Toy Story | Deadmau5

Dec 1, 2008 12:00 PM, By Ken Micallef

DEADMAU5 TINKERS WITH CRAZY CONTROLLERS, MYSTERY PEDALS, MULTIPLE MOOGERFOOGERS AND A GIANT BLINKING MAU5HEAD FOR HIS NEW ALBUM, RANDOM ALBUM TITLE

In similar deconstruction fashion, Deadmau5 uses a Monome 256 as a controller to do everything from creating beats to executing manic melodies. The Monome 256 ships sans manual, diagram or instructions of any sort — all the better for the enterprising Mau5 among us.

“You have to make it work for you,” Zimmerman says. “You can't just take it out of the box and go to town on presets. But you treat it like any other device that triggers another application. Basically, you freestyle and hammer away at any of the 256 buttons to trigger a sound like a drum kit into Ableton Live. But for the techno, you will want to have that sequence in a way that things get quantized and maybe have an LED row scroll back and forth and do a certain sequence of sounds, perhaps over a bar in a loop, and you want to be able to use other keys to modify that loop to have it play in reverse order or random order or whatever. It all comes with the development of custom VST software that communicates to the device before the device communicates to Ableton Live to trigger these sounds. So my partner in crime, Steve Duda, has come up with Molar; it's a VST port of a Max/MSP replacement for the Monome 256 for Ableton Live. It lets you re-chop, re-sequence, re-slice a wave loop or trigger one-shots or send MIDI notes. You would never rig it up the same way twice, which is fun.”

RANDOM ALBUM IDs

The album's bookend tracks, “Sometimes Things Get, Whatever” and “So There I Was” feature a bass drum that sucks the air out of the room. As if in a vacuum, it moves through the mix like an alien vessel laying waste to all.

“I layer my kicks with a sine wave that is tuned with the bass line,” Zimmerman reveals. “You have to be careful with that because you can run into serious phase problems. But if you put the phase offset 180 degrees, it will make the most monstrous kick possible. You have a perfect inverted phase kick. The top end is what gives it the punch. You don't need much of that; the rest is all a pure sine with a bit of a volume envelope.”

As the mix moves along, “Slip” brings the Mau5 mood down a bit, inserting what sounds like tiddlywinks in place of a standard melody. Half rhythmic, half robotic, the boing-ing melody/rhythm dances over the song's beat in a series of odd-grouped phrases, adding to the sense of dislocation.

“The main theme is from a Clavia Nord Lead 3,” Zimmerman explains, “just using some sine waves, and in one of the oscillators the key track is turned off so it plays the same note no matter what other notes you hit in correlation with it. As far as those odd-numbered melodic phrases that float over the bar line, anything I can do to get away from that regimented house sound, like polyrhythms, keeps it interesting for me. If you took the bass drum out, you would get lost in the rhythm. And it's funny, when I play these tracks live, I do remove the kick drum and people clap, but they lose it as soon as I drop the bass drum. By the time I punch it back in they must think, ‘We're all idiots!’”

The beat-defying melodic phrases continue in “Brazil,” further warped by delays and knob twiddling. “I used two 104 Moogerfoogers and manually timed the delay,” Zimmerman explains. “I slowly adjust the delay time backward and forward so it modulates a bit. By the time the delay bounces back around, it has been delayed slightly out of time but still pretty close. When you layer it on top of something else, it gives it a fuller sound.”

THE MAU5 MUSES

Where does a successful Mau5 go from here? Zimmerman has plans to further alter his live DJ experience, and his ongoing collaborations with WTF? and BSOD (with Steve Duda) keep his head spinning. Otherwise, Zimmerman's diet of Coke Classic (one case per track) should keep him energized enough to do battle with any DJ foe or Energizer Bunny.

“I've got the world's only MIDI-controllable mouse head, so that's cool,” he says with a laugh. “I want to start including more cool gear that interacts with the sound and the audience. But as far as defining my sound or popularity, maybe it's the head. I don't know what it is. I don't want to look a gift mouse in the mouth.”

RANDOM ALBUM GEAR

Computers, DAW/recording software

Ableton Live software

(2) Apple MacBook Pro

Custom PC: Quad Core 3.2 gig Intel CPU, Alesis motherboard, 5 TB hard drive

FL Studio software

Steinberg Cubase software

Synths, software, plug-ins

Moog Little Phatty, Minimoog and Minimoog Voyager synths

Native Instruments Reaktor, Kontakt, Battery and Traktor software

Propellerhead Reason Thor and Subtractor soft synths

Roland Juno-106 synth

Sequential Circuits Prophet T8 synth

Effects

Moog Moogerfoogers: MF-101 Low Pass Filter, MF-102 Ring Modulator, MF-103 12-Stage Phaser, MF-104Z Analog Delay, MF-105 MuRF, MF-107 FreqBox, CP-251 Control Processor

Controllers, DJ mixer

Allen & Heath Xone: 4D DJ Mixer and Controller

JazzMutant Lemur

Monome 256

Percussa AudioCubes

Pioneer DJM-800 DJ mixer

Monitors

Genelec 8050As

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