If you’re a member of the Intelligent Dance Music (IDM) community, you have probably heard of Aphex Twin. If not, you have, but I’ll jog your memory — the guy who has an uncanny grin on his album art, and sometimes his music will be in the background of TikToks. He is huge in the intelligent music genre and expanding outside of it to most electronic music fans. In an interview, he once said, “twiddling knobs and people start cheering.” How does this create a unique sound, and how can you create your own Aphex Twin-esque electronic music to stimulate your brain with creative energy?
Even though just pressing buttons seems kind of silly, part of making electronic music is sort of like that in a creative sense. If you have a musical brain, sometimes ideas just come to you, and it’s a matter of executing these ideas in the real world and translating them from your brain. Another aspect is understanding the various effects, hardware, and plugins involved. Aphex Twin uses his own program “Samplebrain” for samplemashing — a process which involves sampling various sounds for musique concrete, a musical technique where sounds from everyday objects are amplified to make musical samples. Aphex Twin, as the composer of the album “Selected Ambient Works Volume II” and the song “Avril 14th”, has demonstrated musical talent far more advanced than the “just pressing buttons” level. When I write music, it often feels like I’m just pressing buttons; I get stuck in a trance-like state where the music just makes itself. I don’t mean that in a way that dismisses my art, but it really does feel like it just happens. This isn’t for everyone, of course, it’s just a matter of whether you have that song in your heart or not. Sometimes, as musicians, we get pulled into a flow that makes us unstoppable, a state that intensifies in the presence of many buttons that need to be pressed.
What kind of buttons are we talking about here? Even in the case of pressing buttons, in the world of analog synthesizers, there is no such thing as just pressing buttons. Analog synths are all physics and calculation, and to get any sound out of them, you need an understanding of music theory and how sound waves work. To get a proper note out of a 2600 analog synth, for example, you have to understand the knobs you are turning, or you will get nothing but alien noises and scary static. The oscillators of a synth can be customized and manipulated using knowledge of physics and music theory. There is technical knowledge required along with scientific knowledge. Even after you get the basic understanding of what specific Hertz are, you have to understand what each wave sounds like compared to others. The shape of the wave, its velocity, and all the different filters on the smaller hidden frequencies affect the sound that is ultimately projected. Then there are also patch cables, which basically rearrange all the info you already have and change the parameters of the synth. Besides fully analog synths, being able to change all of these sounds is still done the same way. By having an understanding of waves and what they sound like, and what kind of filters you can apply to the oscillators, a desired musical effect can be achieved.
Synths were popular in the 1950s for their eerie sound effects, and it took years to learn how to configure them into what we know now. Synths would play a major role in the works of Laurie Spiegel, Kraftwerk, New Wave like Soft Cell, New Order, Joy Division, The Cure, Siouxsie and The Banshees, The Sisters of Mercy, and Depeche Mode. Even pop artists like Tears for Fears, A Flock of Seagulls, Madonna, Wham!, and Michael Jackson developed a distinctly ‘80s sound because of synths. Then came the ‘90s, a pivotal time for the techno scene and IDM, along with the proliferation of a huge selection of electronic subgenres because of artists like Brian Eno, Underworld, Notorious B.I.G., The Prodigy, Björk, Barbara Morgenstern, and, of course, Aphex Twin. Now, synths are everywhere — used by pop music, underground music, and more. Synths have expanded to every genre, with many modern artists, such as LCD Soundsystem, Death Grips, Klack, Magdalena Bay, FKA Twigs, Burial, Jane Remover, Porter Robinson, and Beach House, all fusing synths into their unique sound.
With synths, it’s honestly kind of difficult to just press buttons, and it may just be a humble way to describe the whole thing. It takes passion and understanding of the tech you are using, plus musical talent and a good sense of structure. I feel like people tend to underestimate how much goes into electronic music, but it is a beautiful art form that has changed how music can exist forever.
