10 Questions with Peff!

When I started this blog last summer one of my main goals was to interview Kurt Kurasaki, aka Peff. His Reason ReFills are my favorites for both their playability and technical prowess. If you didn't pick up his last Power Tools for Reason book you are missing out on some of the greatest tips and techniques available for Propellerhead's Reason software. And the book he's currently working on Power Tools for Using Record with Reason 4 should push the envelope even further. Without further ado, here's the interview:




- I've read on your website that you've been using Propellerhead's software since Rebirth, how did you initially find out about the Props and what's your background in music?

I discovered ReBirth through the internet and was hooked from the first moment I tried it.  Back then, the 303 and other Roland x0x devices were in demand, so a lot of people were immediately drawn.  Compared to today’s standards, ReBirth seems like a fairly trivial piece of code, but it was groundbreaking at the time.  Propellerheads started the emulation trend, and now emulation seems to be standard practice.  

My interest in electronic music started when I was about 8 years old while I was on a trip to Japan.  My parents and I were with a family friend, Mr. Isao Odate, and we were in a section of Tokyo Station which is a shopping mall filled with electronic and gift kiosks.  As we walked through I was fascinated by the calculators, tape recorders, and especially the little Casio VL-1.  I went over to one of the stands and played with it while my parents chatted away.  Mr. Odate purchased the VL-1 as a gift for me, and I spent the rest of the trip playing with it.  That little keyboard started me down this road.

My formal training in music is rather limited.  I learned to play piano when I was very young, and later on I learned to play the saxophone and a bit of classical guitar.  I was never really disciplined enough to practice, because electronics and computers were more of a distraction.   It wasn’t until I got my first synthesizer, a Juno-106 when my interest in music really developed.  I’m still not good, but I can edit like a mad man.

- Your patches for Reason are hands down some of the most technical I've seen, do you have a background in engineering?

Again, I’m not formally trained, but as I mentioned before, electronics and computers have been a part of my life for a long time.  I’ve always been pretty good with math and science, but I think I draw most of my inspiration from the years of playing with synthesizers.  Most patching in Reason/Record boils down to a few key processes like certain cv/gate routings, audio chains, combinator and thor modulation routings. I should hope I’ve developed a certain amount of proficiency with the software after having spent 11 or so years with it.

- A few months ago I posted a question on the PUF about what sound designers/musicians people would like to see interviewed on my blog.  The two names that came up the most were you and EditEd.  Which makes me wonder, who's sound design work do you admire?

I admire everyone who contributes free content to the community.  I know how much time and effort goes into creating a library, and I realize that sometimes there’s little appreciation for non-commercial efforts.  I’ll take this opportunity to thank the people whose creativity and generosity has kept the spirit of the Propellerhead Community alive!




- I saw on your Flickr page that you had some pics of one of my all-time favorite bands, Tortoise, from when they played San Francisco a few years back.  Recently I heard that they've been playing samples with Reason for their live shows.  Did you have anything to do with setting this up for them and how do you know those guys?

Tortoise always puts on a great show, but the show with Daniel Lanois was really amazing.  On their regular tour, I’ve seen them using Reason as a sound module.  I’m not exactly sure, but I think the Buchla Marimba Lumina is one of the controllers.

Back in the late 90s, a core group of us early ReBirth users had a chat server online where we would hangout.  Through that group I met engineer, Casey Rice, and John Herndon.  We eventually met up when they toured the area, and I’ve been friends with them ever since.




- I know you've done some workshops at Robotspeak and have also hosted a jam session in your home for Reason users in the Bay Area that EditEd attended, do you have any workshops or group sessions coming up?

The last fireside chat at Robotspeak was great.  It was less of a formal workshop and presentation and basically turned into a roundtable discussion of all things Record.  I was happy that quite a few of my friends from the SFBARUG showed up.

