TALK 897 - Holiday Synths, GForce P5 and Cherry ESQ-1

[Nick] Sonic.

[Nick] Hello, everybody. Welcome to Sonic Talk 08/1997

[Nick] recorded today on the 06/17/2026,

[Nick] which also happens to be the date of the first England match in the World Cup series of soccer, football, however you wanna pronounce it. I'm saying both for our

[Nick] stateside friends. This is not a sports podcast, though. This is to do with music technology. We're gonna talk about synthesizers, software, drum machine, performing,

[Nick] recording, all the kind of stuff that surrounds that world. I'm trying to get keywords in. I keep getting lots of emails saying I need more keywords to make my to make the podcast have a wider reach. There's a real concerted effort there. So I'm I'm saying them all, and I'll probably put them in the description at some point. Before I get to our guests, I'm going to chat a little bit about what's coming up. I think I've got some things coming up. Oh, yeah. Don't forget. We got a great competition. I think if I win Osmo's c 49. Yeah. That is the controller, the MPE controller. Sonicstate.com/competition.

[Nick] That's open till, I think, the twenty sixth. So go and grab that. You can enter either just by Instagram or by signing up to our newsletter. If you're already signed up, it doesn't matter. You just get registered as as an enter to entry into the competition by doing all that stuff. So but, yeah, do check that out. Don't forget we've also got the Embod Me ERA two and ERA sound patch flip up from Matt. Matt, that was really good. Lovely combination of that as well. I've I'm gonna have to check that out. That sounds really good. And I'm looking at the AtoV Faderpunk currently, so there'll be a review of that coming up. Plus

[Nick] Gearfest in London coming up quite soon, twenty seventh on Saturday. I'll be going up to that, trying out a new rig and just kind of filming some videos and hanging out there and all of those things. Before I get on to our guests, as as is customary, I'm gonna plug our Patreon and our YouTube memberships because we've been posting stuff up there quite recently. Few exclusive videos and stuff you get early as well. So stay tuned, and this will give you all the informations you need. Yes.

[Nick] Indeed. In fact, I just posted on Friday. I did some samples of the domino

[Nick] with some binaural goodness. Actually, they came out really well. I was, you know, I wasn't sure how it would translate, but I have to say I'm I'm quite pleased with them. So if you remember, do check them out. They they there's eight or 10 of them. Can't remember now. But, anyway, let's get on to our guests. We've got a fulsome panel this week and and and from all sides of the Atlantic, well, both.

[Nick] But, I mean, it's still it's still in favor of the Brits at the moment, but we got Charlie Clauser who's there from

[Nick] LA where there's the studio

[Nick] masterminding soundtracks to a horror film coming to you as well as all the Saw franchises and many other stuff due to production work as well. Lovely blurred depth of field there. That is all real, though, that equipment behind you, isn't it? It's not just one of the you're not green screened.

[Charlie] Yeah. Oh, no. No. No. Unfortunately,

[Nick] from my bank account, it's all real. Well, there you go. Anything exciting happening in your studio at the moment? Last time we spoke to you, I think you had got a few things. And in fact, actually, I think you said you've got hold of the

[Nick] catcher, the I'd never pronounce it. Icelandic volcano synth. I think everybody knows what I mean. Yep. Have you been trying that out? Have you did you actually pull the plug?

[Charlie] Pull the trigger piece? Right. Sitting right there. They I I ran into those guys at the Buchla and Friends, which is sort of a mini NAM kind of synth focused event that happens, around NAM. And, you know, I kind of poked at it a little bit at that event, and, they said, hey. Can we there wasn't really enough. At those type of events, it's loud. It's crazy. You're running into old friends. So it wasn't really a optimum environment to try it out in. They said, oh, can we bring it over to your studio and show you the intricacies? And, of course, that's sort of the death blow for the bank account because once it's once it's in the room and you've spent an hour or two with the people that made it, then it's it's not leaving.

[Charlie] So they

[Charlie] kindly let me purchase one of the first batch, and I think they're doing a second batch as well now because the first round of a 100 went very quickly apparently.

[Charlie] And it's a weird and wonderful thing. It's it's unusual,

[Charlie] and it has some limitations if you put it on a spec sheet next to other popular sense, but it really points you in a direction that is perfect for kind of minimalist

[Charlie] scoring type of work where there might be only two or three sounds happening at once, but each of those sounds has texture and movement and interesting quality. So I've kind of reduced my upfront my frontline synth collection to three items

[Nick] Who? Besides the Euro rack, which doesn't count. So Waldorf Quantum Mark two and the cop I think it's Katla or I'm not sure if it's Katla. Genki. Genki instrument Katla. Yeah. That's the one. And the just gotten the UDO Domino, which I was very interested to see your reviews on. And that's another one that is weird and wonderful and capable of some very evil tones. So those are the big three that are on that side of the room within easy reach. I guess capable evil tones, particularly given your track record is possibly a pretty good endorsement for for your particular sonic. Yeah. It's right on target. Nice. Oh, well, glad to hear it. Sounds like there's a lot of fun and a lot of crazy sounds. Yeah. Was I'm guessing as soon as you've made a space for it to sit and then they're all standing around unexpectedly, it's it's a bit like that's why that's why I I think that's the same reason why people, when they go into shops and and and shop assistants are too are too attentive,

[Nick] like my partner doesn't like going into those shops because she feels like then there's a commitment to to buy something even and might buy it even if she doesn't want to just because and I guess it's a similar yeah. So Yeah. Love good sales Good sales people.

[Nick] Yeah. Excellent.

[Nick] Well, lovely. That that chuckle you heard there in the background is poorly Alex Bowe, who looks like is that like some sort of a

[Nick] lit up

[Nick] rave rope, or are they are they dungaree The braces.

[Nick] Braces. They're very vibrant. They've

[Paulee] got, like, different modes.

[Paulee] I'm reversing.

[Paulee] I'm reversing snobber.

[Nick] There we go. Nice. How are you doing, Nick? Yeah. I'm good. Thanks. Yeah. Good. Like I said, I've been looking at the AtoV Faderpunk, but, yeah, I'm sure you've got stuff. Because you've got a few things on the go as well, aren't you, Paulie? Right? I do. Firstly, I wanted to say that I have quit my nine to five, which is Oh. A sort of crazy Yeah.

[Paulee] I'm becoming a full time creative in in possibly the most turbulent time for creatives

[Paulee] since the Black Death.

[Paulee] So we're gonna so so we're gonna, you know, just just see how it goes. But I've got loads of stuff to to do for various synth companies and stuff.

[Paulee] But, yeah, at the moment, I am all over the Iridium m k two Waldorf. Right. The Waldorf. Yeah. Which Wolf sent me.

[Paulee] And I've been exploring the new AFEX twin mode, the note parameter locks, and I've I've done a very cool little thing on it. Neat. That will be coming out in my review next time. But, yeah, other than that, of course, the the writing for Sonic State, all sorts of cool stuff. And I think

[Paulee] I don't know if we've got many Italian fans in, but I think I'm going to Soundmit in October.

[Paulee] That was the latest news that came in.

[Paulee] So, you know, if you're there, come and say hello. But, yeah, it's going pretty well, actually. You know, I've just gotta,

[Paulee] obviously, have a bit of discipline now

[Paulee] because

[Paulee] Yes. It's if I don't work, I don't earn,

[Paulee] basically.

