10 Questions with Ed Bauman

Ed Bauman, aka EditEd4TV, is a steadfast member of the Propellerhead's User Forum. When someone writes in with a technical question concerning Reason you can be sure Ed will lend a helping hand. EditEd also produced the fantastic "Reasonable Help", which has an updated version coming out soon. But what we've all really been waiting for is the DVD, "Understanding Thor", which we'll discuss in the interview. In a recent version of "10 Questions", when asked about his favorite patch designers, Tom Pritchard answered, "Special mention has to go to Ed Bauman, just because his patches are so technically accomplished and unbelievably useful." I couldn't agree more! I sent Ed a list of questions earlier this week and just couldn't wait to receive his answers:

- I know you're based in the Bay Area and saw on you Facebook page that you are part of a group called SFBARUG (San Francisco Bay Area Reason Users Group), that meets up occasionally (the last one was a jam at Peff's place!)  I think this is so cool and I'm wondering how you guys got together and if this a regular thing?

The first time the SFBARUG met was many years ago, maybe 2005 I think?  It was an idea that we had, I forget who came up with it, we all probably thought of it about the same time.  I was chatting with Kurt about syncing laptops together and we decided that, well, since it worked on paper, theoretically and all, it should work in real life.  We met at Darin "dbooty" Wilson's place in San Francisco.  Mark Tarlton was there as well - Mark has a really cool PUF name: mark.  We had a drum machine that served as the tempo master clock, sending MIDI out carrying MTC (MIDI time code) to a MOTU TimePiece I believe, where it split off to the 4 destinations we had that night, that being our 4 laptops.  So we each set Reason to sync to this incoming MIDI signal, and we each used our own MIDI to USB interface to bring that MTC into our computers, and we each also used some form of USB controller to actually play the Reason devices.  That first time, things went without a hitch, it just plain worked.  Once sync was established we jammed without saying much to each other at all for something like 45 to 50 minutes, weaving drum loops in and out with bass lines and synth pads and all sorts of stuff, simply mesmerized.  When we finally drifted off into a lull and faded out, we all sorta sat there in a state of, I don't know, it was just sorta... whoah... then we laughed because it was soooo cool.  Since then we've had probably 6 or 7 jams just like this.  Sometimes there are connectivity and sync issues, and it takes a while to get them resolved, but eventually we're up and running.  The smaller jams seem to work best because having too many people together tends to lead to a bit of a wall of sound if we don't each pay attention to being sparse and/or non-dominating.  We've also hooked up quite a bit to just meet and sit and chat over dinner.  I think we'd prefer if it were a regular thing but it's hard for all of us to get our schedules lined up.  Beyond the technology and music I've really enjoyed hanging out with Rick Silvestri (Blacktiger, another PUF regular), we've gotten together to eat dinner more often than we've jammed together, really super nice guy.  This weekend I'm working on a video project with Tony "Cubricon" Dias.  Outside of the San Francisco area, I've had dinner with EnochLight when I was in his neck of the woods, really nice guy, lovely wife/family.  I'd love to travel to the UK and meet Tom Pritchard and Adam Fielding, those two are just incredible.

- what's your background as a musician? did you start with synthesizers?

