Sarah Stuart spoke to soprano Grace Davidson about her new album Sacred Chants, and her work with contemporary composers Max Richter and Julie Cooper.

Many will have heard Grace’s ethereal voice on Max Richter’s Sleep where her pure voice excels. Grace is first and foremost a baroque specialist, working as a soloist with leading Baroque ensembles. Grace’s unique tone has attracted many contemporary composers such as Eric Whitacre, Max Richter, Julie Cooper, and Michael Price.

Grace’s work is split between these seemingly contrasting worlds of early music and contemporary composition. There is, however, an interesting connection in the light sound suited to both. Grace’s pure sound has led to her critically-acclaimed lockdown project Sacred Chants, an album of works by medieval composer Hildegard von Bingen for solo voice.

Your repertoire ranges from the medieval music of Hildegard von Bingen to contemporary composers such as Max Richter and film music. As a baroque specialist, could you tell us about the differences – or similarities – in experience, expression or vocal technique when singing music from such different eras.

Well, it’s funny because I feel that the two worlds are very closely linked actually. Most of my experience as a young singer came through Baroque and Renaissance music. I sang with wonderful consort groups like the Tallis Scholars, The Sixteen, and Tenebrae. So I learnt lots of this repertoire, and I absolutely adored it. It really exposed me to all of these wonderful programs. I don’t have an enormous voice, and I love singing in a straight and instrumental way. I was a violinist as a child.

That became my style, and my niche. Then I was very lucky to have this world of film music come into my life as well. I was approached by Max Richter, for example, who loved the way I sang and felt it fitted well into his sound world. I realised it really did, so I’ve opened up this whole new world as well.

I go from doing a Baroque programme in Austria or Germany, like last week singing Purcell & Händel with Freiburg Baroque Orchestra, to going to Abbey Road Studios to work on a film soundtrack. I’m very much using the same voice always, I don’t feel like I have to adapt.

They are two different experiences, obviously. I’ve gotten used to singing in studios with headphones on, and I absolutely adore that, but I also adore singing the early music. I feel like I’ve found my natural habitat in these two rather different worlds.

They have a similar light sound to them which works well.

Yes, they do, and for example Sleep is a kind of lullaby. The line I sing is like a descant, and it feels a bit like a Renaissance descant, like Allegri’s Miserere – it has that vibe to it.

‘Sacred Chants’ has been very well received, how did this album come about? What can you tell us about the music of Hildegard von Bingen that drew you to record this album? How did you approach your interpretation and phrasing of the music, did you use a modern transcription of the original neumes?

It’s funny how this album came about. In lockdown we all lost a lot of our work, I was still doing a bit of film work for composers, and I brought some of that home. My outbuilding became a studio, it’s not an official studio, but I have a great friend and collaborator Christian Foreshaw who has recording equipment.

One night I was sitting on my sofa feeling a bit gloomy and I received a message from the film composer Harry Gregson Williams. He was writing a score for The Last Duel, and said he’d heard my voice and would like me to sing it. So I asked Christian if he could come round the next day. There were about ten or twelve cues I needed to sing and record. They were all ‘Hildegard-esque’, with a simple feel to them.

We recorded them in my garden outbuilding, and Williams was delighted. After that recording I thought – this reminds me of the Hildegard von Bingen I used to sing. I went to my library and found this book of Hildegard by Christopher Page. It is a modern edition, not neumes, but there’s not very much. It’s just dots on a page.

I’ve had that in my library for years. When I was at the Royal Academy of Music Jeremy Summerly invited me to sing a piece of Hildegard in a concert. I’d never heard of it, so I popped down to Chimes on Marylebone high street and the lady pulled this one score off the shelf. It’s actually what they used in Gothic Voices, Christopher Page’s group with Emma Kirkby.

I’ve always had this album, I’ve sung it every now and then, and snuck it into programmes. I adore it, and I feel very free and comfortable singing it. I said to my husband and Christian after this, “my work has all fallen out of the diary, I’m going to make an album of Hildegard von Bingen”. I asked my husband, Nigel Short, if he’d produce it. Christian came over, and we spent three days recording it in my garden shed!

When we put it together, it sounded very plain – after all it is just voice. I thought it was a bit risky, that it might be quite boring to people and appear as a whole album of all the same things, but it’s not all the same at all. And when you start to listen into each phrase, and each colour, it’s wonderfully varied.

It was born out of lockdown, and loss of work, and feeling isolated. It felt really fitting to do it at that time. It was actually very healing for me to do. To just create my own project in this period of my life when I probably wouldn’t have gotten round to recording it if we hadn’t had a pandemic perhaps.

It’s been really very well received, and people have thought that maybe this is what we need in life at the moment – a bit of something that is just exactly what it is, unaffected. I could have added drones or had other singers if times had been different, but on this occasion it was very much about me using my resources.

‘Sacred Chants’ was recorded during the pandemic from your home, please can you tell us about your experience recording in this way? With lockdown being a time of isolation, singing on your own must be quite powerful.

It is lovely that it was inspired by my film music, where I feel this strong link. So there literally is a link to the film, it was actually a fantastic Ridley Scott film. An epic film. It’s quite a dark story, but if I hadn’t been invited to do that, perhaps I wouldn’t have had the thought to do the Hildegard. So it all just happened very sort of spontaneously, and I’m really thrilled with it.

It must have been nice to have a project to do during lockdown.

Yes, I’m the type of singer who is invited to do this and do that, so it was quite empowering to come up with my own project. For it to have reaped success is even more satisfying.

Hearing Hildegard’s chants sung by solo voice really accentuates how her melodies have a freer and more expressive feel than other liturgical music of her day. Other than the beauty of Hildegard’s music, is it important to you to sing works by women, including contemporary composer Julie Cooper?

Absolutely, yes. I’ve been very lucky to sort of advocate some of that. I’ve been approached by, and work with many more female composers these days, which is just wonderful. And I adore working with Julie, obviously, with Continuum. I think somebody like Hildegard is a sort of underlying influence on all of these things, really. It’s just extraordinary music and actually hugely varied. I think Julie Cooper adores that music as well, and sort of admired it, and everything just tied in nicely. We had a ball doing her two albums.

Can you tell us more about your recordings with Julie Cooper, most recently with your release To a Skylark where you sing with your son Joshua? That must have been a very special experience. How did this project come about?

Well, funnily enough, that one was sort of born out of the previous one, Continuum. Continuum was also mid-lockdown. Julie was writing it through lockdown. When we recorded at Abbey Road, it was all quite socially distanced still. I was in a booth for that, which is quite challenging. I desperately wanted to be in the room with the orchestra, to look at them and make music with them.

Continuum is a beautiful album with some lovely, wonderful musicians. It’s such a privilege to have an accompanist in the form of Clio Gould, and Elena Urioste, a wonderful violinist to duet with, and with Jessica Curtis conducting. It’s very much a female dominated project, which was just how Julie would have wanted it. So it was lovely, and there’s some readings and poetry, a nice variety.

After that recording, I was in touch with Julia as a friend and a colleague. My husband, who runs Tenebrae Choir, has just recently released a Christmas Disc In Winter’s House, which also has some really nice female composers on there: Joanna Marsh and Joanna Forbes L’Estrange. We did Britten’s Ceremony of Carols which is traditionally sung by boy choristers. We had Joshua record That yongë Child just for fun, really. Then we listened back and thought, oh, this is really good. So we put it in.

Around that time I was chatting with Julie and she asked to hear it, and she said she wanted to write a duet for myself and Josh. I thought, ‘Oh golly, that’s quite a big responsibility’, but it was such a lovely thing and it just evolved. We recorded last summer just as he’d left being a chorister at St John’s College School, Cambridge, yet still had his treble voice.

It just happened naturally, and it was really perfect. Joshua just adored it, he loved being in the studio. That to me is a very, very special thing. We’re going to treasure that forever.

Can you tell us more about your work recording and performing as the primary soloist with Max Richter, and what you enjoy most about this type of work? The sustained notes must be challenging. It’s interesting that people who don’t necessarily know choral music love Richter’s work.

I absolutely adore working with Max and singing for him. I’ve been very lucky, I’ve been on a few of his projects and we’ve toured the world with things like Sleep. I feel like that’s very much kind of my piece. It’s a great privilege to do it.

That’s an interesting question because the audience is a very different audience to those of my days with The Sixteen, or my hardcore classical Renaissance audience. These are people that are drawn to the works for the concept, rather than necessarily the music, but the music obviously is very moving as well.

It’s really interesting to see how audience members respond, because it’s a different concept. They don’t sit in chairs and watch us for things like sleep. They can be lying down, or reading a book. We perform in different environments. We’re not just in concert halls, sometimes we’re in warehouses, somewhere which is just a space for people to respond how they wish. So I adore that.

There was a bit of a hiatus through the pandemic again, but we were at the Barbican at the start of October with new works by Max. He’s just had a new ballet released in Canada, which is inspired by Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam. He very kindly got my son Joshua to come and do some readings on that as part of the backing track.

There’s lots more to come from him, I’m sure, and I hope to continue working with him. It is a technical challenge to sing those lines because they sit high and there’s no text. I’m a wordless, sort of ethereal magical, otherworldly type of instrument. And that’s a challenge, but a worthwhile one. I adore it, and I feel very privileged to be involved in it.

It is very unique. A lot of people, who aren’t typically into Classical music, find that music very peaceful and healing, a bit like the Hildegard. I think it’s quite similar.

I think there are links, I think that’s interesting. Although the Hildegard is full of text, every other note is a word, and it’s very religious. Max’s music isn’t religious ever, but it’s normally got a gentle kind of activist undertone. There’s a reason why he’s written stuff, and that really reaches people and relates to them. There’s a fascinatingly wide audience for his music. He’s done an amazing thing, the reaction that we had at the Barbican was just amazing. It was so moving.

Do you have any other projects that you can discuss coming up?

I’ve got some ideas, I am thinking about my next album now. I hope to do another compilation album, featuring old and new music, because I feel that represents what I do. I’ve made that a thing. I never really wanted to go into opera. I love baroque music, but it’s not sustainable just to sing that all the time. Everybody has to find their thing.

Musifée’s playlist Grace Davidson explores Grace’s career, and the music mentioned here.

Grace’s music can also be found in Musifée’s playlists A Spotless Rose, Contemporary Women Composers, and Weekend Classics.

