Synth Setup Tips #3 // Julia Bondar's Compact Techno Eurorack/MIDI Rig and Performance

hi welcome to another video where i ask a producer and performer to get into the details of how they create and perform part one looked at a dollis setup part two at a setup using ableton live and in this episode we'll look at a hybrid midi and mainly eurorack setup my guest this time is julia bondar i reached out after i saw her 90 minute live set where she performed multiple tracks non-stop and i was curious about how she plans out her setup and performance so i sent her a bunch of detailed questions and luckily she agreed to answer all of them without further ado let's take a look at julia's setup workflow and performance strategies hello my name is julia bonder i'm a musician electronic music composer and live performer i'm also a co-founder of endorphins brand which specializes on development and manufacturing eurorack modular synthesizers i perform my music live since around about five years ago and since then i managed to release three full length albums various eps and singles my recent album industrial symphony which i released on 12 inch vinyl for this album i created my full length concert which i released on my youtube [Music] channel [Music] it brought a lot of attention and questions about my setup that's why we decided to team up with lupo and to bring down my workflow i'm not the type of person that would spend hours digging into dos and plugins for me it's important to make my process of creating music the more enjoyable and interactive that's why i promote a lot of this concept of playing music with modular synthesizers and also i like to keep it quite minimal that's why as you can see in my studio i don't have lots of gear but i have two cases which one made for life recordings and another one for live setup i welcome you to my studio this is my place of joy and inspiration and struggle at the same time here i rehearse compose record and sing sometimes this is a a place which i like to be most of my time so please join me and welcome to my studio stuff the main object in my studio are the two almost identical eurorack cases the reason why i came up with that idea just because one year ago and more i had the frequent gigs and i had to travel a lot with my life case which always also was connected to my audio sound card that's why in between i couldn't manage to create any music any track when i had instant inspiration and it made my process not enjoyable at all that's why i decided to create two live cases which are almost identical one is connected directly to the audio interface here which i also record into my cubase i use cubase for recording almost and i don't do much except of recording a little bit more of arrangements and then i have my live setup which we will look more closely today and i will break down my patch and my blogs how i build my live performance we will have a more precise look on my live setup currently and for the my uh main object of my live setup of course is the evorex system which i built with my experience and i was building this throughout like five years also removing adding something and i think more or less i came up with perfect configuration that i managed to uh create and perform my last tracks but of course in the future now i have planned for for the new setup and making new configuration and add new modules but now we will focus on what i have currently this is currently 6u and submodular case i like it quite a lot because it's very small and together with all the modules patched and with lead it's only six kilo which for me as a girl to travel with a live performance is really nice and easier because i can handle it on my own and i can carry it in my hand and even take it on a board and i will not have any extra questions my current live setup consists three essential blocks the central object is of course my live freak of eurorack modules then i have my beats the pro sequencer and roland system 1m for my baseline with sh101 plug out from my sequencer i sent midi over usb to my shuttle controls and normal midi to my roland system 1m to avoid all external patching because i could for example patch from these uh drum outputs uh and during live performance then i would every time to save time on this on the sound checks i would need to make patch again and again that's why for me shuttle controls is really handy i can send the midi over usb to my shuttle controls which i have two shuttle controls they are daisy chained and they are handy to have because it's never too much cv output especially configurable uh in your live case because this cv outputs permitted to make very crazy patches in the future and this is where all the like this is the brain of the further patch and also shuttle control serves me as a power supply as each row i power by flying buzzword i have to say this that i compose and perform on a fixed patch and now i'm not a fan of frequent uh change of the patching because i like my process to be more efficient that's why i know that i can come to my sequencer and compose on a fixed patched i keep all the modules that i manipulate the most during my live performance in a lower part of the rig so i have them more visible and accessible behind all the cable jungle here is my let's say queen of pentacles magneto and erica sample drum are responsible for the drum voices here i have my further generator and ground terminal this is like a skeleton of my main lead voices and also with the running order i control two voices which i built around godspeed i have here uh six hp modules and i around this small