CREATIVE CRIBS - Jon Opstad (Black Mirror, Woman In White)

[Music] [Music] oddly sneaking poses are like dogs we sniff each other out in public places we're drawn to each other at events and there aren't subcategories of composers who sniff each other out the sound makers whether it be hands immer in LA or Ola fur in Iceland and there's an even smaller sub category of composer the shed dweller I'm here today at John op stats shed to have a look at how he uses his troglodytic space to create wonderful sounds compositions and music for media by John Chrystal welcome fellow shed dweller absolutely how long have you been here about nine years now purpose what yeah absolutely yes you know just before we come in you've got a kind of a double door yes and is it kind of floated and stuff yeah yeah so it is designed as a soundproof space and which works really nicely so it was a bespoke thing yeah absolutely so when we moved into the house and it was built quite quickly so we didn't get used to having the extra garden so it's cut the garden in half yeah and but yeah built as a place for me to work for no amazingly brilliant and you do find that that works for you I really do yeah and I think I'll take kind of having family and stuff fit me but it's not the same as working in no I'm coming to work here yes and I've got no windows on the front so I can't see that I'm at home yes I've still got natural light from the skylight so yes that's a two-way important kind of boundary isn't it yeah no it's me yeah yeah exactly so I'm kind of working here and this is where I come to work but then my commute is extremely short and to get to get home and evening and do you find it means that you do just you can snatch important moments yeah yeah yeah I mean yeah it works really well because you know when when you've got deadlines and things if I you know if I yeah if I need to go back to work in the evening for a little bit I can just pop in here that kind of thing or if there's like yeah just suddenly someone needs some files I can yes he mailed over I can just pop back in here and do that excellent stuff it works really well great use of space and a great collection of stuff so I mean I guess oh my lord is that an art it is very 600 Wow bought just before I found out they're called career reassuring it but yeah no bomb it's alright it's a long waiting list I believe yes do you use I do yeah I really here it's really kind of honed to what I use so there have been some other ones that have been and gone but it mostly vintage digital that's that's gone right you know there's there's certain sense there I've heard and just haven't found a way of integrating them into the way I work but but yeah all the analog is basically so lovely that it stays fantasy I'll of the Selina strings yeah yes my wife's working on an album at the moment and and has been listening to some stuff from the kind of late 60s early 70s and I keep on saying it's it's one of those yeah you need there's quite a kind of specific scheme to my curation of this scintillation which I can probably let you know about which is I think M York hello Herbie Hancock fan I think so you probably know that photo pretty well well I instagrammed it about six months ago that that for me is everything that's that's why that's why for me yeah exactly well for me too so I mean basically you know we've headhunters yes I bought by accident when I was nine years old thinking it was something else yeah and just was blown away by the sound a bit and the thing about all the Herbie Hancock albums in that era is that they list all the sense in the inlay card so yeah so you know from a young age I just I was just like what is and our policy you know what's an opera soloist and you know and all these names just kind of became very embedded in my consciousness this album son like you got re-released on CD and I bought it and I'm in that photo it's still to this day it's just yeah so so I very very gradually been building up that collection basically so I've now got all but two of them made that is so cool although one of the last ones is going to be a bit of a hurdle because it says see SAT right it's like a financial hurdle there oh you actually have a clavinet I do yeah um and do you have a wah-wah pedal I don't clavinet is is a kind of slightly guilty pleasure because I think there aren't that many times that you can work at having it into into a film story so it's actually it needs it needs a good service at the moment I'd rather get it serviced properly so I haven't I haven't used it in anger so far so yeah maybe a while one pedal will be on the cards once that's once that's um a wholly serviced the synths are that's that's the scheme to the synths and then it's kind of in a way it's it's coincidental that they work really well for for the kind of scoring that I do and the kind of do what they open up in creativity in the way that you're you're shaping the sound is amazing because I love that for the way I work it just works amazingly well having all these tools to shape say on basically yes because I think that's that's a big sign to what we do is composers for film and TV is making sales is a big part of it it's not just about dots on a page and they have their strengths