Technically I'm not a musician (PUF regulars might remember that thread - oh brother) - lol.  Way back in 1972 when I was 5 years old, I took organ lessons from my aunt Dolores.  I learned all the basics about keys, scales, chords, and more.  But after about 2 years I stopped taking lessons and from there I just trained my ear, just by myself.  I'd listen to the Beatles, The Who and Led Zeppelin and just figure things out on my own, just on the Lowrey organ.  Sometime in the early 80's I finally scraped together enough money, with the help of my dad, and purchased my first synthesizer, a Sequential Circuits Pro-One.  I still own it, still works just fine.  Some of the first things I did with the Pro-One, after experimenting like mad all the time and learning what everything did, was to recreate the sounds off the Lowrey Holiday organ (yeah, I still own that too, sad huh?)  That's how I trained myself in patch creation and synthesis; I'd recreate those organ sounds as close as I could get with the Pro One - just a monophonic voice, but the techniques were all there.  I think that's where I trained my ear to listen for layers, to listen for the raw elements of sound; strip away the effects and listen for tone, strip away the tone or filter and listen for the raw oscillator.  If you can get there in some strange form of sonic mental reverse engineering, you can build up from there; pick the oscillator, set the filter correctly, and then everything else is somewhat extra, like amp and filter envelopes, effects, etc.  So all along this whole process I learned not only how to reverse engineer sounds and textures, but chords as well.  I have been really blessed with an uncanny ability to hear a chord and figure it out.  It's really important to constantly train your ear, to hear a chord and recreate it, split the notes off into an arpeggio in your mind; everything you need is there and you just need to train your ear to hear the individual notes, to pick them out of the whole.  It's a multi-stage process: you hear the chord, you mentally pull each note out in your mind, then you sing the notes back either mentally or with your voice while you fish them out on the keyboard.  After my rock and roll roots I was introduced to progressive rock, and that's where the self-training was really pushed, as I learned chords and time signatures of tunes by Yes, UK, Happy the Man, Rush, King Crimson, Saga, and more.  The UK stuff was especially challenging for the ear; figuring out the opening chords for "Danger Money" or the massive keyboard work in "Carrying No Cross" and "Presto Vivace" was pretty hard for a 16 year old; look those up on YouTube, those songs are great, though the studio versions are way better than the live stuff, even they couldn't pull it off live.  I also taught myself Boston's "Foreplay", Saga's "Conversations", and "Carry On My Wayward Son" by Kansas - oh man, the days of free time are way behind me now!




- I know you've been on the PUF (Propellerhead's User Forum) since at least 1.9.2003 (from your statistics), when did you first hear about Reason and what attracted you to the program?

I think I've been on the General Forum and the PUF since 2002?  Somewhere through the years the numbers got screwed up and everyone has a join date of 2003.  And the total number of posts got messed up too, it's ridiculous how high it got, but I jumped off the General Forum and stuck with the PUF.  I first heard about Reason when I worked at Apple between 1997 and 2001.  My job there put me in touch with a lot of partnership and product managers.  The music partnership manager at that time brought me Reason 1.0 one day.  At the time I was totally into Bars & Pipes Pro for the Amiga, MIDI'd up to my Alesis Quadrasynth Plus Piano.  I was trying to streamline my system for years, and this Amiga + Alesis combo was so much easier than all the MIDI gear I had before (SCI Pro One, Prophet-600, Drumtraks, Korg DSS-1, DDD-5, Kawai K3, K3m, PH-50), just me and my Amiga 3000 and my Quad+.  Long story short, in 1999 I had L5-S1 ruptured disc surgery on my back.  My days of lugging around gear were definitely over.  I was seriously ready to throw in the towel, simply give up, there was so much technology, things were changing all the time, I couldn't afford a subscription to all the mags I wanted to read, it was too much, I couldn't keep up and felt like I was completely out of the loop and wasting my time even trying.  I left Apple to start working at a place where I could pursue my video editing interests a bit more, editing medical videos.  I eventually found the time to look at this Reason 1.0 thing my friend gave me.  I didn't know what to expect at all.  I remember looking at the screen for the first time, thinking "oh, how cute, it's like a rack, neat."  Then I hit the tab key.  Seriously, my jaw literally dropped, and I think I may have even drooled a little.  I was ecstatic - real live cables I can move around and plug in and out.  I knew right then and there that this would eventually be the ONLY thing I would ever use again.  I found my way to the forums looking for help, and pretty soon I was offering help.  I love helping people.  When I was growing up, doing this on my own, I couldn't afford lessons or training at all, and in the video production world I found a lot of people protective of their craft, unwilling to share information or tips or tricks or even basic knowledge.  Being stuck... I taught myself.  So if I can answer a question on the forum and save someone the trouble that I went through, it's worth it.

- A lot of your patches are very technical and delve into some creative uses of CV and combinator patching, do you have a science background,  and how did you go about learning to use Reason in such an idiosyncratic way?

