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View Full Version : RA interviews Robert Henke: Inventor of Ableton Live and abstract dubstepper



Mahatma Coat
02-16-2012, 05:14 AM
Monolake: Sound scientist


One of electronic music's peerless innovators talks Skrillex, Ableton and clichés.

http://www.residentadvisor.net/feature.aspx?1522

Great interview with Robert Henke, a sound engineer who created Ableton Live along with Gerhard Behles in Berlin in the early 00s, He's now Professor for Sound Design at the Berlin University of the Arts.

http://www.residentadvisor.net/images/features/2012/monolake-midi.jpg

On Skrillex:


Well, I guess it goes back to Skrillex. What makes it so exhausting? To me, what makes this type of music so exhausting is the fact that it's completely in your face all the time. Imagine something like Skrillex where the cheesy piano parts have low volume and then the drop comes and the bassline stuff doesn't occupy the whole spectrum. It wouldn't work. The new dubstep aesthetic is having a bassline which fills up the whole frequency range. While, if you look back and listen to the UK dubstep from six years ago, the bass was a sine wave. If you have laptop speakers, the old stuff simply isn't there.

Skrillex's basslines have five million overtones, which will even translate to the speaker of your cellphone. That's what makes it work on a commercial level: The fact that it's completely flat and full-scale all the time. What excites me, and what I like, are the holes. The silences. There are parts in the music, which are empty and then it becomes full again. And mastering has a lot to do with that.

Here's a sample of his music, its exquisitely designed, but pretty much 'out there'; this is what dubstep can be if you really let yourself go wild with it:

Q818-LJrsbM

Alert
02-16-2012, 10:11 PM
:music:

k4hn
02-16-2012, 11:45 PM
Great article!

+rep

uncut69
02-18-2012, 03:53 PM
"Skrillex's basslines have five million overtones, which will even translate to the speaker of your cellphone. That's what makes it work on a commercial level: The fact that it's completely flat and full-scale all the time"

my thoughts confirmed by someone totally credible :)

Still, I cant really get into Monolake dubstep..