Segundo was the first record that I heard of yours. I was wondering how you view the progression of ideas from one record to the next.
Well, I think Segundo is the freest record, because I didn't have any expectations of myself, and especially not from the audience. It took me a long time to make it; almost three years of not thinking and of not having any pressure. Just doing what I felt had to be done, and really enjoying the process during the nights. I had a very young child at the time, so it was impossible to work during the day. It's a very, what's the word… Nocturnal? Do you have that word?
Yeah. Nocturnal.
For some parts of it I was half asleep. A good thing about Segundo is that there was no thought at all. Nothing. Then, after I made that, I started to have a response from people that I had never expected. When I had to make [the follow-up], Tres Cosas, things changed. I knew there was someone expecting something on the other side of the world somewhere. So I started to have thoughts like, "Should I make it a little bit more straight-down? Should I do it exactly the same?" When you start having that, it is a problem that you need to learn to live with and to work with. Those thoughts ruin your record. It's something very difficult to achieve, in my case. I decided to stop the record before it became too similar to Segundo. I didn't record thousands of layers of things on that record. When I came back, and I recorded Son, I had the live shows as an experience that I didn't have during the previous two records. I started to add more. I started to record a lot on the loop pedal, and I started to compose in a different way. I was looking for a looping pedal before it existed, because I didn't want to have the musicians playing the same thing over and over, thinking that they were going to get very bored or that they wouldn't like to play just three notes for five minutes. I was really looking for that machine, but it didn't exist. You had delay pedals and other things, but that looping pedal didn't exist. When I found it, I really found the best friend I've ever had. I didn't record loops on the records. I just played the same thing over and over, but I thought that no one would like to do that, except a machine. I started to record real loops when I got the pedals, and I started to compose faster than before. I had the loop immediately, and I could record other things on top of it immediately. So I would record a full song in almost the time it takes to play the song. That's why the songs on Son are more stripped down at the beginning, and then they build up towards the end.
Right.
I was really happy, because I had found a very personal way to do things that totally represented me. I didn't feel that there was something missing, or [that there was] too much. In the past few years, the looping pedal became perhaps too popular, so I felt like I had to change – I had to find a new way of doing things. But how can you change yourself if you've been playing loops since you were ten years old? It didn't have a name. I just called it repetitions. So I really had to try to change the way I naturally do things in order to grow, or to grow and try to not repeat myself. So it's been more difficult.
What was different about the way you approached getting rid of the loop pedal? What were some of the new approaches and ways you wrote and recorded this new record?
Well, for a start, when I play, I play repeating phrases, because that's the way I've always done things. I wanted not to have, for instance, was this building process. Instead I wanted to have different parts where I had all the instruments coming in at the same time, or none of it. Also, we went into a studio, which I hadn't done for 20 years. We had many instruments to play with, and new instruments always give you new ideas. Like violins in the first track "Paraguaya." Many sounds just told me what to do with them, as it usually is. The difference there is that I don't buy new instruments, in general. I have made five records with the same instruments, except for the electric guitar, but that's not a big difference. I couldn't really tell. There were also other people [involved]. I was not used to working with other people because I had recorded on my own for many years. To have other people around was a way to have more options, but at the same time I risked being more shallow. Sometimes when I am recording on my own and I find an idea, I go until I find what I really want. I could be there for hours, and I don't realize time is passing by. But when you have other people with their arms crossed, waiting for you to finish something, well, that makes you stop before that. But I came back to that situation when I returned home and I had to edit what was recorded in the studio.
So is that how the record was made? You went into the studio and gathered a bunch of performances, and then you got home and worked on the record there doing edits?
I had a few songs. I had many simple ideas for the songs that had been recorded at soundchecks on the [Roland] Loop Station. I didn't want to work on them before I went to the studio. I had a pattern, or a sound, or the seed of the sound, but I hadn't developed the song at all before going to the studio. We stayed there for three weeks; we tried to develop the original ideas and to add more things with the new instruments we had there. We took the songs and sometimes played for maybe half an hour, just playing around. Then I came back home and edited that recording that lasted half an hour or forty minutes into something shorter.
