GHF Presents the Producer Q&A Series Part 5: Heyoka

Heyoka manages to stand out amongst bass music producers with a cult like following due to his unique take on all things ‘Glitch’ and ‘Bass’ centric. In the past few years Heyoka has been taking elements of Glitch Hop, Grime, Drum & Bass, Dubstep, and now Blues and Jazz and turned them on their heads repeatedly and emerging at times like the audio version of synthesized dimethyltryptamine and other times creating walls of sound that provide a full body massage and relieve pressure on the extremities.

One undeniably consistent element that is heard from anywhere he has toured or been submitted for review, is that the Heyoka experience is a bass lovers delight.

Mandelbass is named in respect to mathematician and ‘creator’ of fractals Benoit B. Mandelbrot and also delves deeply into blues and 1960’s garage influences, all the while maintaining Heyoka’s dynamic use of Glitch plugins and edits. So get ready for a ‘glitched out session of low down bass grooves and some honky tonk thrown in for good measure.

We've all heard his tunes and love his unique style of glitch hop production and preforming, now's your chance to find out everything that you ever wanted to know about what goes on inside his mind.

Heyoka's website
A mix Heyoka posted here a while back

I'll start.... do you think you could post an audio clip of you saying your artist name. I want to know how you pronounce it.

how do you synthesize your kicks and snares?

also, how is your live template set up?

love the tunes.

Sweet! Thanks for doing this!

My question relates to finding your own personal sound as an artist. I always know a Heyoka track when I hear one because of the unique sound. Do you have any advice for fledgling producers who are looking for their own unique sound?

Also, on a totally different note, the hoodie you are wearing in that picture is awesome, where did you get it?

Thank you for providing this opportunity!

How many hours a week do you spend producing? What do you find is your biggest producing obstacle and how are you working to overcome it?

Lastly, what is your best advice for growing and evolving your sound in the long term?

Thanks again!

First of all cheers for the new Album. You seem to always evolve in the right direction. Shmufty is the newest Fav

I really enjoy that crazy technique you use (Whatever it is) to make a synth talk. For example the "Yai, Yai" Sound in the tune Meltdown. Or the Lead Synth in Sunshine Flowers and Lollipops.

If its a secret sauce, no worries. But I'd love to hear you explain it.

Cheers Mate!

Seriously huge respect for you man.

I would like know about your talking synths as well, but for specifically, I am curious how you get that sound that sounds like someone playing a set of vocal chords like a hammered dulcimer. that is seriously the business. Also very interested in your live setup. any light you could shed on your performances would be wonderful.

Hey Andrei. Super long time fan now and I really dug your Mandelbass album. It's really great to hear an artist maintain their own sound at the same time as trying new things and the progression of your music itself has always somewhat inspired me as well as humbled.

I was wondering what your motivations and inspirations to make music are? How much time are you spending around on each track and what do you recommend for compression and EQ? Thanks for doing this, it's always a great thing to have the ear of such an artist.

Hey everyone. Thanks for the questions and feedback. I'm at a show right now, but I'll get on it with answering these later tonight.

Whatssup. I don't synthesize my kicks and snares. For basic drum sounds, I use samples. I ussually layer snares and claps. Sometimes I layer kicks, but ussually not. Some sound libraries I like are the vengance libraries and the native instrument urban arsenal libraries, but I don't them use in kore or kontakt, I just use the samples from the folder in ableton. Sometimes I midi assign the play triggers in the performance view to record them so I dont need to run it through a sampler or just drag and drop them in place. I do a lot of my other drum sounds in maschine.

As for the live set up. It's constantly developing, and there is a lot of things I want to change with it in time. I use an ohm 64 from livid. I break each song into 14 clips that play vertically through follow actions. The first is an intro. Then 8 clips that start on a kick, outro, then 4 clips that start on snare points (1.2). This way, I can skip around tracks easilly, and sort of play beats at different points in the song, even though what I'm playing is just play points to a finished track, but it's a fun thing to do live. To save the groups of tracks, I just drag the group into a folder in the live folder window and save it as an als, then I can just drag the als file into albeton onto the slots to make them work with the midi assignments, so they all are layed out to the midi controller in the same way. The only thing that sucks with it is I need to use the computer mouse to drag them into place, which isn't fun on stage. Eventually I want to figure out some way with midi banking to change that up. I also play some one shots and loops. I have a bunch of audio effect racks. One trick I like with audio effect racks is to midi assign them to turn on at 1 or 2, and off at 126 ( or 127 i think), so they turn completely off when you sweep them all the way to either side. I also have some buttons assigned to sugarbytes artillery, which is pretty much the same effects as effectrix, exept you midi trigger them instead of using a sequencer. Hopefully that all makes sense. I'm a bit spaced out on a tour bus right now.

