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Wolfram FrankeInterview by Rick 'Brujo' Wishart. Waldorf and their legendary range of synthesizers need no introduction. But who are the people who toil away at the Schloss Ahrenthal, surrounded by a large forest, to engineer these desirable and ultra-cool synthesizers? Have you ever wondered why Waldorf filters are superb, or about Wavetable Synthesis or how the classic PPG Wave was transmogrified into a software synthesizer for the delectation of today's generation of musicians? The answers to these and many other questions can now be revealed as SoniK proudly presents an extremely enlightening interview with the immensely talented Waldorf Programmer Wolfram Franke!
SONIK : How did you get into the music industry? WOLFRAM : I got my first synthesizer in 1986, a German one with awful preset sounds. So I had to start programming my own sounds on the very first day I got it. The architecture and the user interface of that synth were very complex and so I became quite skilled very soon. It was an additive synthesizer which helped me learn how overtones influence timbre. Less than a year later I sold my first sound set to the manufacturer of that synthesizer and they brought out a ROM cartridge with these sounds. A little later I sold further sound sets to them and after I finished school I did an internship in their company. I bought another synthesizer, (not easy when you don't earn lots of money), with subtractive synthesis and I got skilled on that one too, because it also only had awful presets. Parallel to that, I knew a guy from a studio nearby where our band had recorded a demo tape. This guy was a sales manager of TSi/Waldorf. At a party, he asked a couple of other musicians: "who can program sounds" - and somehow they all pointed at me. Two days later he came to me with a prototype of the upcoming Waldorf Microwave under his arm and a week later I gave him a memory card with 32 sounds! I still remember this Microwave; it had a hardware bug that prevented loading a new wavetable when you've selected a different sound. With this bug, I wasn't even sure if the Waldorf people would hear the sounds as I had programmed them (this prototype Microwave is still somewhere in our company!). However, the Waldorf people seemed to like my sounds and this guy came to me with a better prototype asking me to make two full soundsets each consisting of 64 sounds. One soundset was splitted up into factories and the so-called "Soundset #2", and the other one was released as a so-called "Signature Series" soundset. I made further soundsets and in 1992 I was asked if I would like to work at TSi/Waldorf as a product specialist. I think I confirmed that! SONIK : What was the German synthesizer you first started programming in 1986 which obviously led you on your successful path? WOLFRAM : It's from the German organ company Wersi and it is called MK1 (Series III). It was a 20 voice, 8 part multitimbral additive synth with up to 32 harmonics, an integrated chorus/ensemble effect and only one VCF, but that one was a copy of the Moog 24dB VCF plus a good-sounding overdrive. It had a lot of very interesting features that you won't find in any other synth like modular envelopes with 8 stages where each stage could hold a module that did something like generating random steps, vibrato, linear or exponential ramps or simply holding the level for a certain time. If you ask why we didn't put something like this into our Waldorf synths, I can easily answer that I was probably the only person outside of Wersi who could program this thing! SONIK : It seems to be a great synthesizer on which to master sound programming skills? WOLFRAM : Oh, yes, it was. I still have it in both keyboard and rack version but both are partially broken. Two voices of the keyboard are broken and the rack doesn't boot. It's price tag was DM 6000,- (US$ 3000) with 20 voices (you could order it from 12 to 20 voices) which was the same price as the Korg DSS-1 Sampler at that time. SONIK : Do any artists spring to mind who used the Wersi MK1 (Series III)? WOLFRAM : In fact, I know of one artist only! I've heard one of my sounds, a very typical and unique one, on a remix vinyl of an Erasure song. But I don't know if the remix was done by Erasure or someone else. But that sound increased the quality of the remix a lot. This sound was so good that I re-programmed it later in our Waldorf Wave. You could find it there under the name "Kling Klang" or "Kling Klang Deluxe" respectively. I've heard it from the Wave on a number of records, e.g. on Madonna's "Ray Of Light" album. SONIK : I don't know what synthesizers William Orbit owns but do I presume it was his Waldorf Wave that's used on that album? WOLFRAM : No, he doesn't own a Wave himself, as far as I know. It was Bjork's Wave that they had rented for that time. And when you read interviews with William Orbit regarding this album production, you won't find any word about the Wave. Guess why? If he would say that around 60% of the album was done with the Wave, everyone would say that anyone could do such a production when he would have a Wave. And it's more dramatic to