amount of space in my case i able to build quite efficient voices which help me to keep my life set up more dynamic and more interesting and have more textures because my music is quite minimal but i still it's nice to have more and more texture all the time which can be surprisingly good for the people in the night [Music] [Music] we will go my track overflowing today because this track has everything it has samples it has lots of active drums builds up rumble main voice everything what i have in my system is present in this track that's why it's a good example to show you and for now for now we have space plane from the system i usually play with decay for the certain melody and of course i play around cut off a little bit of reverb and maybe a little bit of resonance those are main controls that i can touch during my live performances and of course during recordings too [Music] [Music] to continue with build up of course we should add some percussion to my base melody i use for this queen of pentacles and also i build small rumble around strymon to hold the atmosphere especially in the nightclubs when textures are really matter to hold some hypnotic moods so strymot magneto helps me a lot in these tasks and queen has lots of great samples and analog voices that i will patch here you have a block of mixing that i didn't unpatch because they are adjusted on a certain level and a certain amount of side chain that i need which is difficult than to recreate again and i need need to spend like few hours to find the proper amount of side chain proper levels and so for the mixing i use cockpit endorphins cockpits i use two of them and this very simple and small one mixer has four stereo channel it can be adjusted muted and sidechain different amount that's why for example to create more harmonic groove uh between my bass and drums say chain is essential of course that's why i don't touch it because i really don't want to spend a few hours uh and patching it again let's continue with the uh with the patch and to add some dynamics and groove uh to create the skeleton of my track overflowing we will uh we will start to add some percussion to the base right so here we have a drum sequence and it means so here is the kick this is very small cable here is the kick four see the output four i sent to the drum then i have here i have snare and we are following the flow of patching of my [Music] [Music] and of course we should send the clock clock we have on cv output 13 we send it to the clock input of queen of pentacles do so here we have already a nice groove that we can follow with the further patching to the main voices i forgot to say that here is the stereo output which i also sent to my to the one of the cockpit channels and uh everything what happens here the aussie audio i can also adjust every the level of audio of ev for every uh drum separately and then all this summarized uh audio i sent to the cockpit i also used diamond and erica sample drum to create some a little bit hypnotic mood around my voices so i created my own loops for erica sample drum and i have to load them first project double because i i use uh two samples from from here i have my project here it's called hangar because i recorded my live setup in angar in barcelona that's why uh here i have one of one sample i use my my recorded loops my own loops and another one i send a light kick to the magnetos and magneto helped me to create around this kick very nice and moody rumble texture to patch audio for sample drum i sent kik to magneto input and another loop sample i sent to the queen of pentacles alex so it will be summarized to all these drum voices so let's listen this is my look and here is the kick which already reflects on magneto rumble [Music] do [Music] do [Music] [Applause] so so let's listen the result of the dispatch on the track we will start with the first pattern because it has very nice atmospheric loop [Music] so [Music] so here we have we already have the structure that can we quite long holds the atmosphere of night nightclub and it's already quite a ready track but of course to add some development some more efuria i love to add melodic like melodic textures i love to add like melodies for me is important because i feel like melody can uh reveal also your like talent as a my talent as an artist also gives a moment of a fourier during night club because people like and even they like very industrial things in the night time but i think when i see their reaction when they hear some melodic music of course they are getting more energized and getting more happiness of course and i i want to give some happiness to people of course [Music] i forgot to mention that i control my loops by velocity and this same trigger uh can lounge different loops just because the say every loop adjust for the certain amount of velocity so let's keep going with the melodic voices right as i said my uh my uh like main skeleton for the melodic voices this is a combination uh further generator with ground terminal because ground terminal has great filters it has great effects and all the and also for the generator has lots of different possibilities of modulation and this combo can give you very huge amount of varieties of different texture voices and same melody with different modulation filter and effect of course can sound so much different that's why it also gives me some possibility for experiment during my live performance or during my preparation to eat not to forget to tell to talk about uh tune during performance because this is like can be very stressful and even further north very good tune