Malekko Heavy Industries

Malekko heavy industries started with a dissolving band, some inspiration, and a kitchen table. "The joke was the website made us seem huge, with pictures of semi's with the Malekko logo when there was only two of us, I soldered every pedal on my kitchen table" explains co-founder Josh Henley from Portland, OR where the company has grown into an 8 person operation with a vast network of players and fans. Malekko is known for original, affordable pedals and synth modules that earn their place in you soundbox. Josh says Malekko is about usability, not impressing your friends with 100 features you'll never touch: "We're not here to make trophies, we're here to make pedals players can use and enjoy." Malekko have cut a unique path with innovative ideas like the Omicron series, 8 no frills mini-pedals that build your signal for up without undercutting your wallet. Working to keep their pedals as useable as they are affordable, it's easy to understand why Malekko has earned a reputation for serving the needs of the working musician.

Ekko 616

650 ms of analogue delay. Count them, love them, rejoice in them. The Ekko 616 has straightforward controls that give you a wide range of sounds. Use the Time, Mix, and Regen knobs to slapback or blast off and engage the Mod controls to give your sound a whole new personality of chorusing and vibrato. Specially voiced repeats allow a larger bandwidth to pass than most traditional analogue delays, giving you a stronger signal out of the pedal. An internal gain knob allows you to customize the E616 to your setup to avoid volume drops or boosts when engaging.

Review: Audio Damage Phosphor

Phosphor is a polyphonic software synthesizer plug-in modeled on the alphaSyntauri hardware synthesizer. While making it Audio Damage took special care in recreating the original synthesis process and then added on a little more to make it more versatile for modern musicians. When I first opened Phosphor up I was surprised by it’s relative simplicity of it’s interface. Most software synths hide most of their features in sub-menus but Phosphor puts it all on the screen in a nice little green and grey box. Two oscillator/envelope sections modeled on the alphaSyntauri sit on top of two independent delays with built in filtering and cross-feedback. To the right of all this is the LFO’s, which can be used to affect multiple parameters. If all the technical talk scares you fret not, the Phosphor comes with 80+ pre-sets I found really actually usable and inspiring. The pads and leads really stand out, but the bass presets seemed a little limited. The manual, available for free on the AD website, actually turned out to be easy reading and indispensable when I started creating my own sounds. Overall, Phosphor is by far the best digital synth under $100 I’ve ever encountered, and puts many pricier units to shame.

$59 at www.AudioDamage.com

Monster Plug-ins: Audio Damage

There the world is replete with companies making ‘utility’ plug-ins, emulating hardware to give digital mixing a more old-school feel. Audio Damage is not one of them. Audio Damage makes effects and instruments unique to the digital environment, helping artists create new and unique sounds that stand out from the pack of producers using Logic and Ableton pre-sets. Their effects catalogue ranges from the beat chopping Replicant and multi-FX Discord 3 (which are pretty crazy in their own right) to more experimental plug-ins like the Automaton, using buffer effects driven by a cellular automata sequencer. Their instruments are no less creative, including the Phosphor polysynth and the Axon drum synth. “We design plug-ins we’d like to have” says co-founder Chris Randall, “We get a wacky idea (e.g. driving an FM percussion synth with an artificial neural network sequencer), research to see if it’s been done, and figure out how to do it.” All that, and AD products come with a no questions asked money back guarantee. What more could you ask for?
www.audiodamage.com/

Endangered Audio

Endangered Audio
Asheville, N.C.

Endangered Audio builds module and stomp box effects for studios and touring
artists. EA gear is known for unique sound and dependability, using only through-
hole components soldered in shop at Smashing Guitars in downtown Asheville.
Todd Kelley started the company in Dec. 2008 to release the Gristleizer, an
updated version of Roy Gwinn’s module used in Throbbing Gristle. Taking
audio input and using an LFO to effect the amplitude or a filter on the signal, the
Gristleizer can do everything from subtle tremolo to complete signal destruction.
Their most recent pedal, the AD4096 is a unique analog delay that is currently
used by Baroness, Band of Horses, U.S. Christmas, and Emeralds.
http://www.smashingguitarsasheville.com/

AD4096 Analog Delay
Beyond Delay
$375

The AD4096 goes above and beyond other delays with its Wet/Dry stereo out,
Expand, and Infinity switches. The Expand switch turns the depth to 100%,
causing run-away self-oscillating feedback for as long as you hold it down. The
Infinity switch introduces a hold function that repeats forever, but not quite like a
loop pedal. Instead of layering signal on signal indefinitely, the Infinite wet signal
takes on the color of whatever’s being played. The Aux out can be switched
between wet and dry, splitting your signal into two separate channels.100%
analog circuitry provides up to 300ms of uniquely colored delay with adjustable
delay, echo, and depth settings. From recreating classic delay sounds to creating
unique sonic creations, the versatility of the AD4096 can’t be denied.

