MUS410

Artist Analyses

Jason Wang 208557

Ableton is a very highly regarded digital audio workstation program in the music industry. Even though professionals all around the world use this program, many up coming musicians, students and education facilities use this program to teach and better themselves as a musician or student. The reasons why Ableton is such a great DAW lie in many different areas. Major areas include, the ability to flick from arrangement screen to session screen, applying VST with ease and how the software itself comes with quality effects units. All these attributes makes workflow in Albeton very flexibile. Professionals prefer to use a DAW that feels comfortable to themselves and Ableton is the number one choice for many professionals in the industry. One such industry professional group is of course, Daft Punk. Daft Punk formed in 1993. They are a French duo with musicians Thomas Bangalter and Guy Manuel de Homem Chirsto (Last FM 2013). According to Last Fm, Daft Punk have been considered one of the most successful electronic music collaborations of all time (LastFM, 2013).

Since forming in 1993, Daft Punk has had an incredibly successful and impressive career. They have released seven albums, sixteen compilation album, one soundtrack album; three remix albums, one video album, twenty-two singles and eighteen music videos (Allmusic, NA). Albums include Homework (1997), Discovery(2001), Alive (1997), Human After All (2005), Alive (2997), Tron Legacy (2010), Random Access Memories (2013). Daft Punk has also won an incredible amount of awards over the years. Random Acess Memories won the Grammy Award for Album of the year in 2014. The track Get Lucky won the Grammy Award for Record of the year in 2014. They have won the Billboard Music Award for Top Dance/electronic music in 2014. Along with many awards, Daft Punk has toured and performed internationally, performing in the greatest concert grounds, stages and festivals. They played at the Even Further Festival in 1996, Fuse Festival in Belgium in 1996. They toured Europe, America and Canada in 1997 playing The Academy in the UK, Rex Club in France, Garage in Germany, The Warehouse in Canada and Astoria in America just to name a few. They have played at Coachella Music Festival in 2006. There latest album Random Access Memories has not been toured yet but it is only a matter of time.
Daft Punk utilizes Ableton in an extremely wide variety of ways. In Thomas Bangalters very own words “Live is by definition one of the most transparent and simple creative software I have ever used”. Bangalter also says that its features and interface is streamlined and offers endless possibilities. Daft Punk use Ableton to inject soul into their electronic and dance music (Ableton Archive, 2010).

In there early stages, Daft Punk used very different equipment set up in conjunction with Ableton Live. Daft Punk uses a Universal Audio 2192 Interface, ProTools HD1, and an old Mackie 1202 apparently the first generation ever produced. They also use a few old FX units and synths but they tend to minimize there set up and use Operator, which is an Ableton synthesizer purely because they are so much easier to use and the sounds fantastic. (Macmusic, 2005). Now for their latest Album, Random Access Memories, the equipment list, software and hardware list is much more substantial. They recorded bass guitar through DI with an AMS Neve 1081 Mic Preap & Equalizer as well as with the Teletronix LA-2A amplifier (Equipboard, NA). They recorded through DI because the bass responds really well to Compression and EQ. Recording through DI also gives the bass a really clean and unadulterated sound, which is very easy to manipulate (Shambro, NA). A Studer A827 24 track analogue tape machine was also used so that signals were split and sent to Pro Tools and tape. The AMS Neve 1073 Mic Preamp and the Unviersal Audio 1176 Amplifier were used to record electric guitar, acoustic guitar and steel guitar. They have an AKG D112 microphone to record the bass drum as well as using the NeumannU47 ET for the kick drum. The Neumann U 67 was used as a room mic to record drums. A Neumann M 50 was used to record an orchestra and a Royer R 121 was used to record guitars from a cab (Equipboard, NA). The R 121 is a ribbon mic and it was used because of its figure of 8 polar responses, which makes it consistent across the frequencies range. It is very sensitive but also creates a smoother sound (Senior, 2007). Shure SM57 was used to record snares and high ends. AKG C 451 was used to record the bottom of the snare. Sennheiser MD421 was used to record toms and the Neumann U87 was used to record the Fender Rhodes and guitar cab (Equipboard, NA). Multiple mics used for the drum kit means that each and everyone of them will pick up different frequencies of the drum kit. For during a live performance, Behringer BCR2000 MIDI controller was used with Ableton as well as a Jazzmutant Lemur Multi touch modular controller. This controller is extremely versatile, being able to play as your keyboard, mixer, graphical output display and simultaneously allow users to use different gear and MIDI gear at a time (Silva, 2007). Daft Punk also uses a variety of synths and keyboards such as the Sequential Circuit Phophet 5 in there early days, Roland Juno Synthesizer, Yama CS 80 Synth and a Oberheim OB- 8 Synthesiser (Equipboard, NA). Each keyboard and synth serves a specific purpose to create a very specific sound. Each and every one of Daft Punks recordings reflects the in depth and wide range of equipment, software, hardware and instruments that they use.