[Nick] But, you know, when when the work is this fun, then it's no bad thing, is it? Well, congratulations. That's quite a that's quite a major achievement. I know it's something you've been working towards for a while. Glad to be able play a play a small part in that. And

[Nick] but, yeah, brilliant. Oh, well, nice one. That's fantastic. We've also got Yoad Nivo, who's here from his studio in London, Nivo Sound, where not only does he do the

[Nick] the mixing,

[Nick] the sound design, the the the instrument software consultation,

[Nick] Atmos mixes.

[Nick] Also doing a great a great going great guns on the YouTube channel. I watched one of your

[Nick] mix.

[Nick] What what was the last one I watched? The watch, the one where you basically didn't use any you couldn't use anything apart from a touch of compression on the mix bus. It was all about level. No EQ. Nothing. That was that yeah. Did did you did you pull that off first time, or did you have to choose choose wisely before you started that project?

[Yoad] No. I mean, I'm used to first of all, great to be here again. I've not been on this show for, like, a couple of months because I was really, really busy. Still am. And it's always fun to to be here. And good luck, Paulie, with you, and welcome to the freelance

[Yoad] world.

[Yoad] Thank I'm sure it will go well for you.

[Yoad] Hopefully. Yeah.

[Yoad] I mean, I'm, you know, I'm used to to

[Yoad] doing a rough mix or, like, a monitor mix on every session when you logged up the the two inch tape, and you you just have to

[Yoad] to do a monitor mix before you can do any overdubs or anything like that. So I'm kind of used to that workflow. I haven't done it for years, but

[Yoad] it's second nature. So,

[Yoad] for me, it's very easy. I know that for many people who are not from that kind of discipline,

[Yoad] they start by piling tons of plug ins, first of all, and then

[Yoad] wondering why it's not sounding good. So that was a kind of back back to basics

[Yoad] sort of

[Yoad] approach. And, yeah, the video is doing very well. The channel is I'm now on a 140,000

[Yoad] subscribers.

[Yoad] Wow. That's happened quick. Just over a year, which is amazing.

[Yoad] So,

[Yoad] yeah, I'm just doing a video now

[Yoad] about whether to have the compressor before the EQ or after the EQ.

[Yoad] So that will be coming out tomorrow.

[Yoad] And yeah. So like you said, I'm I'm working on my normal kind of mix

[Yoad] a lot of mixing. But during that or in parallel to that, I'm also working on a very big project with one of the major

[Yoad] plug in brands,

[Yoad] which is very, very exciting. And on top of that, which I think Yunique know a little bit about, but I'm I'm not gonna talk about it too much. I'm working on my own instrument

[Yoad] based on on all my synths. I have about 50 synths, and I accumulated a lot of samples.

[Yoad] And it's not just

[Yoad] kind of maps. It's sounds that are

[Yoad] usable, and I call it ready to mix. So it's kind of stuff that you drop in your session and they work. So it's all about curation rather than sort of Interesting. Quantity. The interface is very simple.

[Yoad] So it's kind of a

[Yoad] very interesting approach, and I'm very excited about that. It will take a while, but it will eventually come out.

[Nick] Wow. So lots going on for everybody, it sounds like. Fantastic. Well, I mean, summer is is the I'm I'm I was hoping to go down to four days for a few weeks so that I could I could go fishing, but I haven't managed to do it. Either either it's just been pouring with rain or gale force winds, so there's no point because it's not much fun being out. So, anyway, that's not really kind of what we're here to talk about. Got some got some good we it's summer. So let's well, I guess, well, shall I what should we start? We should we start with a couple of the big releases? We've obviously got two of them. If I do let's go let's go here first because

[Nick] one of them is a sponsor, not this one. But, yes, we've got g four software, the official

[Nick] p five profit five

[Nick] sanctioned or whatever you call it made in conjunction with lots of spines. Great video by Alex Ball. As

[Nick] we know,

[Nick] G Force do great jobs of emulations. In '19 Amazing. I'll leave the history part too to you. I know we're often fans of theirs. That's usually the usual stuff. So it's got the I think they've redesigned the x modifiers because it was x LFOs and x envelopes before. And I think now they're tall x modifiers. I think they've been read they've been redesigned. Currently available, $69.

[Nick] And, you know, what can I say? It's it's it's funny. I mean,

[Nick] p five the the the prop the the American sense

[Nick] because of my heritage, because I basically grew up in The UK on sort of cheap Japanese sense, they don't they don't speak to me as much. You know, the profit five, I've never sort of grabbed one and gone, oh my goodness. This is this is what I absolutely need. It's really curious. I don't and I don't know why that is. I mean, it's just it's it's sort of not part of my DNA, whereas I'm guessing know. Maybe, Charlie, you're probably are more of a profit person or an overhand person just purely because those are the sort of sense that have been around during your journey through music tech. Right?

[Charlie] Yeah. I mean, they were certainly ubiquitous

[Charlie] both on records and in in music videos. I still remember the great video for I think it's the song

[Charlie] Operator by Atlantic Star or Midnight Star or something where it's five keyboard players Yeah. You know, on profit fives in a great big straight line.

[Charlie] And so they were very much a part of the of the pop culture or music culture. But also they they had a big presence on some of my favorite records like,

[Charlie] you know,

[Charlie] Talking Heads Remaining Light and David Burns,

[Charlie] the Catherine wheel where he had Bernie Worrell, I believe, from Yeah. The parliament landscape adding synthesizer stuff. And it was very noticeable.

[Charlie] And, of course, Bernie is a, you know, profit

[Charlie] guru.

[Charlie] That was kinda his acts. So those sounds definitely permeated,

[Charlie] the records and the the larger pop culture landscape.

[Charlie] But I, weirdly, was never, like, a profit five guy even though it was the thing to have. I always did gravitate more towards Oberheim's because they were sort of more

[Charlie] brash and and capable of being nasty sounding.

[Charlie] And, of course, Roland's stuff, which, I don't know, maybe because

[Charlie] that was also kinda ubiquitous. But that profit five version from, GeForce is fantastic. I snatched it up on on release day, and, it like all their plug in emulations since, it's amazing. And so maybe that will coax me into being more of a profit guy. I was a big fan of the Pro One Monosynth from Sequential back in the day. And that was one of my first analog since or first electronic instruments ever. And that still is has a, you know, a I have a soft spot in my heart for that because that was also a very capable of being a nasty little little bugger. And it was also widely used in a lot of the EDM and industrial. Yeah. And it was affordable. I think that's the thing. I mean, I think that's the thing. My kind of my my past has always been, I guess, monosense, and I guess the pro I didn't lots of people around my era were really digging the pro one. I guess I I just yeah. Mon was more of a roller thing. I mean and and but now, you know, the I I I Ken Ken Flux said I was talking blasphemy and actually pointed out several people have pointed out that Stop Making Sense, Bernie Worrell in in Talking Heads. I mean, those synth lines are just absolutely fantastic.

[Nick] I really, really right there. I know. But I've never I've never I've I've I've I I've had I've had the I've had the Dave Smith stuff in here, the sequential stuff in here, the pro I forget which one it is now, but and they're fine, but it just doesn't have the same nostalgia. Maybe it's I don't know. I I don't know. How do you feel about profits? I I I guess you haven't got any so have you got any sequential stuff? I've got a profit 600.

