“I came up at Sony Music Studios in New York where I was working on SSL and Neve desks, which are great. But the workflow today is “pull this up, pull that up!” and you’d be going crazy on a console. Even in big studios the big consoles have, for the most part, become giant arm rests. In 2011 I mixed Common’s album The Dreamer/The Believer, and in 2012 Nas’ Life Is Good, both on an SSL. But then it got to the point that clients were asking for precise and minute revisions, like ‘can you turn the vocal up a quarter of a dB?’, that were impossible to do on a console.”

While Kinelski has joined the vast majority of his mix colleagues by going in-the-box and working from his own place, one old habit in particular is still very important to him. “I do a lot of listening. It is really easy in this time and age to overdo surgery, because you are mixing visually and you are adjusting things by a tenth of a dB, and you swear you can tell the difference. It is so easy to fall down that rabbit hole, overdoing everything. The way I work is to listen, primarily. I do everything that’s necessary – levels, vibe, treatments – and then I do the surgery and clean-ups last. I only deal with stuff that jumps out and bugs me. Everything else I leave because I like to keep things organic.”

COME OUT AND WORK

Specific to working with Eilish and O’Connell, Kinelski shares, “Our way of working is always the same: they have a new song, and they send it over. Finn sends me awesome stems. With some people you go, ‘oh, this is going to be tough’, but he does a really good job. I don’t normally know what treatments he has on things; if there are any reverbs at all they’ll be on a separate track, but normally things are super dry. Many of the vocals have no reverb, and all I do is add a little bit of the SoundToys MicroShift for more width.”

“The vocal production is already dialed in when I receive the sessions. I do a lot of really subtle editing on the vocals, because she sings so quietly and that means there’s a lot of mouth noise: breaths, lip sounds, and so on. I do this by clip gaining or using the pencil tool. I don’t pitch or tune anything. I don’t know whether they tune things, but Billie’s control is amazing so they might all be real takes. The vocals usually come with the distortion effects, and occasionally I’ll add a bit to that.”

“I take a day for my first mix pass, and then I’ll send it to them for feedback. They’ll come back to me with comments, usually really quickly. Sometimes they send me a new stem to swap for an old one. During the first part of the making of the album I added a small ambient reverb, barely audible, and the only comment that came back to me was: ‘take off the reverb.’  Billy is heavily involved, but I usually get feedback from Finn. With the album they sent me voice notes for revisions – they’d been talking into their phones, and they sent me the messages they had recorded! I’ve never had that happen before, but it was very cool. Billie would sing me the vocal parts she was referring to.”

BURYING A FRIEND

Kinelski gave extensive details of his mix of Eilish’s breakthrough single ‘Bury A Friend,’ to illustrate his approach. It all starts with his Pro Tools mix template. “I have many effects in my template, ready to go, but after I finish a mix I get rid of anything I did not use. I load all of Finn’s stems into the template session and, when I set all stems at unity, it will be virtually identical to his reference mix. Then I filter it into my template, routing and grouping things as I like them, and tweaking my master fader.”

“My mix process is pretty old school in that I start with kick, snare and hats, and get those feeling great. Then I bring in the vocals and make sure they sit well with the drums. Working on the drums and vocals this way is a hip-hop approach, I guess. Then I mute the vocals and bring in the bass, and work on bass and drums together. After that I’ll work on just keys and drums. I tend to work in groups, and build the entire track together like that.”

“My method on all songs for the album was similar. After I had dialed in Billie’s vocal for the first song that I mixed, I imported that vocal chain into every mix and tweaked it as necessary. They used the same vocal chain to record all her vocals, which meant that everything that came to me was super consistent. It’s one of the reasons why the album as a whole is consistent – Billie’s vocals are always captured with the same mic through the same preamp, and I used the same vocal mix chain for almost the entire album; although I might have changed it a little bit for one or two songs.”