Yo. I definitely like to make stuff that sounds like alien talking or swampy bubbly sounds. One thing in massive I like is the double notch filter. It's pretty vowley. Massive also has formant oscillators. A few people have asked me about the yay yay sound on gate code. As best as I remember, it was just a basic wobble, with the sample and hold on, pitched all the way up. Fabfilter volcano is a good one. Formant fliters are a lot of fun. The only synths I use are massive and a virus ti. The virus 0S4 version has a very cool vowel filter. I got a little phatty last week too. I only got to use it a bit, but it makes fat subs. As for the dulcimer effect, I'm not so sure what you mean, but it might be this. I sidechain gate a lot of my bass and synth sounds to drums. You can also sidechain gate to the flip of the drums. If you play with that, it makes really cool glitchy effects that drop well on the beat. Lately, I have my kick and snare on a group track, and the rest of the percussion on another group track. Then I record the whole thing onto another track that's muted. That way I can either use all the drums, just the kick and snare, or the percussion to trigger the sidechain gate, and still have the kick and snare in its own group to trigger a sidechain compressor if you use one. You can also take beats from another track or really anything to trigger sidechain gates, and just leave them muted. I think I went off on a tangent, but Those are tricks I do to a lot of bass and synth sounds to make them choppy and to make them bounce off eachother.

Thanks man. As for motivations and inspirations, it's hard to pinpoint anything particular. I think the main thing is just making the kind of things you want to hear, and finding your own twist on it. . I listen to a lot of different kinds music too and take influence from many genres. As for how much time I spend on a track, it varies a lot. I used to make tracks a lot quicker, but lately they have been taking up a lot of time. Pretty much in between weekends, when I'm at home. All I do is work on tunes and sleep. I'm very much a night owl. When I'm at home. Usually work on tunes till around 8 in the morning, then sleep all day and repeat. It's not always my pattern, but I generally spend a big chunk of everyday at home doing music. A lot of time is not productive though. I feel like I need to get into a sort of zone to get anything cool done. I can never get tracks done on the road either. I need to be alone at home for a couple days before I can really get into it. As for how much time to spend on compression and eq, it's hard for me to say. I have been spending a lot more time recently on those things as I learn more about them. I think in time you just get an ear for where sounds should sit on the eq range. I ussually render versions of tracks that I'm working on and just play them on different systems to hear what needs to be changed. I often get a track done during the week, go play a couple shows on the weekend and try it out. Then take note of how it sounded and fix it when I get home. One recomendation is sonnox. I have really been liking their plugins. I use other stuff too, but I really like the sonnox plugins.

As for finding your own sound. We all take influences from other people, but it's good to not stick to strict formulas and genres. In my opinion most styles of electronic music have a handful of producers that are making very cool original stuff, and then tons of generic tracks that sound similar. That's one thing I love about glitch, it's totally open for breaking the rules and doesn't stick to a certain tempo or beat or musical progression. So, it's constantly evolving in different directions. I think it's good to listen to different kinds of music too, so your head doesn't get stuck in the same sound. I listen to a lot of styles of (mostly old) music and switch it up frequently, so I don't get bored, and I always have something I'm listening to that's exiting to me to take influence from

It's Hi - yoka. (HI like "Hi, whatsup", or "high grade").

Thanks for all the responses, definitely some gold, and some techniques I am excited to try out. Big ups man!

I was still wondering where you got the hoodie in the photo? (sorry haha, I am a collector of awesome hoodies). It's all good if it's a secret though

oh yeah, I forgot to answer that. It's from Buddhaful out of seattle. I got it at ceiba records in sf.

when makin´music, do U connect with spirits from the universe..so it´s more like the music is comin´thru U instead of U makin´iT? like the next day listenin´to iT and questionin´"did i really do this?"

you kno about this, kind sir?

I would love to know how do you approach the arrangement part of your track,
do you have like a regular A,B,C kind of way or do you let it evolve by itself?
do you know from the beginning what kind of structure your aiming for or it's all free?

Hope I explained myself good enough,

THX

Andrei, big love man. Just gotta say thank you for being awesome. You helped inspire me through some of the times when I wanted to quit, and if I wouldn't have known there's such good people out there like you I would have quit!