[Nick] A profit 600 giggly,

[Paulee] which I love to bits. My goodness. What a synth it is now with that, you know, with that update. But, yeah,

[Paulee] what astounded me about this was the original profit five. It's quite light on modulation. I think there's one LFO.

[Paulee] There's definitely only one LFO on a stock profit 600.

[Paulee] But this new x

[Paulee] mod modifier section on this VST gives every almost every parameter its own envelope and LFO, which is insane.

[Paulee] That is absolutely wild. You know, that's gonna that's obviously

[Paulee] our our

[Paulee] new world of great massive CPUs has just given you an LFO for every parameter. But, yeah, I thought from the the little trailer, it sounded beautiful,

[Paulee] you know. Yes.

[Paulee] And the one thing

[Paulee] the one thing I was thinking about recently because I write for a magazine called Compute.

[Paulee] It's like a retro computer magazine. I was doing a piece on Sequential, mainly their

[Paulee] max synth which connected to the Commodore 64 via MIDI.

[Paulee] It's this silver thing. But I went back and and kind of, you know, had a think, had a meditation almost on the Pocket five. And what astounds me about it is what range it had with different artists, you know. You had the ultra smooth tones of like Haula notes

[Paulee] on one end using the profit five, Then you had, like, John Carpenter on the other end doing all the really pretty and Japan, of course, you know, with all those crazy weird

[Paulee] cross mod sounds

[Paulee] and things like that. So I'm just I'm just absolutely blown away by the range of that synth.

[Paulee] I think it's only

[Paulee] downside is it's mono,

[Paulee] so it always works best. My my 602 works best through a stereo chorus.

[Paulee] But this has got some chorus built in. It's got plenty. Yeah. It's got plenty of effort. It's it's a winner. It's a winner. I'm I'm gonna have to nab a copy.

[Paulee] Yeah. I like to Try all the LFOs at once.

[Nick] I can unmute myself. One thing I will say before I, sorry, get on to you, Yad, is I really I I want I might do a patch flip on if I get a chance, but please, please, please, and I say this every single time, can I have some kind of way of assigning previous pass, patch, next patch onto those? Because there's no key command. There's nothing, and it's it it would really,

[Nick] really make me very happy if that ever happened. Anyway, I don't know. Yeah. Well, I know you're a fan of the g four stuff. And, I mean, I'm I'm assuming this is not have you got a profit there somewhere?

[Yoad] No. I haven't. I I used to have one. I didn't own one. I never owned one, but I used to have one that was it was many years ago. I had it for a year.

[Yoad] I never really connected to it. It's it's similar to what you said. I'm more of a kind of a Roland

[Yoad] and Korg

[Yoad] guy. You know? Give me a one zero one, and I'm there's something there's there's like a

[Yoad] you know, there's something about it. And with the with the profit,

[Yoad] it feels a bit distant. I mean, it it it's amazing. I love the sounds. Obviously, I love all the the songs that that were made using it. I have the Prophet

[Yoad] Rev two, which is not the same, and I love it. It's really good. There's something kind of cold

[Yoad] about it, which I don't mind

[Yoad] listening to, but I don't connect to it in in the same in the same way as I could connect to a Juno or a Polysix. Polysix is like, wow.

[Yoad] And

[Yoad] and even the the matrix, the the Oberheim matrix six, there's something

[Yoad] even though it's quite metallic and it uses the same components, basically, or very similar components to the to the ProFit five,

[Yoad] Something something about it feels

[Yoad] kind of warmer.

[Yoad] But having said all that, this plug in is amazing, and I want it and

[Yoad] absolutely amazing.

[Yoad] And the fact that it's mono I mean, I recently

[Yoad] reconnected

[Yoad] everything here,

[Yoad] and I connect all the synths, all the old synths,

[Yoad] which use the Chorus, like the Roland, the the j the Super JX, the Juno, the JX three p. I just connect one

[Yoad] one channel, And then I use the the TAL then I use the TAL Chorus, which is identical to the the actual Chorus

[Yoad] that lives inside them apart from the, which

[Yoad] the plug in doesn't have. And I actually sample that so I have it as a loop. And if I want that noise, I can add it to the to the port. But I'm not I don't miss it. You know, I changed the capacitors, not me personally, but I had them changed and everything. It's still so noisy. I mean, it's great, but the TAL, which is a free product and everyone should should get it right away,

[Yoad] it's just the same. I I've made a comparison,

[Yoad] using pink noise, and they're identical.

[Yoad] So

[Yoad] so that's what I use. I I connect everything, and it's great on the on the matrix and on channels as well? The

[Yoad] Alpha Juno, the what's it called? The m

[Yoad] the 50

[Yoad] I have the alpha tuner. Right? MKS. MKS 50?

[Yoad] Yeah. Yeah. And and the MKS 80, which is the Super Jupiter.

[Paulee] Oh. Just mono Oh, hello.

[Yoad] Nice. No noise. Oh, interesting. So, yeah, that's my

[Nick] That's your jam.

[Nick] Excellent. Well, think

[Nick] Take Take five. Excellent. Well, Take five, of course, is another product available in hardware. But this is I mean, I think the thing is this this is they've kind of created a bit of a

[Nick] an alliance, you know, and so GeForce are being used to sort of

[Nick] present software versions of those classic hardware since sort of officially sanctioned license, whatever. And I know that they've been

[Nick] talking to the the people at Oberheim and, you know, and Tom and various other people and and, you know, and also, I guess, that focus right now. So so I know it's yeah. So that's all good. So I'll I'll sort of and it's interesting, isn't it? Because I will we'll probably talk about another product a little bit later because it's well, because they're a sponsor anyway, so you'll hear about it whether we get to the topic or not. But it it it's really interesting how the cost of some of these plug ins is really sort of dropping. I mean, I think I think it starts it's a 69. I think I don't know if it stays there or goes up to 99, but 69 seems seems pretty low, if I'm perfectly honest, but fair enough. Right. It's a $100, isn't it, these days? It it's about a $100. Yeah. Which seems pretty, yeah, that's pretty good for for for this kind of this stuff. And I guess the the thing is then the challenge is then selling enough of them, you know, to to make it to make it work because the development is not an insignificant. I was gonna get onto another quick topic before we get to our ads so that we could have a bit of daylight between some plug in news.

[Nick] I wondered whether or not oh, yeah. Here we go. Look. So

[Nick] it's summer. We're all thinking about holidays some of the time or going away. And there there's a great article on gear news by Lassie Eilers. And I found this video by Rise Trigger, which is just basically little modular system

[Nick] on a beach, just kind of

[Nick] battery powered random, you know. This is this is to signify the topic, is, you know, what battery powered or portable things are you likely to take away with you? You know, they they come up with a lot of good calls as

[Nick] Ira Compact, Teenage Engineering,

[Nick] SonicWare, Reface, MicroKorg two, which incidentally has a 128 plug in slots, not 32, I originally thought, which is pretty impressive. So that might make a difference. That's battery powered.

[Nick] I would I didn't see any the k o two wasn't on there. The the Akai sample, which I believe is now in stock, it's back there. I've because that look those both look like things. But the we've all been there, haven't we? I mean, right back from the my first tour where, oh, I must take all of these things with me because I'm gonna be so creative in the hotel room writing stuff. I'm not gonna be lying there either

[Nick] over refreshed or comatose after a really hard day's work. So we've been there, but I wonder whether or not I mean, Charlie, you've taught a lot. Right? Do you think you would take would you take so what would you take battery powered now for that moment of inspiration in the middle of nowhere, or would you like to just leave it all in the studio and forget about it?