don't they yes I mean I I often see my synthesis is almost like an orchestra it's like yes absolutely you can make an oboe sound it's really the horny part that you want from from that thing well you're pointing to the Juno insight which I mean so the Juno actually doesn't you know that doesn't fit with the Herbie Hancock's game so that's the kind of outsider in that respect but it's probably the scent I use the most you really can't approach it in that thinking as though Orchestrator kind of wait but yes [Music] but then you know it's really simple to move from that to much more kind of staccato kind of stuff as well and then you know that's your kind of thinking as an Orchestrator in terms of like pit strings or also strings with a lot of descent stuff I do approach it from that from that perspective well the problems I have with plugin since is that there's the options are too wide as well you know yes and you ain't you end up choosing a sound from a list of presets whereas I quite like the fact that with a lot of these they've got no memory they've got no patch memory yeah so you're having to create that sound from from scratch yeah and it's such a simple sense to use but just sounds great and having a mid eat everything not everything no so the Juno I have converted I noticed quite badly I mean if you look at least I did it myself and if you look at those holes in the back they're not it's not perfectly done you know so one the differences between a Juno six and then 60 is the the six doesn't have any way of getting any MIDI or anything into it whereas with a sixty you can buy a converted to put in back so I bought the kit for converting it and it was such a stressful experience because I stupidly did it myself and went how difficult can it be yeah well exactly how difficult can it be desoldering a 40 pin you know main microprocessor chip that's like the crucial brains of the synth and then you know a few pins in realizing you've massively bitten off more than you can chew and but by that point I just felt I had to carry on and I really thought that I just completely broken this beautiful synth but it worked out okay in the end there was there was a little moment where it felt like I'd completely broken it no but it did work out so let's have a little kind of scout around yeah we've got another film coming out soon where you talk about this being the absolute centerpiece of a project you've been working yes not right the felt Celeste medal it's a discovery it's a disc l'viyah yeah beautiful yeah my heart you three piano but it's got this little box up here that basically means that you can completely control it by MIDI I can basically write stuff in logic MIDI cable runs the other side the room I can make it play completely unplayable stuff in fact I once tried to make it play such unplayable stuff that it blew the power supply I've had to replace the power supply but it's a brilliant instrument cause it's got yeah it's got the felt pedal so yeah you I mean you were saying that this was a u3 was the piano that the classic Spitfire felt soft piano sample was done with so it's got that real sound to it and but yeah it's it's just amazing because you can you know I can I can send lines into it for it to play and then be like messing around with the strings while it's playing stuff so yeah I've been sticking screws in it and putting gaffer tape on it and muting it with my hands and all sorts of things but then it's also just a lovely piano to play as well and I'm only just becoming familiar with these because of the reissue and they really are a thing of yeah I mean that is a thing of beauty it's it's quite a yeah I wouldn't of the synths in here I'd say I'm not completely I haven't quite got to grips with its full capabilities yet it's in fact when I first turned it on I couldn't work out and get us out of this just I can see the speakers moving but I can't actually so yeah I mean it's a it's a beautiful instrument and just the you know at some stage I'm going to really just make some music really exploring what what that instrument can do I mean it's got such such depth to what it's what it's capable of and it's MIDI dup as well so it's got the and that's a MIDI CB converter that's running a bit right so we're not drilling holes into it and exactly exactly I mean I definitely wouldn't want to do that with with that one so something I've learned today is the art and the art Odyssey and not the same thing and that is in fact the off Odyssey isn't it yeah that's actually that is a core issue okay which is yeah which sounds great so yeah there's a great thing called Yelling's Corgan yeah so we've got four different ops here we've got so that's yeah that's the only one that's a replica but the other this was actually my first analog synth which is an axe which is basically a cut-down version of the Odyssey so if you look at it it's basic it's pretty much and honestly without that top layer to it okay which is so it's quite a primitive synth but it there's particular things it does really well like there's a kind of sub e bass tone that I can get out of that it's just my go-to sub bass tone for kind of putting under strings and stuff on your under basis yeah and is that a vintage move that