and it stays in tune for a long time and even warming up more quickly than many other oscillators but still of course i need some 10-15 minutes to warm it up before i start to perform and of course i take this time for sound check but of course do not to lose my octave i have this lock knobs which are i customized for myself and to stay in tune i have this autopilot module which helped me to not lose my octa but still stay in tune by pressing automatically but we should have in mind after pilot during patching that's why we bypass key input through the autopilot so it also like tracks all the nodes and holds it in tune or you can hold the tune by pressing one second so instead of patching to my volt per octave cookie input of first generator i patch it from the eyepatch this to my autopilot and then i drop it out the key input of the carrier uh of the main installator of other generator and then i should send some reference faith the wave we would not use during my live performance for example square wave i send tuning so as you said these both leds are illuminated it means that the autopilot is already tracks the tune of oscillator same we do for the another voice in modulator another part of oscillator [Music] [Music] so [Music] so so so when we have this voice patched we should press the a note and adjust its yeah as you see the autopilot uh catch the and made the voice in tune and repeat for for the main and all together they will be so so so ground terminal has this final stereo output which also goes into one of the channels of cockpit uh and every all the patch what was done from in the photo generator and ground terminal summarized on these final stereo output also grant terminal has this section of you i can change different type of filters and a different type of uh effects for as that's why it gives me some [Music] field for experimentations and also has very nice and large reverb let's hear it [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] it's important to do not forget about strymon because then sometimes it's not really some school in some tracks and also you should apply your musical feeling and and maybe take away and manipulate these parts a lot because sometimes it just not harmonically sounds in the whole composition so yeah this is a basic skeleton what i have this is most important uh which this the system the recording system what i also have has same patch but i also have their black noir because uh i have spent more space there i'm not limited by way for the recordings i can play with more varieties of different percussion and sounds and textures and for queen of pentacles here i have like the most basic and maybe a little bit safe but best working 909 heat and it's already quite a lot of the we can hold on this structure quite a long time of my performance during like venue performances in venues we can have a lot of space for playing experimenting also might change some effect might we can might change some filter i don't do it uh during performances but i can for example come up during rehearsal pre-orders uh actual performance so i can also play with that a little bit more and the final part uh which gives me some more dynamic and as i said beats the pro doesn't have so much power for like first of all it doesn't have so much uh power for for composing music because it only has two melodic tracks uh and one of them is fixed its base and another one is lit and i need some more textures and of course i need some more and running order is a perfect sub sequencer which is only 6 hp very small but very capable of and i'm able to sequence two voices with it and it always it's random it has duplets it has euclidean rhythms uh different dividers and i'm very happy with it because i can also experiment and uh it gives that dynamic and groove to even when i don't use much melodic voices but it's already sounds melodic by using running order with uh two other uh synth voices built around godspeed so let's make another patch around these two voices uh and we will see how it sounds together this is actually will be final part of the patching and then i will perform the whole track how it should sound in eventually as a ready product on the stage [Music] so [Music] uh [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so so the whole patch is done and this is the final result the final patch is what i go in the stage confidently and perform and now we will see how it holistically sound in the track overflowing so let's start from the whole beginning and then i will be explaining and build up the track [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so so so so [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] so so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] [Music] so you just saw my performance and and i made it on purpose for you to show the build up of the track and transition between one track to another one so as you saw i interact a lot with the knobs on my system because it has a lot of controls like adobes reverbs modulation and so on and of course this subsequency running order which i control my two voices is always an experiment and i'm they control me more than i control them and i just let myself flow uh according to the music and my feeling of musicality in the particular track i have all my patterns prepared before ahead going to the stage i'm not experimenting with composing on the go so all the drums all the leads base especially those skeletons that i explained when i patched is made before a hand and then only this running or the situation that i only can have a little bit experiment around