tell interview partners that a particular sound was made with a Korg MS-20 routed through an MXR flanger and a distortion stomp pedal from the USSR than to say that this sound would have been programmed on a Wave without effects! SONIK : What synthesizers have you worked on at Waldorf? WOLFRAM : Before I started programming signal processing code myself, I worked on the concepts of several Waldorf instruments. When I came to Waldorf on a full-time basis, the big Wave was already in a late development stage. However, the developers sometimes asked me how I would like to access certain functions, mainly in the fully software-based wavetable editor. The Pulse was the first synthesizer where I helped working on the basic concept, i.e. sound parameters, UI layout and overall sound character. The concept of the Microwave II was done almost completely by me and half a year later, I started to write down the controls I would like to see on an extended version of the Microwave II. You know the result, it became the Microwave XT! In 1997, Steinberg released the first version of the VST SDK and when I read it, I immediately wanted to do something "Waldorf-ish" with it. Stefan, our main DSP programmer, emailed me the code for the Waldorf filter and 55 minutes later, the D-Pole was born. Okay, it only featured Cutoff and Resonance with the generic Cubase parameter editor but, hey, after 55 minutes! And I was not very good in C++ programming. It took me a couple of weeks and hundreds of crashes until I had finished the D-Pole, but it greatly helped me learning C++ (especially how to optimize code so that it uses as few processor cycles as possible) and I think the result is not that bad! After that, I worked on the concept of the Q with the goal in mind to make the biggest and most powerful VA synth ever built. In fall 1999 I switched my position at Waldorf to become a full-time programmer and I developed the PPG Wave 2.V which I finished in April 2000. In July 2000, Giuliano Orsini, a college student from Italy, did an internship at Waldorf and he started with a small and basic drum synthesizer which I continued after his internship was finished. And that one became the Waldorf Attack. SONIK : So you learnt how to program synthesizer DSP code on the job? WOLFRAM : In fact, I learnt programming DSP code in my spare time! But, yes, I wrote my first "synthesizer" code during my job. But it wasn't that difficult because Stefan Stenzel, Research & Development Director, gave me hundreds of tips and info over the years. I knew how LFOs, envelopes and effects are built and I knew about basic oscillator interpolation techniques. I started programming in BASIC back in 1983 and later learned PASCAL and so I could follow Stefan quite well when he explained how certain things are done in software. The trickiest part of modern synthesizers is the voice stealing, especially on synthesizers with multi mode with dynamic voice allocation, mono mode, dual or unisono mode, portamento and other "cases" you have to take care of. This is much heavier stuff than programming an envelope or a LFO. So, if someone plans to program his own synthesizer, maybe also under VST2, he might think about starting with a single-mode synth. This is already difficult enough, especially when the sustain pedal is recognized or unisono mode should be available in the feature set. Another tricky thing is the filter. There are hundreds of books and documents floating around in the world, but no filter algorithm creates real self-oscillation with a good sound. Only a very small number of manufacturers, including us, have solved that problem while even most of the VAs don't feature filter self-oscillation at all - so, strike through the "A" of V.A.! I would also like to add something. Recently, a number of freeware and shareware synthesizer plug-ins hit the market and a lot of people might ask why they should pay several 100s of dollars for a plug-in when they could have a similar thing for $29.95 or even free. Here's why: I've seen almost no freeware or shareware synth that has the "minimum sound quality" of commercial synthesizers, no matter if plug-in or hardware. They mostly have very annoying aliasing which is introduced even with quite low notes or the waveforms become dull when playing very low notes. Also, their envelopes and LFOs are either too slow or the whole synth needs too much processor power. But: if such a synthesizer plug-in has a feature you really like, use it anyway. I don't want to kill this market, I just would like you to listen carefully to the sound it produces and then decide if you can live with it or not. SONIK : How did you achieve filter self-oscillation with a good sound? WOLFRAM : I couldn't even start without disclosing secrets! I can only say: we don't use an algorithm as most other companies do, we use an actual model of an analog filter. And that's no bullshit, it's really a model! SONIK : What was your background education? WOLFRAM : You don't want to know that! In fact, I left school after 10 years (after the last year before the "high school" would start) and had no further education. The only education I have is 10 years of piano lessons. Everything I need to know to program is self educated - which is probably the only way.