Sacred Chants can be purchased from Signum Records.

Welcome to issue 7 of Audio Media International

The post Interview: Grace Davidson on new album and her work with Max Richter, Julie Cooper and Harry Gregson Williams appeared first on Audio Media International.

Returning with a sonically expansive fourth album, Atlanta’s Algiers have fused hands-on hardware with a cast of guest vocalists, as well as some bewitching instrumental flair…

Fusing the disciplines of hip-hop and indie rock, with lyrics that hit back at political and societal injustice, Atlanta’s Algiers have built a dedicated following since their formation back in 2012. Led by vocalist and guitarist Franklin James Fisher, the four-piece have released three records to date, with the fourth, SHOOK, set to drop this February.

Aside from the kit-mastery of former Bloc Party drummer Matt Tong, the band have delved more into the hardware realm to create the rhythms and textures that underpin the record (including a Roland SP-404 and a Sequential Circuits Tempest) counterpointed by some deliciously unhinged guitar work. We caught up with Algiers’ guitar-man Lee Tesche to learn more about the making of this ambitious new album, which also stars some acclaimed guests…

AMI: SHOOK is a really tremendous listen. What was the starting point?

Lee Tesche: Franklin had been collecting demos throughout the early part of the pandemic. Things shut down at the very beginning of our tour for our previous record and we were all stranded back home in Atlanta. We were with our families and re-establishing the things that brought us together in the first place. Franklin had been in a writing frenzy and he and (bassist and co-founder) Ryan [Mahan] had been working on some new music, watching a lot of documentaries and delving back into the music we’d all grown up on.

Not too long after Franklin revealed that he’d had essentially a whole record in demo form. He shared this big batch of demos with us and we built upon it from there.

AMI: I love some of the dissonant guitar work on the record, in Irreversible Damage and 73% it seems particularly abrasive. What was the idea with making the guitar sound like it does, and what were some of your approaches?

LT: Both Franklin and I are the guitar players in the band and it’s always a difficult space to navigate when you’re playing with someone else. We’ve known each other for so long. The shorthand origin story of the band runs as follows: I was in a band in high school and Ryan came to all of our shows. When that band ended Ryan and I started something new. Franklin became a fan of that band and became a bit of a superfan. He hadn’t come across people doing more DIY indie-punk stuff locally, so it was a big eye-opening moment for him.

He’s always looked up to me as a guitar player, which is funny because he’s the best guitar player that any of us know. He’s probably the best musician in general that any of us know. I think on previous records I’d take the lead and step up to fill in a lot of those sonic spaces with the guitar. This was the first time he actually took the torch and led from a guitar perspective.

A lot of the time he’s trying to do stuff that he thinks I’d do or vice versa. We end up writing for each other. A lot of those things we spent the last month or so really rehearsing the heck out of these songs for live performance. Some of those guitar parts took me a while to learn because they’re quite complicated.

AMI: There’s some amazing guests on this record, and it’s fantastic to hear Rage Against the Machine’s Zack de la Rocha. How did you choose who to bring into this album and how does the variety of voices affect the context of the songs?

LT: It was kind of a combination of a number of different factors. The fact that we started writing this in Atlanta meant that there was a real ‘Atlanta’ basis for everything. We were trying to pull some people who had a connection to the south and some of those thematics into the record. At a certain point we just started talking to people that we’d previously discussed collaborating with. Zack’s collaboration was a long time coming. We’re obviously huge fans of his and he’d been a fan of ours for a long time. So it seemed appropriate to pull him into this album.

The song he’s on, Irreversible Damage is rooted in a lot of things. Franklin had been listening to a lot of North African and Turkish psych-guitar stuff. That’s kind of what influenced that. We were doing a lot of writing and recording ourselves then re-sampling it, putting it in the sampler and then triggering it back and trying to do more beats-focused writing.

AMI: I understand that Franklin and Ryan have been stitching beats together using some retro gear. What was the motivation to use classic gear to do that?

LT: We like hands-on things. We work in software a lot too, but as with most practices it’s good to change things up and use physical materials. Even in graphic design (which is my background) sometimes it’s great to get off the computer and work with physical media. It’s exactly the same with music. Franklin has always had a Roland SP-404, a little sampler. So we decided to use that, and try things ‘this’ way for a change.

AMI: There’s a lot of synth texture on the record too. I like how they veer between the more spiky and the more serene, like on Bite Back. What were some of the core synths used on the record?

LT: Bite Back is interesting, because Ryan just wrote that entirely and brought it in. I remember thinking it was an incredible piece. I was really impressed. His work with synths and electronics I was really blown away by. All of that was done with a Modal Argon-8, and a Sequential Circuits Tempest drum machine in lockdown. When we were in the studio we didn’t really replace anything, we just worked with the textures that he’d already made. Throughout the rest of the record we used all sorts of different things.

The production of the album was spread out across the whole band. Our last few records were produced by seasoned pros. After learning from them, we were really conscious that we wanted to make those decisions and produce ourselves. Our friend and former FOH engineer Matt Rekini was a great engineer to work with.

AMI: What tracks changed the most from their initial form?

LT: A lot of Franklin’s early demos I found very refreshing because he was consciously trying to leave space for the other band members to write within. But I thought that a lot of the space was quite beautiful, and didn’t want to fill everything in. It seemed to work really well.

So, we tried to keep a lot of those original ideas, and keep that sense of instinct-based writing intact. There were some incredible songs that just didn’t make the record. I Can’t Stand It took a while to get right. The music was always intact, but Franklin was searching for the right chorus on that for a really long time. Something Wrong, the more experimental track near the end of the album, changed a lot just because of the process. Franklin’s demo was really interesting. I’d been recently experimenting with tape effects and when I heard Franklin’s demo, I tried to reconstruct some of his similar ideas but with tape.

AMI: How long did the production process take overall?

LT: We started it last summer and had finished most of the basic trackings by mid-September. When you’re collaborating with other musicians, you have to wait for them to find time in their schedule to record their parts.

AMI: We read that prior to making this record, the band was in quite a troubled place, and at one point you were close to breaking up, is that right?

LT: Being a musician is a hustle, it’s the same in a lot of trades right now. You’re just trying to make ends meet but keep being creative. We’d been super busy and active, friendships naturally began to fray. The touring we were doing was getting quite argumentative, so (with lockdown) things shut-down at just the right time for us. It helped us to reset and reconnect. The fact that we’ve had these long enduring friendships has kept us together. We were asking a lot of questions that we were able to answer through this process.

Making SHOOK was a healing process in a lot of ways, as writers and musicians. There had been long periods of working that were tough and tiring but there was also a lot more joy coming out of it this time around. It was a lot of fun.

AMI: SHOOK seems like a meticulously crafted statement, will things have to change arrangement wise when you perform live, or will the live arrangements be in-step with the studio versions?

LT: We’re never trying to match studio versions 100%. Live is really where things come to life for us. In the studio you’re often working on individual parts and mixing things but you’re never really actualising the songs until you take them to the stage. By the end of your first tour all of a sudden it’s something different, a real thing that you’re living every night. We just spent the last six weeks rehearsing it heavily, but we’re trying to leave room for improv and expansion.

SHOOK is released on February 24th by Matador Records, Algiers will tour Europe in February. See Algiers website for more info: algierstheband.com

Welcome to issue 7 of Audio Media International

The post Algiers Interview: “the production of the album was across the whole band. Our last records were produced by seasoned pros”. appeared first on Audio Media International.

We speak with mixer, engineer, producer and Atmos fan Eva about her work on Dune and the upmixing process…

Q: What was it like starting out as a young woman in the industry?

A: I was very blind to the whole idea of women not being in this industry at first. I was 17 when I started out, so I was very young. At that age, you don’t think about gender or any of the obstacles that come with being female. Audio school was fun and easy for me, so I decided to follow that path. After moving to Los Angeles, I realized early on that whenever you’re in a studio as a woman, unless the people know you, they will usually assume that the guy knows more.

It was only then that the reality of the industry hit me like a bag of rocks. My first day interning at this pop studio was just disappointing―I didn’t even get to look at the console. I became so determined after that point, so I tried to give it my best all the time. Even when I had no idea what I was doing, I had good intentions. I never let my lack of experience stop me from working hard.

Q: What are you doing now?

A: I specialize in Atmos, film and record mixing. It was Alan Meyerson who got me into film scoring. While it was hard work – he works every day of his life!, it was also very rewarding, and I loved it. I eventually moved on to freelancing and dictating my own schedule, which is very liberating. It works for me because I love to work hard on a project, go all in and then finish it off and give myself a release before moving on to the next job.

I recently worked in Dubai on the live show “Why? The Musical” from A.R. Rahman and Shekhar Kapur. Prior to that, I assisted with the score mix for the Dune movie and did the Atmos mixes for the soundtrack release, in addition to mixing the score for Amazon Originals’ adaptation of Cinderella. I used NUGEN’s Halo Upmix plug-in for those projects. Some of my other recent film projects include Secret Headquarters; No Time to Die; “Minions: The Rise of Gru; 9 Bullets; “Love and Love Not; and “Falcon Lake. I’ve also been working on some music recordings with a couple of bands.

Q: What types of NUGEN Audio software and plug-ins do you use to problem-solve on your projects?

A: I work in film scoring, so we’re often given stereo stems. If we need to do a surround mix, we need to upmix it. So, NUGEN’s Halo Upmix has been extremely helpful. Scott Michael Smith, a popular film score mixer, got me into it. He has this template where he’ll take certain sounds and copy and paste them to a new track with Halo Upmix on it.

On certain stems, if it’s a synth, you can drag and drop. I’ve started doing that, including on Amazon’s “Cinderella.” It was the first project that I used Halo Upmix on. I experimented with it and really liked it, especially mixing the orchestral samples.

Q: What is it that you like most about NUGEN Audio plug-ins?

A: With film, because we mix samples, I use Upmix a lot now, especially whenever I have a surround mix. I did the Atmos mixes for “Dune,” and NUGEN worked really well for that project. It’s so easy to use. The software is just genius, and I love that you can adjust the volumes of the different sides. What I’ll do is print the vocal track and then an effects track, and I’ll upmix the effects using Halo Upmix to create an effects surround but keep the vocal in stereo. It enables me to get creative and really helps me just specialize tracks.

