I've really cut down on the number of plugins that I use.
I think when you're making electronic music, I think it's really important that you create your own sounds.
And if possible, if you have the ability, create your own instruments, in Reaktor or Max or whatever.
But a lot of people don't want to do that.
But I'm very anti-preset. And I think that was some of the rules that we used very early on
with the Depeche album, but we'd never use presets.
Because I think it's very important if you're going to really have your own sound, you have to make your own sound.
You can't use somebody else's sounds.
And I think even though that sound isn't necessarily technically as good as a preset,
it's your sound, and it gives you the character sound, gives you as an artist, your own unique character,
which you'll never get if you use presets.
I think you can get lost in software. You can get lost with all these plugins,
and you just jump from one plugin to another. You never really get to know any of them properly.
And with the Korg 700S, when I started, I knew everything about that very simple synthesizer.
I knew how to get stuff out of it that I'm sure was never intended.
I spent a lot of time just figuring it out and trying stuff out.
But with plugins, you have 100 plugins. You jump from one to the other, you have presets,
I don't think a lot of people can really learn how to use those and get the best out of them.
You play so little and so consistently
that it's a very interesting approach to playing. And I just want you to... it's not even a question,
I'm just prompting you to talk a little bit about why I thought you were trying
to play like a machine and why you think you're not.
Actually, it's more about a very reduced attitude, a very reduced way of playing, but not in the sense that I want to be
like a machine, like a program, like somebody bought a drum machine
and doesn't know how to handle it and just pushes the three buttons or something.
But it's more about this discipline and concentration and really just taking very few elements and stick to them.
And really, because it's amazing what you can discover if you limit yourself very much,
then sometimes it's really amazing how much space you get in the end,
like for yourself and for everything else that's happening at the same time, so this is...
I could demonstrate also just a little bit what I do.
I limited myself a while ago. On my setup I could have up to 16 tracks playing at once.
But I really felt like I wanted to have the contour of four tracks only at once.
Four sound sources only at once. And partially to resemble the traditional band arrangement, but also just
these are as many things I can keep track of, and I'm already asking a lot of the audience
to come along in these leaps and bounds. So by really limiting that technologically,
it really helped free me up to make creative decisions in the moment that were more drastic
and I felt, like, more empowering to myself and the audience.
I think it's important also to master what you have
as opposed to think that if you only had a better thing, that you would sound better.
Like, I opened a studio recently, and mainly I cater to guitar players because I have a lot of very
beautiful high-end guitars. So it's a very simple recording style. But I kept thinking,
Oh, if I only had this microphone; I should switch from Logic to Pro-Tools because of some mysticism
that other people were doing it and their stuff was cooler. And really, like, I just said, no, I need to
master exactly the things that I have until I've outgrown them,
until I know the next thing that I need, as opposed to like,
Oh, now I got to go buy this thing, and that person uses that plugin and just...
work with what you know and what you already have until you realize...
I need something way better because this is worthless to me.
-You can slowly build on to it after that. -Yeah, build on to it as opposed to decide
well, I need the rack of plugins that my favorite producer uses, therefore, I can sound like that.
It's like people like buying running shoes and thinking they're going to run fast.
Really. Like, in a way. It's like, use your body, use what you already have and use the shitty shoes you own.
And then when you're like, wow, I can't run any faster, I should get some better shoes.
That's the point where you get the upgrade.
At times I was working with two mics, so one for looping. One for the lead vocals I was triggering off
because it was talking to Ableton, when it would loop and also doing some Kaoss Pad stuff.
And there were moments on a particular tour, I realized I'd become too obsessed
with needing that autonomy or control over my sound and engaging with my units
and making sure that the audience knew that I was doing all of this,
because there's always ego in this as well, right? You want to prove that you are...
And so, I had to step back, with the help of my band, and be like, well, what's the priority here?
Because we're all trying to connect as well with our audience.
We want to emotionally engage, and technology helps us do that. But...
But there's also a moment where I think you look at the kind of gig you're playing, the kind of tour you're playing,
and really judge what is going to meet your needs for that purpose.
So at that time, it was a tour in certain sized venues, and doing some festival dates, and I realized that
in order to keep the audience engaged, I needed to be able to step away at times
from that stuff and probably just have one mic, you know? Did I really need to be flying about between...
You know... I think I even had three at one point because I had a third one that was running just different processing.
And it's like at a certain point, no one could see my eyes because I was just so...
invested in needing to... So, that, for me, has been a process of kind of...
working out limitations and posing some limitations on myself that actually helped me to
get to the core of what I'm trying to communicate.