Blackout Effectors

Blackout Effectors
Asheville, N.C

“Built by us, for us … but available to you”

Kyle Tompkins started Blackout Effectors in his Vancouver kitchen in 2008, modding, fixing, and building the occasional pedal with a cheap soldering iron. “Really,” he say, “I should have been playing guitar instead of fooling around. It was an awesome kitchen though.” In 2009 he quit his day job and relocated to Asheville, N.C. to focus on Blackout full time. Skip to 2011 and Blackout Effectors is producing 40+ handmade pedals a week that ride with bands from Band of Horses to Baroness and The Black Angels. With the experience accumlated over the past several years, Kyle is sticking true to his vision of what Blackout Pedals need to be, even if that means he ends up scrapping the majority of new circuit designs because they won’t fit the Blackout mold. “We’re only going to release the coolest of the cool stuff and in the Blackout world no one gets to decide what is cool besides us.”

http://www.blackouteffectors.com/

Blackout Effectors Mantra Overdrive
True Grit
$175

Whether you’re looking for that classic overdriven sound or want to turn your speaker into Satan’s mouthpiece, you need a Mantra. Amp-like circuit architecture gives you maximum control of your overdriven sound while the Mantra’s multiple gain stages give you endless amounts of clean-up with your guitar’s volume knob. It switches between rock and blues as easily as it switches between low output single coils and hot potato humbuckers. From fingerpicked phrases to windmill finishes, this pedal conjures a classic sound that’s all your own, a Mantra you’ll play over and over again.

Interview with Julia Goryuchkina

Note: This was is a piece I did for Performer Magazine and can also be found on their blog.

Garrett Frierson recently sat down with Julia Goryuchkina. Julia is a pianist, composer, and film scholar from St.Petersburg, Russia. She attended New England Conservatory of Music in the 1990s where she was influenced by Ran Blake’s "Third Stream" philosophy (now known as Contemporary Improvisation). After intensive private studies with Mr. Blake, Julia went on studying jazz piano and film music composition at the Berklee College of Music. She just released her second CD, TheatreWorks, through CD Baby.

Performer Mag: How did you become interested in film music?

Julia Goryuchkina: I first became interested in film music during the 90's, I checked out a book by Tony Thomas called Music for the Movies. It focused on composers of Hollywood's Golden Age, and I found it to be a very fascinating art-form that didn't seem to be fully explored. I started watching films with these scores, and they influenced me tremendously in the way they compliment the action and the story. Today the music in movies is mostly used to provide ambiance and mood, they like to insert something that is not in the film already.

P: How do you use this history in your writing?

J: How film music inspires me is the way the music tells a story, often with time changes because in a film the music must sync up with what's happening on the screen. Also in terms of melody and texture, both very important in French film music. I let the melody twist and turn, much like film music, instead of constant repetition like in most popular music.
P: Your music has a great sense of location, where do you write? Do you pursue that sense of place or is natural?

J: A lot of that comes from instrumentation, we all have our favorite instruments to work with and then complimenting those with a consistent band. I have always loved the vibraphone and have a lot experience writing for it, so once I formed the band around that I stayed with it and got comfortable in that space.P: Does the orchestration affect the writing process or does it come later?

J: Later. For me, melody always comes first, instrumental thinking comes later. I compose and then I orchestrate.

P: Does that change when you score film?

J: Yes, then you have to focus more on genre-specific instruments. The director will often have desires that you need to fulfill, so a lot of your work will be discovering what will suit their needs. If you develop a relationship with a director they may start to trust you and allow you to do your own thing with visuals. Personally, I tend to blend classical and jazz, which is very thin wire to walk because it is most often done very badly.

P: But you manage to avoid the stiffness most composers encounter when approaching this combination, you do a great job of keeping Jazz's fluid nature while using more classical melodic ideas.

J: Well, I was classically trained in Russia before spending several years at Berklee focusing purely on Jazz. I was very influenced by Ran Blake's Third Stream Philosophy.

P: Has technology changed the writing process?

J: Somewhat. After writing out the parts I sequenced everything in MIDI, and then subistuted the most important instruments with live musicians. Also, the mastering was done with Guilherme M. Vaz in Rio De Janeiro, we worked completely online mastering my record. He was a delight to work with.

P: What could you recommend for people who don't know much about film music but are curious?

J: Watch movies and listen to their scores. Start with the Golden Age, the old composers like Max Steiner and Franz Waxman. Many classics, like King Kong (1933), Informer(1935) and The Bride of Frankenstein, have brilliant scores that compliment the action beautifully. Georges Auric was the main collaborator of Jean Cocteau and wrote very interesting scores to movies like La Belle et la Bete and Le son de Poet.

P: What about contemporary composers?

J: Michael Giacchino has had a lot success recently, he recently won an Oscar and composed for Ratatouille and successful TV shows like Lost. It's funny because he got his start writing for video games. Ennio Morricone is legendary, he lives in Italy, but works for Hollywood. James Horner and Howard Shore are both amazing composers working right now.

P: What challenges might an artist run into on their first scoring project?

J: Most artists used to writing for themselves will find it challenging to create within the limits of what they are given. In contrast to a free composition, which is a method of your self expression, writing film music you have to write for someone else. You have to write for the visuals and there is a director whose vision you have to conform to. With the right mindset though, this challenge can become an inspiration to create in a new and refreshing manner.