I wanted to ask, how long does it take for you to write a track? Do you get in the flow then just hammer it out over a day from start to finish/mastering? Do you write the main phrases then add glitch or is glitch written as part of the phrase kinda thing? Thanks

props for doing this man! i'm going to ask what i always ask in these q-n-a's:

can u go into your standard (general) mixdown process? what tricks do u find yourself relying on most often? what about balance and levels, how do you approach the act of mixing down? as you go or after arrangement? how do you treat your bass and drums?

cheers.

I love this idea, its similar to using drum loops as kits by setting the start point to kick or snare and coming up with different launch quantizations - Gate and Repeat modes are also fun to mess with because you can hold down the clip to repeat according to the quantize..

Do you use this same technique when coming up with beats in the studio?


I'm using an APC40 and this may be different on the OHm64 but nativeKontrol.com has come up with a way to navigate in the browser and load clips, samples, sets using the pads on the controller rather than the mouse, thought you might be interested because I'm assuming the OHM64 scripts he's come out with have the same functionality in navigation mode - http://www.nativekontrol.com/omC_Series.html

can you list all of the things you use for production?
also, what do you do for money?

Hey man. I dig your ep. This is also one of those things that's constantly changing too. I pretty much mix down as I go, and then in the end do a final mixdown too. While I'm working on a track, I pretty much try to always keep it sounding as good as I can and keep it in the green as I go. On my newer tracks, and some of the ones on mandelbass, I mixed my stems from ableton in cubase. I feel like simplifying the session and doing that step helps sort of hear it with new ears. The interesting thing with it too, is that I can have everything sounding good to me in ableton and totally in the green, then when I load the stems into cubase or logic, it might be redlining and sounding different, and I need to remix it. This makes me think that ableton does some sort of limiting. I generally do my sub bass on one track, and midrange on another. I have a uad card. Uad has this replica moog low pass filter that I've been using on a lot of the subs, because it seems to fatten them up a bit, and kind of helps find the sweet spot on the subwoofer. My monitors are dynaudios with a sub, but I haven't had them very long. I can't bump beats in my apartment at night, which is when I work, so I generally produce at very low volume or in headphones at night, then check stuff and fix it when I wake up. I also always test everything in my car. I have a pretty shitty system with a really obnoxious sub in my car that helps me a lot because if something sounds bad in it, it sounds very bad. sometimes if I really want to check my subs a night, I will just bounce what Im doing and go play it in my car with the sub cranked. Also, it's probably bad for my monitors but I always find myself lightly touching the rubber part around the speaker on my monitors just to feel that things are hitting clean. I'm always trying to improve sound quality. A lot of my tracks make me cringe when I hear them a year or sometimes even a few months later, because I'm always learning new techniques. Then there's the whole "Shit , I wish I would done that on the last release". Each of the releases I've done have had totally different mixing techniques, and hopefully each one has been an improvement. One last thing, While producing, I would recommend not cranking your sub too loud, because it drowns stuff out. But, I think it's definitely good to have it to reference and dial the subs in. Of course, you want to hear cranked loud too, but I ussually keep the sub quiet and just keep my foot on it to feel how things are punching. It's all a learning process though. Ads stuff gets sounding better too, I often remix older tracks to make them sound more consistant with newer ones for playing them out. That was probably a long response, but let me know if there is anything specific you want to know.

That's an interesting question. I definitely agree with that. I think that there's a lot of sonic ideas that we just kind of tap into. That's why I like to mess around and experiment with stuff that I might have no idea what I'm doing, and stumble on some new kinds of sounds that I wouldn't have thought of. For me thats the funnest part, when you're working on something and suddenly out of nowhere it sounds like nothing you've heard or intended to do. For example, on a synth, I might turn an lfo up and scroll through different things to assign it to to see if something cool accidentally happens. I always try to go for the very wacky alieneish psychedelia with sounds that make me crack up laughing because they sound so obnoxious, squishy or quirky. I like the stuff that you can almost see it trailing off and melting while you listen to it. For me, that's the kind of thing I want to hear dancing at festival or party.

I used to definitely have a more formulaic approach to arrangements. Ussually, my process starts with making some drum patterns. Then I ussually try to do a bassline, but sometimes will do some chords or melody's first, just to get a vibe going. For me, when I listen to my first couple albums, they have a much more formulaic arangement than what I like now, that over time makes me kind of bored, because it's so predictable. There are some formulas that I think just sound right, and we naturally lean towards, like sections of 8 or 16 or 12 bars. Untill mandelbass, and the newer stuff I'm doing, I used to always do everything in a minor scale and follow a basic dub vibe in the music. Right now, I am trying to expreiment with copying chord progessions from a lot of the other kind of music I like. I want my next album to have many different kind of musical styles, but still with in the framework of the glitch and psychedelia.