Kinelski’s Pro Tools mix session of ‘Bury A Friend’ is, by contemporary standards, relatively modest at 69 tracks. The mix session consists of 18 drum tracks, four bass tracks, one piano track, four keys tracks, seven sound-effect tracks, six lead vocals, nine lead vocal harmonies, and seven backing vocals. Each set of vocals has an aux group track above it. Below all the audio tracks is one aux effects track (with the MicroShift), seven stereo tracks of outputs to the Dangerous Music 2-Bus, and VCA that controls these outputs, two master tracks and two final mix print tracks. The structure and tracks names also give some insight in O’Connell’s production approach, with drum tracks having names like ‘dial tone,’ and ‘tension,’ sound-effect tracks called ‘nightmare,’ ‘screech,’ ‘scary shit’ and ‘voldemort,’ and an impressive 22-track vocal arrangement with lead vocals spread over six tracks.

DIGGING DEEPER

Kinelski described his mix session from the top, starting by addressing the most striking aspect of the session: the fact that there are so few plugins. This obviously reflects the quality of O’Connell’s stems, but also, as Kinelski explains, “I like to keep it simple and use minimal plugins, most of the time. When I get new plugins it’s usually because they are in sessions sent to me by clients, and I want to see what they do. Other than that I have a really simple approach, especially with Billie’s stuff. I’ll be doing some volume riding, but the beauty of Finn’s stuff is that many of his transitions are built in to the session. The sound-effects create many of the dynamics, while the rest is mostly loop-driven.”

“The only plugins on the drums are the Waves SSL Channel Strip doing EQ, compression and gating. It’s my ‘go-to’ channel strip; I like to pretend I’m still on a console! I have it on two kick tracks, two snare tracks, and the hats. One of the kick tracks, the ‘PitchKick’, is a massive 808 and has the FabFilter Pro-Q2 pulling the sub frequencies down. The only other plugins on the instruments are the SSL Channel Strip on the piano track, and the SSL Channel Strip and FabFilter Pro-Q2 on the organ track.”

“I’ve divided the vocals into three groups, but that’s just my interpretation. Some of the harmonies could be backing vocals, or vice versa. The chain is the same on the lead vocals and lead vocal harmony groups, but I varied the settings. The insert chain starts with the FabFilter Pro-Q2 doing a low cut. Then there’s the Waves PuigChild 670 compressor on one of its default settings, a Waves De-esser, another Pro-Q2 scooping the mid-range, the UAD 1073, and the Waves Vocal Rider.”

“I love the Pro-Q2, because it allows you to audition the specific frequency you’re working on. You press a button, sweep through to find what you don’t want, then pull it down. I kept doing that, combing over the vocal, and it ended up with this mid-range scoop. All EQ was subtractive, because I loved the tone of the vocal as it was and felt that all the frequencies I needed were already there. I added a hair of top end with the Neve, but that’s it. The Vocal Rider is the final insert, and it’s smoothing out any dips and peaks, maybe by 2dB. It’s a corrective thing, and I prefer using that to a compressor. I do my vocal rides, i.e. my performance automation, after I set the Vocal Rider.”

“The two lead vocal aux tracks also have a send to the MicroShift, which is the only one of my template’s aux effect tracks that I ended up using for this mix and therefore left in the session. The thing that’s interesting is that I automated the Mute on the MicroShift aux because it was giving off the slightest bit of hiss. I don’t automate the Bypass, because I found out that it sometimes clicks when it goes in and out. The Mute does not do that.”

“Below the MicroShift aux are the send tracks to the Dangerous Music 2-Bus summing mixer. DBus 1-2 is for drums, 3-4 is for bass, 5-6 is for keys, 7-8 is for sound-effects, 9-10 is for lead vocals, 11-12 is for backing vocals, and 15-16 is my effect returns – in this case only the MicroShift. I have the Steven Slate Virtual Mix Rack on all DBus tracks, using various different modules. The sound effect DBus has the Pro-Q2, and the backing vocals have the Sonnox Oxford Inflator. The signal comes back summed to stereo on the two Print master tracks. They have identical plugins, with the only difference being a lower setting on one of the limiters to give John Greenham, the mastering engineer, more to play with. The chain is the UAD Ampex ATR102 set to 30ips and half inch, UAD Thermionic Culture Vulture with just a hair of drive, the FabFilter Pro-L2 limiter, and the TC Electronics Clarity M meter.”