Q: What advice do you have for women and other young people getting started in the industry?

As women, we bring an energy to the table that’s quite a bit different from our counterparts. It’s just a little more laid back sometimes, and it’s a little less egotistical. In general, women have to work harder, they have to be extremely smart, and they have to walk this fine line of being assertive but not too assertive. For young women, I try to tell them not to be afraid. Just go into a job with the mindset that I did when I was younger, which is just don’t be scared to mess up and, of course, stay true to yourself at your core.

Generally, if you’re good at what you do and you find your community, you’ll be just fine. Things will always happen, both good and bad, so it’s important to find your support system. Finding someone you can go out with while also talking shop is a great stress relief and a great way to learn as well.

Lastly, what you bring to the table is what is going to define your career as an engineer, including how you react to situations. Be courageous and definitive with your decisions when you’re working, and that will steer you to where you’re going to end up.

For more info about Eva, visit www.evareistad.com.

Welcome to issue 7 of Audio Media International

The post In the Mix with Eva Reistad appeared first on Audio Media International.

The award winning composer joins Bowers & Wilkins at Abbey Road to celebrate 60 years of James Bond.

“I can’t believe I became part of this film series,” says composer David Arnold. “I did five Bond films – Tomorrow Never Dies, The World Is Not Enough, Die Another Day, Casino Royale and Quantum Of Solace – and it still feels like an enormous honour.”
Arnold is in Abbey Road Studio Two, reminiscing as part of a 60 Years of Bond shindig. There’s a Martini Bar in one corner of the studio and Bollinger on tap in another, while a sizzle reel loops on the wall.

The themes for Spectre and Skyfall were recorded at Abbey Road. What’s more, the recently released Bond 25 album, featuring Bond themes played by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, with brand-new arrangements, was also recorded in Abbey Road Studio One.

The orchestra is on hand for the night, playing Monty Norman’s theme, as well as the themes from Goldfinger and Skyfall, for specially invited guests.

David Arnold says that his first encounter with Bond was at a Christmas party when he was eight years old. “I saw it projected (on 16mm film) at a children’s party and within the first five minutes I had heard John Barry’s extraordinary strings for that amazing opening song, Nancy Sinatra singing, and saw a giant spaceship eating a smaller space ship; a hollowed out volcano and ninjas!

“I’ve always said that when you’re from Luton, everything seems exotic, but this was truly exotic. Ever since then Bond has been a part of my life. Bond has become a cultural touchstone. An icon. It’s remarkable.”

“A common criticism of song writing can be ‘this sounds like a Bond song.’ It’s an easy thing to say. Whenever a new Bond movie comes out, someone will produce a list of songs that could have been a Bond song but weren’t…

“Yet it’s evasive. McCartney’s Live and Let Die sounds nothing like Billie Eilish’s No Time to Die, and neither of them sound like The Spy Who Loved Me, yet they’re all Bond songs. The Bond name shoulders an awful lot.”

Talking about the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Arnold says: “The RPO made me want to be a composer. I wanted to be a part of something that made such an incredible noise. When you’re in the studio with the RPO at full blast, it’ll make you want to become a composer. Just don’t become too good. I can do without the competition…”

The post David Arnold on scoring 007: “A common criticism of song writing can be ‘this sounds like a Bond song'” appeared first on Audio Media International.

At the crest of a wave of increasingly astounding AI-led compositional software, DAACI has a potential for generating melody, sound and texture that is vast in scope. Now, the company quests towards a Metaverse-leaning future…

As a 2020s music-maker, debating the pros and cons of AI-generated tracks has become one of our regular pastimes. From those platforms which reliably construct ready-to-go soundtracks on the fly, to those that nudge composers into certain niches, the question of whether the growing surge in computer-driven creativity is a good thing or a bad thing keeps many of us up at night. One thing that’s undeniable is that the quality of these algorithmically-designed works is getting better.

Enter DAACI; a fully-formed artificial intelligence, capable of composing, arranging, orchestrating and producing completely original music in real-time. An acronym for Definable Aleatoric Artificial Composition Intelligence, the DAACI software doesn’t rely on human-crafted samples or existing frameworks, instead forming its own musical architecture and often going above and beyond what composers are capable of.

We had a conversation with DAACI’s CEO Rachel Lyske to learn more about this intriguing software, and how DAACI might end up benefiting modern composers…

AMI: Firstly, can you give us an overview of DAACI, and how its AI-led tech is able to construct musical elements in real-time?

Rachel Lyske: The best way to answer that is to start thinking like a composer. In the compositional process, composers have options and choices for what they can do to achieve their end result. They have their defined options depending on what it is they’re trying to say. They’re not going to choose certain musical options that don’t meld well together (such as sad music during a car chase for example). So there are always many intelligent constraints over the options they choose.

So what we do at DAACI is encode that series of options based on an input, then the computer can present those options in real time to compose for whatever brief we need to fulfil. Hence we can create this dynamic and limitless music because we’re not static. That’s how DAACI works, it’s a composition brain that acts in the same way as a composer would.

AMI: How does DAACI interpret a composer’s input?

RL: If we truly understand what a brief is – especially in music – then it doesn’t really communicate a deeper meaning. What music does is that it gives you an emotional connotation. We can annotate the emotional connotations within specific music choices. And what the emotional connotations will be if we use certain cues. Consequently, when we go through a brief and someone tells us they want it to be ‘happy’ or ‘scary’ or ‘tense’, we can look at this and see how combining certain options can lead to the end result that they need.

A big part of how it works is an analysis process and another half is this meta-compositional process. So we’re helping people determine what they want to say emotionally – and how musically they can say it. Then we’re aiding them to combine from different places, to create bespoke reactions to that brief.

So the question kind of answers itself. It’s an emotional language. Straight away as a composer, you know what you need to fulfil certain briefs, and you bring certain elements together to make music that hits a certain emotional target.
 

AMI: Do you see DAACI’s unique approach to AI-based music composition as more of a system that works in tandem with the composer, as opposed to a replacement?

RL: It is very much working in tandem with the composer. DAACI isn’t a replacement for a composer, it’s an enhancement of their process. They might choose it to replace their process but it’s certainly not replacing *the composer*. In reality, most commercial composers already have heaps of options to play with, and we’re just providing a similar mechanic for everyone else. We respect that composers do that, and we’re enhancing that approach.

AMI: You’ve stressed that video game composition is a particular area where DAACI might prove to have a strong impact, why do you think this is?

RL: Well the gaming market is massive and it’s only growing. As we get closer to the Metaverse and Web 3.0 it’s only going to swell. There’s no way that smaller composers can fulfil a lot of the huge demands that writing for interactive mediums entails. With this tool you can express your intent, and DAACI will do the rest.

As an early experiment, even with just three inputs we worked out that it could generate variations of 5×10^{11}. It exceeded that actually. To put that in context, Spotify holds around 82 million tracks, and that’s 6,400 times smaller than the options available via just the three inputs we entered for our brief. So we’ll invite any gaming company who wants to explore all that with us.

AMI: Is there any other software out there similarly innovating in the field of AI-based music composition, and what marks DAACI out as different from the likes of AIVA and Amper Music?

RL: What we are excited about is that the world is opening up and the attitude towards AI and composition isn’t a terrifying prospect anymore. As individuals we’ve got around thirty years of experience at DAACI so there’s a real maturity to our approach. Getting back to that idea that DAACI is the core of the system, what we’re not doing is feeding it a load of scores and saying ‘alright, make me something that sounds kind of like that’. We’re not trying to extract from some deep neural network some kind of truth from the music. What we’re doing is saying ‘we’ve got the intent’ and we can craft a meta-composition.

It’s not a trivial thing. The majority of us are professional musicians and artists, even amongst the coders, and that’s been one of the unique aspects of us. We really think we are unique in our approach. The other approaches are only going to get you so far. I think absolutely. We’re the only ones that are doing this.

AMI: How will DAACI be rolled out then – will it be a web platform, or an app?

RL: Ultimately the system is designed to benefit the composer and there’ll be a composer tool for them to use. But that’s only the start of a productivity tree that the benefits of DAACI will flow through. The commercial applications of this brain can go into many different products, just like the end result of a piece of music written by a composer. It’s the same with DAACI. It’s about creating a new framework.

AMI: The Innovate UK investment was a high-profile advocacy of DAACI – How competitive was that process of winning funding, and can you talk about how the investment will enable you to build on the company’s objectives?

RL: We are extremely thankful to Innovate UK for that. It’s absolutely brilliant. The recognition and the support has been fantastic and it’s great that they are recognising what we’re trying to do. It was a really rigorous process. It was like doing due diligence on an investment, it was a real deep dive into everything. I think there were 1,072 applications and only 71 were funded.

The main aim was to recognise game-changing, innovative and ambitious ideas that they think will significantly impact the UK economy for good. For us, having that investment has been extremely powerful. It’s allowing us to enhance our R&D side and develop more research. We’re massively thankful to them for that and their ongoing support.

AMI: Do you think that AI-led content and art generation is going to be a massive part of our lives across the next few decades, and are we just starting to see a tidal wave of AI-led applications? Particularly as innovative ideas like the Metaverse become more widespread?

RL: I do, and I think it’s an incredibly exciting time right now and I think it’s an incredibly empowering time. DAACI is riding that crest of that wave, anticipating what the needs of the future will be. Making music intelligent in its environment, and that’s essential for the future.

AMI: What would you say to those fearful of the perceived encroachment of AI into the music composer’s marketplace?

RL: If you were asking my brother that question he might not be as polite as me. My brother is the inventor of DAACI, and it’s been built on a lifetime of research. Essentially he’s a composer, I’m a composer, and we didn’t just wake up one day and decide to do this. It’s something that’s been a lifelong obsession. We genuinely believe that the landscape of how music is created and experienced is changing. If we can enhance and empower then why wouldn’t you try to do that.

AMI: How do you see DAACI evolving further in the future, and what’s next for the company?

RL: I think it will be an integral part of composers’ workflows. Our CCO Ken often refers to a great quote from Chris Cooke (CMO Insights and Miderm, 2008), he says “The history of the music industry is basically a story about how a sequence of new technologies respectively transformed the way music is made, performed, recorded, distributed and consumed.”, essentially there’s been a series of leaps over the last 100 years, DAACI is that next phase in that evolution, particularly as the digital world starts opening up. Composers become meta-composers. The users can become composers. It can be democratised. Things don’t stop, they evolve.