is the modern reissue great it looks beautiful yeah and I mean to my ears that sounds really great I was at the time I bought it it was roughly I could have got an original one for roughly the same price but I just thought I've got so many synths that I'm always having to get repaired it would be nice to have one that yeah hopefully just works particularly a workhorse yeah yeah exactly yeah going back to the Herbie Hancock picture this was one of the real kind of key addition to the collection and they're very difficult to get hold of this is the Oh behind for voice which i think is actually the first polyphonic analog sent this first since that could play a four note chord daunting and complex to start with but it's actually a very simple synth because it's it's basically that we've replicated four times so the simple so just say if you play four note if you play a four note chord on it you're just you know it's sending each of those notes to the four separate synth okay so what you've got to learn it's like a little bit they're actually very simple and it's basically a Rooter from the keyboard that room yeah to the different Austin yeah exactly so you've got that's what's going on down here so and then that's just a mixer between the four voices so actually being being hugely temperamental as these things are currently I'm only really able to use it in two voice mode because the third voice has a crackle on it and the fourth voice is just suddenly decided to completely bypass the filter cutoff so it's now completely open massively huge and bright okay so I said we saw and put some vintage sense with over Arnold's for his composer toolkit and he kept on going guys every time you send me something to check out I changed the voice count down to the voice count the actual synth has and you keep on putting up slide 64 is it doesn't sound like we're a synth if you can play more than six notes on it or whatever it was that you know it was I think and this synth is one where it really shows the value of having the real synth rather than you know because you can get emulations of this one but the thing about this is because it's because it's sending each two note to a different since you're having to set up the tuning you know the filter and everything separately on those four notes which means that they're never exactly the same so which is partly why it sounds so thick and huge from when you play it because it's got all those differences in the sound you know it's not it's not perfectly in tune and that was someone said to me recently about modern analog data demonstrating modern analog synths and original vintage analog synths as well is that the kind of first-generation ones that components the electronic components in them weren't as precise as they are now and modern components are so precise that you don't get those little fluctuations of tuning they're part of what makes the the kind of character of the sound so yeah so I really feel that these instruments have something to offer you know now even though you know 40 years old great and what's this beast underneath this is a Yamaha CP 30 electronic piano so not an Aloha hello electronic Oh so it's one the early so if you think of like a Rhodes or a world it's or something yes isn't it familiar with the sound of those year so they're they're you know they're electromechanical so they work by amplifying a physical action whereas this is one the first ones that's literally electronic circuitry inside you making a sound so it's yeah it doesn't get a huge amount of use because basically that's one that's completely because of the Holy Hancock picture and it was a massive eBay bargain it was 150 quid off eBay so great stuff but yeah so I mean so I've kind of set it up so that the ones that that I do use the most are within easy reach so the twos the two synths that my real go to to the Juno and the Oh behind and then they both you know from where I'm sitting I can just lean toward the side for those we got no behind expander there which is I really wanted to get more of that eight is thick analog pad sound yeah which the other synths weren't offering so much I mean a lot of them a month that areas kind of all monotonic and I mean the Juno gets quite a bit of the way there the over homes just got a bit more kind of fizz and grit to those creamy pad sounds and I just wanted a bit more of that so that's what that one's offering so that I mean they all offer something different there's no no real duplication of a function they're all offering something different amazing and the Akai to you yes I think actually in one of your vlogs once you talked about I think you described it as a kind of Trent Reznor Atticus Ross approach of of you know having a sampled sound that when that yes pitch is then you know literally transposing it you got the keyboard and all of that yeah and I mean obviously you can do that with with software samplers but I just I just wanted to get that writ of having a yeah kind of slightly no fie sampler sampling sounds and then playing one sound across time stretch algorithms are interesting in those as well yeah very crude yeah yeah so basically I it was making some amazing sounds but the problem I had with it is that it's