[Charlie] Well, if it's a vacation we're talking about then, yeah, I don't wanna be I don't wanna be bringing some, you know, a modular rig down the beach. That's the last thing I want. But I recognize that that's that that's not a typical viewpoint.

[Charlie] On tour, I would always have,

[Charlie] you know, I was on for for better or worse, I was the guy who had to manage and and sort out the portable

[Charlie] studio,

[Charlie] which

[Charlie] in the early days was meant two racks the size of refrigerators

[Charlie] with, you know, d a 80 eights and

[Charlie] an old Mac Quadra and that sort of things. In the current days though, I I would gravitate towards the SonicWare stuff, which I don't have any of. But every time I'm over at Perfect Circuit, the local, you know, boutique synth shop, they've always got one or two I mean, SonicWare seem to release a lot of instruments fairly rapidly. And there's always one or two sitting out on on display. So you can grab a pair of headphones and go nuts. And I've definitely

[Charlie] been tempted

[Charlie] by that stuff because it's it's very immediate and quick and there's, you know, a very small three digit display. So you're kind of everything's right at the surface. And that seems in the most out of the current crop of stuff, that seems like the most, interesting, and it's quite inexpensive too. Some of their boxes are 3 or $400.

[Charlie] So that's

[Charlie] that's the direction I'd be looking first.

[Nick] Interesting. That's an interesting thought. I know yeah. And I know you sometimes go to a holiday apartment or whatever or apartment and and and but you I mean, it's laptop and a controller and a small interface. I mean, do you do you is it all about in the box to you when you do that sort of thing? Absolutely. I I want to when I'm away,

[Yoad] I want to recreate

[Yoad] the environment I have here as much as possible. I'm I'm not too bothered about all the analog stuff and the nave and all that. I just want to get stuff done.

[Yoad] And

[Yoad] so yeah. So recently,

[Yoad] I've been even taking my

[Yoad] Mac mini,

[Yoad] the the m four pro, which is actually lighter

[Yoad] than

[Yoad] a laptop. So a laptop is, like, three kilos, and this one is 700 grams. And with the hard drives, which are nothing, I just throw it in the bag, and then

[Yoad] I get access to a screen, like a four k

[Yoad] screen. And I don't even have to

[Yoad] I used to to make sure that my laptop is fully synced to my to my desktop computer. So the same plug ins, the same everything,

[Yoad] which is kind of 80 there probably. But when you actually take the same machine, that's amazing because you just plug it in,

[Yoad] and it works, and you're in the same situation. So for me no. I'm not gonna use it on the beach.

[Yoad] For that, yeah, I would take I would use a laptop. So I'm not

[Yoad] I'm not that kind of guy. Right. Know many many viewers of the channel are,

[Yoad] but I'm I'm a studio person,

[Yoad] and I want to recreate that experience

[Yoad] as closely as possible wherever I am.

[Nick] Yeah. No. Fair enough. I I know. I I I sort of thought you might go that direction. And I I mean, I'm the same. You know, when I went to Spain, I took essentially what's in front of me

[Nick] to Spain, you know, at with a with a a CME keyboard. Because, I mean, taking synthesizers and whatnot. But, I mean, what's really interesting now is you can power so many things from from a power bank and all those MyVault step ups and rip cores and all that sort of thing. So, Paulie, I've got this I've got this notion. So you've got two young kids. You probably haven't started collecting tokens for budget caravan holidays on the West Wales Coast yet, but you will. And I'm wondering what you'll take with you when that happens.

[Paulee] I think

[Paulee] the MC one in one is an absolute winner. It's

[Paulee] it's because it's got I know the screen's tiny, but you can kind of learn it. And essentially, you get a full

[Paulee] Zencore engine.

[Paulee] You get

[Paulee] god knows how many samples. With all the patterns and all the scenes, you can, like, have like, I ran my entire live show from this in France,

[Paulee] which was a bit seat of your pants, but I did it, and it worked. So,

[Paulee] you know, if you don't mind a little bit of menu diving, then then it packs so much into

[Paulee] small space. Something that's a bit more friendly

[Paulee] is

[Paulee] the what's it called again? The mega synthesis.

[Paulee] Yeah. Mine is Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

[Paulee] skin on it.

[Paulee] But it's, you know, four four operator FM

[Paulee] with, I think, one channel of sampling,

[Paulee] four bit grungy sampling,

[Paulee] and a bunch of presets from Yuzo Koshiro, who wrote all the Streets of Rage games for Sega music.

[Paulee] It's just an absolute winner.

[Paulee] Just, you know, in my video, I was able to really

[Paulee] and this is the thing to its credit. You can really push it out side of video game music as well and make something, you know, very unusual because it's got the

[Paulee] the effects on it. And the final thing, of course, is everyone needs a Game Boy. Well, everyone in my generation needs a Game Boy.

[Paulee] There's so many if you get a flash card for your Game Boy, there's so many cool little

[Paulee] music making

[Paulee] bits of software available from a simple, like, electric drum that you can play with the the buttons to full

[Paulee] kind of sequence in wavetable sense and stuff like that. So

[Paulee] big shout out to all the Game Boy musicians of the world because there they are with these tiny screens making absolute, you know, legendary compositions.

[Nick] So that's my thoughts on battery powered synths. And nobody can see whether they're gaming or making music, which I suppose is kind of No. Interesting.

[Nick] Interesting. Right. Well, I'm gonna stop things there and just bring a mention in. I mentioned that we have one of the products that I was gonna talk about. It was a sponsor, so I might as well play the ad now. So we're back after this. Yes. Indeed. That was what all the teasing was about. So, yes, Cherry Audio

[Nick] ESQ one. This is another synth that kinda passed me by. My synthesizer

[Nick] my and and sonic involvement ended at the Mirage. Mirage was I was my first sampler. I drove many, many, many, many miles when I was I remember very vividly. I hired a car. I drove to the Far East Of England. I picked up this thing. It was in a flight case, and I had to get back in time to be there for a sound check at the club I was a house engineer for. So it was like I was probably on the road for about eight hours. And so I couldn't even play with it when I got home because because I just couldn't. And I do remember when I did. So this the Ensonic that's that's where my Ensonicness ended. So I know for a lot of other people, I mean, I know there are some really big expanse. I mean, I think Adansky is probably one of the biggest

[Nick] poster child in The UK pop scene perhaps for the Ensonic because of killer, which was done. I don't think it was an ESQ one. I forget what it was that that that was, but somebody will know. I'm sure. 80, I think. SQ 80. Right. SQ 80. Maybe. Similar sort of lots of similar sort of technology. I don't know. Jorad, did this Yeah. Did this did the SQ one figure in your in your musical journey to where you are?

[Yoad] Absolutely.

[Yoad] I

[Yoad] remember

[Yoad] I didn't own one, but I worked with this

[Yoad] psychedelic trans

[Yoad] band duo.

[Yoad] And

[Yoad] they had one, and it was unbelievable.

[Yoad] They they we did a whole track just using that.

[Yoad] And

[Yoad] in order to get actually, it's funny speaking of Adamski and Seal.

[Yoad] Around

[Yoad] the same time, there was

[Yoad] what's the song?