For more information on DAACI, visit daaci.com

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Founder member of The Horrors, synth polymath and passionate enthusiast for all things AI, Tom Furse spoke to us recently, and predicted how machine learning will re-define art in all its forms, he also admitted a growing hunger for innovation when it comes to music technology…

“Why go anywhere when you can go anywhere?” laughs Tom Furse, The Horrors’ inventive co-founder and creative journeyman tell us, when asked about his recent swing away from live performing. Aside from his continuing role as a The Horrors’ principal sonic architect, Tom’s individual exploits have brought two deep solo records, and a burgeoning passion for AI.

Using his own system to manufacture dense visuals, like those in his recent video for HAAi’s Baby We’re Ascending, as well as his ‘Relics’ series of generative art pieces. Furse explained to us how he foresees similar mind-blowing AI innovations eventually re-drawing the music technology landscape. But first, we asked Tom about his recent departure from performing live with The Horrors…

AMI: Last year you announced you weren’t going to be touring with The Horrors anymore, in your Instagram post you mentioned that you’re more of a ‘creator’ than a performer. Had that been an issue for a while for you, the need to write not marrying with being on the road?

Tom Furse: Yeah, it absolutely had been an issue for quite some time. Just because it’s such a different environment when you’re on the road. It’s great for all kinds of reasons, but if what you really want to do is make stuff, there’s pitfalls. It’s just really hard to find a quiet spot. I’d spend a lot of time with headphones on in noisy environments. I wasn’t always happy on tour. When Covid hit it was a bit of a lightbulb moment.

AMI: But of course, you are still a member of The Horrors, and you’re working on album six?

TF: Yeah, that’s slowly happening, we’re chipping away!

AMI: Your own career beyond The Horrors has been pretty varied, one of the things that has been interesting recently is your use of AI in your visual art and videos, not least the Baby We’re Ascending video you did with HAAi. AI seems like it’s quite a big area for you right now. How long have you been working with AI and what first attracted you to it?

TF: I’ve been using it for the last year. I just heard about it online, and I’d seen examples of [AI-generated visual art] and thought it was pretty cool. Then I heard an episode of the Interdependence podcast with Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst that really got me interested. I heard about an approach that married image synthesis with natural language input control. I really wanted to give it a go. So I did. It required the navigation of a virtual coding environment, it wasn’t like a nice easy user interface. It was a little bit tricky. But, I just started messing around with it and I haven’t stopped since.

After doing more of less the same thing with music for the past 15 years or so, this was like a much needed breath of fresh air – an entirely new medium that was much less explored than music. I think music is thirsty for new technology and sounds, and new places to go. I don’t think we’ve had that for quite a long time.

I’ve always loved exploring the element of surprise in music, with generative approaches. But, that’s more an illusion of surprise. This is much more strange and psychedelic. It’s quite something.

AMI: Have you used generative and AI-based approaches in music before?

Tom Furse: No, not really because they don’t really exist yet. I went looking for it, and everything I found was pretty wanting to be honest. The processes I’ve used before have been based on logic and maths systems. You can set quite complex patterns, but it’s in reality a very simple computer, ones-and-zeroes approach. It’s not really intelligent but it is fun. It’s what Brian Eno’s been doing for decades, he’s done some of the most interesting work in that area. But we need new stuff – we can’t be Brian Eno all the time!

AMI: Do you think that we’ve only seen the tip of the iceberg really with what AI can do, particularly in music production?

TF: Oh, God, yeah. It’s a hard thing to capture because I think historically what people have been trying to do is train AI on like MIDI files, but they don’t necessarily convey what is interesting or *good* about the songs. Or, the style of a song or a sound. It’s not terrible data but it’s quite raw data. It doesn’t really capture the essence of stuff, which is what the visual art-aimed AI approaches do.

With what Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst are up to, where they have captured the essence of Holly’s voice with Holly+ – there you can drag an audio file into it and a very good approximation of Holly’s voice will sing it. With the latest version you can’t tell the difference between her voice and the synthesised version. So, there we’re getting into some really interesting territory. The lines are going to get so blurred.

One of the best-selling vocal albums of 2026 or 2027 will probably be made not using a real vocalist. People will start making things like Chet Baker techno records. Whatever the maddest thing you can imagine will be possible. We’re seeing this already with image synthesis. People will be mashing up stuff. If you think about how postmodern culture is now, we’re all really primed for this.

I think that’s more how entertainment will go. Giving the type of AI technology that we’re currently seeing in visual art to musicians is going to be wild, beautiful, scary and psychedelic. I can’t wait. But, there’ll undoubtedly be a lot of pushback.

AMI: Then you’ve got the other side of the AI-paradigm; platforms like AIVA and Amper which can manufacture tailor-made soundtracks using AI, what are your thoughts on that side of things?

Tom Furse: I mean, I’ve heard them and I think it’s almost like the equivalent of Dall-E. When I first saw that I suspected that a certain kind of illustrator might not have as much work, and that might also be the case here. I feel that I have a slightly savage opinion on it. My heart says, maybe everyone needs to try a little harder – why do people settle for this kind of mediocrity? I don’t enjoy it, when I’m watching a film, if there’s just a really vanilla score there, I don’t enjoy making that kind of music when I’ve done library projects before, I just feel like we should be rewarding bolder experiments.

This is perhaps a wake-up call for everyone. If you’re worried then you’re really saying you’re as much of a skilled craftsman as the AI is, but then the art is somewhere lost in there.

Having done a few films, I do understand that it is a very cutthroat industry, and music is such a tiny consideration when people are budgeting. It’s really undervalued, so it doesn’t surprise me that people are seizing on the chance to undervalue it more. I think a better AI solution would be a system that enabled their samples to sound more realistically like a certain style…

AMI: Well, there are quite a few string sample libraries out there that are pretty indiscernible from the real thing…

TF: They’re great, and I do use string sample libraries but the lengths you have to go to to make them sound natural is often quite extreme. I’ve been recording some live strings recently and there really is such a huge difference. It sounds very convincing, but when you get the real articulation and expression from a real player, that hasn’t been beaten yet.

I think you have a lot more scope to do that if you’re synthesising out of nothing – rather than trying to construct recorded samples to play in this natural way. But that’s not there yet. I think that side of the industry will be able to realise a lot more, with a lot less. It’s going to be pretty wild.

AMI: Do you have a similar stance on synths, are you averse to soft synths and prefer the real deal?

Tom Furse: No, I’m synth-neutral. At first you could kind of tell there was a difference, but it’s harder to discern now. I use Arturia’s stuff quite a lot. There’s loads of great Max for Live developers doing interesting synths, there’s so much good stuff happening. I do think we’ve reached a little bit of a plateau in terms of synth methods and sounds.

When I first started buying synths around 2007/2008, there wasn’t really anyone making any good new analogue synths, but now you can get a Behringer TD-3 for under £100. The accessibility is there now, we’ve conquered that particular mountain but where can we go from here?

AMI: How many synths are in your studio right now, or is that a silly question?

TF: Like ten I think, I definitely used to have a lot more, but I’m slimming down a little bit. I’ve got an Arturia Polybrute, and that’s a really amazing workhorse. I realised there’s lots of things I didn’t need anymore. I’ve kind of gone for a more efficient set-up.

AMI: Your second solo album, Ecstatic Meditations was quite a blissful record. Do you intend to continue making music in that vein?

TF: At the moment, it’s more a question of time. I’m just quite busy with a lot of projects that are more visual based. I am doing a bit of music but it’s really nice to have a break for a little bit. I’ve got a piano downstairs and I’ll sit and play something, realise I’m on to something but then might not chase it – But I know that ideas are still there. I used to chase it relentlessly. When your identity is wrapped up in this niche of creativity, it’s good to have a rest and explore something else. When I do come back to make music, it feels more focused. Less like a job.

I also feel like I’m preparing myself for what will be an exciting new wave of music technology. I feel like this investment of time is a very positive thing right now.

Tom Furse: Well, I’m working on another video for HAAi right now, then I’m finishing up some artwork for Temples. I’ve got a record of mine I’ve mixed with Ghost Culture that’s sounding cool so I’m going to get to that when I have a bit more time. Yeah, my current situation is that I wake up in the morning and I think ‘Right, what am I going to make today?’ Things are pretty open.

Follow Tom’s artistic and musical adventures over at tomfurse.com

The post The Horrors’ Tom Furse on how AI will revolutionise music production appeared first on Audio Media International.

Ahead of his standing down as President and CEO of NAMM, we speak to Joe Lamond about his twenty year-stint as head honcho of one of the industry’s most important associations, and learn how the upcoming June show has ended up being one of NAMM’s most pivotal.

In announcing his departure from the role of President and CEO of NAMM in the summer of last year, Joe Lamond – the man who has overseen NAMM’s collective endeavours for the last twenty years – marked the end of an era of staggering global growth and unprecedented importance, not to mention the annual trade shows cementing themselves as cornerstones for the music making industry.

Since taking the role back in 2001, Joe has witnessed the exponential boom of software-based companies taking even more of the limelight from traditional instrument manufacturers, as well as the rise of the internet, a boom in digital B2B relationships and, most recently, a global pandemic. Navigating these industry-reshaping shifts and jolts has been keeping Lamond busy over the past few decades, and now, as NAMM 2022 prepares for its grand opening on June 3rd, Joe is looking forward to bringing his presidency to a climax with the deft merging the summer event with the Anaheim-based winter staple, though he has next year’s NAMM to oversee, too. We spoke to Joe to find out more about his life at the helm of NAMM, and to understand what aspects of running the show have provided him with the most joy, and where the winds of change will sail him next…

AMI: So, firstly, we should talk about the fact that you’re stepping down from the role that you’ve been doing for 20 + years, what prompted this change?

Joe Lamond: I think in a sense we’re all artists, and artists drive our society. They push us, make us uncomfortable make us feel all those wonderful things with their art and their music, so I think at heart I was still a little bit of an artist. I thought ‘what’s next’. I’ve had a wonderful, wonderful time, we accomplished a lot together. But, I need to be uncomfortable, I need to be pushed and always be out there on the edge. That was really one of the drivers. There was really nothing wrong at all. I think we want to keep pushing ourselves.

