The Italian producer Alexander Robotnick this year embarked on a series of releases from the archives of his illustrious career in electronic music which has spanned nearly 30 years. Here he talks exclusively to Sonic in the next installment of our 15 Questions Series....

Where did you learn your skills from. Self-taught or education route?

Education route. I started to learn music very late, I was 27. Before I could just sing and play some songs on guitar. Then I went to a Jazz school in Florence where I studied Jazz guitar following Barkley's method for three years. During that period I would play Jazz standards in a students' quintet. But in the early 80s I turned to electronics. Anyway what I learned in that period is still useful to me.

What is your current studio set-up? 

I use Cubase 5 on PC (Win XP)
MOTU 24 I/O
Analog Summing Box 16ch (custom) equipped with a SSL Bus compressor (clone).
AG Project Pre 73
Behringer MX1602A (just for listening)
Speakers: Yamaha NS10 M Studio - Alesis M1 Active

Analog synths: (SH101 - WASP - Korg Mono-Poly - Oberheim TVS-1 (two SEM modules) -
Roland JX3p - Roland TB303).
Drum-box: TR808 - TR909
Poly synths and keyboards: (Kurzweill K1000 - Korg WSR - Microkorg)
Master Keyboard: Roland A300 Pro
Outboards: Korg Stage Echo (tape echo) - Boss Flanger BF-1

This is what I use on a daily basis. I also have many plug-ins but I 'm not using them a lot.

What made you decide to use your current DAW? 

I 've been using Cubase since 95. I never had any problem with it. Before that I used Cubase on Atari even though at that time I prefered hardware sequencers such as Roland MC500 because computers were too slow. At present, to me, all DAWs have similar features , so why change it?

Talk us through your typical workflow from idea development to conception….. 

It depends on what kind of music I'm working on. When I work on dance music I mostly start from bass and drums. If I have a song in my mind I start looking for chords. Very rarely I start from a sample, especially in electronic music. Anyway I think it's impossible to talk a precise composition process because it keeps changing all the time.

What part of the production process do you find the most challenging?

The beginning , then the arrangement, then the production. The first two are exciting, the third one is boring.

How do you deal with 'hitting a brick wall'? 

I do what the music market requests. Please don't ask me if I like it

What piece of software and hardware could you not live without?

Software: Sony Sound Forge 6 (after that I don't like it anymore) - Sony Acid 6 (after that I don't like it anymore) - Cubase (for production) - Ableton Live (for djing). It sounds odd but I think we are going to talk about "vintage software". It's because every new release of a software sounds worse than the previous one. I know that programmers working in software houses have to earn their living and support their families , so they need to sell new releases, but, with very few exceptions (i.e. Cubase that improved a lot its rendering algorithm) most new features have no real use and many of the most useful old features are cancelled. That's why many producers don't even check out new releases. This goes to the detriment of the whole software industry. I'm still using Win XP on my desktop because I'm not sure that my precious "vintage software" can run on Win 7. Talking about hardware, I cannot live without my TB303 and my Korg Mono-Poly.

What piece of equipment would you most like to own?

I'm happy with my present gear, anyway I'd like to have a real Prophet 5

Is there a piece of equipment you regret getting rid of?

Maybe the Microkorg, I didn't use it a lot.

What piece of software or hardware are you most looking forward to launching this year?

I'm going to upgrade my desktop with a new board, a sandy bridge processor and Win 7 64 bit (but still having a partition with XP 32bit) and a solid state hard.disk

What's your current live/DJ set-up and why have youchosen this over everything else available in the market? 

I use Ableton Live for DJing, because it's perfect for DJ-musicians as I am. There is nothing else with such features. Anyway I have to say that the whole part of Live dedicated to composition has no use for me. They should make a version for DJs just cutting out that part and adding some features to the mixing consolle (i.e. a numerical output in db please!)

Is there too much choice in the music technology market these days?

Honestly I think there is not. There are thousands of similar items under different names, most of them not really useful. For example: for years I 've been looking for a keyboard midi controller provided with at least 8 sliders that could fit into a cabin luggage (I travel a lot by air). Nothing was available until a few monthes ago when Novation finally made it. But for 7 years I 've had to check-in my luggage that included my Edirol keyboard/controller, running the risk of not finding it at my arrival and being forced to mix using the computer keyboard,which is horrible.

How do you think the technology affects the music producers release?

It always did, since ever. How could XIX and XX century music have existed without trumpets, saxophones and pianos? Everybody says: making music is easier today because of computers. It's only partly true. Whether you have a computer or not Computer , making good compositions is always difficult.

What's the secret to good mastering? 

Having the original mix as balanced as possible, avoiding to compress it, while the single tracks must be rightly compressed. This gives the mastering engineer the headroom to work properly. The "new wave" in mastering now consists in preparing everything for mixing but, instead of mixing, doing the rendering of the single tracks, including the effects so the mastering engineer can load them into protools. In this way he has more chances to correct sound mistakes.

What projects are you currently working on and what can we expect from you in 2012?

Having the original mix as balanced as possible, avoiding to compress it, while the single tracks must be rightly compressed. This gives the mastering engineer the headroom to work properly. The "new wave" in mastering now consists in preparing everything for mixing but, instead of mixing, doing the rendering of the single tracks, including the effects so the mastering engineer can load them into protools. In this way he has more chances to correct sound mistakes.

Links:

http://www.robotnick.it