En este post quiero compartir una entrevista que hizo Keyboard Magazine a Richard Barbieri, tecladista británico conocido por haber pertenecido a la banda de new age Japan y por ser un miembro actual de la banda de rock progresivo Porcupine Tree.
Desde mi punto de vista, lo que hace que este artista sobresalga es su habilidad y creatividad como diseñador de sonido y programador. Siempre he admirado a los músicos que no sólo se preocupan por componer o interpretar, sino que también se preocupan por descubrir o conseguir un sonido específico, independientemente del instrumento que ejecuten, ya que al hacer esto nos recuerdan que las fronteras de la música se expanden hacia el infinito.
Living Sound: Richard Barbieri brings years of synth programming
mastery to progressive rock and cutting edge electronica – by Scott
Healy
Richard Barbieri breathes life into the circuits and
transistors that create electronic sound. His career spans four decades
and bridges many trends and eras in electronic music production, and
fans of post-punk British pop and electronica will fondly remember the
work he did in the ‘70s and early ‘80s with the seminal band Japan. His
first solo release, Things Buried, is a lush sonic journey whose
intensity comes from Richard’s craft of sound design and manipulation –
and draws a compelling contrast to the edgy progressive art-metal-pop
band Porcupine Tree. His palette with the group varies from thick prog
pads and strings to icy pianos and burning leads, an arsenal he
constantly tweaks in real time on stage. In the studio, his approach is
similar, but regardless of location, for Richard, the performance of
the sounds is the key.
Electronic pop music was born in the world
of bulky modules and messy patch cords, and soon became the realm of
those who could consistently coax musically useful sounds out of some
early synthesizers, most of which were underpowered, quirky, expensive,
and built with obtuse interfaces. Players like Barbieri, who came up in
this challenging age, have a different outlook than the archetypal
modern music superstore shopper. The programming techniques that, at
the time, seemed the invention of necessity (or perhaps of sonic
deprivation) became valuable skills which electronic pop and rock
musicians would later turn towards. And Barbieri’s work remains true to
that pop-electronica lineage. You won’t hear solos, or even standard
song form. But what you will hear, like in good orchestral music, is
the beauty in the details. Rich sound layers meld, while sonic motifs
build and morph into other musical textures as the track moves through
the electronic landscape.
To some digerati, the onset of
digital synthesis, sampling, and now inexpensive one-touch synths might
render Barbieri’s hard-won skill set quaint at best. But the variety,
depth, and the intensity of the sound design and realtime sound
manipulation on Things Buried and Fear of a Blank Planet amply
demonstrate how his abilities are more relevant now than ever; with so
much sonic clay commercially available, it falls on artists like
Barbieri to express and codify electronic music, to make it organic and
real.
We caught Richard one afternoon on one leg of Porcupine Tree’s worldwide tour.
Things Buried is recorded digitally. That means nothing analog, not even synths?
Basically,
it means I didn’t use any analog synths, for the first time on any
recording in my career. I had gotten into a real comfort zone with the
old analog stuff and, as much as I love it, I thought this would be a
good challenge. I want to embrace the new technology as well as the
old. I thought, well let’s do the whole album with software, and see if
I can get it sounding warm, if I can work with the textures the way I
always used to.
What specific software instruments did you use?
A
lot of it was Native Instruments software, like the Pro-53 and Absynth,
but I’ve also been using the synths in Reason quite a bit. I’ve been
doing some programming for Reason and I really got into Subtractor and
Maelstrom. And to be honest, if you’re working with subtractive
synthesis in a software format, then I think you can more or less get
what you want. I can make it sound like a Prophet-5 if I want to. If
you know what you want to do, if you have the sound in your head, then
you can achieve that.
You obviously spend a lot of time on your sounds, probably more than most keyboard players.
It’s
manly because of lack of ability. I’m self-taught and I’m not a
technical keyboard player. I didn’t grow up knowing the scales and I
didn’t know how to play blues progressions, jazz progressions – all that
was completely alien to me. So I just started making the sound do
something, rather than my fingers. So I would create sounds that
evolved over ten or so seconds. I would put more features into the
sound, more modulation, various kinds of effects that would come and go,
filtering, panning and LFOs. That for me was the way forward,
especially hearing what Brian Eno was doing with Roxy Music in the ‘70s.
I thought, well this is interesting, because it’s quite abstract, but
it’s working in the context of pop music.
When your parts move
and change over a few seconds, the effect is an undulating and moving
part or layer. Where most keyboard players might cut and paste or loop a
section, you seem to perform it.