Daft Punks approach to composition is totally different to most musicians today. Daft Punk is heavily influenced by disco just like many other bands. But Daft Punk decided to go even further and brought in all the elements of music that they liked as children. From disco to metal, from rock to classical, an extremely broad range of genres and styles influences Daft Punks compositions. They often take classical pieces and transform it directly into a synthetic form which is clearly demonstrated in the song Aerodynamic (Smith, NA). In every one of Daft Punks songs, there is a full and thick sound, but Daft Punk tends apply the term “less is more” in their compositions. For example, in the song Around the World, there are only five instruments in the whole entire song. Theses instruments were playing numerous different patterns and figures, always using repetition and stopping just before it becomes too much (Gondry, NA).

During their live performances, there are many different skewed opinions on what Daft Punk are really doing. There is the opinion that everything seen and heard has been pre recorded prior to the performance and there are videos and analyses from people trying to prove this. On the other hand there is the opinion that they are playing it legitimately live. In 2007, Daft Punk went on tour with quite a complicated live set up. They had 4 MacBook pro’s, two Behringer BCR2000 MIDI controllers, two Jazzmutant Lemur touchscreen controllers and a Minimoog Voyagers (Deejers, 2013). They have Ableton Live running on all four computers and use the Jazzmutant Lemure solely to trigger the sounds and effects aswell as applying synthetic sounds with the Minivoog.

A major feat that Daft Punk has managed to achieve is to successfully and effectively compose a music score for a feature film. Tron: Legacy, released in 2010 received major praises not just for the film itself, but also the large scale music score, composed by Daft Punk. The soundtrack contained 24 tracks, recorded with 85 pieces orchestra and was recorded over two years. Guy-Manuel explained why they chose to use a orchestra instead of their synthesizers and drum machines; “A Stradivarius will live for a thousand years, we knew from the very beginning there was no way we were going to do this film score with two synthesizers and a drum machine.” (2011). Daft Punk fully unified the two genres that created the sound track. They fused the acoustic orchestra layer with the electronic layer (Ditzain, 2010). All these different, unique and wonderful sounds were made possible by utilizing Ableton Live in many different ways. Daft Punk is a very clear example of how versatile and adaptable Ableton Live can be used. Whether it is for live performance or for studio work, Ableton Live is a great DAW to use.

Another artist that utilizes Ableton Live extremely professionally is Deadmau5. Joel Zimmerman also know as Deadmau5 (stage name) is a progressive house producer and DJ from Canada (Equipboard, NA). He has released three albums with SectionZ Records before starting his very own label in 2007 called Mau5trap (Equipboard, na). What differentiates Deadmau5 from Daft Punk falls to the fact that these two are very different artists in many aspects including genre, composition style and live performance style. Deadmau5 has an ever changing desktop setup with Digital audio workstations varying from using Protools to Ableton, to Bitwig Studio.