[Yoad] It's the same song that Adamski did with

[Yoad] but with the Trevor Horn production,

[Yoad] which had this filter sweep.

[Nick] Crazy. Yes. Crazy. Right. Okay. Right. And it had this,

[Yoad] you know, that kind of filter sweep. And we tried to do that. Obviously,

[Yoad] you didn't have any controllers to control the filter or anything like that. So what we ended up doing

[Yoad] was sampling

[Yoad] a filter sweep.

[Yoad] So we use the the base station for that. So we sample the filter sweep

[Yoad] like that, and then we assigned the modulation wheel

[Yoad] to the sample start. So once so when you play it, it's like,

[Yoad] you know, you play it and then the sample start. Start time. So it's Yeah. Every time it triggers a different place, and so we managed to get that with with Ensonic. That was that was quite fun.

[Yoad] But, yeah, really good. I I have a lot of memories from the Mirage as well. I remember I used to it sounded so kind of shit, basically. I mean, now in retrospect, it's amazing. It's like a almost like a digital Mellotron and and all that. But at the time, it sounded really shit. So I used to run it through the Clark Technique,

[Yoad] third octave.

[Yoad] Oh, EQ. EQ. And I just used to take, like, a pen and just push all the bends all the way up. So with all the phasing and all the kind of sweetness that it added, it made it sound a little bit better.

[Nick] But Oh, it was all about the film. So I'm sure about that. Get my hands on on this Cherry Audio

[Yoad] synth as well because it sounds like it it replicates the the vibe very accurately,

[Nick] definitely. It's a it's the

[Yoad] You muted yourself, Nick.

[Nick] On hold.

[Nick] Yeah. The latest from Cherry is authorized digital waveforms, obviously, from the original $69.

[Nick] You know? Again, just bringing the price of these things down. So I really like, actually, the one thing that Cherry already did very well is the effects.

[Nick] I know certainly with the SH five, they did where you could take effect sends sort of post oscillator,

[Nick] post one other one of the filter, they're all post band filter. So you have completely different sort of points. I don't know if they've done the same on this. I would imagine there's something similar going on. I really like the way that works. I know it's interesting. And now I remember. I remember when I bought my first multi timbral keyboard, which turned out to be a Korg m one. At the time, I was wondering whether I was buying an m one or maybe I was gonna go for an Ensonic,

[Nick] one of those maybe SQ one of the multi timbral ones because they they were no longer in being made,

[Nick] but they were really they had been really expensive. So but I didn't because I think in the end, the piano sound wasn't as good as the m one for the time. So that's probably where I I diverted. I don't know. Charlie, you you got Fonda and Sonic memories or ESQ

[Charlie] particularly? I mean, I like many, Mirage was my first sampler that I owned, which was quite a step down from

[Charlie] the Fairlight, which I was renting time on at the time. And I foolishly thought there was gonna be some equivalency between

[Charlie] a Fairlight

[Charlie] and a Mirage, which there is some equivalency in that. I guess technically both are samplers, but beyond that, the the comparison ends. But I did get a lot of mileage out of the Mirage

[Charlie] back in the day. And I do remember although I never had

[Charlie] an e s q one or s q 80 or any of the later Ensoniq instruments, but I do remember at the the one job that I ever had, which was working at the the Sam Ash Music Store on 48th Street in Manhattan, fresh out of school,

[Charlie] there was

[Charlie] an employee there who know, some employee each salesman would sort of gravitate towards one brand and would be he would be the core guy or the Roland guy in the store. So, oh, if you wanna talk about Roland since, go see Phil. He's the Roland guy. And there was one employee, Joe Albano. Hi, Joe, if you're out there. Who was, for a minute, kind of the Ensonic guy. And he would dominate with this sort of stack of Ensonic instruments and would create sequence demos using the onboard sequencers,

[Charlie] which were amazing

[Charlie] and which sold a lot of Ensonix when when customers would hear what he could whip up just on the built in sequencers and with the built in sounds on those instruments. So they're always hugely impressive

[Charlie] and a bit of a sort of a left turn from what was the sort of rompler stuff that Korg, was doing. And then Sonic stuff with their sort of way not exactly wavetable,

[Charlie] but waveform

[Charlie] synthesis was

[Charlie] an unusual take with surprisingly

[Charlie] good results. And I know that it was that those instruments were super widely used. Again, maybe it's an American thing. They were everywhere

[Charlie] in for that short period of time because they are they were an American based or or company

[Charlie] to some degree. And

[Charlie] so but one thing I'm super impressed by and really glad to see is that Cherry have implement they've licensed all the waveforms, so they're allowed to call it an ESQ, an Ensoniq brand name.

[Charlie] But they've also implemented a data exchange so you can do sis exclusive patch dumps

[Charlie] from the hardware to and I've, you know, I've done that with great success on the with the hardware profit versus that are still somewhere in the rack over there and the Arturia

[Charlie] profit versus v plug in. And that is a huge

[Charlie] step forward in for anybody who did own the originals or maybe still has them and being able to kind of move diagonally or sideways into a software emulation and still take advantage of their decades of patches they've accumulated. So I love to see that the Cherry have done that, and I wish we'd see it in more sense, like in the hopefully, Arturia will implement something for the their emulation of the matrix 12 and expander because I got a lot of patches in my expander that I would love to move over to the software equivalent without sort of manually fiddling the parameters and looking at the display on the hardware and trying to match it and so on. So I love that they've done that and good on them.

[Nick] I wonder how much work it is for the sort of niche the niche of, you know, how that yeah. But I I might I might match for I know, Paulie. There's something about digital waveforms like this. Obviously, they had digital waveforms that frankly were fairly raw and not that nice sounding,

[Nick] which were then went into

[Nick] a Curtis filter, wasn't it, basically? I mean, it was that that seemed to be the approach that they took. Right?

[Paulee] Yeah. Yeah. So Bob Yans, who developed the the dock chip, which is the kind of heart of the digital waveforms,

[Paulee] he originally did the SID, the Commodore 64 SID,

[Paulee] which is cool. And then dock was his next sort of step, and

[Paulee] he he he had digital triangle, square, saw waves in the Commodore 64. So he added a bunch more in the

[Paulee] the SQ one.

[Paulee] And

[Paulee] it's

[Paulee] it's amazing because for the time,

[Paulee] it let you get so nasty, honestly.

[Paulee] You know, like, people people I mean, I don't even think the most

[Paulee] the heaviest heaviest crazy deranged music,

[Paulee] which I love, came, you know, sort of nineties ish, you know, where we turned distortion up to temp. But with an e s q one, you can actually

[Paulee] just

[Paulee] create just absolute legions of grit and filth by just using

[Paulee] they've implemented things like hard sync and AM

[Paulee] on these digital waveforms

[Paulee] with no care

[Paulee] for, like, you know, trying to stop the alias in.

[Paulee] I think it was assumed that you'd filter it down, you know, if you wanted to to make it sweet. Much. Yeah. Yes. So it is absolutely capable

[Paulee] of some of the most

[Paulee] vile, amazing tones that you're gonna get, especially the sync. Sync on waveforms, which aren't your classic analog waveforms is is a bit of a treat.

[Paulee] So, yeah, excited for this one. I don't have any SQ one. I've got a VFX, which was the

[Paulee] sort of first rumpler instrument, though it had some trans waves on it as well, like wave tably things.