I do. I try to avoid MIDI,
to be honest. I like the performance aspect, so I don’t want to get
caught in that cut-and-paste kind of thing that people do sometimes when
they’re working with computer software. And I try not to look at the
screen – people now are watching music more than actually listening,
working with chunks of information and blocks and passages. I like to
do most things manually, so I’ll set the bpm, and I don’t care if it’s a
half-a-millisecond out of time. I’ll just try to get a groove going
and play right through the track, but play with the synths in real time
as I go. That way when I listen back to something, I’m thinking, “It’s
nice that changes there and this happens here.” It wouldn’t work in a
cut-and-paste way where, well, once you’ve heard eight bars, you’ve
heard it.
You seem to be discovering new aspects of a sound as
you’re playing it, as the sound morphs and changes. I’m thinking in
particular of a sound on “Medication Time” from Things Buried, a
warbley, lowpass filter thing with a cool envelope. It starts off as a
melodic idea, then it becomes a bass. It sound improvised.
Yes, that formed the basis of the track. It was improvised. That was on an Access Virus Indigo.
In addition to the virtual instruments, what other synths are you using for recording?
The
hardware synths that I use are the Virus, the Roland V-Synth series,
and the new Roland SH-201. And then I use the 201 to control the
computer and the software. I also use the M-Audio Radium 49.
There’s tremendous layering in your music. How do you go about achieving a balance and finding a space for each sound?
It’s
tricky if you’re just working with synths. They’re not as defined as
guitar, bass guitar or drums. They have their place and their own
frequency. With synths, anything goes, so it is a lot harder. In the
end, unconsciously, I probably work out the frequencies and what needs
to happen – I just go with whatever works, what things are working well
in context with others, what creates nice combinations of sounds and
textures.
I heard a tweezy, distorted layer spread across the
whole mix on “Fear and Trembling” also from Things Buried. Another of
your tunes has two bass lines rubbing together. You’re not afraid to
take chances in combining sounds and layers.
That’s the advantage of a solo album. You get to do these things.
Do you sample?
I
don’t sample that much. I tend to sample voices more than anything
else. My wife’s a singer, and usually I grab vocal samples of work
she’s doing. I’ll run them backwards, or through filters and LFOs, and
they sound quite a lot like instruments. I’m probably late to using
sampling but it definitely has a place in my future albums.
It’s
interesting that you mentioned your comfort zone earlier; you and other
artists in the early days of keyboards were all working beyond your
comfort zones.
All those keyboard players who were great in
the beginning with the limited analog stuff – when digital came along,
to me their work became less what I wanted to hear. Not so many people
took to the digital era, whereas now, the people pushing the envelope
with digital synthesis are groups like Aphex Twin and Boards of Canada.
These kinds of artists love the analog stuff, but they embrace the
digital because it’s what they’ve grown up with, in the way that Edgar
Froese would have had the huge modular systems.
Describe your creative role in Porcupine Tree, how you take part in the writing and arranging.
Porcupine
Tree has now settled into a way of working, and Steven is the main
songwriter, but the band co-writes probably about 20 percent of the
material. We all arrange the material together. So it has a leader,
but on the other hand, we’re all very involve dint he music arrangements
and writing as well.
Regarding your own work, in writing
music that doesn’t have traditional song form or solos, how do you
sustain interest over a long song? What do you listen for when you
write?
That’s the whole artistic dilemma, isn’t it? Is what
we think of as interesting to us, personally, interesting to people
listening? I suppose when I’m writing, I just do what keeps me
interested. It sounds a bit pretentious, but it’s almost like going
into a trance. You start something, and you take it down a certain
path, and you see if that’s an interesting journey, or whether there’s
nothing there. That’s why making a solo album is always something I was
a bit apprehensive about, because you’re working on your own. Working
with people is a lot easier, because you’ve got things to play off of,
and you’ve got feedback. Whereas when you’re on your own, you know what
you’re going to play, and you want to surprise yourself – and that’s a
lot harder to do.
Do you think it’s ironic that some of the best music was made with some of the worst gear?
You’re
right. That’s how I feel. I know everybody’s nostalgic for the music
that was there when they were growing up, but I firmly believe that the
70s were such a great time for all kinds of music – electronic, soul,
heavy rock, progressive rock, dance, anything. There was such a
variation of sounds and artists at that time.
It’s hard to recapture that spirit because so much of that music came from artists working within strict boundaries.
Absolutely.
