Plastic Robot, a newly-created electronic music blog/zine, interviewed me recently to talk about Glitch, my music, my workflow, and to get my thoughts on a few other topics.
Plastic Robot: One of the most inspiring aspects of the music culture to us is the creation of tools to push the interaction between user and intrument… Or perhaps just the creation of new instruments altogether! Sometimes these new tools can create a whole new world of their own. Glitch proves to be one of these instruments. We happened to catch up with Glitch creator Kieran Foster and were able to ask him a few questions about his cult VST. Without further nonsense, we are honored to present our interview with dblue.
Plastic Robot: What did you get into first: music production, or programming? How have your DSP programming skills affected your perception of music?
Kieran Foster: My interest in both subjects started when I got my first computer, a Sinclair ZX Spectrum, at around age six. I really enjoyed following the programming examples in the user manual, which included a small section on sound and music, as well as following examples printed in various magazines and books. I was too young to fully appreciate or understand it all at the time, so it wasn’t until several years later, after upgrading to an Atari STe, that I really got into music and programming.
As far as programming affecting my perception of music, I’d have to say that it does make me listen to things in a more analytical manner. If I hear a nice sound effect or something like that, I do try to break it down in my mind and think about how it might have been created. That’s always been a big part of my personality, though; I’m very curious to know how things work.
PR: At what point did you decide that you wanted to design your own VSTs? What was your inspiration for Glitch, and did you ever expect it to be so successful?
KF: I didn’t start using VST plug-ins myself until early 2003, so I was quite late to get into it. As I gradually got more into using various plug-ins in my music and realising their power, there was always the thought in the back of my mind that it would be fun to make one of my own, but at that point I was too busy with other things to dedicate any real time to it. When I created the first VST version of Glitch, it wasn’t something that I had actively planned on doing, I just kind of stumbled into it.
In the Spring of 2005 I was working on some PHP code to read/write .wav files, for no particular reason. At some point during the process I got bored and decided to, for lack of a better term, “fuck up” the sound samples I was using to test the script. One thing quickly led to another and pretty soon I had this PHP script, arbitrarily named “glitch.php”, that chopped up sample loops into smaller pieces and applied various effects such as bit-crushing, reversing, volume gating, etc. After my friends heard it and asked for a version they could play around with, I used a tool called PriadoBlender to wrap the PHP script into a simple command line program they could run, and we all spent the next few days amusing ourselves with increasingly more ridiculous, randomised sounds.
At that point, it was still just a novelty toy that I thought I might occasionally use to create weird sounds for my own music, but it didn’t really occur to me to take it any further than that; it felt like too much of a niche thing to be of any serious use. I did eventually get a little bit curious to know what people might think of it, though, so after a few more days of tweaking the script I started a thread about it on the Renoise community forum and let people download the program. I must admit, the positive response to it took me completely by surprise. With the unexpected encouragement from people and the requests to make it into a VST, and finally having a bit of spare time on my hands due to being unemployed, I grabbed Tobybear’s Delphi VST template and Steinberg’s VST SDK and got to work. I honestly didn’t expect it to catch on the way it did, though, and it still blows me away now when I hear it being used in someone’s track.
PR: There are a lot of major software instrument developers on the scene these days. There are also many independent developers as well. How do you feel the independent software instrument/FX developers have affected the scene?
KF: I think independent developers have undeniably changed the music software scene for the better. It used to be that the larger “industry standard” companies had a sort of monopoly on everything, creating this myth that in order to get professional results you had to be using their expensive products, but now there is so much out there for users of all budgets to choose from, and some of the independent guys are really giving the larger companies a run for their money. I think it’s healthy to have this competition in the market; it keeps everyone on their toes and forces developers to continue being innovative in order to get our attention (and our money). There are a lot of very intelligent and creative indie developers now who are releasing high-quality products at affordable prices, and I think users are quickly taking notice of this and realising that they don’t necessarily need all the expensive, traditional “must-have” DAWs and effect bundles to get the professional-sounding results they desire.
PR: Have you ever thought of writing software professionally?