but the rest i mix the patterns and i always start with very minimal and very uh calming sound and then i build up the tension until the middle of the track when i um i let uh let more elements to pop up on the track like more active drums like more loud bass drum and maybe i can not remove uh because not remove some elements but otherwise until the middle of the track i like to put all the elements together and then again remove one by one uh by the end of the track but it all of course requires a musical feeling and i let myself go with the music again because sometimes it's experiment and same life will never sounds the same again [Music] yeah for example here i will show how the most like the most big big extension in the track overflowing so i can mute running order here both voices of running order this is mute or unmute again then uh i can mute my uh drum [Music] and a mute running voice running order voice or also i can use for example the filter from [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] also you saw the transition when i made a transition from the track overflowing to the drag fire which i was collaborating with nero bellum but it is implemented in my live setup without his parts but it's already enough for me to perform it uh because it has enough elements also that's why i i made this transition and as you saw um my approach to the transition is to leave one element from the previous track and change some nodes for the baseline what was previously and which will remind a little bit of a next baseline still not the previous one not original baseline from the previous track but it's already has some notes and captures the scale of the next project this way it permits me to transition more melodically it do not make like big stops and big pauses between tracks especially i'm oriented for people dance and not stop dancing during my life performance in the night club about my life mixing solution as i said previously i used two copies from endorphins those are very simple six hp small handy for channel stereo mixers that i use two of them in my set and uh every uh audio output every voice what i have and my system goes to each channel and then i adjust certain amount of levels for certain voice and also adjust certain amount of side chain for example for bass and kick let's for example here listen some of the here is my simple pace without a chain without kick then i sounds more balanced sounds better more like dance music finally then also what i like in my base maybe it's i i heard from many professionals that it's not it's not really applicable on the stage during live performance and people afraid lots of reverb but i actually believe and this is like maybe i will learn it with experience that music doesn't have a certain rules we are and i like this raw power of life instruments and maybe they don't sound super perfect of course they should be well balanced but but this raw power gives the special feelings that you cannot feel from the dj mixes and for example i like to add some river on my base especially in a certain tracks this track overflowing also can be a good example really has that moody it gives the mood for a certain period of time of course you cannot keep it for the whole performance but for the certain track it works very well so yeah for example when i released industrial symphony uh why i called this album this way because when i was creating it i was creating it purely on my system and i felt like i'm a conductor of it and this is my orchestra this is a member of my band say obey me and they never let me down that's why i felt super confident about also the sounds what the system was able to give me especially when i was composing this album and making patch and trying to figure out what what extra i can add what i previously already done i just i extracted that very nice from grand terminal sound [Music] so i felt like this is so powerful this is such a like orchestra and that's why i decided to call this way my album but since then this trick become my um this never change i always use and i'm always satisfied and people ask me how you did it and this is very simple actually this is super simple trick but i'm very happy that i discovered it as for my live mixing solution i don't have many as i prefer to keep my case minimal and of course it's very hard to stand out from this perfectly master and compressed dj says that you they play mostly uh because it's easier to bring one digis and a live performer of course now on the set that's why i have in my case i have two two cockpits which i said in the beginning those are very small handy stereo mixers that i can adjust level of each voice and roads directly to my tc electronic finalizers that i use to compress my sound a little bit so it will not overcome the limit of in the club so i can be still a little bit compressed and better in sequencing i have to say that i don't use this to pro to compose my melodies and i compose it on external keyboard and then all the patterns and melodies i save to beast pro and i use it only to sequence my live setup uh and also for example for me it's important the sequencer to be part of my uh live rig case to ex to avoid all external connections and many many small boxes to carry around of course i wanted to be part of my future case which i plan to build very soon that's why we at endorphins were developing for past two years ground control this is our most ambitious product but it has everything what i think would serve me well two octave keyboard and stream melodic tracks then also drum tracks this is must be very handy