LISTEN BEFORE YOU GO

With Billie Eilish’s album still riding high in the charts everywhere, Kinelski feels on top of the world and his phone is ringing non-stop. “It’s been crazy,” he says. “But it’s cool, and I’m grateful. I knew this was going to be big, but I had no idea it was going to be this big. I had an inkling when I saw an industry showcase they did before the EP came out – normally the industry A&R people in LA are a tough crowd, always checking their phones to see where they’re going next, but from the first chord Finneas played and the first note Billie sang, you could hear a pin drop. They captivated everyone. After I finished mixing the album, I listened to it analytically as a whole for the first time, and thought, ‘Wow, this is a dark album.’ There really is hardly any high end in there, and no reverb. I wondered how it would translate to the world, but it’s been nothing but positive!”

The sound that Eilish and O’Connell have created together, aided by Kinelski and Greenham, is unlike anything else in the charts. The next decade will show whether their sound will remain unique to them, or turn out to be a harbinger of a new direction in music and production.

It always makes sense to keep plenty of free disk space on your drives, to provide working space and buffers. However, now that so many of us are relying on much smaller solid state drives to host Windows, it’s much easier to fill them up without really trying.

For instance, I recently ran into a ‘no drive space available’ error part way through a long and involved batch process, sample rate converting a huge collection of audio files. I was a bit surprised, especially since when I started this task I still had 8GB available on my solid state drive. Now it claimed to only have a miniscule 18MB available, insufficient to complete the task; which is why my audio application had bombed out.

CCLEANER IS BETTER

The first thing to do in such a scenario is to run some sort of cleanup routine. I still periodically use the freeware version of the CCleaner utility (www.ccleaner.com), which not only removes a wide variety of temporary files from your drives, but can also scan for and remove issues in your Windows Registry, manage any System Restore points, as well as seeing what programs get run each time you PC starts up (sometimes sneakily added by developers whether you want them or not), and what plug-ins have been set to run each time your Internet browser is launched. I ran this as usual, but it only found and then removed a few hundred megabytes of temporary files, mostly used by my browser. CCleaner can also analyse your drives in a basic fashion so you can see what’s taking up most space — the output is a simple bar chart with different colours displaying the proportion of your chosen drive devoted to Pictures, Music, Documents, Video, and Other files. This can be a really useful function, but for a musician it can still occasionally feel like you’re searching for a needle in a haystack. My next port of call was Windows’ own Disk Cleanup utility, which apart from the usual temporary files also searches for any Service Pack backup and Windows Update Cleanup files, lets you delete your most recent System Restore point (which CCleaner by default wisely ignores for system safety), and disposes of any Windows Error Reports. However, this didn’t really find much that CCleaner hadn’t already dealt with, so I had to explore somewhat more deeply than normal.

WINDIRSTAT TO THE RESCUE

Now at this point I reach for the free third-party utility WinDirStat (windirstat.net), which is described as a disk usage statistics viewer and cleanup tool for Windows. It’s known to run from Windows 95, through Windows 98, ME, NT4 2000, XP, Vista, 7, 8 and 8.1, and although the website doesn’t specifically mention Windows 10 there are plenty of people using it on this latest version, as well. Its opening graphic display doesn’t impress, but once you’ve chosen one or more drives in your PC it will scan through all the files and present its results in three main graphic areas. This can take a few minutes, especially for a large drive, but it’s well worth the wait. At top left there’s a familiar-looking directory tree displaying all the folders and subfolders on your drive, now sorted from biggest to smallest by how much space they take up. To the right of this is the extension list, which provides a neat breakdown and statistics for all the various file types (each of the most common is displayed in a different colour, along with totals for how much space has been used by each type of file and the percentage of the total).

Notwithstanding, it’s the third area across the bottom of the display that provides the real revelation. Its ‘treemap’ visualisation of your hard disk contents shows each file as a coloured rectangle whose onscreen area is proportional to its filesize. Folders also make up larger rectangles containing all of their files and subfolders, so their area is proportional to the size of the subtrees. Cushion shading is also used to highlight each different area of the overall structure, and you can zoom in and out at will. As often happens, a picture is worth a thousand words, so you can see a typical WinDirStat display at the top of this column.