incredibly slow to use yes I mean just you know and and you and the RSI from yeah yeah exactly and just like even like you know in the amount of time it takes to write in the name of a sample because you haven't like turn the wheel to get every letter all that kinda thing so really so I really enjoyed the process of it and the sounds I was getting and what that was doing musically but just for deadlines and stuff that just wasn't working so then I looked into the best way I could replicate that in the software environment and so I found this thing called the towels on oh I was waiting for the point at which I was going to end up spending some money it's actually really affordable still money though isn't yeah but it's great so it's basically it's you know I mean you probably could do the same kind of things with the XS 24 no-contact but I think you know it I just felt that exs24 in contact a designed more for that more advanced kind of virtual instruments yeah exactly and I just wanted something that's designed for that grittier getting you know just sampling a bit of sound and then making textures out of it and yeah I've just found this really interesting to use because you can even just sometimes I'll just drop a whole mix of a track in there and then just something like a little bit of the track or like a you know that thing where there's there's I've had loads of times where like you hit stop and then you get an amazing reverb tail but it's not actually you know yeah I just thought be great to just be able to capture that and use that reverb tail for something and so with this yeah I'll sometimes just put a whole bounce of something in there and just chop off the reverb tail at the end and make make sounds out you know what this is served as inspiration for me because it is he may be or may not be aware I travel a lot absolutely and there's a lot of dead time and I'll use it to do editing and to write emails and stuff but I never ever use that time to fiddle around sonically or musically yeah and this looks like a good good yeah it's great it's great because you just know it's very simple because you just drop the audio file in here and then you've got just a knob for wearing your DoDEA for your starting where you're ending and then you've got your loop start and end point so you can loop things and then you've got your envelope so you just sort of finally front panel and then it's got in terms of getting that more kind of low-fired degraded sound it's got some emulations and things so like s1000 so that's you know that's based on the a kind of approach I mean it's not you know it's not quite the same sound as if I did it with the Akai sampler but the amount of time I mean the time difference is just crazy so so yes so the Akai that was something where kind of you know buying a bit of hardware got me thinking about a certain approach yeah then I tried to replicate it in the software and that's led to something else it's always great to see some strivings all hooked very much they are very much part of their part the process so basically if you look down here I've got I mean everything everything around the room pretty much is coming through these patch Bay's down here and so I can pretty much loop anything through anything to some extent right so basically think things that are further away on the other side of the room like the ARP and Selena and actually do behind as well they they go into they're basically looped to they're connected up to little patch Bay's yeah that then go into di boxes that then soever anything that's coming through D eyes is coming down to this XLR patch right here great and the reason for that is just I think when you've got longer cable lengths it's just safer to go through di boxes so you don't get you know if everything's line level cables then you all I need to get hub and interfering right so it's just really easy for me to don't connect up any of the since from there to the front panel of the rme interface but then the things that are close to by are just coming in with shot jack line Evan into this patch way but then I've also got like asteroids and stuff coming into there there's some old effects processes like that you have a whole one down there and is the m7 the precaster you're kind of go to hall verb it was for awhile and then just for workflow wise it stopped making sense in terms of stems and things so I was mixing in here but I not set up for surround in here you know some projects get up mixed from stereo to surround yeah and I have a project where I absolutely had to deliver in surround so more recently I've been mixing Angela Gertz what's not I think you know great what's what's your go-to haul the fabfilter now it's great yeah exactly no dongle as well as really yeah I don't do a lot of taking stuff from here and putting it on the laptop but when I do it's really great to just be able to transfer it easy and have the same plugins so a couple bits I've noticed this Leo like a very interesting bit of kit yeah that's a it's called a mystical in it so it's actually I think it's kind of eurorack compatible but eurorack is something that I've deliberately avoided continue being deliberately I mean I think I you know I've enough and I've got enough