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Faux Tales Interview

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Faux Tales Interview




Interview Date: 13 Nov. 17




Let’s start from the beginning before we get into an technical questions. Who is Faux Tales and how did the musical journey begin for you?

Faux Tales started in 2013 with the "Another Mile" EP, with the idea of producing melody-driven, atmospherical electronic music. That first EP was still a bit club oriented. With the "Dystopia" EP, I shifted into a more cinematic territory, omitting the standard dance arrangements and leaving more room for experiments. That’s the direction I’m still trying to take further.

Music Theory

Electronic producers have a hard time with music theory. Either they don’t know what to learn or how exactly to apply the theory. If you use theory when writing your tracks, what specific parts do you use and what would you topics do you feel producers should know?

I took piano lessons for years and also studied music, so I was always exposed to theory and it happens rather subconscious, but I also know lots of people who do brilliant things just out of intuition. I think the most important thing is to listen to loads of music from different genres and figure out what’s going on in the interesting parts or try to play it on an instrument. For my music, chord progressions are really important to me, so theory of harmony is interesting. Also how these things are connected to the "physical“ part of music (relations frequencies - intervals etc.)

Mixing

Many of your tracks drops contain small little bass and melody fills. How do you go about choosing complementary sounds that work well with the drop and how do you decide where to place them in the drop?

Often these sounds are snippets from other sounds in the track which were heavily processed, so they organically fit in. Other than that, I spend evenings building sounds into the tracks, let them rest for a night and then with a fresh ear, I delete at least 75% of them because they sound like pure chaos 😉

The super saw drops that you have in many of your tracks are extremely powerful. They really seem to take the track to a whole new level. How do you go about layering and mixing the sounds for these supersaw drops so they make the biggest impact possible?

They are layered with lots of other stuff, pads built with vocals or other instruments from the track (to give it an organic touch) run through a massive reverb. But it’s always a balancing act, because you can easily overdo it so it will clutter everything or sound too harsh, I often spend much time EQing them and removing layers again.

The drums sound huge in your tracks. How do you go about choosing the sounds and mixing them?

I often work with a temporary drum track, which I put quickly together just to get the feeling while composing. When the track takes form, I exchange the drum samples so they fit the track and also the key of the track. Sending all the elements of the drum into a bus and compressing and saturating it a bit glues the drums together.

Plugins

What are your go-to effects and processing chains?

I like the FabFilter stuff. They have really clean interfaces and sound great. I’m not a big fan of photorealistic GUIs where you have to turn a virtual knob with the mouse. The Native Instruments stuff is fantastic as well. I bought the Komplete package a really long ago and always keep it up to date. The instruments and samples you get with it are incredible.

YouTube video

Arrangement

There are a lot of rhythm/ drum pattern changes in your songs that seem to change just at the right time to give the listener interest and excitement for what is to come. How do you decide what rhythms work and when to change these rhythms so the listener is not confused by the change?

It’s a bit the same procedure like the synth sounds. I often go totally overboard and think that it is absolutely brilliant. Then I save the track, go to sleep and listen again in the morning and it’s just a total mess, so I delete most of the stuff but some interesting fills and changes actually work well and stay in the track.

When arranging you song it can be difficult to keep listeners interested from start to finish. What are some ways you can keep the listener engaged in the arrangement and have it flow smoothly throughout the entire track?

I think listening to the track with other people really helps, you’ll listen totally different when there are other people present and you can see when they lose their interest.

General

Where do you find inspiration? Also if you are working in the studio and get stuck. How do you get past that point?

I listen to music, watch youtube-tutorials, or videos of great music performances and concerts. If that doesn’t help, I have to got for a walk or do something totally different.

What’s next for Faux Tales? An EP, another album?

I just released a brand new song called „Beacon“ and I’m working on a live-show with awesome visuals, really excited for that. I also feel like working on a longer EP or even an album again.



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