Deadmau5 has released 7 albums, 62 singles and EP’s and 9 compilation albums. Studio album includes “Get Scraped” (2005), “Vexillology” (2006), and “Random Album Title” (2008) just to name a few. Deadmau5 has also been awarded Dance Record of the year for the JUNO awards in 2009 and 2010. He won the Artist of the year for the JUNO awards in 2013. In 2011, he was awarded Best American DJ, Best Dubstep and Best Artist for the International Dance Music Award.

Deadmau5’s in studio gear consists of internal and external audio interfaces, effecs processors, instrument machines, compressors, preamps and midi controllers. Interfaces included Apogee ensemble Firewire Audio interface and the RME HDSPe MADI FX internal audio interface. The RME boasts 194 inputs and 196 output channels with 3 virtual midi channels and 1 MIDI I/O. The RME is also able to process three times the as many channels as the previous model, which greatly decreases the system load and enabling ultra low latencies (RME AUDIO, NA). A Lexicon MX400 Effects processor and Solid State Logix Processor were used in studio. The Leixicon is a multi effects unit that possesses Lexicons famous reverb algorithms which in this case is what Deadmau5 was after (John Walden, 2006). The Lexicon also has multiple other affects such as Delay, Chorus, Flanger, Rotary, Compressor, pitch shift and Tremelo.

Deadmau5 also has a very intensive live set up which is extremely different to his studio set up. In the studio, a Dj and producer such as himself has time to tune and tweak sounds. But when performing live, he has factors such as latency, little accidents and even spur of the moment improvisation to worry about. He would have to have a set up, which he can easily and freely manipulate. In his live set up he has gear that consists of an Apogee Ensemble soundcard which is exclusively designed to work with Mac computers which Deadmau5 uses (Wherry, 2008), a Monome Controller, a Lemur Touch Screen and a Pioneer DJM 800 set up with a Pioneer EFX-1000 (Graham, 2009). The Apogee Ensemble has 4 stereo outputs, which he runs into his club mixer which is the Pioneer DJM and EFX-100. The Monome Controller is a very simple looking trigger pad, which has three main functionalities. It is a step sequencer allowing which allows the user to have 8 sequencer tracks with mode and control buttons. It can also be used as a keyboard arrangement. The design of it basically allows itself to become a two dimensional keyboard allowing the ability to lay note horizontally and transposition of the notes vertically. Different intervals of notes can also be arranged. And finally it can be utilized as an algorithmic sequencer meaning certain buttons pressed can communicate to another button building feedback loops and can generate polyrhythms (Rothwell, 2008). Deadmau5 also utilizes a Jazzmutant Lemur Touchscreen just like Daft Punk. Just like Daft Punk, Deadmau5 uses it by firstly constructing the actual interface with the Jazzeditor program. He uses it for faders, Multisliders, pads, signal scopes, monitors and switches. All these parameters can be customized and tweaked to suit his needs and purposes (Silva, 2007). With all of these equipment, he runs it through Ableton Live.

Deadmau5 does not have a clear and so to say structured composition technique. In an interview he had with Digilove he explained how he usualy plays around on a Midi Keyboard and loading up random patches with plug ins or synth. Sometimes he wires up the modular and some sequences. He states that he likes to get the melody and phrase down before making it heavier. As a DJ it is essential to always include a breakdown. Deadmau5 also says that he usually MIDI’s out to his gear and then records it. Following by throwing into a sampler channel and they become audio (Digilove, 2011).

The difference between Deadmau5 and Daft Punk in my own opinion is that Daft Punk uses more sound manipulation where as Deadmau5 may rely on premade effects to compose and perform his songs. Deadmau5 has admitted to pressing play for his live set-ups, but not without good reason. Deadmau5 explains that with tens of thousands of people waiting to hear the songs the way they are on the album, he can’t afford screw ups (2012). Daft Punk on the other hand have some skeptics about weather they play live or not, but video footage have proven that they do play live, manipulating sound and triggering tracks for their live sets. Daft Punk also in my observations utilizes different styles and genres to mold into their own genre. Having influences from classical music, rock and even disco, Daft Punk is a much versatile group in the music industry.
References
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