy, but the bottom of the snare is between -12 and -24.
For Hi-hats is more near -36.

Considering I’m checking on the spectrum analyser at the end of my chain master after the last limiter. (And track is loud as it’s supposed to be as a mastered track).

For example sometimes you can go louder for the kick if you want something more boomy, but stay focus on the balance with all others sounds.

Important thing is the balance and your ears at the end will decide how you want to sound.

A good way to learn for that is to do some reverse engineering with reference tracks and see how they’re balanced in the mix in term of volume and frequency.

Hope it could help.

I’m a huge fan of saturation and distorted sounds. Probably from my years listening Metal and Hardcore. I love when the sound is grinding.
And doing Hardcore Techno push me to go to the extreme distortion research.

So I put a lot of small noise or distortion on each sounds.
A good tip for example is to use it with send track.
Like doing a good Reese Bass with his own character, with enough harmonic distortion then send everything in a send track with some others distortion settings and blend it as your taste.
On the send track you can add EQ too to control the harmonic distortion you want, add some reverb too or extra chorus. It will add that kind of warm. And you can do that for for every sounds, drums, synths. Sometime I sending few of them in the same send track and it glues everything together.
But at the end it’s a question of taste. Some prefer very digital distortion, some more organics or analogic. I love both 🙂

Most of time I don’t limit or clip in bus, but if I need I add a hardclipping most of the time.
As I’m working directly with the limiter on master, I can control the loudness of each track directly using distortion, EQ, multiband compression.
It goes very loud in the master channel at the end and I can hear directly if it’s too much or enough.
If it’s too much I level it it on tracks using volume track or with limiter/hardclip/saturator.
I never check LUFS tbh, if it sounds good to my ears, it’s good 🙂

Yeah it’s coming in the next video I’m doing for Sample Genie for this season 😉

It would be Camo & Krooked, for their sound design and their storytelling.
But there are lot of more. I love TK, Synergy, Imanu, Redpill, Audio, Sleepnet etc etc…

About Third Colony, we first been 3 in it, Deerhill, Nickbee, and me. But Nick left after the first release because he didn’t have enought time to work on it. So it’s only deerhill and Me since years now.
And with Yan (Deerhill), we found a workflow for working together, sending stems and stuff. As Third Colony is a place for freedom in our music, we give ourselves as much freedom as possible when we’re working. We just talk a lot about the conception before making music and at the end everything come easily.

No secret weapon you can’t easily emulate with vst.
For example, during the process of the “Remind So I Can Sleep” album, I used a lot the Roland Juno 106 hardware, because I love his sound. But now for example I only use the TAL-U-No-LX which emulate Juno 60. And it works so well.
And as a big fan of BOC, I try to emulate that kind of constantly moving noise in our music, using distortion/saturation/tape/reverb/echo/shifting/chorus etc etc. Trying to destroy the sound into something more organic.

About ear fatigue, I’m quite ok as I don’t work at big level on monitoring, and I use open back studio headphones which make me allow to work long time without fatigue. And I guess switching to all the project I’m working on is like a reset for ears and allow me to have a semblance of new ears each time (even if now I miss some frequencies, because the age, the years of making music and touring)

I’m just using the default setting in Mid-Side Stereo with Side Underlay.