WOLFRAM : The sound, the products, and the people I work with!!! I think, Waldorf is a very special MI company. We are small enough to build synthesizers that are a little unusual - the kind of machines we want - but we are big enough to be heard! We made blue-colored synthesizers when everyone made black ones and we made orange and yellow synthesizers when everyone else thought blue would look cool on a synth. We made an 8-voice semi-analog synth when everyone else made sample-playing workstations with 32 voices and integrated effects and now we make semi-modular synths with comb filters, and plug-ins tributing classic hardware of the 80's! SONIK : Who works on the team at Waldorf? WOLFRAM : It would be a little long to list everyone at Waldorf, but here are some: Wolfgang Dueren - our boss and the boss of TSi, our distributor. He was also the boss of the PPG and Steinberg distribution in the 80's (and early 90's for Steinberg). Stefan Stenzel - the Research & Development director. He's our DSP programmer and responsible for half of the Wave software, the Pulse, the Microwave II/XT/XTk, the 4-pole, and the Q series. He also helped me greatly diving into audio processing code. He did a lot on the PPG Wave 2.V and the Attack plug-in, mainly the oscillator interpolation and optimization to prevent aliasing and to have it running with low processor time consumption. Tommy Kircher - our hardware developer. He developed the hardware for all Waldorf machines and before that, he developed the hardware of all Steinberg MIDI and Sync interfaces (and even the Steinberg Topaz). Albert Huitsing - he made his exam at Waldorf a couple of years ago by projecting and developing the Gekko Arp. After his university time he first went to Ericson and later to Philips to learn how working in big companies felt like. After two years he decided that Waldorf was the better company at which to work. He developed the X-Pole software and is now responsible for the administrative software (MIDI, patch storage, sound editing, all that stuff) in the Q series synths. Wolfram Franke - oh, that's me... I think I wrote about me elsewhere in this interview! Joerg Huettner - he's my successor as the Waldorf product specialist. Besides that he runs his own studio and makes a lot of music in industrial or EBM style. Holger "Tsching" Steinbrink - he's the product manager of all newer Waldorf products. He's responsible for the manual, sound programming coordination and product-related marketing. SONIK : Does the castle, the Schloss Ahrenthal, where you work have a 'magical' forest? WOLFRAM : I've never been in the surrounding forest so I can't tell you if it is "magical"! But it's quite a big forest in the valley where the castle is located. Furthermore, in Germany we have two kinds of "castles", one of the type "Schloss" and one of the type "Burg". A Burg is usually older and solidly built to act as defense against possible invaders, kind of like a fort or forest while a Schloss is more for representing a certain status. Just wanted to add that because I don't know how many people know the difference - I've heard that there are not many castles outside of Europe! SONIK : How do you feel the PPG Wave 2.V compares to the original hardware and how did you manage the task of programming this 'virtual' synthesizer? WOLFRAM : The 2.V matches the 2.3 by almost 100%. Even when directly comparing them you would have a hard time to tell which is which! I tried to emulate every aspect of the machine, including the steppiness of the envelopes and the LFO, the raw wavetable sound and the sound of the filter, even with resonance cranked up fully. However, there were parts that I didn't emulate, e.g. the noise and the display hum, but I think everyone is happy with that! So, how did I do it? I took the PPG Wave 2.3 from our mini in-house museum and made sure that it reflected the PPG Wave well by asking Achim Lenzgen to check it. At home, I turned on my Microwave XT to see how close it comes to the PPG by setting up sounds in both machines with the same wavetables and same filter settings. Fortunately, the resonance sound of the 12dB low pass of the XT came quite close to the resonance sound of the PPG, only the steepness of the filter was different. This was a lucky coincidence because that meant that life would be easier! The next step was to program the basic building blocks of the 2.V, oscillators, filter, envelopes, LFO etc. without taking care of the fine elements that make the PPG sound. Then I started matching the oscillator and filter sound to the PPG by A/B-ing two identical wavetable sounds and viewing the results on oscilloscopes. The sound I used was programmed with a sweeping filter with high resonance and I made sure that the slight distortions that happened in the PPG during the filter sweep also happened at the same positions in the 2.V. Parallel to that I matched the sound character of the PPG VCA to the one of the 2.V because that one changes the overall sound of a synthesizer, too. After that, the real PPG and the plug-in sounded the same with any