[Paulee] And I've got the EPS 16 plus sampler, which is,

[Paulee] again, amazing. I want to see that in software ideally

[Paulee] because there's things that it does with samples, which I can't do anywhere else. And, you know, it's aging, and it's got a VFD screen. And if it goes down, I'm gonna have to spend loads of money getting another one. Is the VFD it does. I'm curious. Does anybody is the VFD, is that similar technology that's in the domino?

[Paulee] It is.

[Paulee] Ah. Yeah. Okay. Interesting. They got like an

[Paulee] they got a new company to make them for them,

[Paulee] I think. But I think it uses a more modern technique, so they'll have a longer

[Paulee] longer shelf life. But, yeah, VFDs are surprisingly rare

[Paulee] nowadays.

[Nick] Interesting. Vacuum fluorescent display for anyone who doesn't know what it is. You you all nerds listening. You know what a VFD is. I I forget because when in my review, I just I I sort of glossed over the fact that it was a screen I I screen technology that I sort of said it reminded me of eighties pioneer high famps.

[Paulee] That's exactly what it is. And also, when I went to Bristronica,

[Paulee] I saw it from about three meters away and it was I know I was in total train spot on mode. I was like, is that a VFD? So I walked over to the Domino and had a good minute just staring at the screen, changing parameters, and going, wow. This display is really something. I didn't even play it the first time. Just looked just looked at the display. To the screen.

[Nick] That is proper nerd. That is. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Anyway, available now as ever, and we thank them for the obviously, they're sponsors of the show. You you know that because I didn't play a video. I just played the ad. So pretty much that was out yesterday. There's a really there's a long video with Tim Shuberge who does a deep dive into it if you wanna have a look at that. Again, that may be something that I'll get around to doing a patch flip. I might line up a bunch because there was also did you see the UVI rumble? That was interesting. Maybe I'll put maybe we'll do that one because that's that's actually quite an interesting

[Nick] approach for synthesizer. I'll play I'll play this now. Will I play it now? I might have to do the ad. Maybe I should do an ad first and then come back. I'm sorry they're a bit close together, but we were having such fun chatting. I'll be back after this.

[Yoad] So one second.

[Nick] Oh, yeah.

[Yoad] I want to say that I was looking for replacement

[Yoad] for my aging BCR 2,000,

[Yoad] and I went for the

[Yoad] for the Novation

[Yoad] launch control XL,

[Yoad] and I have to say that I'm really enjoying it. It's really solid. It's really good. It's very compact, so it fits here.

[Yoad] And

[Yoad] I used

[Yoad] Claude to program it. So I now have rather than

[Yoad] using the software to manually enter, like, all the all the parameters, I now have four pages from control one to control ones one two seven or zero to one two seven, and it's all mapped. Amazing. Claude created a

[Yoad] c like, four c six files, which I uploaded

[Yoad] to the machine.

[Yoad] Works great. I don't use it as a logic controller. I just use it as a generic

[Yoad] kind of MIDI controller.

[Nick] Really liking it. Just Excellent. To say. Yeah. Nice. Well, I'm glad to hear that. They are sadly leaving us, I think, at the end of the month. So if anyone else wants to pick up their slot, consider this an ad for an ad. I suppose I shouldn't say that, but anyway, I'll put it up there.

[Nick] So, yeah, this is what was I gonna go to next? I was going to the yeah. Yeah. The UVI, wasn't I? That's right. Here we go. Yeah. This was just out.

[Nick] I downloaded this actually and had a little play with it. It's a really interesting idea. I mean, basically, virtual analog, but what it does is split the sound into multiband. So you get a baseband generation,

[Nick] mid band generation,

[Nick] and high band generation. I mean, it's

[Nick] there's quite a lot of different, you know, sounds in here, but I found it just by moving those sliders across between the frequencies, you can make such dramatic changes to the sound and send each band to its own set of effects. It was real I thought it was quite an interesting thing. I I currently want it's $99

[Nick] reduced from $1.09 9. It's a bit more expensive, but I just thought, oh, this is really good. I don't I'll come to you, Jorg. I mean, I know you've developed software, so you often appreciate these kind of alternative approaches. I've I've never seen this before. Have you seen anything like this?

[Yoad] No. Not in this sense. I mean, there are a lot of kind of multi temporal

[Yoad] kind of scenes that that use different

[Yoad] morphing vectors and things like that. But that's a that's a quite a fresh take.

[Yoad] I wonder what happens to the phasing

[Yoad] when you have

[Yoad] highly correlated

[Yoad] parts,

[Yoad] especially between the the mid and the highs. So I I suppose that the way to use it is to have something quite plucky for the highs,

[Yoad] something

[Yoad] different for the for the mids. So maybe something long for the lows and the mids and something more plucky for the highs, and then you can

[Yoad] I I'm sure it has, like, a sort of LFO

[Yoad] control that you can assign to the to the crossover because that will be Yeah? That that will be great.

[Yoad] Yeah. Seems like a really, really cool concept. I like the UVI. I don't

[Yoad] I have one product of theirs,

[Yoad] and I never got into into their kind of universe. I know that they have a lot of stuff,

[Yoad] and

[Yoad] they're known for their sample libraries and things, but they do have a lot of synt engines and and things. So

[Yoad] interesting.

[Nick] Interesting. Yeah. Definitely. Yeah. Well, the one thing that's in because you move not only do move the frequencies, it's like a multiband crossover. You can drag

[Nick] the level of the relative levels of those at the same time as well. It's clearly interesting. I don't know, Paul, if you've I've never seen anything like this before. I wasn't sure how it was gonna sound. I mean, I downloaded it and and played a few patches. It's again another thing that I might do a patch flip for. And it sounded because you can play it polyphonically as well, which is kind of interesting if you choose. So it's not just a bass synths like some bass synths that say they are up far, if you see what I mean.

[Paulee] Yeah. Yeah. No. Definitely. I could I could see you going so many different ways with this. So I think maybe a bass synth is the

[Paulee] serving suggestion. You know, like you get on a packet of food, you have a serving suggestion. I think that's bay base is the serving suggestion here. But,

[Paulee] I can imagine you can make perks, you could probably make

[Paulee] things which morph

[Paulee] really quite drastically as time goes on.

[Paulee] I think this would be another one which would make great sample fodder, you know, if you if you

[Paulee] created a cool sound

[Paulee] and then sampled it, multi sampled it, whatever, maybe added even more effects after.

[Paulee] I think it's a real sort of good building block synth. And

[Paulee] as regarding

[Paulee] if it's original, I I think it is original all in one.

[Paulee] You can, of course, you know, take

[Paulee] you can take one synth and and split it into a multiband splitter and put different effects on on each time, or you can get two different synths and obviously

[Paulee] put them through a multiband separator.

[Paulee] But it's all quite fiddly,

[Paulee] you know. Yeah. It's interesting. Really know what you want and what you're doing. And I tend to do it more on guitars where I want the low notes to have something

[Paulee] and the high notes to have a completely different sound.

[Paulee] But I haven't seen it done all there when you're altering the sound, you know, just to put it there. So I think it's pretty cool. It's pretty original.

[Nick] Interesting idea. I think, Charlie, you could make some fairly horrible and terrifying sounds down down in the basement as it were with something like this. It does look pretty interesting.

