How does the Aphex Twin Program Fast Stuff?

[mjudge55]

My intuition and takeaway from vague interviews is RDJ mostly puts his pants on one leg at a time like the rest of us. He came up using gear that we may regard as tedious to program and maybe developed a sick appreciation for it, so once technology advanced and programming complex stuff became slightly easier he could take advantage of that, learn to do it quickly, and even have fun. Maybe lots of folks that came up back in the day developed some of those same skills and patience but just wouldn't program the way he did because they had a different aesthetic -- drills probably sounded gauche to them. I get the sense he was having a laugh just doing something most others had chosen not to, and I think that's important.

[gentleclockdivider]

Does he use some software to program these passages? Does he play it al in by hand?

Noone is going to know for sure, because he consistently makes stuff up about how he does things and what he uses.

Yes , in the past he used to take the piss and it was pretty obvious , typical youngster prank jokes
Since the release of Syro ( and perhaps parenthood ) he is pretty open about the gear he uses , and I have no reason to believe the (huge ) kitlist on Syro and the liner notes with the Soundcloud upload are not genuine.
During the late 90's(come to daddy ) up untill drukqs Richard used tracker programs (player pro on mac , there's a video floating on the web) , the typical effects to trackers are verry easy to .recognize .

Nowadays it's a lot of cirklon ,video posted by op can be checked on syro kitlist .
Some tracks on Syro which features the cirklon heavily use the cirklon aux events routed to transpose up , it got roughly in the same ballpark with mine
RIchard is also close to Colin fraser(cirklon developer ) who also maintains-(midifies ?) his GX1( verry rare and expensive ), seen here and played by splitradix .

[gentleclockdivider]

. This was a reference to the 'Symbolic Sound, Kyma Capybara' system. Many of the EDM producers of the period (Autechre, Squarepusher, etc..) also used the Capybara.

Maybe for the occasional sound effects , but that's it .
Often overlooked artist who coded everything himself ( former housemate of Aphex ) is Chris Jeffs aka the mighty Cylob .
He is a supercollider wizard .

[legendCNCD]

Trackers.

[whyterabbyt]

Personally, I'd just program slow stuff, then speed it up. Outrageous I know.

[Ah_Dziz]

It's just a matter of time and effort. Most of the "fast" ways of doing this wacky stuff were based off of the work of the earlier pioneers of this type of music. I doubt squarepusher loads up live cut set to "squarepusher" mode when he wants some drums chopped up. You won't get better results for intricate musical parts than just digging into them and putting everything exactly where you want it.

[HOTF]

I am guessing his worflow changed and evolved over time with the different technologies available to him.

[dayjob]

pretty sure lot's of more recent things were all done w/the sequentix Cirklon as the heart of the set up. he's talked about it a lot in interviews.. but he's used everything including trackers, DAWs, ataris, x0x style sequencers, Roland R-8 etc but has said in a few interviews that he's heavily using the Cirklon.

the Syro release has the gear list right on the cover of the album..

[dayjob]

Personally, I'd just program slow stuff, then speed it up. Outrageous I know.

there's a lot of DnB and luke vibert stuff that works great at 45rpm and 33rpm. you are not alone in working this way

[mjudge55]

I like the last couple posts. I also think with RDJ style music, the focus needs to be on the musicality.

Getting back to the first post, the bass line really just outlines the chords the song starts with using a 16th note feel. My experience with e.g. the MC-202 is it's easy to program in a couple bars of 16ths that include the notes of the chords you've established, plus passing notes connecting the chords, then turn some of the notes into rests and ties, vary their length, turn on portamento and accent for a note here and there -- pretty quickly you have that funky, robotic feel and you can set it to whatever insane tempo you want, tweak some knobs, Bob's yer uncle. Complexity is no problem, even on old gear, and then you can record in your DAW, chop, edit, rinse, repeat. It's easy to go too far.

What's more important to me then is the chords. They are where the musicality is at, the melody of the top voice and the harmony underneath. The bass outlines them, fair bet it followed them in the timeline of creation. So yeah at the end of the day you have dude messing with some chords, that's all you need to start a song like this.

Last thing, I think it's important not to take it all too seriously. Some of RDJ's best work is where he consciously chose to put out what he probably regarded as "cheesy" music - RDJ album for example. That's not to say he disliked his own tunes, you can love your songs and laugh at them too, that's all part of the fun and what helps you get past your self consciousness. Some of our best stuff is probably the stuff we're embarrassed about.

[vurt]

i do it like this....

[gentleclockdivider]

. Some of RDJ's best work is where he consciously chose to put out what he probably regarded as "cheesy" music - RDJ album for example. That's not to say he disliked his own tunes, you can love your songs and laugh at them too, that's all part of the fun and what helps you get past your self consciousness. Some of our best stuff is probably the stuff we're embarrassed about.

Richard d James album cheesy ?
You’re trippin
The one album that could be considered cheesy but genious at the same time is melodies from mars

[vurt]

. Some of RDJ's best work is where he consciously chose to put out what he probably regarded as "cheesy" music - RDJ album for example. That's not to say he disliked his own tunes, you can love your songs and laugh at them too, that's all part of the fun and what helps you get past your self consciousness. Some of our best stuff is probably the stuff we're embarrassed about.

Richard d James album cheesy ?
You’re trippin
The one album that could be considered cheesy but genious at the same time is melodies from mars

i think come to daddy is his cheesiest piece
but i grew up listening to death metal, and his cookie monster is pure cheese

still a cool track.

there are some, lets say "twee" quite soft tracks, some on druqks too. but not "cheese" in the common sense of the word no

[vurt]

re the video above, just took me ten minutes to knock up the drum loops (battery) and basses (absynth) then as long as the video in the sampler module. so 15 minutes, from nothing for that.

as i said earlier, if i was going to make a track like this, i would then take the above audio, slice loops out of that, put them back in the sampler, and trigger with some filtering and so on.
then maybe chop up the results and arrange loops on the time line.

[mjudge55]

. Some of RDJ's best work is where he consciously chose to put out what he probably regarded as "cheesy" music - RDJ album for example. That's not to say he disliked his own tunes, you can love your songs and laugh at them too, that's all part of the fun and what helps you get past your self consciousness. Some of our best stuff is probably the stuff we're embarrassed about.

Richard d James album cheesy ?
You’re trippin
The one album that could be considered cheesy but genious at the same time is melodies from mars

Don't @ me bro, I love RDJ album more than you love life! We're on the SAME TEAM.