filter setting, even when the filter was set up to the 'thru' signal. Then I started with the envelopes. I programmed a square sound on the PPG and recorded every single setting of the envelopes to my Mac. This means, I pressed record in an audio software and then set envelope 2 Attack to 0, played a note, Attack to 1, note, Attack to 2, note, and so on. Afterwards I did the same procedure with the Decay rate, the Sustain level and the Release rate. The same was true for envelope 1, but this one is even trickier. Actually, envelope 1 is made of two envelopes, one analog exponential envelope to control the filter and another linear envelope to control the wave scanning. The tricky thing now is that the rates don't match, sometimes the exponential envelope is faster, sometimes the linear one is. So I had to do the record procedure twice, first by modulating the filter and second by modulating the waves. Finally, I recorded the rates of the LFO by setting up a square LFO modulating the filter cutoff heavily so that I could see where the square is up and where it is down. After I had these recordings, I counted the samples that were needed for each "event" and typed them into tables so that I got big lists of each rate of the Attack, Decay and Release phases, the Sustain levels and the LFO rates. Furthermore, I changed the shape of the exponential envelopes in the 2.V to match the behaviour of the original envelopes. During all this analysis, Michael Johnson, a composer living in L.A., converted all factory sounds of his PPG system to the plug-in and I had told him to report any differences in sound instead of choosing a different setting in the plug-in. He reported "nothing at all" and so I was sure that his PPG and my PPG both matched the sound of the plug-in! BTW: he converted around 400 sounds by reading out the respective value on the PPG and setting the same value with the mouse in the plug-in. I still wonder why he didn't go crazy! I had two other beta testers that owned an original PPG Wave and they were also asked to check the similarity. Peter Kuhlmann, one of them, reported a difference in the resonance behavior in an early development stage but it was a matter of seconds to change that in the plug-in. After all that was done I asked Frank Schneider from our production to get hold of the original PPG Wave 2.3 ROMs to read out the wavetable data with an EPROM reader and sending me the binary data. This was because our Microwave and Wave synthesizers are based on such a readout, too, but when Wolfgang Palm read the EPROMS out sometime in 1987 or so, he made a mistake and one wave was missing in one wavetable. Also, the saxophone and piano samples of the original 2.3 never found their way into our Microwave and Wave synthesizer but we certainly needed them for the PPG plug-in and so we just did the whole procedure with reading out the EPROMs again. The last development stage consisted of implementing the steppiness of the envelopes and the LFO and matching the aliasing behaviour of the wavetable playback. All this can be selected at once by the user by activating the "TRUE PPG" mode found on the front panel of the plug-in.
WOLFRAM : My initial inspiration came from the fact that there were a number of analog drum machines in the past with very decent sounds. I didn't want to copy the circuitry of each and every drum sound of those but I wanted to have something which makes strong and interesting drum sounds and can be freely programmed. Something that is a counterpart to the standard way of playing back sampled sounds and that's also different (but not too different) from the sound character of the 808 and 909. I'd already had the idea for a couple of years prior to Giuliano Orsini doing his internship but couldn't get free resources in our company. This was the "chance" for me because Giuliano was not a musician and we had to find something that fits to Waldorf but doesn't need too much knowledge about pitch and notes. It took a while to finish the project because I rewrote it almost completely. And, due to the structure of the Attack with 24 sounds, complex controller handling and a quite sophisticated MIDI implementation, I had a hard time to implement every idea. The same is true for the freely adjustable envelope shapes and for the high-quality oscillators with FM. One of the biggest problems was to make the envelope shapes. I didn't want to use lookup tables, which would have been the easiest way. I wanted to process the envelopes by an algorithm that takes care of the individual shapes because, when programmed correctly, this can be much faster than a table lookup which must read from RAM (slow slow slow :-)). I talked to Stefan how to solve that problem, we came to an initial idea, I worked out a formula that covered part of the shapes, forwarded it to him, he enhanced the formula to cover the rest of the shapes and finally I fine-tuned the formula so that it doesn't have rounding problems. So, all in all, it took around half a year for me to do the Attack. SONIK : What makes you proud of the Waldorf Attack? WOLFRAM : The sound, the ease of use, and how far you can come with such a limited number of