for me that's why i wait when it will finish its development and i can finally install it in my new case when i just started to compose my very first tracks i didn't have any idea about polyrhythm and polymatter for me everything was just a try an experiment and i was discovering how i can do and which direction i can move but then i found out that polarity in polymathers really works well for my music and i started to implement it more and more and for example my recent track enchanted which is a was released as a single uh has essential part of poly matters in the melody and i think we should listen it now this melody pursues all the track constantly it doesn't change it doesn't go but still it that because of the because this is a poly matters it doesn't make my track boring let's listen [Music] so [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] so do do so so [Music] so as you saw also i added some polyrhythms from iranian order and it always follows its flow itself i just really let myself go so [Music] so [Music] [Music] now i explain my recording process which is uh not very different from my live setup here you can see my recording case and everything wrote it into the sound interface and it constantly wrote it i never unpacked this is the beauty of it it has the same blocks it has the base as roland system 1m it has that main melodic voice with autopilot further generator in grand terminal it has drum section without rumble and magneto because i can add it maybe in the post-production queen of pentacles and black noir because i have extra space i decided to have both of them here also i have one voice made of milky way square dirty and godspeed controlled by running order and all together it make almost the same logic and same patch as i have on my live system the main difference is that all my voices are rotated not into the cockpits but they go into the sound card focusrite and also a dot expander and my focusrite has eight channels and and that also has eight channels so all together i have 16 channels in multi-track recording here i have example of the same track overflowing uh recorded in one take from the modular system and for example how i do i create like very basic structure on my uh on beatstep pro and just let it go let it play then i manipulate some controls modulation and the same controls what i do on my live system uh cutoffs and i build development by this controls and then i just let it play and record itself in one take of course i can repeat few takes if i felt that i didn't do it so gently i tried to be more sensitive during recordings i try to let myself go with the flow of the sequence or melodic music and i try just to uh to imagine myself like it's a ready melody and how i would love how it would sound that's why i just adjust some modulation according to my feelings so as you will hear now the track overflowing will sound recorded same as in a live arrangement on my life system [Music] [Music] so and to finish the tour in my studio i think it's important to talk about mix and master of your tracks because this is the way you present your final work to the world this is the way your fans will hear your music this is the way it will be remembered this is the way it will stand out among other tracks in a different playlist that's why it's important to invest in your music invest in a good quality mixing and mastering and to be honest i don't do it myself because as i said at the beginning of the video that i barely work with dough beside recordings and arrangements that's it and i don't have enough enough patience to spend shaping sound uh experiments with different plugins and so on to make it sounds beautiful and maybe also beautiful is subjective i can that's why i really prefer to work with professionals for example part of my album industrial symphony was mixed by guy lozon who is a french producer and also europe manufacturer we have a very common ground with him and i admire his sense of beauty and he is really expert of that ibm french electro style that some of my trucks have feeling of it that's why he really made my tracks sound in a certain way and as a part of my album those tracks which were more feeling i worked with alan lockwood from bus valley here in barcelona and for my recent trek enchanted i worked with glenn morrison who is also very famous dj and music electronic music producer i want to thank you zee for this opportunity because i think this is a great platform for me to talk about my setup and to answer the questions what i had under my live concert video because i knew exactly what i should talk about in this video also i want to thank you a lot for all the people and all the fans who supported my music because this is very valuable for independent artists as me and i accept all your love and i very grateful for this and thank you for watching this video and i wish you all the best so that's it for this time thank you so much julia for agreeing to go into so much detail about your creative process if you'd like all the tips shown in all my videos including this one be sure to check out my ever expanding book available to the good people who support this channel on patreon hit like if this was useful don't forget to ring the youtube bell if you want to make sure you don't miss the next one links to other episodes in this series in the description thanks for watching [Music] you

Channel: loopop

Views: 61,810

Rating: 4.9049921 out of 5

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Id: oTmYtetA8Bw

Length: 71min 18sec (4278 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 01 2021