THE WOOD FROM THE TREEMAP

The biggest single rectangle on my C:Windows drive belonged to the Windows Pagefile, followed by various Windows installer files, but the most significant proportion of my drive was taken up with DLL files (around 30%), System files (14%), and Applications (8%). However, this very clever visual mapping makes it far easier to spot large groups of similar files that may be taking up far more space than expected, and, sure enough, I soon spotted a huge chunk of temporary files belonging to Wavelab, which had been carrying out my batch sample rate conversion. I was able to click on this area in the treemap, open the appropriate folder in the standard Windows Explorer utility, and then delete the lot of them, which turned out to be some 7GB in total. While I was about it, I examined various other areas in the treemap that looked suspiciously large, and was able to recover 8GB in total on my SSD without breaking a sweat. Once any biggies have been dealt with, you can now try clicking on the TMP file extension in the extension list to see if there are any other temporary files lurking elsewhere – most can probably be safely deleted, gaining you yet more space on your drive.

CACHE ON DEMAND

It’s also a very useful exercise to find out where your chosen audio applications store temporary and cache files – many let you choose a folder location for these, or at the very least tell you where the defaults are. Even after I’d deleted the morass of temporary files following my sample rate batch catastrophe, peering through the Wavelab Options menu helped me discover a further 770MB of redundant cache data that could safely be deleted. The CCleaner utility lets you add custom files and folders to be removed, so you can in future achieve this cleanup automatically. Auto-save functions have saved most of us at some time or another, so make sure your audio apps have theirs enabled (typically you can adjust the auto-save interval, but every 10 minutes seems to be a good compromise). This may avoid you losing work in the event of a PC crash. It’s always worth archiving your completed audio projects too, as then you can safely dispose of all sorts of temporary files that may not have ended up being used in that project, plus auto-saved backup files that you no longer need. For a freeware utility, WinDirStat can be a revelation!

Tutorial: Nick Franklin

GROWTH

Equipped with your bookkeeping software and its analytical capabilities, you’ll soon know if your business is growing, shrinking or stagnating. In an ideal world, an amount of growth that you can handle is a best case scenario. If your business has plateaued or, worse still, is in decline, you need to ask yourself why. Engineers and producers who had their most successful years in the ’80s will be climbing over themselves at this point to tell you it’s because of the demise of the music industry, music piracy, home studios, Katy Perry, UFOs and the government. The truth is the only person responsible for the growth of your business is you. Blaming outside factors is saying you have no control, and having no control is no good.

I have a three-tiered system for ensuring that my business as a freelance music producer remains in growth. It probably won’t work for your business in this exact form, but it might help you to develop your own strategies to keep that profit/loss line moving up and to the right. No one wants to find themselves earning less when they’re 40 than they did when they were 30, but that’s the risk you run by not focussing on growth in your business.

The first tier to my system is to do everything I can to ensure that every client I work with will want to work with me again. That means working really hard on every project, and making every record count. You’re probably already doing this, unless you’ve hit that period that everyone in our industry does where you actually resent your clients. If that’s the case it’s time to wake up to yourself because if you don’t make them come back, they’re going elsewhere. Be the guy the band whines to about the last guy, not the guy they’re whining about. Be nice, be friendly, be a badass, be awesome at your job. Do that at a price that makes sense to your client and follow up with them on a regular basis, and you can be their producer for life. Win four new ‘clients for life’ a year and you’ll have more work than you can handle before you know it. The added advantage of this behaviour will be solid word-of-mouth promotion — the best kind! Pro tip: keeping clients coming back has nothing to do with gear, so stop spending!

The second tier to my system is to spend at least one hour per week doing what I call ‘business development’. That’s anything that has to do with growing my business. Sometimes it’s trawling back through my emails and social media messages to make sure I didn’t leave a lead hanging or a conversation unfinished. Sometimes it’s working on my website, or trying to develop promotions that might lead to more work. Sometimes it’s inviting someone for a coffee or a beer to chat about music, and sometimes it’s collaborating with someone free of charge in the hope of generating work down the line. Whatever it is, you have to put aside time to do it or it won’t get done. The best part about this tier is that I can do it with a TV show running in the background, a beer in my hand, or both!