No, no science background.  Scientific I suppose, but not directly science.  There's a science to creating patches, it's almost an art form I suppose.  When I see a clever bit of programming I'm very impressed, I love it.  I remember the first time I saw Shawn "Ogggy" Sunkel (a PUF member we sadly lost to a heart attack in July) use Thor's formant filter display to visually show an LFO pattern - that was brilliant.  Or the recent 4 source audio crossfader by Shultz, another truly awesome idea.  For myself, I suppose I learn from necessity.  When someone says something "can't" be done in Reason, I like to find a way to get the job done.  I think I first jumped into CV, believe it or not, by looking at some of Tom Pritchard's work in 2003.  Up until that point I had no idea how to go about it.  I mean, I knew how to use it in the real world with the Pro One and other analog gear I experimented with, but I never tapped into it at all with Reason 1.0 until I looked at some of Tom's work and thought, ok, what is he doing here?  As I learned from looking at other people's work, I began to do it myself, reading threads on the forums and using those requests as launching pads for research.  So yeah, I like a challenge, so I'll take those moments of impossibility and work at making a patch that accomplishes the task.

- Obviously we all know you use Reason, what else does your studio consist of?  Do you use any other software or hardware in your music production?

No, It's all Reason.  The only hardware I own is in support of Reason: Emu XBoard 25, Evolution MK-461c, Keystation Pro 88es, Behringer FCB1010, Korg nanoKontrol, Yamaha BC3 w/MIDI Solutions Breathalyzer, Line6 UX2, and three MIDIsport 2x2 interfaces (actually ones an authentic Steinberg version).  None of that does anything on it's own, it's all used to control Reason.  In the studio I also have a UREI 6230 power amp and two JBL 4410's for those rare moments when I feel the need to be loud.  I have some ancient Yamaha MS10 (yeah, MS, not NS) that were part of a 4-track system, I use them for rough monitoring when I edit video.  On the video side I have a DSR-30 DVCam editing deck, and some other DVD and DVR stuff, all converted to HDMI and routed to one of my Dell SP2309W monitors.  I have two of the 2309's, hooked up to a fairly new Mac Pro, so the monitor on the right serves dual purpose between the Mac and the video gear.  All of my Reason work is done on my MacBook Pro, but now that the Mac Pro and dual monitor setup is here I'll switch over to that system soon, especially with any Record work I'll be doing.  I just need to get a rotating monitor stand so I can put one of the Dell's at a 90˚ angle to see the full mixer, top to bottom.  But I still like to work on the MacBook Pro to get out of the office/studio, wander the house, sit in the livingroom, etc.




- I know you work professionally in the video editing field (hence the name EditEd4TV) and I've been to your website and your videos are very impressive.  Do you sometimes get burned out on using a computer creatively for both work and leisure?

Oh yeah, definitely, I get tired of sitting at a computer all - day - long... ugh, it's exhausting sometimes.  It comes and goes in waves; the workflow, my interest, etc.  Sometimes I can put in 8 or 9 days non-stop, 5:00 am to 11:00 pm just editing video, trying to get projects wrapped up and delivered, and then I hit a wall where I just don't want to look at a screen anymore.  Literally, I've had nights where I dream about Final Cut Pro errors all night long.  Then I wake up and go sit at my desk with Final Cut Pro all day long, then it's back to bed for more nightmares - hah!  I joke with my wife Lana about wanting to be a park ranger, where the only thing I would have to do all day is welcome people to the park, wear my cool hat, avoid bears, shoot my index fingers at little kids and call them "partner", etc.  Then I found out that being a park ranger is no easy task.  So yeah, I get burned out, especially when I have a string of other people's projects all over the bay area, sometimes all the way up to Sacramento, sometimes all the way down to Bakersfield, sometimes out of state too, and then I come home and sit at a computer for a few hours working on projects that I'm producing, and then beyond that I have to take care of all the computer work that goes into being self-employed, and then I finally get to work on something like "Understanding Thor" or "Reasonable Help", and then, maybe then, I can maybe just put on my headphones and enjoy playing some music, just for fun.  Those moments are rare, so I try my best to make the most of it.