gear that I'm obsessed with so but yeah it's just a really interesting little synth I just saw I think it would say like I think it was kind of crowd funded originally and there was just some stuff online about it about them building it and it just looked really interesting in in some of the videos it was making some sales that I thought I could really apply to stuff starting a new project it I kind of allocate some of my budget to new sounds basis because that can inspire inspirational for as a starting point so most projects I've done I've kind of bought some new gear for it reward yeah yeah I'm just good pitching can't say it's not fun but absolutely but it that really helps kind of find a sound world for the project and something a bit different and so yeah going back to kind of finding sounds as a source for inspiration and a starting point for things so I'd known about this instrument called the water fame for a long time I think it was the score for Chinatown by Jerry Goldsmith which is just one of my absolute favorite films cause I just think it's a total masterpiece and and yeah this instrument was a key part of that and it was on that score was performed by a really legendary LA kind of film score session percussionist corner Emile Richards and I think they did recently invented as an instrument around then in California and yeah just that scores have really kind of one that earliest places that it was heard but it's so I was aware of aware of it for a long time and then I found that there's this is actually one made in Poland which I think said I think it's technically a equi phone and it just make some beautiful sounds sonic isn't it it's a very 3d sound oh yeah absolutely and and yeah so I I recorded it by setting off the pair of 4:1 fours and then you can make it sound really you know if you've got perform on fours on there's a kind of spaced Omni pairing and you moving this around you get is huge this looks suspiciously wired up the Sony it absolutely is wired up yeah I mean I do use that quite a lot so in what context so I've done stuff where I've recorded sounds to it whatever they are like it's like the solver a store since based on to the tape and then played the tape back at half speed so one of the really good things about this there's so anyone is it's got three different speeds okay which basically means you can record stuff and picture down an octave or picture down talkative what I've done is you know played stuff out of it and then through all the pedals and that's a tape delay there so the copycat yeah and starting stopping the tape kind of you know you can have that and then having it going into the copycat and having the gain as kind of you know you can use the gain then as a kind of envelope and then how you're shaping their sure amplitudes in it sound and then from there into their various different pedals don't you need some pedals in the way down here and like the heliotrope and stuff are unlocked and then so there's yeah that side to it which is kind of making sounds via text I actually don't I first got into that when and when I was doing a BBC period drama called the woman in white yes and we were looking for a kind of different approach to the sound I'd watched this film around about then called the offense 70s Sidney Lumet film but it's the only films go by Harrisonburg whistle oh wow and it's a really interesting score there where and there's a little on the blu-ray that was a little documentary about an interview with him about about how he approached a score and basically he he wrote the music and then took it into a kind of early 70s electro acoustic studio and chopped it all up it's a picture how he kind of wrote the music and then and then kind of shaped it to picture after the music was written and so doctors got me thinking about you know because obviously the technology at that time would have all been based on tape tape manipulation so that just set me thinking about what kind of sounds like you get by messing around with tape like that so so yeah this little corner is the kind of tape and tape delay amazing but you can get just some because I've yeah been messing around with it you can get some lovely sounds like one thing I do is put the one of your Spitfire strings libraries the Oliver Arnold's chamber strings through that because it's got a lot of lovely Lagarto shape to it yeah you know so I'll take some you know make some kind of pad textures out of that with loads of reverb and delay record them into the into the tape deck and then play it back at half speed and you can just get some lovely because you know the tape adds some kind of flutter and everything to it as well yeah so you can get some lovely textures that way so yeah I mean a lot of it is it's about kind of ways of making sound basically and shape a lot of its shaping sound I just for anyone who doesn't make their own sounds writer's block is a possibility but if you make sounds yeah I mean that's just it doesn't exist in my world when I started out I just had the laptop in front of me yeah I didn't really even have any plugins or any else basically it was just a laptop with logic and so initially I was really trying to work out how to make you know the samples I had weren't