The third tier to my system is developing income streams that aren’t directly related to producing and mixing bands, so that there is money coming in from elsewhere during the quiet times. For me this includes things like teaching one day a week at an audio college, building audio equipment to sell via my other business (NF Audio), and one-on-one Pro Tools lessons. Anything you can build in to your business that will remain standing while your main income streams are having a lie down for a moment is good. There’s no shame in having a side hustle.

THE FUTURE

Audio professionals are notoriously bad with their personal finances and even worse with planning for their futures. Many I know have more than one microphone that cost them more than the price of a used car, but not a cent in superannuation or anything else in place for when their bodies can no longer withstand 12 hour days and six day weeks in recording studios.

For the following information, I must stress that I am not a financial advisor and you should not necessarily apply my systems without seeking advice from your accountant, financial advisor and/or lawyer.

When you’re employed in Australia your employer is legally required to invest the equivalent of 9.5% of your wage into a superannuation fund on your behalf. Those contributions cease the moment you leave the safety net of that employment and begin your life as a freelance producer/engineer, and it is then your responsibility to plan for your retirement. You aren’t legally required to make contributions to your superannuation, but no one else is going to do it for you. Retirement probably seems like a long way away, and you probably feel like you could continue being a music producer until the day you die. The reality is that one day you’ll be sick of it, or your clients will be sick of you. Starting to build your nest egg as early as possible might make the difference between retiring in a beachside house with an incredible home studio in which to tinker away the rest of your days, or living in a caravan park with not even two dollar coins to rub together. Planning for your future may not be as fun as planning to buy a new guitar, compressor or monitor speakers, but neither is stressing about your electricity bill or groceries when you’re 70. And don’t even start with “But my gear is an investment!” Pro tip: $100k invested into a low-fee index-balanced superannuation fund appreciates faster than any vintage console, microphone or electric guitar.

The thing I wish someone had explained to me when I went freelance is that if you don’t continue to make contributions to your superannuation after leaving full-time employment, not only might it stop growing, it might start shrinking – thanks to the sometimes exorbitant and arguably unethical fees and charges applied by some superannuation fund managers. If you don’t know where all of your superannuation is and how much you might have, go and find out! Google ‘find super’ and follow your nose. If you have bits of superannuation sitting around in different funds, move it all into one low-fee low-cost account, start adding your own contributions, and watch it grow.

FINANCE FRIDAYS

To keep my personal and future finances in check I’ve developed my own system that I call ‘Finance Fridays’ (very nerdy, I know), which I implement each and every week. It takes me about 15 minutes.

Every Friday morning I sit down with a coffee and sort out my finances for the week. First, I total the amount of income the business generated in the last seven days and I immediately transfer 9.5% of that to my superannuation fund; just like an employer would do. Second, I take a percentage of the week’s earnings (calculated based on my tax obligations) and transfer that into an account linked to my business account that is specifically for tax savings. Come tax time, there is usually enough in that account to pay my tax bill immediately. Finally, I move around 70% of what’s left to my personal bank account for my life expenses: savings, beer money, rent at home, and the rest. The amount that remains in the business account is for business-related expenses, such as the studio rent and equipment purchases.

With this system I know I’m planning for my future, I know how much I’m allowed to spend that week, and I know that the studio bills will always be covered.

My specific system may not work for your circumstances, but that’s not the point. The take-away from all of this is that if you’re not dedicating some actual time and effort to the way your money comes in and goes out of your business then I doubt you’re setting yourself up for success in the future.

DO IT YOURSELF!

So there you have it. Over the last two issues I’ve described what I consider to be the bare minimum any freelance producer/engineer should know when running a small business. You could (and probably should!) dig deeper, research further and develop an understanding of business that positions you for success. While not as fun or sexy as reading about the newest plug-in or compressor, time invested in yourself and your business will give back 10 times as much in the long run. So take my advice and develop your own systems of money management. It actually makes your life easier, and you may even come to enjoy it!