KF: I’ve been working professionally as a web developer since around 1999 and have worked a lot with PHP, SQL, Javascript, Actionscript, etc., so that’s been my main focus in programming for quite a long time. In terms of traditional application development, however, I actually haven’t spent very much time working in that area, apart from occasionally creating custom tools for my own needs and for previous employers. I suppose I’ve always been too distracted by other projects, music, social activities, etc., to focus on creating any major applications.
It’s only been very recently, with the creation of Glitch, that I’ve given any serious thought to the possibility of creating my own software professionally. I still have a lot to learn when it comes to advanced DSP and things like that, but over the past few years I’ve been brushing up a lot on my general programming techniques and I feel pretty happy with the progress I’ve been making. I find web development really unsatisfying and boring now after doing it for so long, so I would ideally like to get out of that industry and focus primarily on audio. At the very least, a break from the typical 9-5 routine would be great, so it would be nice to make *something* from audio and then supplement it with occasional web work if I have to.
PR: Do you have any future music software projects that you’d like our readers to know about? Anything you’re particularly excited about?
KF: I’ve never been 100% happy with the current version of Glitch, since a lot of the code is old and quite poorly written, and to be honest I just didn’t have a strong enough understanding of plug-in development at the time, so one of the main things I want to do next is rebuild it from scratch. Just getting the rewrite done has kinda turned into a ridiculous ongoing project in itself, though, since I have a terrible habit of frequently changing my mind and scrapping huge chunks of code, but it is gradually coming together.
There seems to be moderate demand for some of Glitch’s effect modules to be made into standalone plug-ins, so I will probably explore that angle a little more. I’ve already unofficially released the stretcher effect in a very basic, GUI-less form, and it’s a fun one to play around with, so I definitely want to release an updated version of that with a proper GUI and some extra features.
As far as long-term plans go, I’ve always wanted to make a version of Glitch which is highly modular and flexible enough that the user can create almost any configuration of effects they need, being able to route signals in various ways and automate parameters with LFOs, sequencers, envelopes, etc., while at the same time remaining friendly and easy to use. That’s probably what I’m most excited about, although it’s definitely a large project to tackle and I don’t want to get too ahead of myself at this point.
I wish I had more exciting things to report, but the last few years of my life have been pretty slow for various reasons, meaning projects like Glitch have stagnated a little bit. At the moment I’m simply trying to get back into a productive routine and stay focused, but I’m feeling pretty good about things now and I’m definitely looking forward to coming up with some new effects in the future.
PR: Your EP “1985″ is a delectable blend of haunting soundscapes, synthetic textures, and rather unorthodox vocal samples. The album has been in heavy rotation on many an mp3 player around the Plastic Robot office. What was your main source of inspiration for that album? What’s the story behind the vocal samples?
KF: When my sister and I were quite young, my dad would often set up a microphone and tape recorder in the room to capture us being goofy, singing nursery rhymes (you can hear me singing “The Fireman Song” on the EP), reading story books, telling bad jokes, etc. Sometimes he would record things in more of an ambient style, like my sister knocking on the window from outside (also on the EP) to say that her bicycle was broken, or just weird background noises from one room while people talked in another part of the house. Over the years, my sister and I continued the tradition and recorded various sessions of our own. Sometimes we would invent entire radio shows with us talking and cueing up pop songs for the “listeners”, reading the weather and news (complete with self-made sound effects); other times it would just be screaming, shouting, and completely childish nonsense, with our friends making occasional cameo appearances for good measure.
So anyway, one day in June 2005, while digging through some boxes at my dad’s house, I stumbled onto the childhood cassette tapes and listened through them again for old time’s sake. The main tape we used had been recorded over so many times, in so many random places, that it was littered with all of these incredible-sounding lo-fi artifacts, from the tape heads not being aligned properly on my crappy old boom box, to feedback and distortion caused by poor handling of the microphone, and everything else in-between. Some of the earlier material had become warped by what we had recorded over it, twisting certain words and sounds into really bizarre, distorted noises. I just loved the way it sounded, and the whole idea of focusing on these artifacts and imperfections seemed like a good theme to experiment with.
PR: Rumour has it that you’re a Renoise user. What about it appeals to you, and have you always used trackers, or did you arrive at Renoise via the more traditional DAWs?