The San Francisco Bay Area Reason Users Group was started by Ed and a few of the others in the area who are active on the Propellerhead User Forum.  I think each one of us has hosted a session in different areas of the Bay Area.  Ed organized a get together up in his neighborhood,  Tony (Cubricon) arranged a couple of jam sessions at Cogswell Polytechnical College in Sunnyvale.  Mark (mark) and Darin (dbooty) also hosted us a few times.  It’s always nice to take the conversation offline, but finding a location and coordinating a time always seems to be difficult. I’m not sure when our next jam session will be scheduled, but I’ve been thinking about organizing another Re-BBQ down at my place.  You should come out!

- I read somewhere that you used to own a studio in San Francisco, do you think there's still a market for studios now that products like Record have made home recording sound so amazing?

Yep, that was a long time ago, and I will never attempt to run a commercial studio again.  I’m not cut out for it.  Don’t get me wrong.  I enjoy working in studios, but dealing with clients and engineering is a bit too much for me to deal with.  I really admire the guys out there who are able to multi-task in this manner.  There will always be a need for recording studios because there are bands that require the space and resources that larger studios can accommodate.   Producers can certainly achieve a lot with a small home or project studio using Record, but tracking drums or a complete band requires space.  The business model of the high end recording studio is probably no longer viable, but a studio, integrated as part of a large media company, could continue to thrive - like Skywalker Sound.




- For awhile Amazon was showing a new version of your popular Power Tools for Reason book coming up for sale and now it looks like the new version will be called Power Tools for Using Record with Reason 4: Music Pro Guides.  Is this book a completely new edition or a compilation of some of your past work with some new tricks?  And seeing as the Amazon dates seem to change constantly will it really be out this month?

Power Tools: Using Record with Reason 4.0 is terribly delayed and will not be available in March.  The truth is that I'm still working on it.  I didn't want to simply add a few chapters to fill in the gaps of PTR3 and try to sell it as a new book.  If I did this, I would feel like I was cheating people who expect something new.  The new book will embrace all of the new technology in Reason and Record and will try to help beginners and intermediate users understand various aspects of recording and mixing.  Finding effective ways of communicating these ideas has been tough, but I've had some help from producers who have shared some great concepts.  I’ll keep you guys in the loop, though.

- One of your recent refills, Monologue, features samples you recorded from one of the world's most famous monophonic synthesizers.  These samples are absolutely beautiful, did you record these at home and what kind of gear did you use?

Monologue started as an experiment while working with a development version of Propellerhead Record.  I wanted to see how it would stand up if I sampled an instrument.  The results were really good, so I took it a step further and fashioned the first set of multisamples for the NN-XT based on the Record Sessions.  I recorded the samples in my home studio.  Just about everything I track runs through a D.I. and a mic-pre.  With the monologue samples, I used an old ADL Stereo Tube D.I., and a vintage Neve mic pre.  The signal was digitized with a Universal Audio 2192 interfaced to my workstation.

- Speaking of gear what does your home studio consist of?

My workstation is comprised of a few key pieces that I use all the time.  The Neve Pres, a Millennia Media Pre, a pair of Manley Compressors, a RS-124 Altec compressor, an Eventide H3000 (SE), a Lexicon 300, the UA 2192, a MOTU 896HD, and a Dangerous Music D-Box.  I monitor with a pair of old Genelec 1031As. I still have some other tube preamps, compressors, EQs, and a lot of MIDI modules and some nice analogue synths.  The real gem of my collection is a classic Buchla 200 system.  Most of my gear is stored and I’ll pull something out when I get the urge for a particular sound.  My mic collection is pretty modest and includes an AKG C12-VR, a Wunder Audio CM-7, a pair of B&K 4012 (DPA 4012), and other miscellaneous dynamic mics.




- Recently on the Propellerhead's forum many people have posted that they wished Dr. Rex would be upgraded (myself included), so that it could slice and dice and be more DJ friendly.   Shortly there after your newest refill, CycleOn came out and had many of the capabilities that people were asking for!  Where did the idea for this refill come from?