Going back to Eno again, that was one of the things that he was
interested in – using the studio as an instrument. You just kind of
accepted what you were working with and that was it. That was the
limit. And you just did everything you could to get every variation out
of those instruments and out of those effects.
I read a quote
by Steve Wilson in which he was talking about the idea behind Fear of a
Blank Planet: “Everything has become so easily accessible that none of
it means anything anymore.” I imagine this might apply to you as an
electronic musician. How do we find true meaning in sound among the vas
amount of available sonic technology?
It comes from within
yourself. I don’t think the actual gear, software, and designs are
important things. The important thing is the idea that you have in your
head, or the emotion that you have in your heart, and your relationship
with music. I believe that the personalities of musicians are very
mush part of the music that they make. If you have an idea about what
you want to do, then it doesn’t matter what particular instrument you
play. I read these synth forums and I hear kids saying, “Wow, man, I’ve
got to have that synth because I need to make dance music!” or “No, I
can’t do this track until I get this new software.” Or “I can’t write a
bass line unless I have this keyboard.” They get it in their minds that
it’s all about the gear and that gear is going to be their answer. You
get a piece of equipment, or any technology, and you think, “Right,
this is going to make my life easier.” But in the end it’s nothing to
do with that. It’s what’s in your own mind and what you’re going to do
personally.
***
Who are Richard’s sonic influences?
“From
an experimental point, Stockhausen, and all the early electronic
experimental stuff he was doing in the ‘50s and ‘60s,” says Richard.
“From an abstract sound point of view, Eno and Ryuichi Sakamoto in the
early days were quite an influence on me. In terms of playing and
playing sounds, Joe Zawinul. I’m not a great lover of jazz keyboards,
but for me Zawinal was so different, because he used to create these
sounds and then play them as the sounds should be played – he would get a
beautiful flute sound, or some kind of exotic wind instrument sound,
and he’d just play it right, with sensitivity. And that’s really
amazing programming. Early Vangelis – I was listening to the Blade
Runner soundtrack the other day and it’s just amazing. If you really
want some saturated analog sounds, that’s a beautiful album. And the
early stuff from Tangerine Dream, Edgar Froese, the early analog
sequencer music, Kraftwerk. I loved all those sounds and approaches.”
Playing the Porcupine
Porcupine
Tree has no lack of technology on stage. “People say we’re a
progressive rock band, but we’re not looking back to the ‘70s for the
inspiration,” says Richard. “We’re progressive in the way we’re using
today’s technology, and we’re trying to find new ways of making our
music sound interesting.”
Barbieri’s live keyboard rig includes
analog and digital synths, effects, processors, and a laptop running
Reason instruments. “That’s pretty safe,” he says. “I’m also using a
Yamaha CS-01 for the lead lines through a distortion modeler, then
through an SPX90, that always sounded really nice and warm.”
The
band plays along to tracks and sequences as well as to a click track,
all generated from an offstage laptop running Logic. But Richard’s
setup offers a certain flexibility and room for improvisation within the
strict confines of the show. Within his complex rig, he finds his own
sonic and creative space. “This is the first time I’ve worked with
dynamic rock music and obviously, for a keyboard player, it’s not always
easy,” he says. “You have to find you space within that. You have to
find the right sounds and the right frequencies.”
He’s Big in Japan
Richard’s
work with the band Japan was very influential. “The Tin Drum album was
an important one in terms of the synthesis, because we were working
with real limitations,” he says. “I had two synthesizers, and Oberheim
OB-Xa and Roland Sytem 700, and David Sylvian had a Prophet-5. That’s a
really valuable process for keyboard enthusiasts to got hrough, to try
to do something working with limitations, maybe working with only one
synthesizer. Then you tend to find things within it. You can get very
lost because there’s so much available now. In the end it’s better to
keep to two or three instruments and really get to the bottom of what’s
going on with each, and not just play a few presets.”
Programming and Sound Design
Barbieri
recently designed 40 factory sounds for the Roland V-Synth GT. “They
got me involve din the early stages,” he says. “I’m a little surprised
it didn’t happen in the ‘80s, really. I’ve been using Roland keyboards
right from the beginning.” Also, Propellerhead Reason 4’s Thor
synthesizer comes with a “Barbieri” folder. “It’s nice to be part of
something – I guess it sounds corporate – but they’re all sounds that I
enjoyed making, and they’re out there in the world. There’s some kind
of recognition there for me as a programmer, and I feel proud, because
I’ve never really been a player. That’s something I’ve had to fight
with for my whole career.”
