![]() ![]() When I was at STEIM, I was fascinated by people who would build their own synthesizers and self-program software. I don’t have to build stuff from scratch to know I have an original sound, but I have an immense respect for people who do build from scratch. That said, I really love hacking without being so dogmatic about having to build everything from scratch. I’ve always respected people who could find and point out microscopic differences in sound at the programming level. Once you understand how a principle works-a kind of deconstruction of its codes-you start really understanding how these things work. JSW: I think there’s a widespread notion that one must prioritize “free experimentation” and “finding your voice” over making copies. When I was younger, I would sit at the back of class tapping out jungle edits with my fingers, thinking, “You must be able to make something to load a drum break into and do the editing live with your fingers-that must be possible.” As soon as I learned how to use Reaktor, that was one of the first things I did. ![]() ![]() I don’t do that much “messing around.” As soon as I got into Reaktor, before even knowing what it was or how to use it, I had quite a fixed idea about what I wanted to do. TE: What you say makes me realize how goal-oriented I am. Often, these musicians didn’t really care about aesthetics, and whether it was electronic or tape or microphone experiments, the sound would never exactly explain itself. I never had anything to compare it to until when, as a late teenager, people showed me music that really hit me: Holger Czukay and David Sylvian, concrète and phase-shifting music and old industrial. Unlike you Tim, I was never interested in rigid music-I always wanted a story-based progression. Once I began sampling, my projects became more track-based, but I never did it seriously. I’d also record movie soundtracks, cut out the dialogue and extend the ambient part to make audio plays. Werner: I started playing with tape recorders to make soundtracks for games I played. I didn’t even consider trying to sound different until I was well into my 20s. At the time I was into house and jungle, so I wanted to achieve fairly sequenced eight-bar music. The sound quality was horrendous, but it planted the seeds of digital music in me. It also had a super rudimentary software synthesizer with the precursors to the graphical interface we see in Reaktor and all other digital modulars. There was a free CD on the cover of a magazine with this wave editor thing. Tim Exile: I first started messing around with sound on a PC in ’94 or ’95 when I was around 14. Their respective music is inseparable from the innovation and playfulness that Reaktor encourages, and here they explore a deep appreciation of the elegance of systems that open up such possibilities. Werner, who has previously talked tech on Slices, has pushed musical boundaries for decades as a member of the influential duo Mouse on Mars and guest director at Amsterdam’s Institute for Electronic Music (STEIM). As a pioneering instrument builder for Reaktor, Exile has contributed directly to its development with innovative programs such as the recently revealed Flesh and has also released his own music on established electronic labels Warp and Planet Mu. ![]() It unites the digital and analog worlds by bringing modular methods to computer production platforms, and that’s a pretty precocious move considering the reinvigorated interest in modulars among contemporary electronic musicians, including Jan St Werner and Tim Exile. A few months ago, Native Instruments rolled out a new edition of its Reaktor program, Reaktor 6, which models a software music production studio after a modular synth rack with over 30 oscillators, filters, sequencers and effects. ![]()
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