[Charlie] And I I'm surprised and ashamed to say I haven't bought it yet, but

[Charlie] I think that's it's gotta be on my list. And it's it's interesting because one thing I've found I've just been lately getting more and more deeply into

[Charlie] Serum two, the excellent Mhmm. Hard wavetable synth from Steve Duda of Expert Records, which has become a staple in a lot of sort of EDM and dubstep and brostep kind of genres because of some of the weird routings and and excellent effects that you can do. And one thing I discovered

[Charlie] that's kind of similar to the UVI Rumble, although much more basic. On a lot of Mhmm. The more ex there's some extreme patches

[Charlie] available for serum

[Charlie] that are in that sort of dubstep web category.

[Charlie] And some of them are just so aggressive and just speaker destroyingly loud,

[Charlie] but still have some clarity in the bottom end. And as I was poking around and dissecting some of these patches that I had found,

[Charlie] I discovered some of the routings that are possible in Serum where there's a sort of mixer, much like you were saying with the Cherry Audio ESQ,

[Charlie] you can apply effects

[Charlie] individually to either oscillator or or both or to the post filter signal or post filter one and post filter two. And some of those patches that I was amazed at that had in serum two that had a very warped wave shaped top end, but clear bottom end. We're using that kind of programming technique where some one oscillator would be routed around the effects, whereas the other one was going through some extreme distortions. And that's how they were able to maintain

[Charlie] a clear and clean signal path for one part of the spectra, and then a very grungy and distorted signal path for a different frequency range within a single sound. And so just seeing seeing that little clip about UVI Rumble where you can see the crossover points moving, and then it kinda clicked just

[Charlie] thirty seconds ago that, ah, this might be a more sort of full featured take on what a lot of programmers had done to create some of my favorite sounds in Serum. So Mhmm. That's it definitely bears a closer look for me. Yeah. It might make it a little more what

[Paulee] was I saying? Instinctive, know, bit easier to program. Yes. Go pull it. Yeah. Just very, very quickly, Charlie. You've always mentioned your list and putting synths on your list. How long is that list now? Have you got an idea of idea

[Paulee] for our viewers and listeners? Oh, he's he's It's long. He's like Oh.

[Paulee] Yeah. Cupping his forehead in despair. Wow. Yeah. I did just get There's always something new. Messing

[Charlie] well, I've been messing around with plug in managers to kind of help me deal with the soft synth and plug in load. And there's there's a few excellent that was another, you know, sort of very short topic, but little utilities that let you manage plug in lists and deal with things like the the weird ecosystem of waves plug ins and UAD.

[Charlie] Those little utilities have kind of matured

[Charlie] greatly

[Charlie] in the past couple of months. And, you know, first there were some very simple, basic utilities that let you turn on and off plug ins that weren't much better than the built in capabilities in logic to toggle plug ins off. But recently, there've been a few plug in managers that have kind of matured and offer loading and saving of sets of plug ins and that can automatically check for check the manufacturer's website for updates from a central

[Charlie] interface and things So like I've been I've been using some of those to try to help lighten the load and Try to help reason I mentioned them is that one one of those utilities I've been trying out different ones and one of them kinda gives you a master count of all the files that it has scanned on its first launch, and the number was in the eight the eight thousands.

[Charlie] Now, of course Is it called plug in is it called plug in therapy by any chance? It feels like it should be. Yes. It be. And of course that that that number counts, you know, every plug in installed probably counts for three, an AAX, a VST three, and an audio unit. But still seeing that number is sort of seeing that number in the eight thousands was a bit like, you know, seeing your test results from your cholesterol test or something at the doctor's office. The hidden it's the hidden killer. Exactly.

[Paulee] Exactly.

[Nick] Explains the furrowed brow when I ask then. It's an interesting point though. Mean, I don't know. Yeah, do you usually because I have the logic. There are tricks that you do. Do you use Plug in Manager at all? Because I imagine you've got a lot of stuff maybe that's beta testing, not not current, you know, whatever. Do you have a or do you just Yeah. But actually

[Yoad] You know, I I received a lot of I get a lot of plugins, and I and I try a lot of stuff, and I have a lot of kind of prototypes.

[Yoad] So my my plugin folder is is quite,

[Yoad] you know, messy.

[Yoad] And, I used Claude to,

[Yoad] take the list to build me a list of plug ins because when you when you look at the components I use audio units. So when you look at the component folder,

[Yoad] sometimes you see a plug in name, and it's not associated with the with the brand name. So sometimes it could be quite random. And if I want to delete it, so

[Yoad] it it it's it's a bit risky.

[Yoad] So I asked Claude to I gave it the folder, the entire folder, and I asked it to to make a list

[Yoad] where where where each brand

[Yoad] is associated with its plugins.

[Yoad] And, although I didn't want I could

[Yoad] have let it delete the stuff that, I've not been using and stuff, but I wanted to do it manually. So it took, like, an hour.

[Yoad] But then I deleted a lot of stuff that that I wasn't using. Sometimes I

[Yoad] you know, when I test stuff and and

[Yoad] not to mention when there's work in progress on on a product or something like that, then I have to to move all the content of the components folder to a temporary folder and back and things like that.

[Yoad] And if there's something I'm not sure of or something that I haven't used for a while, I I use it to an unused AU, and then I can

[Yoad] know? So, yes, I do that a lot, but that's part of of my work. You know? So I do that and other stuff and registry and what have you. So I do that kind of stuff all the time.

[Nick] I wonder if there's a way because, I mean, it might make sense to, you know, last used, for instance. Last used, they just build a database that says last used on this track in this project. That would be a useful thing to be able to to have a query for. Not not per project, but what you can do, every every time you open a plug in in Logic, it creates a database entry.

[Yoad] So what you can do is delete all of them

[Yoad] and then

[Yoad] let it create it every time let let it create the entry every time you open a plug in. So then if you sort the folder by date, you'll have an idea about what you've actually used. And the stuff that's not in this list means that it hasn't been hasn't been used at all. Interesting. Interesting.

[Nick] Wow. What a first world problem. But, you know, nonetheless, still still Yeah. Come out. Well, I mean, it it comes back to this notion that, you know, music

[Nick] has gravitated towards being, you know, ever since it became digital. There's an IT aspect to it, isn't there, which many of us Yeah. Yeah. You know, who don't who don't come up with creative names for final final final version, you know, it just it's hell. I mean, I know, you know, some people don't have any concept of it, you know, and there's, you know, obviously, worse when you work at if you work on a Google Drive, for instance, you could save multiple versions of the same file name. Yeah. And it's just like when when when my partner says, I'm working on this letter for something or other, and she go and then she go, well, I don't know which one it is. And it's like, well, why don't you name them? Because otherwise, you'll never see you'll it's just particularly views not on iPad. It's very hard to see views in the right way with date modified and all that stuff. Yeah. Sorry. You were about to say something.

[Paulee] Just if it's a final final final project,

[Paulee] it'll probably be called, you know, song

[Paulee] final version

[Paulee] mixed down,

[Paulee] and then f off in capital letters.

[Paulee] To just to warn anyone who comes in here, you know,

[Nick] you know, lose all hope, ye who enter here. When you go to caps, then you know it's serious. Don't you start lowercase,

[Nick] then go to caps. Sorry.

[Yoad] I've never I've never done that. I always number my versions. I never give them any titles.

