The DVD can be downloaded from Umfeld TV click to find out more...
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THE UMFELD REAKTOR
Speedy J (front) and Scott Pagano
Jochem Paap, otherwise know as Speedy J, has a long and impressive heritage in techno circles. The Dutch producer released his breakthrough minimal techno track, "Pullover", in 1992, with a follow up album released on Richie Hawtin's Plus 8 label the following year. Since then Jochem, a long time NI user, has explored more experimental areas of electronic music, not least his new project, Umfeld TV, which provides a platform for an audio visual surround sound concept with visual artist Scott Pagano. A free version of the DVD can be downloaded from the Umfeld TV website. Native Instruments recently caught up with Jochem to find out more….
What was the initial idea behind creating your new DVD as a surround composition?
I felt that the surround domain was very suitable for electronic music, yet there were and still are very few artists who actually make use of it. Surround sound has been around for several decades, and in the last decade the 5.1 format has become a very accessible consumer format.
However, it is only widely used in Hollywood, on one end of the spectrum, and in the academic world on the other side of the spectrum, but not much is happening in the area of modern electronic music.
I think especially this genre is perfectly suited for surround, as it is all about the experience, and less about song structures. Before I started I felt there was enormous unexplored territory, as not many people have tried to find out what possibilities surround sound has for electronic music.
Did you work out your own compositional rules for the surround domain?
My rules were basically defined as the project developed. I had some ideas what I wanted to do; things I had missed in the surround productions I heard so far. So I tried to incorporate these ideas into the project. I quickly found out that many things were simply impossible with the available tools.
Therefore, I spent a lot of time designing new tools, and modifying existing ones, for which I used Reaktor, Plogue Bidule and Max/MSP. I had some help from Telco Systems here in Rotterdam, they helped develop some surround mixing environments.
What I find most striking watching Umfeld was that there are certain very organic movements that correspond very well in audio and video. Did you actually compose this together?
In most cases, some early audio sketches existed before Scott started to work on the visuals. we did a lot of ping-ponging back and forth. When I saw what he did in particular sections, I often went back to the sound of that section and tweaked it so it would work together more smoothly. It was quite a challenge to make such a rather long audio visual piece. You have to take good care of the arcs and make sure the entire piece makes sense as a whole. I was aware that the viewer was going to be focusing on the screen in certain moments, but I did not reflect the viewing direction too much in the audio. One of the things that I wanted to experiment with was the creation of environments which have no focal point at all. I did a lot of asymmetric things and diagonal movements etc. The whole piece turned out to be quite an intense experience because of that, there is a lot of information going on all the time. Also, despite the fact that you have all the cool rotation tools available all the time, I tried to stay away from too much obvious rotation and movement. I tried to create spaces and environments, which sometimes change abruptly and very smoothly at other instances. There are so many layers, I don't even know what's going on sometimes when I listen to it now...
Images by Scott Pagano click to visit the Umfeld TV site...
How did you gather the material for this project? Did you build your own archive?
Every bit of audio used in this project was designed especially for it. I wanted to build everything in surround from the ground up. So, even the samples I created were already in surround. Normally, surround audio is built up from mono and stereo samples, but then you end up placing those sounds in a certain space only, and maybe use some effects. I have done this with a couple of sounds on Umfeld, but most sounds were developed in surround. That way, the treatments to it would be in true surround as well. This means that I could get much more interesting and satisfying textures and environments, but it also meant I had to develop tools and work out methods as most of what I did was not possible with existing tools.
Reaktor has been part of your working environment for a long time. How did you involve it in this project?
Reaktor is a great tool to use for surround work, as you can add as many inputs and outputs to an instrument as your soundcard allows you to.
One trick I used often is a very simple but effective one: Any instrument can easily be modified to have more than two outputs by just copying the instrument in its entirety within the ensemble, and then connecting the outputs of the copied version to the outputs which resemble the surround or center speaker. By making variations in the sound on each output you get a spatialized version of that particular sound.
The same trick works in stereo: Pan one sound to hard left / hard right and then treat them differently using EQ, delay or any other modification. This gives you the impression of more width in the stereo field, and it works very well with more than 2 channels.
How did you implement this into your sound design process?
Well, I used a lot of granular synth based instruments which are split up across multiple channels by the described method. I fed these multi channel granular devices with mono samples which were part of 6 channel audio files that already had spatial information in them - kind of surround premixes. By skipping through the waveforms in a controlled way the spatial information is kept intact but it skips as well, which results in some very cool robotic movements.
Yes, I could make that out, interesting to know how it was achieved. Which material did you use Kontakt for?
I mostly used Kontakt to spatialize stereo sound. The panner is capable of some very nice automated movements, and they can be controlled by waveforms or other controllers. It also has some great algorithms to make the sound appear outside of the speaker range, and it can enhance the impression of movement using the doppler effect etc...
Do you think the use of surround formats in electronic music will become more of a regularity in the future?
I think so, yes. When I started this project three years ago, the available tools to work in surround were very limited and totally geared towards the typical Hollywood approach. Over the last few years, more sequencers and other applications have been getting surround features, which allow a more free form approach.
Most NI apps are surround ready, and Logic 8's surround features have been seriously enhanced. I would love to see more people in the field of electronic music giving it a try! Now that it has become more accessible, all you need is a multichannel soundcard and a surround speaker system.
Surround can add very inspiring new dimensions to your music as a composer. It also raises some interesting questions, like what the relevance of a work in surround vs the same work in stereo could be. What does it add to the listening experience, how much of the experience is created by the fact that the work is in surround, and how much by the composition?
What feedback have you been getting from the audiences?
Scott and myself have screened the DVD around the world, and I can confirm that surround definitely has a very large impact on audiences. It is a very complex domain to deal with but for me it has definitely been worth it. Besides being a surround composition, Umfeld also is an audio visual work. I think these types of works will definitely gain an audience in the future. Twenty years ago the majority of the music fans would never listen to abstract electronic music, and now the entire world is dancing to abstract repetitive non narrative electronic music performed by guys behind laptops! The generations that are growing up now will all have access to any type of audio visual work from anywhere they are. It could take on many forms, for example audiovisual ringtones or short films, whatever, but I'm sure we will become more accustomed to consuming abstract audiovisual works the way we got used to consuming abstract audio.