AMI: The NAMM show is obviously back this year, for the first in-person NAMM since 2020. What can attendees expect, and has it been more challenging than usual to organise the upcoming show?

Joe Lamond: We use that phrase ‘transformation and tradition’, because so much has changed. Nobody is going to arrive at NAMM 2022 the same as they were in 2020. We’ve all changed. We’ve all been impacted by this pandemic and many of us have lost loved ones. Our industry tribute to the people we’ve lost during this time is 280 people long. We’ve all been changed by this, so that’s the transformative part. Companies have changed and had to adapt. Also, there’s a tradition to this. We are in a sense still dealing with the fact that people love to come together around music, whether it’s concerts or theatre, or education – we’re rooted in tradition. If you’re arriving at the show this year you’re going to be thinking ‘which foot am I leading with? The transformative foot or the traditional foot’.

I think there’s going to be this interesting experience when we get there of wanting to feel nostalgic and getting back to that place we were which was wonderful, but at the same time it’s different. Kind of like Frodo going back to The Shire in The Lord of the Rings. You’re not the same person any more, you’ve changed, and we have. People will recognise a lot of it, there’s a lot you will find familiar, but at the same time the exhibits will be different. So, those two words – transformation and tradition – best describe what to expect. You’ll find a home that you remember. But, it won’t be the same, because you’re not the same.

AMI: Do you think the switch to hosting the show in June – and the merging of Summer and Winter NAMMs – will change anything about the show’s ethos this year?

Joe Lamond: The cycle of our show being in January traditionally meant that it was aligned with a time of renewal, coming out of the Christmas holidays and looking ahead to a new year. This show belongs in January and it will return there. We’ve got one more off-cycle show in April, and we’re smaller – we’re probably half the size that you remember. As organisers, I kind of think that’s a challenge sometimes. We’ve made it all fit and we’ll make it flow well. But, as organisers we like big. Then again attendees were saying that it was maybe getting a little too big for a while.

There’s going to be a big difference regarding the fact that it’s a different time of year, and the show is smaller. Some companies are demonstrating some amazing innovations, while others are just barely keeping up with supply chain issues and other macro economic issues. It’s a disruptive time. I think the show will illustrate how the show has changed and how disruptive things are right now. The people who are there are going to be the ones looking for those clues as to how the industry’s future will go. It’s an interesting one, there’ll be a lot of curious people, looking to see if they can predict the future of the industry.

AMI: Navigating NAMM’s trajectory out of COVID must have been tough, what have been some of the key priorities for NAMM beyond the show’s organisation over the last couple of years?

Joe Lamond: Number one was helping our membership through it, and number two was helping our membership through it. Probably number three, four and five too. That was everything from funding studies to figure out how soon music classes could come back safely. Literally funding aerosol studies about wind instruments and how to set up a band room post-COVID. Lobbying the government for relief for the parts of the industry that had to shut down, particularly the touring and live sectors. Helping other governments around the world understand the value of this sector to the economy, and help support them.

Though we’ve got a lot of multi-nationals, a lot of our members are small businesses, manufacturers and retailers. They were looking for guidance on the latest regulations on opening safely and how to resume safely. Tens of millions of dollars were put into the education system to help schools and a lot of that went to the arts.

Every industry needs a voice, and that’s the role we found during the pandemic that I think was most needed. Since we weren’t doing the physical gatherings. On the other hand, we had to survive ourselves. Sometimes, there were sleepless nights with no revenue. Luckily, we’d built up some reserves over the years which allowed us to keep all our team paid and employed, and able to work diligently on behalf of the industry. So, that was how I spent most of my time – helping our members and helping our organisation get through this.

AMI: The virtual ‘Believe in Music’ week was a fantastic way around not having a real show, yet still keeping NAMM a critical fixture. How different was that to organise?

Joe Lamond: It was weird to go back to your own bed every night instead of a hotel! It was really fun and we learned a lot. Some of which we’ve applied to this show. WIth NAMM Show+ you’ll be able to access the first true digital version of our show. I think one of the thing we learned was how many countries there are around the world that couldn’t attend the physical show, but wanted to. I think out of the 195 countries in the world we had 180 that attended and participated in Believe in Music. For those who are physically there, this app will be a great tool to help you be more organised and network more easily. You can watch a session while running to another meeting.

The NAMM Show + app will not just make the show more effective, but for those who can’t come at all, there’ll be multiple streaming events from the show, from the education sessions or the entertainment. This is our first time welcoming so many people from around the world into the NAMM experience via NAMM Show+. We took what we learned and it’s now going to forever be part of our physical gatherings.

For us, how to make those that are there virtually have some semblance of the same experience as those that are there physically is the toughest challenge. Because it won’t be the same. Trying to emulate the physical experience virtually is difficult. It’s almost like trying to describe a sunset to someone versus just watching it. That’s the challenge for anyone in this space now, approximating an experience. They simply aren’t the same.

AMI: Can you remember your very first NAMM, what year was that? And what products were making a splash back then?

Joe Lamond: I was 22 years old, it was January 1983. I was working for a small music store in Sacramento. As a little holiday present they sent me and the other store manager to the NAMM show. We were young and had never been before. It was amazing. It was probably a fraction of the size it is now, but it was still so overwhelming. We felt so inadequate and like we didn’t belong there. I had an absolute blast but I never forgot that feeling of ‘this thing is so big, and I’m just from a small store’ I’ve always tried to think about attendees at the NAMM show in that way.

Every year there’s someone just like I was, coming to the show for the first time. My goal has always been to make that person feel as welcome as a long lost friend. That had been the vision that we created with the NAMM show, to make it your place, it’s your clubhouse. It’s where you come to see all your friends and do you business. Over the years it’s always a difficult task, especially as it got bigger, but that was still always the goal. So whether it’s their fiftieth show or their first, they feel like they’re at home. Our team has done a wonderful job at that.

AMI: Can you remember some of the products that you first saw at NAMM’s over the years, that made you think ‘wow, that’s going to be a game-changer!’

Joe Lamond: I mean there’s been so many breakthroughs. When MIDI was introduced springs to mind. Oddly enough one of the first meetings around MIDI was at my first show in 1983. Needless to say I wasn’t involved in it, but that’s when that started. I remember the breakthrough in mixing consoles that enhanced sound quality, ADAT was huge. I remember people saying to me ‘let me get this straight, there are an * endless* number of tracks?” Back in the day of course, some of the best music ever recorded was done via bouncing back and forth between 8 tracks of tape, but when those limitations were lifted that was a really big deal. Those types of things were mind-blowing technology breakthroughs.

It’s interesting at the same time as all this was happening we celebrated a Les Paul and a Strat, or my instrument the drums. There were refinements but they were fundamentally unchanged as the years went on. So that transformation and tradition concept has perhaps always been a part of our show.

AMI: There seems to be a pattern of long-term leadership of the NAMM Presidency – with both William Gard and Larry Linkin taking the role for considerable stretches. Is it a role that’s hard to let go of, and what aspects will you miss?

Joe Lamond: Yeah, you’ve got to go back to 1947 when Bill Gard started. Then Larry Linkin is the only living former CEO of NAMM. He’s the only one I get to talk to and commiserate with. Prior to my role (and I was already working here, I just moved offices down the hall when I came in in 2001), the last time NAMM put together a search committee was 1981.I said recently that if practice makes perfect we’re going to do very poorly at this because we don’t do this very often!

I think steady leadership has been one of the hallmarks of NAMM, and I think that’s lead to long term success for NAMM. But it’s also critical to know when it’s time for new leadership. As much as I was also looking to be challenged and move on, I also knew that the world was changing enough for someone with a different vision and a different perspective to take the reins. I remember the show from 1983 to my last one in 2020 – that’s a lot of pattern recognition. I thought it’d make sense for someone to look at it completely differently. Our industry is changing too, the gathering will be changing. I felt that it was responsible to start the process at the 2020 show.

Whoever takes the role will be better equipped to plan NAMM’s future, they’ll probably make less mistakes than I made, they’ll obviously be better looking because that’s a low bar! But change is good, and it’s accelerating very fast right now. I mean we don’t do this very often, there’s only been three CEOs since World War II.

To quote Peter Drucker, the aim of a nonprofit like NAMM is a changed human being. So, your methodology is different and your planning is different. By definition those things take longer. It can take years to find the right projects to invest in, let alone undertake them and publish and peer review them, and use them. That’s a good five/six year run. The profit world is more focused on the next quarter’s financials. Associations have a longer timeline to get things done – that doesn’t meant they’re less efficient but it’s down to the fact that they do different things. If we lobby the US congress for a law change, that can affect 50 million school kids this fall. No one company in the industry can have that sort of impact, but collectively as an organisation, an association can. We can literally impact the education of school kids, with a change of language that we lobbied for.

AMI: Do you think that NAMM and Anaheim are now interconnected, and what’s the reason that the Anaheim Convention Center has cemented itself as NAMM’s home for so long?

Joe Lamond: I think it’s the right place for our members. Most of us are regular working people. There’s something about that community in Southern California which is comfortable. Our families feel comfortable coming here. We do have a very family feel to this organisation. The tradition part is important too. NAMM’s 121 years old now, but Anaheim has become synonymous with us as a group of loyal working people that bring the tools to music to the world. It’s a nice place to be, the facility has grown with us over time. They’ve always been accommodating and literally built new halls as we grew too. In 1983 when I came this thing was two little halls. That’s how big NAMM was then. Even though we’re half the size we were in 2020 we’re still taking up the whole convention center.

AMI: Finally, when you think back on your twenty year+ stint as the head of NAMM, what have been the biggest thrills and the biggest learns for you – and where do you think you’ll head next?

Joe Lamond: It’ll be 21 years this month as CEO, though I’ve been with NAMM for 24. I’ll be here one more year. It will always come down to the people that we’ve been able to work with. Visiting NAMM members around the world, visiting their factories, their stores and having dinner in their homes. It’s always going to be about the people. These are very special people, most of them are trying to create a more musical world, and that’s the why of what they do.