KF: My friend showed me SoundTracker on his Amiga back in around 1989 or 1990, and I immediately fell in love with it. I loved how hands-on everything was, being able to see all the important data right there and manipulate it directly, and the speed at which you could experiment with new ideas. Up until that point, I had been playing around with a music package called Quartet on my Atari STe, but its interface was very clunky and never felt right for me, so I picked up a tracker instead and have been using them exclusively ever since.
When I heard about Renoise in 2002, I definitely thought it had potential, but I was a little bit stubborn at first and didn’t make the switch immediately. I was using MadTracker 2 at the time and had gotten quite comfortable with that, so I didn’t feel like learning a whole new system. It wasn’t until 2003 that I tried Renoise again and gave it a proper test run, which is when it became obvious how much more powerful it was than anything else I’d tried before. These days, it still has some quirks, and there are a few features that I’d love to see in the future, but it’s definitely the cream of the crop for me.
I think one of the most appealing things is the strong feeling of community involved; there’s a great sense of pride among the users and people are always happy to help each other out. It’s also obvious that the developers are passionate about what they are doing and that they listen to their users; you really get a sense that your input is helping to shape the application itself, through the feature voting process available to registered users, as well as through discussions on the community forums.
PR: How would you describe your work flow when using Renoise?
KF: I like to get everything done within the application itself and not rely too heavily on additional tools. In terms of effects, I tend to stick mainly to Renoise’s native DSP modules because they’re simple and easy to use (although I do have a handful of VSTs that I can’t live without), and in terms of mastering or finalising my tracks, I try to make sure that what comes out of Renoise is the final result I want to hear. Once I’ve exported my track to .wav, all I really do is normalise the volume and trim the silence, both of which can also be done easily right inside Renoise’s sample editor.
PR: Renoise 2.0. what do you think is going to be a greater success: a beat slicer, nibbles, or the replacement of the pattern editor with a piano roll?
KF: I’m not sure if we’ll actually see a beat slicer or a piano roll in time for v2.0, since Renoise is already at v1.9.1 and there are no signs of those features on the immediate horizon, but if I had to guess, I’d probably say that the piano roll will be more popular, since it should help to attract more users from the traditional DAW crowd. I think it’s important to point out, though, that the piano roll is not intended to completely replace the pattern editor, but simply to provide an alternate method for those who are more comfortable working that way, and it is my understanding that the user will be able to switch back and forth as needed.
Personally, I’m much more excited by the idea of a clip-based arranger in Renoise, which would provide a far more practical way of managing the various elements and performing radical changes to song structure, as well as providing a very clear, visual overview of the entire song itself. As trackers have evolved over the years and opened up more possibilities, the amount of data has grown larger and increasingly more difficult to manage. It’s very easy to get lost in your own work when coming back to a project that you haven’t touched in a while, and making substantial changes to a song typically requires a huge number of awkward keystrokes and mentally keeping track of your progress, so I feel that this is a weakness in Renoise right now.
Note: Anyone who knows Renoise will understand this is a joke, but Kieran was nice enough to entertain us with a serious answer. Thanks Kieran :)
PR: Where do you predict that electronic music will be 10 years from now?
KF: Generally speaking, I think music tends to progress in a slow and subtle fashion most of the time, so I doubt we’ll see very many drastic changes; genres will just continue to gradually fuse and overlap, spawning even more abstract subgenres. Personally, I’m quite lazy when it comes to seeking out new sounds, and whenever I stumble onto something which is new to me, it’s usually already been around for years in some other scene that I simply wasn’t aware of. Obviously there are the extreme ends of the musical spectrum to consider, so we’ll probably see some ridiculous new *core subgenres with tempos so high that the sound approaches white noise, and on the opposite end, we’ll probably see variations of minimal techno which have devolved into little more than a 33hz sine wave pulsing at 50bpm for 27 minutes. Who knows :)
PR: Should music be free?
KF: I think it’s really up to the artist. If they want to release their music for free then that’s awesome, but if they want to get paid then I’m fine with that, too, as long as I know that a fair share of the profit is actually going towards supporting the artist directly, rather than fattening the wallets of any middlemen who may be involved.
PR: You can download Glitch, Kieran’s EP “1985″, and a few other goodies from his website http://illformed.org
