Los Angeles-based Detroit native Jimmy Edgar was signed to Warp Records at 18, and has since produced under a variety of monikers, working with an even wider assortment of collaborators, from his Ultramajic co-founder and JETS cohort Machinedrum, to former Beta Band singer Steve Mason. Jimmy got his chops playing piano at Baptist churches in Detroit as a teen, and has released on an almost impossible collection of labels, from Poker Flat, Warp and Merck to !K7 and Hot Flush, spanning a range of styles, from techno to glitch.
We spoke with the synth specialist and hardware aficionado about his favorite new pieces of gear, and found Jimmy to be typically informative and incredibly generous in his willingness to share his expertise and interests.
JIMMY EDGAR’S TOP 5 GEAR INNOVATIONS FOR 2015
My setup changes all the time. Sometimes I am only laptop and headphones, sometimes I am full on modular, sometimes I am strictly preamps and EQs, other times I am using only MPC and samplers, most of the time I do combinations.
For instance, my album Majenta was made on one shitty speaker and two 9U modulars. You wouldn’t really be able to tell because I used them in such a musical way.
My setup is now the biggest its ever become, but I thrive on changing things around and trying new setups. I am currently into rerecording on cassette tapes and running them back through EQ and preamps. So, Ive gotten really deep with recording processes and using microphones.
The vintage room simulator is such a musical piece of art. Apparently, Quantec uses a new category of reverb algorithm that is much more realistic than most other units. It determines decay based on amplitude rather than having a static decay for all incoming sound. What that means is the louder a sound is, the longer the reverb tail is. To me, this makes a lot more sense. Not only that but the results are extremely musical.
In the past, I didn’t really use much reverb ever, I always felt like it made my sounds flat and muddy. Just with simple tests you can hear the differences, play an A440 sine tone through it and it will ring the reverb in this tone based on harmonic equivalents; as opposed to other reverb units that stray away from the original harmonics a bit too much. This is probably because they are based more on hierarchy of echo, whereas reverb is real life is about infinite reflections on walls.
The difference for me is that I actually like using reverb now, and the sound on real instruments or voices is really nice. They are extremely hard to find but well worth it, in my opinion.
For a long time, I searched for ways to get my laptop sounding more like an MPC. Sounds simple but it took me a few years to figure it out, plus this kind of stuff is expensive once you start getting into subtle improvements like this. To be honest, I just was not happy with most of the sounds coming from my laptop. I grew up using 808s and MPC’s, and I just wanted that big thick sound; I didn’t want to wait until mastering for that to happen.
Anyways, so I ended up getting a maxed out Apogee Symphony sound card, which really helped in a particular way. Recording also improved. I knew there must be a way that I could load any sound (like an MPC) and have them all be equal, whereas with software I felt I was limited to the quality of my samples. Any little sound I load into an MPC will “work” for me.
I had a pretty bad experience with a shit preamp about 10 years ago and I had ignorantly written them off and concentrated on music-making hardware. Long story short, I decided to get into lunch box recording equipment, namely API stuff. Now, I cannot record anything without it. People talk about how subtle preamps are, but coupled with EQ’s and compression they far exceeded my expectations and plans for my sounds.
I know I didn’t mention the BOX mixer very much, but for me this is a relative cheap solution, for what you get, to have this sound coupled with your DAW. You now have the power of preamps and some extra 500 series options integrated into your recording and output. You will need sufficient inputs and outputs for it to make sense though. It is about $15,000 but a good investment for the serious musician.
So, my path continued trying to get this big sound from 80s and 90s records that I liked. I just wanted my DAW to be able to compete and add a fresh vibe, with no noise.
I had an MPC60 for years and always loved the sound, but of course I eventually would like to play these sounds on a keyboard. A few years ago I picked up 3 AKAI S900s for about 100$ each, and this year I got an AKAI S950 (for the time-stretching option). They are dinosaurs to work on but once you get used to them they are great. I like making digital sounds and running them in to sample. I didn’t bother to learn how to do multi-tracking because its a bit of a lame process, so I just use the different unit for one sound at a time. I even became quite fast at programming drums on them, takes about 20 minutes though, because you have to plan out what sounds you want to run in.
For me, the sample rates have a great sound effect and now instead of looking for samples on records or libraries, I can create my own. This is incredibly gratifying for me. The filter is alright too.
EURO-RACK MODULES COMING OUT IN 2015
I had the opportunity to spend a few hours at NAMM this year, before my flight to Europe, and it was great to see how crazy the world of modular is exploding.
Here are some of my top picks:
I had a nice introduction to the guys here and they showed me the ins and outs of this device. It’s very cool, I am looking forward to having one. I like how it has an Accent output, which I see as an extra gate out whereas you don’t need to link up a new sequencer, very smart. Also, the quantized digital output will send out any scale you want, with user defined melodies. The screen is nice too. I recently got an Intellijel Metropolis, but I think this unit will replace it.
MAKENOISE FIXED FILTER & ADDITIVE SYNTHESIZER
I could talk about fixed filters for hours, its something I feel really strongly about. I have about five of them in my system, because each frequency is important to me and I like control over them. I see fixed filter as being a vertical spectral processor that you can control on a horizontal plane (time) which makes sense when I apply it to music.
The additive synthesizer called TELHARMONIC is a 3 voice additive synth in eurorack format. I suggest listening to some of the demos. I have always loved additive synthesis because its essentially how organ sounds are made, based on harmonics. Musicality is all about harmonics and the more you align yourself with this philosophies the more interesting your music can be, relative to musical theory. Not to undermine microtones, because there is quite profound beauty in dissonance but I like to make puzzles that fit into each other most of the time. Anyway, its all controllable via CV, so that opens up infinite possibility.
[Beatport]