The fact that we’ve been able to work with these wonderful people for a lifetime has been fantastic. There’s been such camaraderie. I’ve got a million stories of meeting wonderful people, and that’s what I’ll never ever forget. Yes there’s the shows and there’s the logistics and trucks and budgets. If you ask ten members of NAMM what we should do you’ll get eleven different opinions back. But some moments will never be repeated. My role allowed me to meet some absolute heroes. I was just lucky enough to be there and absorb those moments and appreciate them. For a little kid from Buffalo, New York that was an exciting ride.

Audio Media International returns as a print magazine at NAMM 2022 as an official partner.  If you’d like to know more, get in touch with Rosie@audiomediainternational.com or sign up to our newsletter here.

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From its humble beginnings as a small private workspace in 2011, Tileyard London has become Europe’s largest music-focused workplace community. On the eve of the opening of Wakefield’s Tileyard North, co-founder Nick Keynes speaks to us about the past, present and future of Tileyard’s talent curation philosophy, and reveals to us how a new membership-based model will ultimately provide professionals with pro studio access around the world.

If you take a stroll around Kings Cross these days, you’ll notice an omnipresent array of cranes laddering across the skyline, the rattle of drills and more than a few high-vis jacket-clad workmen scurrying the streets, as London’s formerly dilapidated station hub continues to be re-structured into one of the capital’s most attractively modern work and social destinations. Over a decade ago, Kings Cross was in a quite different state.  Nick Keynes, the former bass player of 90s boyband Ultra, was on the lookout for somewhere to house the small music production business that he’d formed with fellow members Michael Harwood and Jon O’Mahoney. With the guidance of property developer Paul Kempe, Nick and co set-up shop within a neglected industrial estate at the then still fairly grim auspices of Kings Cross. This punt would eventually lead Nick and Paul begin re-working the site into Europe’s largest music-focused creative workspace – Tileyard London.

11 years on, and Tileyard London is a booming studio and workspace provider for artists, labels, writers, publishers and managers including Apple Music 1, The Prodigy, SoundCloud and Spitfire Audio. With over 85 bespoke studios within its warren of corridors. Tileyard now also warmly welcomes in businesses that work in the creative sector more broadly. More than just providing a comfortable and professional working environment, Tileyard’s ethos is centred on cultivating a spirit of community.

After a decade of growth and success, this successful Tileyard model is set to be replicated in Yorkshire, at Wakefield’s Rutland Mills. Nick Keynes sat down with us for a conversation about the impending opening of this 135,000 sqft second site, as well as Tileyard’s intriguing new TYX membership plan and a more global future…

AMI: Hi Nick, let’s start with the biggest news at the moment, which is the imminent phased opening of Tileyard North up in Wakefield, firstly what spurred the team to open a new site up in the North of England?

Nick Keynes: For many years we’ve been thinking about how to expand. The world’s a big place, and the country’s a big place. What Tileyard fundamentally is all about is talent incubation – we want to create an environment where talent can thrive. For many years we’ve felt that it’s all very well having a London hub but we wanted to help talent around the country. So, we’ve ended up pinning the tail on the donkey in Wakefield.

AMI: How long has the process of regeneration and re-fitting Rutland Mills taken?

NK: Oh it’s taken around five or six years now. We’ve been working on re-fitting a derelict textiles mill (Rutland Mills), which is a series of buildings owned by the local council. It’s right opposite the Hepworth Gallery which is world renowned, so it’s a really culturally significant place. In fact, it was when Paul (Kempe) was viewing an exhibition at the Hepworth that he first saw the buildings opposite and the idea formed.

After two or three years of planning and funding we started work. The buildings were in such a state of disrepair that they weren’t viable initially. We really had the appetite to invest in the site, but we needed some support. The local authority helped and we raised funds. Covid slowed down the project a bit, but we’re now in a position where we’re finishing up spaces which we’ll be opening later in the year. It’s very exciting.

AMI: Do you see this new Northern site as the start of a larger expansion of Tileyard, and what are your thoughts on potential overseas development, and launching Tileyard as a global brand?

Nick Keynes: Yeah, that has been on our mind. Pre-pandemic we spent quite a bit of time visiting various different countries and locations. There’s quite a few people overseas that had come to Tileyard to work and collaborate, who subsequently invited us to look at some locations. So we scoped out Los Angeles, New York, Texas, Singapore and Stockholm. So, we’re thinking about some significant expansion. We’re music-focused primarily of course, so we want to target those more music-oriented cities. We’ve looked at Berlin as well. Anywhere really where there’s creative talent.

AMI: Tileyard Education will see significant focus with the opening of the North site, can you give us a little background on when the Education side launched, and do you see a through line between studying there and finding yourself in full time employment within a Tileyard ecosystem?

Nick Keynes: Education is a really big part of it. When we first set up at the Tileyard London site we actually ran a few small workshops aimed at artists and young managers. Fundamentally it was about a fast-track way to get into the business of music. Then we parked that for two or three years when we started really building Tileyard, and then wanted to re-invigorate it. We launched Tileyard Education. It’s a post-grad space aimed specifically at qualifications in music. Production, writing, business, marketing – these areas. It’s a really important entry point into the industry, and people can spend time within an ecosystem where they can see people working professionally, and learn from their experience.

AMI: Switching back to the original Kings’ Cross site now, can you give us a bit of a brief rundown on how the last year or so has been for Tileyard London? What have been the most notable additions to the site?

Nick Keynes: Well it’s been a funny old three years. There’s been a lot of workplace providers that have had a horrific time during the pandemic. We’ve been very fortuitous in that the curation of the community that we’ve undertaken has meant that people come to Tileyard for more than just the space. We didn’t lose very many people at all. We’re now actually at a state where we’re 100% occupied. So that’s a fantastic place to be.

We’re very grateful for that. I think a lot of that’s down to the fact that a lot of the businesses at Tileyard need to collaborate and need to be physically interacting. I think there are some folks who’ve come out of lockdown, discovering that hybrid-working is the future, and it works for them. But many of the businesses here were hybrid working prior to the pandemic and they continue to do so. I think the world is slowly getting back to the way it was before.

We’ve actually expanded our site over the last two or three years. We’ve welcomed a few more businesses. SoundCloud has recently joined us. I’ve spent five years trying to persuade them to situate themselves here, and they finally decided that the time was right.

We also brought a business in called Trailmix Games who are a games developer. They’ve just launched their first iOS game which is called Love & Pies. In the first three months since the game was released they’re already up to a quarter of a million users. So they’re growing rapidly. That’s been another fantastic, new layer, to our ecosystem. We have three or four quite interesting gaming businesses in the community, as well as a couple of production companies who provide services for games. There’s also two or three interesting podcast production companies who’ve joined the fold which is really interesting. That’s another exciting, emerging form of media that we want to embrace.

AMI: Can you explain to us a little about the concept of TYX, the new membership-based studio access? It sounds like a truly innovative, exciting concept.

Nick Keynes: Absolutely. Ever since we started, our model was to build spaces for clients. So they can make it their space. Rather than running our studios commercially. Increasingly, as Tileyard has grown, we’ve noted that more and more people just need a studio for a day or to complete a project. Or they want to run short camps. We didn’t really have an offering for those needs. For the last three or four years we’ve been working on a way to expand into a studios-for-hire type model. But what we didn’t want to do was to do it in a sort of old-school way.

We wanted to create a model that was automated but was flexible. Something that was multi-faceted in terms of the type of spaces available. We created the model of Tileyard X (TYX) which is basically a membership offering. It’s a sub-brand of Tileyard effectively. The core values of the business are the same as Tileyard’s. We still want to curate those spaces, but it’s very much a case of rather than taking a permanent space, you take a membership where you build credits.

We’ve got Dolby Atmos mix studios (recently established by Platoon) , we’ve got a range of world-class production studios which double up as listening studios, we’ve got great mix studios. There’s also a lot of simple plug-in-and go studios, designed for users who want to bring a project in where they can literally just plug-in via Thunderbolt, with no set-up required at all.

We’re building an influencer production studio, a photographic studio as well as straight meeting rooms and desk space. So TYX is almost like *Tileyard in a box* if you like. It’s everything that we do and we’ve wrapped it into a packaged membership offering. I think this could be a great way for us to scale the brand.

In the future, I’d like for anyone that has a need for a content space, anywhere in the world will be able to use their nearest Tileyard. The idea does seem to have gone down very well so far. I think we are providing something that solves a problem for many people.

AMI: How important is the concept of community to the Tileyard ethos? And is that something that you think will play an increasing role in the future in many professional spheres – blurring those distinct work/life mindsets

Nick Keynes: It’s the root of our business. While we own the real estate and have 180 tenants, that’s not really our business model. Our focus is on building a community. And, it’s the curation of who we bring in that creates the community.

If someone wants to take up space at Tileyard the most pressing concerns for us are ‘who are you?’, ‘what do you do?’ And ‘what will you bring to our community?’ That’s far more important than the rent that you’re paying. We want to know what value our tenants can bring beyond paying for the space. That has been our mindset and business model from day one, back when we had lots of empty space and we were looking to fill it. We were super selective on who we brought in, and quite brave. Particularly from Paul’s perspective. We held out, and I think that’s why now we’ve got a really meaningful community.

Going back to the pandemic, we managed to keep our community together because people wanted to come back to Tileyard for reasons beyond the space. Connections are hugely important. When you’re approximated together you get happy accidents. You’re constantly bumping into people everyday and you can ask them what they do – forging connections that will likely come in useful.

Your next door neighbour is very likely to be doing something that’s very complimentary to what you’re doing. Podcasts, films, TV, gaming – all of these use music in different contexts. This ecosystem of creatives is key for us.

AMI: Do you hope more artists take up space in Tileyard KX and North?

Nick Keynes: Yes, we we talk about businesses of course a lot of businesses are artists. We’ve got so many music studios here that are occupied by artists. We’ve got people like Sub Focus, Sigala, Pixie Lott and Joel Corry. We’ve got a studio for Noel Gallagher which we built a few years ago. He’s currently making his new album, so he’s in every day. He’s in his studio working on his terms 24/7. It’s a home from home. People have the choice to be as engaged or as private as they like. There’s nothing forced.

I think that artists have never been more empowered to do things themselves, and to make their records and put them out as independents, while working in a community where there’s a lot of that going on. It gives a support network as much as anything else. Artists can do things their way. We’ve been encouraging that for ten years. I really do think Tileyard has given artists a platform to do things much more autonomously.