PROCESSING & EFFECTS

For the mix, Aaron used four separate internal reverbs – one for Kurt, one for backing vocals, one for the kit and one for snare – plus a delay. The vocal channel had the HPF set at 90Hz, with a few dB cut between 200Hz and 500Hz. There was an Empirical Labs Distressor across the vocal channel and an internal multiband comp across the vocal subgroup, but each of these compressors was only just catching the midrange peaks. Overall there was very little processing on Kurt’s vocal; a touch of reverb and a little slap delay gave it some space.

The other outboard gear was an Empirical Labs Fatso across the bass subgroup and another across the acoustic guitar subgroup, but neither was working hard. Aaron was generally happy to let the channels speak for themselves with only small touches of EQ (mainly HPF) and some dynamic smoothing – except for the unruly banjo. As Aaron explains, “the banjo gets high-passed and hits the multi-band compressor quite hard. A dash of the drum reverb and it stays inline, cutting through without stabbing eyeballs. Banjo picked hard and passed through a variety of drive pedals can be a bit of a wild beast!”

The output of the Digico SD10 went through an API 2500 compressor on its way to the house amps and speakers. At home (British Columbia) Aaron uses a Rupert Neve Designs Portico MBP II for this purpose. Referring to the API 2500, he said, “It’s pretty punchy, but I think ultimately I’ll return to the Portico on future tours. The Portico allows a little more versatility and has a really great low pass button that stops it from reacting to everything under 125Hz”.

PA SYSTEM

The main speakers are a pair of Meyer MSL3s, with two dual 18 inch subs per side. They’re just shy of 40 years old but hard to replace without a big budget; we tried a more modern system a while ago and it lasted one weekend, so I won’t mention names. The FOH console is a 44-channel Soundcraft MH3, ex JPJ Audio. Side of stage there’s a 32-channel Allen & Heath monitor board running eight sends of foldback into eight monitors, including four of the old ‘Lord Nelson’ wedges and a drum-fill. Old-school and time proven.

We decided to stay analogue mainly because I prefer the sound quality, but also because of the ease of operation for the staff (the movies also go through the PA). Our timing has been good; as digital consoles take over more people are beginning to miss the quality and operating enjoyment of analogue consoles, so they’re coming back into fashion. Festivals are increasingly onto this and are offering a choice between analogue and digital consoles, and we’ve had a great reaction from touring sound mixers. I don’t mind the digital consoles for complicated stuff, but analogue consoles were made for rock.

FOUR MUSICIANS, 44 CHANNELS, & IEMS…

Higher channel counts have become normal in the digital age, and we’ve embraced them at the Theatre Royal by lifting our capacity to 28 channels from stage. That wasn’t enough for Kurt Vile & the Violators, however. They may look like a normal four-piece rock band but their tech rider required 44 channels from stage, plus the whole band were on IEMs. So the crew rolled in some new consoles supplied by JPJ Audio: a Digico SD10 for FOH, and a Digico SD11 for monitors.

Despite our love for analogue gear at the Theatre Royal, digital consoles offer considerable practical benefits in a touring situation like this; they’re almost essential with this many channels and the increased complexity of making mixes for IEMs. Once everyone is wired up and the show files loaded into the consoles, the operators can start from known settings and make small tweaks to suit the occasion rather than re-inventing whole mixes.

Kurt Vile’s monitor operator, Lachlan Wooden, lives in Sydney. This was his third Australian tour with Kurt and his first time to Castlemaine. On previous solo tours he’s been tour manager and FOH engineer so he knows Kurt well, but this time the band was new. Because everyone was on IEMs, Lachlan placed a d&b Q-SUB speaker near the drums to add some low punch on stage. He also used a pair of SDCs, one on each side of the stage and aimed towards the audience, to capture audience/room sound for the IEMs and avoid the sonic ‘disconnect’ that often happens between audience and artist when using IEMs. At the end of the first song at sound check, Kurt declared it was the best stage sound on the tour – obviously things were going right with the consoles, the IEMs and the room.