- I just picked up "Reasonable Help" and was impressed with the amount of documentation included with the .rns and aif files.  (I particularly liked the MixerChannelMuting.rns and DizzyPanning 1 & 2 files.)  This first version of "Reasonable Help" was created back on Reason 2.5, before the advent of combinators and the mighty Thor.  Now I know you are currently working on a new version of "Reasonable Help" and am wondering what kind of tips and tricks we can expect with this updated version seeing as Reason has advanced so much since the last edition?  

There is a LOT going into the new version, I'm very excited to get it out there.  Honestly, if you're a regular on the PUF, you've seen about 90% of this stuff before, BUT, almost all of it has been revamped, Combinator knob and button functionality has been changed and improved, so... all sorts of things are new, so really, you've probably only seen 40% of this stuff.  Plus, all of this is coming with PDF documentation that's way better than the last version.  I'm hoping to have the PDF documentation work hand in hand with the demo aif files, as well as the Reason files themselves, so, keep your fingers crossed.  It'll almost work best if you work from the PDF document, where you can do key word searches, find what you want, click on a demo aif file to hear what the file is supposed to do, then click on the rns file to open it in Reason for your own use.  Not sure if all that is possible, I have a bit more research to do, but I think that may be the route I go with.  Some new cool stuff in the next version: 1 Finger Jazz Band, 7 ReDrums, Analog Delay, Analog Synth Latch Mode, Auto Fader, Car Radio, Channel Checker, Heroic Pad, Keyed Layer Selector, Live Pitcher, Noise Gate, Strummer, The Antiquator, and more.

- The MP3 clips on your website really run the gamut of musical genres.  From the ambient electronica of the track "Drive" to the hip-hop dirty finger funk of "I live in the Projects".  What music inspires you personally?

Hmmm... I grew up listening to your basic top 40 rock and roll through the 70's, and 80's, so I was raised with the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Van Halen, AC/DC, Yes, Genesis, and of course all the 80's stuff fer shure fer shure.  I got into progressive rock and listened to the bands I mentioned earlier.  But I also love thematic motion picture soundtracks from the likes of Alan Silvestri, Hans Zimmer, James Horner, Jerry Goldsmith, and of course, John Williams.  I also love the work of Debussy, Aaron Copland, Holst (oh how often has "Planets" inspired others?), and more.  But for pure inspiration it's almost always cinematic orchestrations, they're always so moving.

- My last  "10 Questions" was with Tom Pritchard, who named you as one of his favorite sound designers in Reason.  Who are some of your favorites?

We've heard great stuff from Tom of course, but there's also Jeremy Janzen, Dave909/Sample Basement has excellent work, Exode, KikBack's MPC stuff, Xsynth (he has something new coming this December I believe).  As far as song composition, Tom Pritchard and Adam Fielding are my favorites, they both do such wonderfully excellent work.  I long for the day that I can dedicate so much time to working on one of my own songs, but life is busy and composition has taken the back burner for now.




- It seems like a lot of the patches you make begin with someone on the PUF asking if a particular sound/effect can be achieved in Reason (see TrifonicPercussive), what are your favorite type of patches to design and why?

I like making patches that end up being a smaller part of a larger whole.  I love making the "ReCover" files, where my initial intent is to provide just a synth patch, but I end up recreating the whole song.  But I think I enjoy utility patches the best, where it's not really a sound but more of a supportive tool.  For example, I just finished creating a Combinator that has this great function behind one of the buttons: you press it once and it advances Thor's step sequencer one step (no big deal), but when you turn off the button it advances Thor's step sequencer one step again.  Sounds simple enough but it wasn't as easy to program as I thought it would be.  After I found every "simple" idea resulted in the two desired results canceling each other out (no step advance at all), I had to find a new way to do it.  I incorporated the solution into my NoiseGate/UnGate Combinator (which works very well by the way) and used this technique to advance delay ms via the step sequencer's curve 2 value for a compensation delay, but that portion of the design can easily be lifted and used in other Combinators.  My hope is that people will take these patches I make and split them out and use portions for their own use.  Those "utility" type patches are my favorites, as it's not just a sound, it's a tool, and being the catalyst for someone else's imagination makes me very happy.

