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How did you get involved in creating music ?
Severed Heads formed in 1979 when the members were 16 years old. We used tape recorders and radios and a Radio Shack TRS80 computer. Since then the band has been part of various scenes in Australia and abroad - perhaps the best known period for most readers was a series of albums on the Nettwerk/PIAS labels in the late 80s but we've actually done far more than that.
There's a site here where the owner has laid it all out in too much detail!
Who (& which albums) did you work with so far ? Any pics ?
For a band that's been running 25 years there's almost too many albums to describe. Early on they were made with the most primitive means - later we had access to the most expensive equipment and finest producers. But I am the most happy with the current time where home recording can sound as good as the studio sound. You can see and hear all the albums at our home site. The most recent recordings, known as the "op" series are almost entirely FL Studio based.
How did you end up using FL Studio ?
I've owned just about every piece of hardware that has been available - but
always wished I could somehow fit it all in the one box. I grew up with 808
and 303 machines, cheap monosynths and lots of cables. Patch cord synthesisers look great - but they're a royal pain to use for music. So
started to get rid of all this equipment and looked for one software title
that could work for me. It was the Fruity Scratcher that finally convinced
me to use FL Studio - it's just like a tapeloop machine and it fits in
really well with my 'virtual studio'. It feels like I'm using the hardware
but I can save the whole patching system to hard drive.
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What does FL Studio mean in your current setup ?
The best advice I was ever given was - 'people spend a lifetime learning the
piano'. They pick ONE instrument and explore that instrument. So I just want
to use FL Studio - of course I can cheat with owning many VST plugins. I
have a music laptop and it flies around with me and I try to use FL Studio
for everything to the point where I don't even need to see the screen
anymore. But no matter how smart I think am, always somebody shows me
something new.
What are the advantages & disadvantages of using hardware & software ?
It's true that hardware has a rich sound that very few VST instruments can reach. But there ARE some VSTi that with a little care, you can reach
something close. Apart from that I really don't give a damn about hardware anymore. Maybe because I had to use it for many years. I don't care for all the fake wood panels on the computer screen.
What else did you use FL Studio for ?
I scored a film called the Illustrated Family Doctor - a very dark film
about a young man and his lack of kidneys! Of course I couldn't do the whole 5.1 soundtrack in FL Studio but it was a great way to sketch out an idea and try it against the film edits.
Fruity Videoplayer wasn't yet released so it took a bit of trial and error to line things up with a QuickTime player.
Then I'd load up the sounds in a hardware multitrack and synchronise it all with the visuals. Since that time I've sketched out quite few television commercials in FL Studio, even though they sound like they were done with high end equipment. You can see more about the film soundtrack here.
POSTSCRIPT - the soundtrack just won an ARIA award for Best Soundtrack Album 2005!
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