James Bernard always has a great demo that he develops around a control surface, and his performance is fun to watch because he’s not tied to a mouse.   This inspired me to develop presentations for the Producers Conferences in 2006/2007 where I showed people how to customize combis for live performance integration. The early setups for these live demos was based around Dr. REX switching systems connected through a series of effects devices like the beat repeater and other custom tweak patches.   Everything was mapped to a controller, so I never had to touch the mouse.  Over the years, I’ve been modifying the setup and managed to streamline the programming thanks to the Thor Polysonic Synthesizer.  Eventually this took shape as one of the early CycleOn patches.

CycleOn was originally supposed to be introduced with the new book in a section dedicated to real-time performance combis.   The patch itself is complicated, so different elements like the crossfader, juggler, beat repeat, are separated into different projects.  Since I knew it would be delayed, I figured I would just put it out.  It was fortunate that my friends at Bitplant were willing to help, and James Bernard suggested the idea of including presets with some new loop content.





- I loved the video you did with Josh Mobley (aka Neoverse), Music Production with Reason 4, any chance you'll be doing another commercial video tutorial on the "Push Me Down" demo song for Record?  

Josh and I are still talking about doing a video tutorial for Record.  Personally, I’m a bit tired of the song, and need a little space from it before I dive into developing it.   We’re thinking of a different arrangement to make a fresh version that people haven’t heard yet.  There’s quite a bit of work involved in deconstructing and developing the presentation, so it will come in time.

- Speaking of "Push Me Down" that track has many different people working on it - James Bernard, Josh Mobley, Jodie Evans, Goh Nakamura, Tim Degaugh...  were you guys all in the same town to do this or was the track all done by trading files electronically?

Producing this track was a logistical nightmare because everyone is scattered in different parts of the world.  Originally I had everything scheduled and even booked studio time, but the deadline was pushed up by 10 days so I scrambled to get it all together under the gun.  Josh developed the initial track and sent it out to me where I worked out the structure and progression.  I then sent a mix to James, and he emailed me the bass track.  Goh came over to my place and we tracked guitars.  I then put the session on my laptop and went up to Tim’s practice space where we recorded the drums.  Jodie came up from LA to record vocals at my house, and we sent takes back to Josh for his approval.  After editing the comp tracks, the session then went back to Josh for a new arrangement.  We finally stitched it all together and sent it off to Sweden for final approval and mixing.


Obsessiosine by peff


- Your track "Obessiosine", which I've studied the .rps file for too many times to count, is a great example of what's capable with Reason software.   You have some other great tracks on your myspace page to listen to as well, any chance you'll be releasing an album any time soon, because I know for one I'd buy it?

I’ve moved most of my stuff over to SoundCloud.  They have a great feature which allows me to embed the player on my site, and everything is now on my music page.  The thought of working on new music has crossed my mind, but there are so many other projects on the table.  I’ve geared up to start working seriously on a music project, and the version of Obsessiosine on SoundCloud was the first attempt at a new production approach.  I imported the Reason Song file into Record and processed and re-recorded all of the parts with outboard effects like tube compressors, a moogerfooger ring modulator and analog delay pedals.   The final mix is comprised of reason devices processed through hardware.  The noise is more noticeable, but there’s a different character compared to the Reason only version.  

- Besides your work with Reason what else do you do and are passionate about?

Just so there’s no ambiguity, I really only work in Record+Reason now.  Occasionally, I launch Reason alone to work on patches, but most of the time I only launch Record.  Music technology is really my passion, but trying to make a living from it is tough.  One thing I didn’t like about running a studio was that I took something that I really love, making music, and turned it into work.  Now I only work on projects that excite me and won't encumber me with responsibilities - this keeps it fun and interesting. Reason users tend to be of the same ilk; we tend to be audiogeeks/wavenerds, and this community has fostered friendships with people who share this strange passion for music and technology.  Meeting other users is really one of the most rewarding things to come from this bit of technology.




Thanks for the great interview Peff! Stay tuned for another edition of 10 Questions...