- My final question is on another project I know you are currently engrossed with and that's "Understanding Thor".  I've seen some demos on-line and it looks fantastic.  I like that you are going into minute detail of every one of Thor's functions...  because I know that when I watch tutorials, even when it's on a topic I think I know back to front I usually walk away with a new understanding and thus am really looking forward to this tutorial DVD on Thor, a synthesizer with so many possibilities.   Some questions about it:  What kind of release date are you shooting for? how long is this video going to be?  are you planning on including documentation, .rns files, etc..  with this series as well? 

Oh boy, do we have to talk about the release date?  OK, sheesh... the original release date was supposed to be December of 2007 I think - hah!  After I realized how intense I was making this video, I knew there was no way it was going to happen.  I stopped taking pre-orders because I didn't want a massive horde of angry customers wanting to kill me.  I worked on the project as much as I could but the freelance video production business really picked up and I ended up with no time to work on the Thor project at all.  I'd spend so much time away from it that I'd have a terrible time trying to ramp back up to speed - it's so confusing, so many Final Cut Pro layers, sometimes up to 19 or 20 layers at a time.  I was originally editing this on my MacBook Pro, with the intent that I'd be able to go portable with Final Cut Pro and edit anywhere I want.  Ultimately this was a bad thing as it was limiting to work on a small 15" screen.  I didn't realize how limiting it was until I finally shoved the whole project over onto my new edit system a few months ago - working on dual 23" monitors has made a huge difference, plus the render time on the new system is great as well.  The terrible economy has been good and bad; I now have the time to work on this stuff, so my new deadline is December of 2009, but the downside is I'm not out and about making money doing freelance video because the normal workload has dwindled off to somewhere around 25% of normal... 2009 has been really bad.  But back to Thor... as of right now, I have the entire introduction completed, the entire front Controller Panel completed, and a good portion of the Voice section of the Programmer Panel completed.  Just this portion alone is already 55 minutes.  By the time I get through the rest of the Voice section (more filters, ADSR envelopes, LFO 1), as well as the Global Section and the MBRS (Modulation Bus Routing Section) and the Step Sequencer, and the back panel connectivity... I think we're looking at well over 2 hours of content, probably closer to 3 hours.  Yeah, that's a long video.  My goal is to provide this with the entire script as as PDF file, verbatim, word for word... I think it'll be about 100+ pages.  The script won't have illustrations, but it will have chapter markers for the DVD, so those could be used as a reference when watching the final product.  So, you could pretty much use the PDF file as a Thor exclusive user's manual.  It doesn't go into extensive detail in some areas (I'm not going into über geek mode on FM, for example, because it's just way over the top and beyond the scope of not only this video but most people's interest as well), but in most areas it goes into more detail and/or clearer explanations than the provided documentation from the Props.  There's only so much you can do in print, and I'm trying very hard to make my visuals as graphic as possible; simple to understand, conveying concepts in simple ways that make it easy to understand.  My hope is that someone can watch "Understanding Thor" and break through any barriers or anxiety they have about it, guided through the graphics and explanations.  I want people to have many "ahhhhh... NOW I understand!" moments when they watch this.  There probably won't be any included rns files, since it's very basic stuff I'm showing on screen, the actual patches would be boring instructional level stuff, but... if "Understanding Thor" does well, the plan is to release the next video in the series, which would be "Programming Thor" - that project would cover 12 to 15 different patches, from scratch to finish.  If anyone wants to follow along on the progress of "Understanding Thor" and "Reasonable Help 2009", look up "EditEd4TV" on Facebook.  I'm posting demo videos there and giving away a few Combinators now and then too.


Thanks for the great interview Ed!

Stay tuned in September, for the next edition of "10 Questions"...