good enough to pass as real instruments at that point and so I really got into just chopping things up and using just the logic plugins to pitch shift things delay is distortion all those things to make different sounds and that seemed to be working well everything in here has a different way of functioning and you know it forces you to look at things in a different way and approach the creation of sound in a different way because all of them are hugely limited when that is the one absolutely it's all of the stuff that lets out the box and you know you finding this this sampler I can see it's it it definitely has limitations yeah I'm gonna be outside yeah programmer and orchestral with with portamento legato the articulations in it no exactly exactly and I think yeah partner from for me if I'm just sitting at a computer with a blank logic page and you've got contact completely full of all these different options you know all those things are really valuable but to do something that sound that sounds different and it's really going to inspire me to you know on a path to the the sales of the score then you know just stepping away from that and and having that imposing those limitations can be really really valuable amazing this is the first Judy I've been in these Neyman speakers yeah oh those very yeah kh3 tens they they were a little bit of an impulse purchase so I didn't actually tried him before I got him so I was going to buy a pair of Barefoot's and then I went into kmr in North London and they they talked me into these ones which got I'm completely happy with them brilliant I used it was I had anime sevens right before that and I always found them a little bit bright and I wasn't always worried that my I was kind of rolling off the top end of stuff and then when I heard it elsewhere it sounded a bit dull yes oh but these seem much more balanced and I don't have a subwoofer I used to have a sub woofer in here and always found it really difficult judging the bass yeah and I think this is this is a fairly basic room because I decided the room I need to need to improve the bass traps at some point but it means that when I had the subwoofer it was quite bassy in here and again it meant that I was really rolling off the bass end and then when I heard it elsewhere you've got a basic on yeah so where's that yeah these feel like they were good new components and they're just and really the amount of clarity they've got this it's really great it's a couple of things you're obviously working logic do you run picture in logic too and so actually hidden away behind no to make mini which is what this screen is mmm so I actually have logic running on there but just for running the picture so that's the overarching that the projects sequence yeah yeah exactly so so I used to run Vienna Ensemble Pro on there for all the samples yeah which with the previous iteration of the main computer was necessary like power right this is my Mac Pro's it it's actually just an old it's a normal I know it's not it's it's it was the it's getting on a bit now it's about five years old but it was the most powerful one when I bought it but that was before to make any I'm at pro yeah so it's not massively powerful but it works fine because I don't tend to work with a huge number so this is another question I was going to say is I think that the tide is turning away from massive templates which I think I know Ensemble really facilitated yeah and also because it was on a separate machine you didn't really want to change the template because you couldn't retrospectively work through different projects and yeah but it's problematic isn't it yeah I mean I think I just realized that I wasn't the kind of composer whom who worked with a big template I I fit like every project I just feel like I need to find find the sounds you know not be selecting them and so basically every project now and even every every cue I basically just start with a blank logic page looks like that it's got nothing nothing loaded up and as you work through kind of multi episodic how does that kind of so I am so I might use like a previous cue as the template right and you know particular strands of the narrative will you know will evolve and I'll return I'll think well a cue is that part of the narrative I'll use that as the structure for you find yourself kind of getting master cues kind of the ones that you go that's got a bit of everything that we need with that strand in yes sort of but also I mean I did a lot of what I do is with audio so so a lot of it is so yeah I mean sometimes I will use audio that's recorded from the synth and chop it up and read it to the new scene but quite a lot at the time I'm kind of recording new stuff in so yeah I mean basically they're the ones that are MIDI DUP that's more so I can if I need to do something kind of quantized yeah yes a ting baseline or something it's run the missing and kind of for recall no known as the I mean it's no recalled basically it's also I mean I don't thing is you know this is a genuine concern with something like the Oberheim is that it's not just a matter of not being able to recall it's just it might not work tomorrow oh absolutely yeah miss it oh yeah no exactly I mean that was the thing