The second in our series of interviews with producers on their sound design processes.

Last month we welcomed Charlie May, this month we welcome dubstep producer DFRNT. DFRNT has an impressive DIY ethic. Producing deep, engulfing synthesized dubstep under the vowel less DFRNT moniker.

1) Your sound is quite unique in the dubstep genre, where do you draw influence from?

I listen to a huge vareity of music, from classical and jazz, to house, techno, drum & bass, indie, folk and almost everything in between. I guess some comes from that. To a degree my emotional situation, and how I’m feeling when I have time to make music also affects the tracks, and often my biggest source of inspiration is listening to other producers doing similar things to me. That way you can hear new ideas that are more likely to fit your style, and then it’s a case of trying new things along those lines.

2) During the sound design phase of a project do you start with a particular sound in mind, or do you design sounds to fit specific tracks?

I’ve started tracks both ways – and it’s worked both ways. Sometimes you get a flash of inspiration, and it’s a case of just getting it made, and as close to the way you invisaged it as possible. Often though, I’ll start with one or two samples, or a desire to create a particular feeling or mood and I’ll just play with elements.

3) I know you use Massive in your productions. Perhaps you could tell us a bit about how you use it when creating your music?

Actually, right now it’s a bit of a go-to synth for lots. I’m yet to really use it for bass – but I’ll use it for keys, pads, top lines, little bits here and there – so actually it can often crop up quite regularly in my work. I love it actually – it’s such a versatile bit of kit, and it’s nice to know that I can play and play and play, and continue to discover new sounds and tricks within it.

4) Could you choose a sound in one of your released tracks and give a little background on it’s creation?

OK, well let’s go with a recent track I made along a minimal techno type tip – The main synth in “Monday Morning”

that continual dubby-stab sound was something I spent ages trying to get right. It features throughout the whole track, and I knew it was going to have to sustain repeated listens. I actually had a pre-made sample that sounded similar, so I chucked that on the track – and as much as I liked it, I firstly felt a bit shabby just relying on a sample, and secondly I wanted to work with the sounds in more detail, so needed to re-create it.

First stop – Massive. I jumped in and loaded up a dubby patch, which was a good start – It felt nice in place of the sample, but took a good amount of playing with the delays and reverb to get it echoing right – then I had to get the sound EQd so it had plenty mid-range as well as depth, while being played pretty high-up on the keys. I played with a few chords, but went back to the first one I used, since it worked well with some of the other elements I was putting in. There was one or two times I’d refer back to the original (discarded) sample, to check EQ, and warmth, so I could really get some of what I liked in it to begin with. Basically it took a stack of tweaking, and then a lovely big EQ envelope, to have it slowly build over 16 bars. The result of all that tweaking, os something I can now listen to over and over – a good measure of when I feel a track is good enough to put out there.

5) What other software or hardware do you use?

Currently, I have a fairly sparse setup. I use a small Korg Nano controller (I have the full set of 3, but only use the keyboard one for now) – My sound is running through an M-Audio FIrewire Solo, to two Tapco S5 monitors, and an SW10 sub. I have a nice condenser mix for recording – and some fairly cheap headphones. I produce in ABleton with a few synths – Massive being one of them. The others, I’m not going to reveal! Sound-wise, I have a few sample-sets for kicks, hits and so forth, and then I synthesise a lot fo my sounds, so I’m not reliant on samples. That’s about it really!

DFRNT
Website http://dfrnt.alex-c.com/
Soundcloud http://soundcloud.com/dfrnt

DFRNT