What are you working in at home? What system do you use?
Well, I used to use [MOTU] Digital Performer. But everything had been recorded in Pro Tools, so I had to learn how to use Pro Tools, which thankfully is very much like Performer. There are a few things that Pro Tools doesn't have that I really missed; very simple tools that are obvious to me. But, in exchange, Pro Tools has many things that Digital Performer doesn't have. Now what I want is to have a mix of both. It would be great. It took me a little while to get used to Pro Tools, especially the shortcuts and all that. In Performer, you can change the shortcuts the way you want, but in Pro Tools, they are mandatory. They force you to use what they build, what they have designed.
When you're starting a mix, where do you begin? What are the essential elements in your approach to a mix?
In general, the mixing comes with the recording, because I've already found a place for the new instrument in the mix. Maybe then, if there are other things that come into the track, I decide that something that was in the middle needs to go to the right or the left. But it's like embroidering, when I mix on my own. Here it's been a different process, because I had previous mixes made at home, and then I took them to the studio. He [Eduardo Bergallo] took the mixes from zero. I was very scared, because I had worked a lot on the mixes. The only things that he sometimes kept were the panning and the volumes. For instance, in songs like "Lentísmo Halo," the guitar that starts the song was really low and very quiet. When he proposed to do that I was a bit reluctant at first, but then I thought he was right and I loved it. The problem with working a lot on something is that, when you give it to someone else, you suffer a little bit. You've worked so much. You're used to the song and things sounding one way, and then someone starts from the beginning again. All I do is tell him to do this so it sounds exactly the same way it was. Then he asks, "If you want it to sound the same, why do you need me?" We made a good team. He insisted on having delays and reverbs that I didn't want, but some of them are really good!
It's always interesting when you have something that you've worked on, and you have somebody that you trust mix.
Yes, totally.
One of our contributors, and a friend of mine, Thom Monahan, who I know you've worked with in the past, wondered how much of your writing is based on pure improvisation. Do you see composition as a curation of ideas initially, or is it a thing you do daily and then watch what themes emerge?
No, I think it's the first case. It's curating a few improvisations. Especially because I think improvisations have something so fresh, so I try to keep all of them in the records. Then I learn them [in order] to play the record live, but it has something that you can't really repeat. I don't know if people would notice the difference, but I can. And if I can, anybody else could. Sometimes you're playing a key, and you just move the modulation wheel in a way that has something special. When you do it, it's heavier. Not everything, but many things are impossible to repeat. Sometimes [it's possible to] improve them, but I usually take what's been recorded. If it's really wrong, and I see what the idea was, then I play it again. But I try not to.
When you're programming synths, do you program for a specific song or purpose, or do you program more broadly and then pull from that what you need when you need it?
In general, I go first through the sounds in my keyboard. When nothing works, I go to the closest one that I imagine that could work, and then I start changing some parameters to make it fit in the song. Sometimes I am just playing around with the keyboard and make a sound that I find very nice, and then I make a song with it. It can be either way. I am currently taking programming classes, because I got a new keyboard that I really can't manage at all.
Which one is that?
It's a [Dave Smith Instruments] Prophet 12. For instance, there are a few things on the song "Cálculos y Oráculos." The sounds are like little cats. I programmed that sound in the studio, but if by chance I wanted to repeat that sound, I wouldn't be able to make it. Odin [Schwartz], one of the guys who plays with me, and I are going to take classes on programming synths, because everything I've done is just by ear. Sometimes I struggle trying to do something, and I really don't know what exactly. I know many things, but this new keyboard really has too many parameters. Sometimes I'm moving knobs here and there, and nothing changes. It's just because you need to enable who-knows-what to make it change the sound that you are trying to get. I'd like to try to make things faster. Although accidents, as everybody knows, are our best friends. If you know too much, then you are less inclined to have an accident.
I agree.
