Who Does What?

so how do yall think the work is split up?

is one better at programming drums

does one come up w/ most of the melodies?

I often wonder this. Through interviews, it seems that Sean is the one more concerned with the beats and stuff. After all, Sean is the one who did the interview with Elektron about the machine drum. And Sean is always the one talking about how he programs beats in MaxMsp. And the few interviews I have seen with Rob it is not uncommon to hear him talk about keyboards and stuff. Plus when you look at Untilted photos, Sean controls monomachine and machinedrum while Rob controls the Nord Modular. And in older photos it is usually Sean on Max and Rob with the Nord Lead. I would be more interested to hear who handles production.

I recently bought some new headphones. They expose flaws in music much easily and I notice little things like changes in Reverb much easily. I notice some notable production flaws in Aphex's music, but I literally can't find any flaws in Confield. It is absurd.

What kind of headphones did you buy?

the kind that help you find flaws in musics!

jk btw!

:teeth:

The little flaws in much of Aphex's recordings are part of the charm. There's something satisfying about hearing his equipment glitch out a little, or his synths clip, it lends a personal quality to it somehow.

Autechre's music on the other hand is pretty reliant on everything being perfect. They're all about ironing out every flaw into something cold and precise.

So I dig Aphex for the warmth, and Ae for the cold detatchment. They're my two favorite IDMmers for almost completely different reasons, though they both have pretty kick-ass drum programming.

*edit: it would SUCK to be the guy in charge solely of the melodies in Ae for the last 5 years or so. Worst/easiest job ever. I just assumed the workload was divied up between them. Maybe one will have a "basic" beat going and the other will provide classy Ae fuckery to it.

Well firstly I never said I didn't like aphex, I just said I have been noticing more and more production flaws. People always accuse Ae of being cold and detached, but I never get that feeling. Ae's music is much more emotive and colorful than any of Aphex's music has ever been to me. (and I like aphex quite a lot!)

Those headphones I got are AKG's. They make it a lot more fun to compose with headphones too. Especially when it comes to minuscule delay and reverb changes. They are good but I still need to replace my earbuds for travel.

  Quote

Weidenbaum: Your partner in Autechre, Rob, is not around. Could you describe what portion of the music is his, or what he would say is yours — you know, vice versa.

 

Booth: At times, yeah. But we can copy each other as well. Quite often it's things I've done and I'll say, That's so you, but I've done it.

 

Weidenbaum: Could you take a minute to describe such a moment?

 

Booth: No.

 

Weidenbaum: I'm doing my best.

 

Booth: No, but even if I could I wouldn't tell you, and I can't, I really genuinely can't. I don't — well, I could if I were here for a few hours, but it's a bit complex, and it's not something that we've ever really tried to define. The only reason I'd say it is just to let him know I'm aware of it, that sort of thing. It'd be like ... we're kind of like — we like certain aspects of each other's brains but we really do want the same result. But it's kind of odd. Because we're different individuals it leads us to do different things, go about it in different ways.

an old interview from 97, found it copied and pasted http://www.klangforschungost.org/forum/showthread.php?t=422

  Rook said:

Well firstly I never said I didn't like aphex, I just said I have been noticing more and more production flaws. People always accuse Ae of being cold and detached, but I never get that feeling. Ae's music is much more emotive and colorful than any of Aphex's music has ever been to me. (and I like aphex quite a lot!)

I wasn't implying you didn't like Aphex, just pointing out how I think the imperfections add to his style in a positive way, and the immaculateness of Ae's music is integral to it. When I refer to Ae as cold and detached, it's not meant as an accusation in any negative sense. I like that whole aesthetic a lot, and it does evoke emotions in me, but ones that are often more difficult to define. Seeing them live and actually feeling every beat vibrating throughout my body was an incredible experience. I've never had rhythm effect me in such a powerful way before. Their music often makes the world around me seem a bit more surreal.

I could swear I read an interview where AE have released some songs that are practically all rob or all sean.

i reckon they both write teh musics

sean did an interview around the time of chiastic slide and said on that particular album half the tracks were done together, the other half done solo, but he declined to say which tracks are which. so at least 2 tracks are just sean, and 2 are just rob.

Yeah, Sean said about 1/3 of their material is either just one or the other. They also said they don't really know who does what in an interview. They say they send files back and forward and edit what the other does so much that there is no possible way of keeping track of who does what and that it really doesn't matter to them.

Thats actually pretty cool if you think about it. I would love to send like a chord progression to someone, and be like, yo check this. They are like, this chord sucks, new chord. Same with drums.

It would be pretty amazing to find someone with musical judgement that you'd trust enough to do that with. I'm sure their practically telepathic with one another by this point.

Yeah really very cool. When I've collaborated with friends, I get too attached to stuff that I spent a lot of time doing. I'll make a beat a certain way or something and really like it and then I'd get it back sounding way different and I felt like "Where did my hard work go?". So I think it's really an achievement that they can detach from those kinds of things for the sake of the composition.

I know they also have said they have hours upon hours of unreleased stuff from each album session and tons of alternate directions of released tracks, so I bet those result from wanting to try tons of different things, and playing off each other's ideas.

Their dynamic seems really interesting.

from what i've gathered from interviews, they try to switch it up really.

first of all - i'm sure that yes, some trax are all one d00d. everyone gets stuck at the airport or something at some point, and so you whip out the laptop and get cold and detatched.

here's what i gather: they have also said they regularly swap bits and pieces - they have some sort of common networked server, i imagine. rob uploads some audio, sean uploads max/msp fx patch, rob comes back 2 weeks later, drunk, runs the uploaded audio through the uploaded max/msp patch, and samples 2 seconds of it for a track he's working on, used as a loop. that track, good but a bit rough still, is later remixed by sean and appears on the next ae album. reporters then ask ae who wrote which part of the track.

computers and technology and being able to do shit like email your bandmate a synth you made in max/msp makes it possible to get things done very quickly, work in seperate studios, in airports, wherever - At the expense of being a bit scatterbrained about how you got to point B. perhaps they've written up some custom software to track their masses of bits and bobs... lord knows i need to cave in and start seriously categorizing stuff... going through hours of odd cubase recordings... dsfjl;gkdjfl;kgd

once they cloned themselves it was all simple delegation really

chune

sean and rob do the music.

autechre do everything else.

  Zephyr_Nova said:

  Rook said:

Well firstly I never said I didn't like aphex, I just said I have been noticing more and more production flaws. People always accuse Ae of being cold and detached, but I never get that feeling. Ae's music is much more emotive and colorful than any of Aphex's music has ever been to me. (and I like aphex quite a lot!)

 

I wasn't implying you didn't like Aphex, just pointing out how I think the imperfections add to his style in a positive way, and the immaculateness of Ae's music is integral to it. When I refer to Ae as cold and detached, it's not meant as an accusation in any negative sense. I like that whole aesthetic a lot, and it does evoke emotions in me, but ones that are often more difficult to define. Seeing them live and actually feeling every beat vibrating throughout my body was an incredible experience. I've never had rhythm effect me in such a powerful way before. Their music often makes the world around me seem a bit more surreal.

flim is a great example. Listen to that on good headphones. There are all kinds of interesting things going on with the low end of the track. And all kinds of really quiet blips and bloops that are easy to miss when just playing the track on a stereo.