[Yoad] One, two, zero one, zero two, so then the the kind of Nice. You know, over 10, it it doesn't mix up. It doesn't do it on on max anymore, but you because you don't wanna jinx it. When you when you label something final, of course, it won't be the final. So why why bother? You know? Just don't do it. Exactly. Just number them.

[Nick] It's never over. The mix that was never over Beautiful thing. Well, that's interesting. That no. But that's interesting. Unless, of course, you go into the hundreds, and then you need zero zero. And, you know, that starts to get then then then then you're, Charlie, I'm I'm I'm guessing

[Yoad] most the the highest I got to was, like, 23 or something like that. That was a nightmare album.

[Yoad] And one one song in particular went to version 23.

[Nick] And I could tell it. You've scarred. You've scarred. You remember the number even? Scarred.

[Nick] Yeah. Charlie, I noticed you looked a little a little sheepish then when I was mentioning that. But, I mean, in your world,

[Nick] film world, you'll do it's not like just you. It's like the director or the producer or whoever. So you must have, you know, this was the version that that I was happy with, the director was happy with, but the producer wanted a tweak. And then when I tweaked it, the producer wasn't hap you know? Do you know what I mean? Do do you get into all of that, I guess?

[Charlie] I mean, I've been very lucky when I talked to other composers

[Charlie] working in a similar vein.

[Charlie] A lot of them seem to have a a bit more struggles with that than I've been blessed with. Part of that's because of, like, the Saw movies franchise is almost like a a family business, like running a farm stand or something where it's the same sort of crew at the core of the thing for most of these movies across twenty years. So there's been some

[Charlie] easing of those kind of issues with that. But early on,

[Charlie] some of the first scoring work I did, I I quickly

[Charlie] realized that I needed to have a a single and coherent and clear way of numbering and naming everything,

[Charlie] whether it's an individual audio track within a LogicSong.

[Charlie] And so that it could be easily identifiable and utterly unique and would never there would never be a file, certainly never a file called, you know, audio one dash o one.

[Charlie] But also not a to we would extend that concept to never always making sure that we had utterly unique titles for every piece of music. And when you're getting into the thousands of pieces of music, I think that the sum total of film and TV queues over the past twenty some years is over 10,000 individual pieces of music that all had a title.

[Charlie] And it would be a disaster if you're scoring a weekly TV series

[Charlie] about, you know, a crime drama.

[Charlie] It would be a disaster if you had a piece of music called Car Chase.

[Charlie] Because chances are there would be another piece of music called Car next

[Charlie] week. And so we would always make and my music editor who would work up the cue sheets during the spotting sessions, he developed a system where instead of using like a dedicated

[Charlie] cue sheet software or a spreadsheet, he would use a database and he would

[Charlie] be so that then each show was a single record

[Charlie] database, like a card and a Rolodex. And he would set the the parameters of the database to he would check the checkbox in the queue title field

[Charlie] for force unique values

[Charlie] so that it would check all the titles of all the previous pieces of music that he had entered over the years. And if he was entering

[Charlie] car chase or whatever Yeah. For the second time, it would say, no. It's not allowed, man. So but that that we would make sure that everything was named very uniquely. Never something called shootout or gunfight or car chase, but always had a a unique and easily memorable

[Charlie] title, and it's made life so much easier when you get into the multiple year long

[Charlie] gigs like TV series type of stuff. Yeah. I can imagine.

[Nick] Fascinating insights. Thank you so much. I I'm gonna wrap things up now because I am I'm going to knock off once I've done this, and I'm gonna go and watch England play at 09:00. So I'm I'm I'm getting quite excited. I'm gonna start getting getting ready. I I I'm not like yeah. I'm not gonna be draping myself in the flag or wearing the key. I was gonna say, is it getting ready? No. No. Putting on face face makeup and I'll have a look. Yeah. I've got yes. May no. It's not gonna be anything like that, but it is I'm quite excited anyway. So thank you so much. Yarad, I'm guessing are you back to work now, or do you get to knock off at a reasonable hour today? I think I'm gonna call it today for for today.

[Yoad] And it it's my my daughter's birthday tomorrow, so we're gonna do something nice this evening.

[Yoad] Excellent. I'll get back to it tomorrow.

[Nick] Nice. Well, well, that's thank you very much. Thank you for joining us. I know you've been busy. It's much appreciated that you give up your time like this. Very much so. And, Paulie, I'm guessing you're back to well, I mean, you don't keep regular hours anymore. You just gotta work around the kids. Right? That's the other problem. Working at home the whole time, you will be constantly available for. Can you just can I? I've just got to yeah. That's that's one thing. I love it. You just gotta yeah. Okay. Yeah.

[Paulee] So I need to get an office is what you're saying.

[Nick] Well, need to see how it goes. Journal down the street. No.

[Paulee] So,

[Paulee] yes, next up, I think once the Iridium interview is done, I'm gonna edit the next episode of Retrocast, which is gonna be Mono Lake, Robert Henker,

[Paulee] all about how he uses Commodore PET computers live. I use, you know, Amigas and and nineties computers live. I think he's absolutely bar me for trying to use seventies computers live, but it works.

[Paulee] And after

[Paulee] that, I've got in the can as well an interview with

[Paulee] Gavin who was DJ Aphrodite in the nineties who did loads of cool jungle music. So I'll be editing those podcasts together and then putting them out. So Nice job. That will keep me busy.

[Nick] Of course. That is, of course, the retro cast, which is available on the I can say it. I think I can say the Sonic State Network because we've got more than one podcast on it, so that makes us a network. So,

[Nick] yeah, episode

[Paulee] is it three or four? I forget now is coming up. So, yeah, brilliant. That'll be good. Episode four will be coming up. Episode three was all about pirate radio, by the way. So if you didn't check out lesson episode three,

[Paulee] you can find out how they nicked things off the top of traffic lights to make pirate radio work in the nineties. Nice. It was amazing. Yeah. That's all podpod.sonicstate.com

[Nick] is where you can find all that stuff. And, Charlie, I know you got up an ungodly hour. Well, I don't know. You might be one of those people who gets up at five and drinks kale.

[Nick] Oh, okay. Well, that's fine. I'm glad to hear it. But thank you so much for making yourself available. It's been lovely to have you. I know we haven't had you for a while. Have you got a day in in in gainful employment ahead of you, or are you chilling?

[Charlie] Yeah. No. I'm gonna dig into

[Charlie] a couple of tracks by the cellist, Tina Guo, who performs with Hans Zimmer on tour and plays on a lot of his scores. And she's got a solo yet another solo project that, she wants to have some, industrial grime.

[Charlie] So she kindly approached me about, adding some dirt and flavor to her new project, so I'm gonna dig into that today.

[Nick] Excellent. That sounds fantastic. I am somewhat disappointed that there's no rust in your control room, because, I mean, it feels like that'd be something something you could have somewhere. But lovely. Thank you ever so much, everybody. It's been an absolute pleasure. That was Sonic Talk episode

[Nick] 897.

[Nick] Is that no. Eight yeah. 897. I think that's right. That seems Well I think I think I might have jumped up a a number. I'm not sure that's right. I think it might be 8 100 and anyway, whatever. This episode's over. We'll be back. Well, I'll make sure the numbers add up in the end anyway. That's fair. Thank you very much, everybody, and thank you for

[Nick] everybody in the chat room. See you later. Take care. Bye bye.