FOH engineer Aaron Brody started with Kurt Vile three years ago, initially mixing IEMs before moving to FOH two years ago. For the Theatre Royal gig he was happy with the room sound and stuck closely to the house EQ.

SOUNDCHECK & GIG

The sound in the room with the FOH off is strange, of course; all guitar amps and drums, with no vocals, keys or bass to speak of due to the use of IEMs. Once FOH was on, however, it all made sense. Aaron was ready to go after a couple of songs and the band spent most of their time rehearsing. Lachlan used a different mix snapshot for each song, and, in his words, “The update and recall scope changed as the tour went along. As I got to know the band better, I was able to add more detail to each snapshot or learn who wanted what levels to stay constant throughout the set”.

The sound at showtime, with the room full of people, was great. Aaron was the steady hand at the controls delivering clear vocals and well-balanced instruments with all the parts and cues in place, and Lachlan must have done well on monitors because there was no feedback at all. [IEM joke] Special mention must go to guitar tech Doron ‘DB’ Tamir, the hardest working man on the tour; he loaded in over 20 guitar cases and didn’t stop during the whole show, always handing the musicians freshly-tuned instruments between every song.

Kurt Vile & the Violators wouldn’t have been out of place at the Crystal Ballroom in 1980; their instruments, amps and musical intent are not much different, and in those days they would’ve fitted into the Ballroom’s 16-channel desk. It’s the technology around them that has gone through a revolution since my days at the Ballroom, and it earned its money at the Castlemaine gig. The show was great, everyone was happy and a special appearance by Courtney Barnett in the encore capped off a big night. Another classic gig at the Theatre Royal. 

MODULATION SOURCES

The LFO is equipped with six waveshapes. The Rate encoder adjusts the speed from 0.06Hz through to 100Hz, thus reaching into audio rate territory. By pressing the Rate encoder, the LFO is synced to various clock divisions of the tempo of the Arpeggiator/Sequencer Clock (which may be synced to MIDI or incoming analogue pulses).

The main Envelope is a traditional ADSR that is hardwired to the amplifier and the filter. The AmpMod button allows it to be removed from the amplifier, and the amount applied to the filter is controlled by the nearby Filter Amt knob. Unusually, control of the Decay and Release times is ganged on a single Decay/Release control which purists may criticise, however it doesn’t cause much concern in practise. An additional envelope, called the Cycling Envelope, provides either a secondary envelope or a secondary LFO via two looping modes (either free running or key-synced). Unlike the main envelope, the slopes of the Rise and Fall stages of the Cycling Envelope can be adjusted to taste in a continuous fashion from a logarithmic to an exponential shape via the Shift modifier button. When the Cycling Envelope is looped and set up with very short Rise and Fall times, the resulting LFO can reach substantially into audio rate territory.

MODULATION MATRIX

In a masterstroke of great design, the MicroFreak has a digital modulation matrix that is entirely accessible on the front panel without menu diving. It provides five sources and seven destinations; the first four destinations are fixed, the remaining three are user assignable. Establishing routings is a slick and intuitive process – using the Matrix push encoder, spin through the LED array to select a source/destination point, press the encoder to select it, and use the encoder again to specify the amount of modulation (reflected on the display). The three user-assignable destinations are defined simply by holding down the associated button and tweaking the parameter you wish to assign. Furthermore, modulation points can ​themselves​ be defined as assignable destinations, allowing you to scale modulation points by each other.

ARPEGGIATOR/SEQUENCER SECTION

Further inspiration can be found in the Arpeggiator/Sequencer section. The Arpeggiator and Sequencer are controlled using a row of unique capacitive touch-pad icons just above the keyboard. The Arpeggiator has four modes: Up, (note) Order, Random and Pattern. While the first three modes are self-explanatory, Pattern mode is most noteworthy since it is the gateway to achieving controlled randomness. Press a chord shape down and it will play the notes in a random pattern, press another chord shape and the note sequence will change again and so on. The lowest note you play is treated as the fundamental of the chord and is played twice as often as successive notes, usefully emphasising the root note of the chord.