like that was like a week or so ago that voice just suddenly decided to lock completely open on a massively bright sounding huge you know filter setting so yeah yeah I have to record something and yeah like the other row behind that a couple of weeks ago that just suddenly decided to add an extra out of tune pitch to one of the six voices in it so just suddenly became unusable basically and I'd been using it as quite a central part of the project I was doing but luckily I recorded enough up enough audio that I could then chop up what I had yeah while I was getting it repaired then the Noah's back I can use it again so I've got three kind of fixed questions that I always like to ask in these circumstances but I don't wish ill on your studio so if some phantom destructive force was was it was over the horizon coming towards your studio and you could just grab one piece of equipment what would that be of the hardware probably their Juno which is weird because it's the only synth really that doesn't fit my Herbie Hancock scheme of its completing but it's just it's just it's just makes great sounds I mean it's it's a really it's a simple like you saying primitive I mean it is a primitive synth I mean look at it it's not there's not that much you can do with it in terms of the controls but just the sounds that come out of it I've really they just work for fulfilment TV music hey I have one right and I just which I call it musical it's musical it is once the sounds are primitive I said there are some since where it's primitive and horrid yeah but that's just primitive and sounds great is it as sixty or a six is it takes you got you because I used to have a original of 106 but it just went for me that 106 has got a bit of harshness to it yeah and was I mean it was playing up all the time so eventually I just decided to switch it for a six and to me that just sounds so much nicer solutely I mean basically functionally it's pretty much the same sense but it's just something about the sound if the six did just really works brilliantly well and if you've just come out of the national film and television is it that film television school yeah yeah if you just come out there the national film and television school and as you know you've suggested you've got your laptop what would be your advice for people you know with kind of creating a sound finding their own voice you know I always think it's very important to go you know it's not necessary to buy all of this kit in order to to get started oh definitely definitely I mean yeah you just I I think it's it's it's a lot better now because I mean the things you've been doing this bit for into you know the sounds that people could have access to now like with all the lab stuff and everything is amazing I mean that didn't exist when I was I was starting here so I think people can in terms of what you can do just with a laptop now there's like an amazing array of sounds but then also yeah I think just find ways to manipulate the sound as well so you're just not not just using presets and things filled you know find ways of making it sound like you you know the sounds that that you love so for me I mean I do loads of stuff with automation so really shaped sound yeah so things like I have I mean if it in any of my projects I had the number of kind of plugins I have on each channel strip get a bit silly sometimes but a lot of it is just I use gain the gain prod plug-in in logic a lot and I have it at different stages of the signal chain so and I just use that to shape the it's basically the envelope of the sound and you can do so much to shape sounds like that and then also kind of automating like reverb levels and distortion levels and things like that just automating kind of subtle distortion coming in and out on things final question anything on your shopping list bucket list the cs-80 and that's the one that's kind of missing but no not really I think I've reached a point where this feels like a really good set up for me this really this really works for me so no nothing kind of nothing pressing at the moment I feel yeah I feel like I've kind of streamlined it to the the bits of kit that really work for the way I approach things so yeah like eventually far in the future the cs-80 is is it is is kind of I that's in my future somewhere but no part for them I think nothing nothing pressing brilliant stuff so dear Santa John's got to be a really really good boy in order for him to be obliging with the cs-80 John thank you so much everyone it's a really wonderful space and do subscribe if you haven't done lots of these fascinating videos indeed a video with John coming up and ding that bell if you ought to be notified the next time I put a video up one of these for this fantastic space would be much appreciated see you next time

Channel: Christian Henson Music

Views: 66,399

Keywords: spitfire audio, christian henson, behind the scenes, orchestral programming, media composition, media composing, media composer, orchestral samples, orchestral sampling, behind the scenes in recording studios, recording studios, music programming, music programming techniques

Id: Mp0tJlTlObM

Length: 40min 16sec (2416 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 09 2020