AMI: From the perspective of someone who has been plugged in to the music industry for decades, what do you think are the biggest challenges to the industry right now, and do you think Tileyard has a role to play in emphasising the value of this sector?

NK: As I say, I think there’s never been more help for artists, but it’s still really challenging. There’s tens of thousands of new tracks being uploaded to streaming platforms every days, it’s so easy to put a record out there but that doesn’t mean that it’s going to be successful.

The routes to market have increased but you’ve still got to build an audience in a very competitive landscape.

If you want Apple Music to feature you on their homepage then that’s very tough. The curation of who we have at Tileyard is kind of part of that. There’s a lot of content out there and a lot of talent out there and it’s having these tastemakers championing the good stuff so that the audience can access truly great music. For us, it’s ultimately all about giving the talent the platform to build their business. But also giving them the tools they need to get heard and then to make money out of what they do. That’s ultimately what it boils down to – you can have all the talent and energy in the world but at the end of the day, you’ve got to try and make a living.

AMI: Bit of a far-reaching question to end on, but do you have a picture of what Tileyard might look like in a decade’s time?

NK: I hope that our London hub will continue to thrive and we’ll continue to expand. We’re having more conversations about film and TV. So we’ll be looking more at that sector and seeing if we can accommodate some of the more independent strands of that. That’s something that the TYX membership will encapsulate too as it grows – so it’s not just about music. There’s expansion plans beyond what we’ve got in London. We’ve got the next phase lined up for the Tileyard North opening. Then, within a five year time frame we want to keep rolling out TYXs. So, I think we’ll keep ourselves busy and excited!

The post Nick Keynes on Tileyard North, TYX and Beyond appeared first on Audio Media International.

A composer wowing gamers with his evolving, textured score for zombie epic Dying Light 2, Olivier Deriviere explains how creating music for video games requires a wholly different philosophy than scoring for film and television. 

From a very young age, dual passions for both video gaming and music making have driven Olivier Deriviere. Now a renowned video game composer, Olivier has made considerable impact with his acclaimed scores for critically venerated games such as A Plague Tale, Streets of Rage 4 and, most recently, the zombie-ridden open world of Dying Light 2.

Committed to his role as one of the team’s crucial emotional architects, Deriviere explains to us how making compelling music for the interactive medium requires composers to get invested in the project from the get-go, and that an approach of simply layering on music to a finished product just doesn’t cut it when crafting the music that might be experienced entirely uniquely by different players. Olivier also detailed how working with the London Contemporary Orchestra remotely during lockdown resulted in a much more textural, impactful sound palette for Dying Light 2, and how the importance of quality scoring requires a collaborative effort. From talented mix engineers, to mastering professionals.

For those readers who have an interest in getting into professional video game scoring, or are curious about how the soundtracking process differs between mediums, Olivier’s experience and advice is certainly worth your time.

AMI: Hi Olivier, firstly how did your journey into the world of video game soundtracking begin?

Olivier Deriviere: Well, since I was 8, I’ve been a gamer. I was educated in music and math, and at a certain point I needed to choose whether to become a programmer or a composer. I thought I was a better composer than a programmer. So I chose the musical path. Basically, it was because of my background playing games, and understanding how to code music on the Commodore 64, that led me to understand how people make games, from a perspective that most composers don’t generally have because they’re not into that coding aspect. Now it’s much different of course because the tools are far easier

AMI: What are some of the major differences between conventional scoring for say film and TV, when compared to an interactive medium like gaming?

O: When you work on games there are no rules – let’s just say that we need to think about interactivity. It’s a very different world than the movies. The number one is the technology, which is less of a concern with film scoring. I’m not talking about producing the music, I’m talking about making the music work within the game. There’s a lot of tech you need to understand there. Next you need to interact with the developer and the creative team behind the game, as well as the audio director who is in charge of the audio. Then, you need to talk with maybe the level designers, lead programmers and people like that to really grasp what this game is. You need to prepare for everything and build toward the right vision.

I’m a composer that likes to go and develop ideas for how the music will work in the game long before it’s ready for release. Dying Light 2 for example was a three-year process. I worked very closely with the developer Techland, so the composer is really a big part of the team.

AMI: We’ve been reading about your work on Dying Light 2, and how the music evolves and shifts in simpatico with player actions. Can you explain a little about how this system works and how long it takes to map out your music to operate like this?

Olivier Deriviere: Well the parkour (environmental jumping and running) system is unique to the game. The first thing I asked the director, Adrian Ciszewski, was ‘what is this game about?’ and I don’t mean the story or anything like that, I mean the game from a playing perspective. Dying Light 2 is essentially about free parkour in an open world. So, we needed to focus on these core gameplay mechanics. My job is basically ask questions around the game. The answers to those questions then completely drive the music creation. Adrian said “I don’t want music to be on the street level, I want music to be on the rooftops” Players have free choice and can stop and look at their surroundings, but we really want them to get into the parkour – so the music has to grow and nudge them to do a certain thing.

We wanted players to be able to really flow into the parkour. We wanted it to be fluid, and therefore we created the momentum in the parkour music. What’s so funny is that players don’t seem to want to stop the parkour because it stops the music. The music follows your moves and will stop if you stop. Once the music was written it took almost three years to fine tune everything to work together the way it does.

I work with Cubase, but in terms of integration the main software we use is Wwise. That’s a third party piece of software made by Audiokinetic. Anyone can download this software to play with it, test it – they even give you a game that you can work with and link music to. People just starting out can dabble with the same tools that we used for Dying Light 2, and others have used for games like Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher 3 – everyone uses it.

It’s essentially a matrix of events/states – rather than a linear approach. It makes you think about music in a much more modular way. I’d definitely recommend aspiring video game composers download Wwise and learn it today. Mastering that software is fairly straightforward, but it’s more the shift in approach that is the most important aspect of it.

So different play parameters based on the player action is constantly being sent to Wwise, and then it will decide (based on our programming) what musical cues get triggered. We can provide players with immediate feedback, that is not passive but active and re-active. That’s amazing for a composer, it really is a new form of composition.

AMI: What are the major challenges with creating so much music, and then waiting for the player to trigger its launch – It’s possible that the player could miss some music by not carrying out certain actions, right?

Olivier Deriviere: I have a sort of PTSD from the previous game I worked on, which was called Remember Me. The idea was the more you do, the more music the game reveals. Once the game came out I realised that very few people were getting to the required level to hear the full blown score that I’d created. For Dying Light 2, I’m sure that some players don’t get the exact flow that I imagined from the beginning – it’s something that you need to work towards. There’s a lot of special parkour moves that players can learn, then it becomes very easy for the music to grow. As they get through the game, they start hearing it (particularly the main theme, Run, Jump, Fight)

AMI: How was the experience of working with the London Contemporary Orchestra – and working with the wonky, imaginative sonics they can produce?

Olivier Deriviere: It’s a blessing that the LCO exists. I’ve been so used to going to London, but my regular orchestra is a regular classical orchestra. This time I wanted something a little different, something singular. I wanted to modernise some of the techniques and articulation, to improve and enhance our ideas. With the Dying Light 2 score I wanted to make bridges between the electronic world, the classical world and the real world. The LCO are super advanced, and when they agreed to work with me I really couldn’t have been happier.

I wrote the music but I couldn’t write the articulations because that was entirely their domain. Hugh Brunt, who is the musical director and the conductor of the LCO showed me how to score in a way that made sense to him, but for me I wasn’t sure how it worked. On the day of recording I discovered what the sound would be. But the attitude was very open, very much ‘let’s see how it sounds’. It was an interesting thing to do.

Olivier Deriviere: I’d previously worked at Abbey Road for a range of projects, but this time with the pandemic I couldn’t go. I usually gathered the whole orchestra together. Because I’m somebody that likes to make sure the whole orchestra knows what’s going on and they can build around the sound. I felt very frustrated when the restrictions came into play and we weren’t able to do that. It wasn’t my style. But then I started writing stuff that kind of leaned into that – that if the orchestra had all been together it would have been a little bit harder to do perhaps.

So we had separate groups recording remotely all working on shorter, sharper pieces. We used the AudioMovers software to record at a distance. I have to applaud Hugh Brunt the conductor, because you really wouldn’t know the players were recording separately.

That was the first project I used AudioMovers remote software for. The pandemic really changed the whole industry. I normally don’t like remote recording that much in the sense that I like to be physically there and I like to interact with the musicians. But AudioMovers is a great technology and it allows me to hear exactly what they’re doing.

AMI: What tech is central to how you create music these days?

O: A lot of my fellow composers have studios rammed with gear. But, in my studio it’s very minimal. I have one PC (due to the fact that I need to play a lot of games) running Cubase. Aside from an RME sound card, everything else is software. Maybe what makes it this way is that I’m usually out and about, recording live. I’m all about the location. AIR Studios, Abbey Road, Avatar,  these are my go-to environments. I’m working on the sequel to A Plague Tale right now, and that’s actually fine to record here at home, as it’s a much smaller scale game. I don’t need a big room. For that, I have an engineer that gets me the right mics for the job.

I believe when it comes to engineering, mixing and mastering, we need to recognise the true value of professionals. Too often composers are forced or think that they can or should do it all. Maybe some of them are good enough to do it, but I always think it’s better to bring in third party ears to listen and add their sensitivities. I’ve always worked with the best engineers I can, as well as the best musicians I can. I think it elevates everything and gives to players a quality. Too often the quality these days just isn’t there any more. I don’t know who is to blame and I know budget plays a role, but I think you need to fight for this budget.

It’s very important to show. I invite clients to come to the studio to discover how we make music, and how complex the process is. Many others outside of the soundtracking industry don’t know, and need to be educated. Techland, though, are great listeners.

AMI: Do you think the more personal relationship between player action and music within interactive entertainment can foster a deeper connection to the score than say the score to a film or TV show?

O: I think it’s true for lots of mediums. If you are in the business of creating memories for players or viewers then it either succeeds or it fails. There’s a great bit in Dying Light 2 where players have to go up a tower, and the music rises as the player rises. Everything makes sense and comes together – the gameplay, the music, the player goals. People really cherish those moments. These days it’s kind of rare that you notice the music in modern filmmaking. In games, I think that composers have more to say than in the movies.

AMI: What advice would you give to those looking to embark on a career composing music for video games?