Sequences can be created via step recording or real-time recording and two sequences (either A or B) can be stored independently for each Preset, with each being up to 64 steps in length. A third method is available for creating Sequences: if you come up with a pattern of interest while using the Arpeggiator in Pattern mode (mentioned above), you can instantly copy the results into Sequencer slot A or B. If your patch is in Paraphonic mode you can sequence chords and even play solos over the top of sequences while they are held. Just like some classic mono-synths, Sequences can be transposed in real time simply by playing notes on the keyboard.

The intriguing Spice and Dice functions found on the icon pads, in tandem with the horizontal touch-strip, provide the means to tweak sequence content in real-time. Spice affects note triggering while Dice shuffles the order of the notes already in a sequence. With either Spice or Dice engaged, touching the areas further to the right on the touch strip results in Spice or Dice having a more pronounced effect with Spice more aggressively removing notes/reducing gate times and Dice more aggressively rearranging notes.

If that wasn’t enough fun, Sequences are capable of Motion sequencing up to four parameters and may even be step-edited for radical timbral shifts on each step. Within the Preset area of the Utility menu, each Motion sequence lane can be smoothed to even out rapid transitions. It’s also possible to have Motion sequences built into your patches without having notes recorded; thus, the Motion Sequencer may be used to extend the MicroFreak’s modulation possibilities.

Notes generated in the Arpeggiator and Sequencer can be output via MIDI or via the CV output jack, allowing the Microfreak to capably serve as an inspirational jamming sequencer for the rest of your hardware world or to be captured into MIDI tracks within your DAW.

MISCELLANEOUS

Sensibly, knobs that are end-stop potentiometers are coloured black and have a value indicator printed on them while knobs providing endless rotary adjustment have no value indication on them. A majority of controls transmit MIDI CC data so automating essential parameters from a DAW is accomplished with ease. A wide array of shortcut functions are offered to improve efficiency when creating sounds. Such shortcuts typically involve a combination of long-presses of relevant encoders/buttons, or making use of the Shift modifier key. Another great touch is the Panel function which forces all parameters to match the front panel’s settings.

CRITIQUE

The lack of a built-in effects engine is an obvious but acceptable omission considering the price and knowing that most musicians will have access to at least DAW-based effects or various pedal/rack effect units.

With the latest firmware applied (version 1.1.2.390 at the time of writing), there were several occurrences where the MicroFreak completely stopped making sound or froze (resolved by power cycling the unit). I had issues with MIDI feedback loops when used in conjunction with a DAW, even with Local Off engaged and MIDI Thru disabled. I assume these issues will be addressed with firmware updates.

I also found that the line-level output is substantially quieter than other synths in my rig, even with the Preset level function in the menus turned up to maximum. Finally, as mentioned in the manual and online FAQs, I found the pressure response of the keyboard to be unpredictable when powered via USB (using the included power supply solves this problem).

CONCLUSION

By now it should be apparent that the MicroFreak offers a wealth of facilities for a minimal outlay. It is so well designed that you’ll have mastered the exploration of the oscillator’s engines and the modulation matrix in no time, with little manual reading. Although it lacks a built-in effects engine and doesn’t have a stereo output, the amount of sonic diversity on offer more than adequately compensates, and after processing through effects this synth gets even better!

While other synths with only simple waveforms rely on multiple oscillators and their interaction to provide complex tones, the MicroFreak’s single oscillator with its wide range of oscillator engines provides a gamut of sounds extending far beyond classic VCO designs. For those yet to dive into modular Eurorack synths, it provides the opportunity to experiment with seven of the synthesis models found in Plaits but with the benefits of working within a semi-normalised synth package with memories and four-voice paraphony.

Although I’ve little doubt its facilities will keep many sound designers occupied for quite some time, I’m sure many will begin to dream of an expanded MicroFreak with dual or triple oscillators, additional voices/LFOs and true polyphony. Inevitably, such fruit would come at a substantially higher price.

While it may hold limited appeal for the traditional synth player looking to cover classic analogue sounds, the MicroFreak will win the hearts of electronic musicians seeking an all-in-one inspiration machine that dares to be different.