Ask A Sound Guy

The other day in our forums, a user by the name of dellphia asked us a question that, frankly, I wasn’t so sure about. I’m not as much of a buff about synths (virtual and otherwise) as I probably should, but thats what I get for listening to rock music my entire life.

dellphia was wondering how Trance producer Sean Tyas got his now legendary synth sound that appears on his also legendary track “Lift.” Sanjay and I took some guesses (bit crusher, guitar amp sim, something else?) but I wasn’t totally satisified with the answer.

So I looked Mr. Tyas up and sent him an email. To my surprise, he answered back and answered the few questions I asked him.

AskASoundGuy.com: What kinds of effects or instruments did you use on “Lift?”
Sean Tyas: When i did lift that was on logic 5.5.1 on a pc with no hardware at all.. lot of instances of vstation and es1 and es2 for all synth sounds.

Ask: If I walked into your studio, what kind of gear would I find?
Sean: Now a dual monitor mac setup, running logic 8, with Virus TI (though I use it less than I would like to).  next to that is also a pc, the old one, I keep around still “just in case I need it”

Ask: Do you prefer virtual synths or analog synths, and why?
Sean: Virtual.  When I started with hardware synths like nordlead2, supernova2, and virus b back in new york.  Unavoidably I lost patches all the time, because maybe I forgot to save, or I turned a knob or two with the wrong channel selected and went and totally changed something that sounded perfect before and wasn’t anymore.   This just doesnt happen with softsynths because of how they are implemented.  And I certainly think the battle of software vs hardware is coming to an end, because still I can get a ton of better sounds off my ES2 than my Virus.

Ask: Which do you prefer: DJing or production? And why?
Sean: Production.  I don’t have to go through airport security to do it ;)

Ask: Any advice for aspiring electronic music producers, trance or otherwise?
Sean: Best thing I can say: Stop asking your friend producers questions and research everything yourself.  This is so rewarding for one, but by learning things this way (although it’s a bit slower), you will be much more confident in your ability, and it will show in your tracks.

Special thanks to Sean for taking the time out to answer my questions. Sean’s got quite a few tracks coming out soon (one premeiring on BBC Radio’s Essential mix on February 14th), so be sure to check his Myspace and website for his upcoming shows (and there are a few) as well as his new tracks coming out.