Olivier Deriviere: I think you need to love games. It may sound trivial but it’s very hard to make games. You need to understand the language and how to communicate with people around a game – understanding gameplay mechanics, unique features and things that games do, stands you in better stead of getting noticed. Developers know then, that you’re talking their language.

The post Olivier Deriviere: Scoring Interactive Action appeared first on Audio Media International.

Family businesses can be a hotbed of sibling rivalry and a battlefield of arguments and egos. On the plus side, family businesses can be agile and quick to respond to rapidly changing markets. You can also say things to a family member that you may not necessarily be able to say to a colleague. There’s much to be said for a well-run family business writes Mark Sparrow…

I suspect brothers Daniel and Andreas Sennheiser – the joint CEOs of Sennheiser electronic GmbH & Co. KG – are nearly always in tune with each other because they appear to speak with one voice when it comes to the future of one of the world’s best-known audio brands. The German company that was founded back in 1945 by Prof Dr. Fritz Sennheiser is still an independent family business and the brothers are the third generation of the family to run the company.

Daniel is the elder by a year and has a background in design and marketing. His career has involved working for a variety of agencies and blue-chip FMCG concerns including Procter & Gamble. In 2008, Daniel joined Sennheiser and set up the company’s strategic innovation department.

Younger brother Andreas studied Management and Production at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETHZ) in Zurich, with a focus on Electrical Engineering and Logistics. Andreas gained his doctorate in 2004, four years after graduating before going on to work for Hilti AG before joining Sennheiser in 2010 where he was responsible for the company’s lean management and strategic supply chain design.

It was in 2013 that the two brothers were appointed joint CEOs of Sennheiser and began planning the long-term strategy for the company. During our interview, Daniel and Andreas set out the rationale behind their recent decision to sell the consumer business and license the brand to the giant Swiss hearing-aid and audio company Sonova AG.

The announcement that Sennheiser was selling off its most visible division came as something of a shock to the consumer audio industry when it was announced last year. Why was the company pulling out of a market that has annual sales of $50bn? Would Sennheiser even be able to find a buyer without running the risk that the brand would be taken downmarket, ruining the family’s hard-won reputation for audio excellence?

The deal took around 24 months to complete from the original strategic decision to find a partner for the consumer business to the signing on the dotted line with Sonova. I wondered whether the idea of hiving off the consumer business was an emotional wrench for the two brothers after so many years in the market as a household name under their control.

Andreas was first to answer: “We concluded that we needed to focus on the pro divisions of the company. We reviewed our business strategy 24 months ago and found that there was growth potential for all four, but at the same time they were following different paths in different markets. Increasingly there was less cross-fertilization of technology between the consumer business and pro divisions.

“Our teams were becoming more specialized and the consumer business had different market dynamics. We looked at the opportunities for all four units and concluded that the independent family business was best placed to fund and develop the three pro divisions most effectively. Those are the divisions that have all the differentiation needed to bring on superior technology, deliver remarkable audio experiences and Sennheiser’s reputation for rock-solid reliability.”

The brothers found an interesting hybrid solution to their conundrum by finding a partner that was willing to work with them by licensing the brand for the consumer business rather than buying it outright. The deal required a lot of trust. If Sennheiser had sold out the consumer business to a consumer audio rival, it’s doubtful that such an arrangement would have worked. I wondered if that was because Sennheiser is a family-owned business and that’s what enabled the two brothers to weave such an artful and elegant solution?

Daniel responded first: “Yes. That’s exactly the point. We were not necessarily looking for the highest bidder but the best strategic and cultural match. And we believe that’s what we found with Sonova. In the end, time will tell whether it was the right decision for us. We didn’t take it lightly. We looked at this move very carefully with consideration for the brand, the heritage and our family name. We believe it will be a very successful move and the exciting part is that we can now focus on the pro side of the business which is where we believe we can make a bigger impact with the competencies we have on board.

Andreas added: “We knew the consumer business had high-growth opportunities in a multibillion-euro market. However, we thought it would be better if it were attached to a larger company. It was purely from a business development perspective that we thought our consumer child would be better off under a new roof where it could grow and flourish. We decided that the three remaining pro areas of the business would be better off if we held onto them and put all our efforts into a strong growth strategy for them.”

Daniel then chipped in: “I think the consumer division is in good hands now. It was a risk but a good risk. It’s mostly run by the same team because we transferred more than 600 of our employees to Sonova AG. We trust those people will continue the business successfully, because we have worked with them for many years and know how passionate they are in what they do.

“When we were seeking a partner, we looked at several companies, but with Sonova we believe we chose the perfect company to work with. It’s not only what Sonova can get from us, but also how we can jointly strengthen the brand. Our two companies will jointly discuss the development of the Sennheiser brand while we will still own it. We licensed the name to Sonova and we will work as a true partnership. Both companies can win if we play it right. I believe that we have similar cultures with the same intention of cherishing the Sennheiser brand. Sonova also has a great track record for excellent audio quality and good brand building.”

Daniel and Andreas are now turning their considerable energies and talents to nurturing the remainder of the Sennheiser business which consists of the three divisions. The professional audio division produces equipment for touring, broadcasting and theatre use like wireless and wired microphones. Then there’s the business communications division which is increasingly important in the world of hybrid working and teleconferencing. Finally, there’s the Neumann microphones business in Berlin, perhaps the brightest jewel in Sennheiser’s corporate crown

Sennheiser acquired Neumann back in 1991 when it was probably the most high-profile brand acquisition the company had ever made. Neumann is the last word in high-end studio microphones and its products have a legendary reputation with sound engineers all over the world. Countless platinum-selling albums have been created in some of the world’s best recording studios using Neumann microphones. The brand is the Rolls-Royce of studio microphones and the brothers have now taken the business further by producing specialist instrument microphones and speakers for recording studios. Currently, Neumann makes up around 20% of Sennheiser’s turnover but this should increase with the ambitious plans the brothers have for the brand.

Daniel describes the company’s remaining divisions as being like a string of pearls in an audio necklace. The company has a reputation for producing products of the very highest audio standards. I can see why Daniel and Andreas felt the need to concentrate on undertaking advanced research into emerging audio applications. Perhaps the consumer division had become a distraction and was taking up too much of the brothers’ time; time that could be better spent focusing on the company’s core DNA of advanced audio research and development.

Andreas explained: “In our Business Communications division we make microphones for meetings and they are also used widely in higher education. We want to be present in the world’s meeting rooms. For example, our Team Connect Ceiling 2 microphone can be installed in ceilings and will follow a speaker around a room using beamforming. Sennheiser microphones are used in many lecture theaters around the world. With the development of dynamic classrooms and virtual and hybrid teaching, microphones must deliver the clearest possible sound to students studying remotely. We also have microphones that provide assistive listening for people with hearing difficulties in live environments, products such as our Mobile Connect system.

“Our microphones offer a different level of quality compared to the all-in-one teleconferencing products like video bars. That’s the real difference that we bring to the table. We can integrate our products by working with integrators so they can create and design the best meeting rooms possible. This requires a different skillset and we are truly agnostic when it comes to different systems. Sennheiser works with many different manufacturers and we have developed APIs that can connect our equipment to Crestron systems as well as Team and Zoom-certified solutions. We can play with everyone because we only really care about the quality of the audio experience.”

When it comes to Pro Audio, Sennheiser has held on to a few of its classic headphone models like the iconic HD 25 beloved by many DJs. The company also continues to make the very best wired, wireless and instrument microphones for entertainment and broadcasting applications. Sennheiser plans to consolidate its strong position in the global market by continuing to win over customers in the Live and Broadcasting business with reliable audio solutions and first-class sound quality. In addition, the audio specialist aims to develop corresponding software solutions for optimal workflows for these applications.

The company has also invested heavily in AMBEO 3D Audio, a spatial sound technology aimed at VR applications. Sennheiser has been recording 9.1 music since 2010 and has developed an algorithm that can create 9.1 music from conventional stereo recordings. Spatial sound is a rapidly developing market with plenty of competition from the likes of Dolby Atmos which is now available on Apple Music with spatial music mixes. The first AMBEO product, the AMBEO VR Mic for professional VR/AR/XR sound recording was introduced in 2016 and Sennheiser also created the first augmented audio listening accessory for Magic Leap’s AR/VR goggles, the AMBEO AR One.

I began my interview with Daniel and Andreas Sennheiser thinking that I would be talking to two brothers who had been forced to sell off the family silver in what is an incredibly competitive market. It turns out that nothing could be further from the truth. Instead, I encountered two brothers who had put an incredible amount of careful thought into developing a strategy that would deliver their consumer division into the care of a bigger partner that could develop great products for consumers in an incredibly fast-moving and fickle market. And they have done this while still protecting the reputation of the brand going forward.

I’m in no doubt that the brothers made the right decision and now they can direct their energies into the professional side of the business with its greater research needs and its higher financial returns which can fund more advanced research into the cutting-edge audio technologies that Sennheiser has always been known for.

I ended the interview by asking Andreas and Daniel where they thought Sennheiser would be in five years. Their answer was unequivocal: “There are a couple of streams that will matter in the next five years. One is immersive audio experiences, whether for conferencing or live productions. The 3D immersive experience is becoming increasingly important in live performances but it’s also important in hybrid situations using virtual reality. Another stream will be the integration of our meeting-room systems and microphones that we discussed earlier.

“The products that we bring to the market must be the pearls in any system. We want to make the best possible microphones with seamless integration with other systems. We want to focus on offering the best possible ingredients for the overall audio experience. With Neumann, we have a very clear strategy for producing more products for our professional customers. Neumann has already started producing specialist instrument microphones and studio monitors. We will be releasing more microphones for live performances soon.

“In the next five years, we will cover significantly more of the whole production stream for both live and studio productions. Sennheiser and Neumann brands will continue to stand for reliability, innovation and remarkable sound. That’s what Sennheiser stands for and in the next five years that will become even more important. We will do lots more development and continue to ‘over-invest’ in our development.”

I came away from my interview with the impression that these two thoughtful brothers had taken the right and difficult decision for their business. They are no longer bogged down with the short production cycles of the consumer audio market and can now turn their attention to developing the advanced audio technology of the future without the distraction of a consumer marketplace that’s as much about fashion as it is about audio technology. The future is looking bright right now for Sennheiser.

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