parameters. I mean, the Attack is not only a pure drum synthesizer, it is also a complete lead and bass synthesizer and you can even create pads with it (although this is limited because of the missing pitch LFO and other factors). Sometimes I just listen to one sound, how it behaves in the different phases and how pleasant its timbre is. A good example of that are the sounds that I did for the "Drum Chaos.all" (or maybe it's called only "Chaos.all" track. The claps, the strange swish sounds, the chopped FM bells and the bass, they are all so unique that I cannot imagine any other synthesizer where I could re-program these sounds. That makes me proud of the work! SONIK : Are you planning more VST plug-ins and virtual instruments or has piracy had an effect on your developments in this area? WOLFRAM : Certainly do we have future plans. But you're right with piracy. It doesn't make fun to make plug-ins when you know that they are cracked within 4 weeks of their release date. It's horrible!!!! Furthermore, although hardware synths are more expensive this also gives the companies more money to develop new and interesting machines and synthesis concepts. Everyone who wants to use such a synth has to buy it, because that's the only way to get it. There's no way to get a "cracked version" and the companies therefore earn the money needed to pay the research and development of new things. SONIK : Are there other forms of synthesis you would like to more fully explore? WOLFRAM : There's not much I could say here as you can imagine. Basically, I'm interested in all synthesis methods, I even like physical modelling a lot but that one is patented by the Stanford University, Yamaha and others. However, when you are a lucky Waldorf Q owner or have the chance to play one, you should check out the things you can do with its comb filters, because those are also the basic building blocks for physical modelling. I also like VA and FM and, certainly, wavetable synthesis! SONIK : How would you explain wavetable synthesis and its unique characteristics? WOLFRAM : Wavetable synthesis was invented by PPG founder Wolfgang Palm in the late 70's when RAM or ROM was more expensive than a medium-sized car. He wanted to overcome the static behaviour of typical analog oscillators with the goal to get rid of a post-routed filter. He came to the idea to store a number of similar-sounding single cycle waves in a list that could be scanned by modulation sources like envelopes to e.g. get the effect of a sweeping filter. This means that one wave is played back for a certain time, then the next or previous wave in the list is played back and so on. This list was called a "wavetable" and it contained up to 64 different waves. To save memory, he just put pointers to waves into the wavetables to select one of a couple of hundreds waves out of a pool. This means that a sine wave was only stored once somewhere in ROM but several wavetables might have used this sine wave. He found other ways to reduce the data size even further: - He only stored half of each wave in ROM and 'copied' the missing half to the wave during playback. This means that such a wavetable could only play back point-symmetrical waves but according to Fourier's law, any periodic sound can be produced with that anyway, even if the wave would look unusual on an oscilloscope. - Not every entry in a wavetable contains a real wave taken out of ROM. Those entries could also be empty, even a couple of entries in a row, resulting in proportional interpolations of the previous and following real wave. This means that if a sine wave would reside in entry #1 and a sawtooth wave in #5, entries #2-4 would be filled with proportional mixtures of a sine and a sawtooth wave. This resulted in smooth wave transitions well suited for simulating analog filters with resonance or so. For hard switches between waves, two adjacent entries have to be filled with completely different sounding waves. - Some wavetables were generated algorithmically as soon as they were selected in a sound. E.g., a wavetable that simulates a pulse width modulation just contains pulse waves with different widths. There's no need to store those waves in ROM because with a simple program you can generate those waves on the fly, probably even faster than reading them out of memory and interpolating missing entries. SONIK : How do you feel the Micro Q compares with other VA synths? WOLFRAM : The Micro Q has a couple of features that you won't find in any other VA synth on the market (except in its big brother, the Q) or in a similar quality compared to it: Comb Filters - those can create very dense sounds and can be used for quasi-physical-modelling sounds that you wouldn't expect from a VA synth. FM - the FM possibilities are much more complex than in any other VA synth. You can frequency-modulate each oscillator with any other and you can FM the filters too. Wavetables - though the Micro Q is not a wavetable synthesizer, it has two wavetables on board where you can sweep through without clicks or transition noises. Modulation speed - the so-called "Fast Modulation" matrix and the pre-routed modulations allow modulations with a speed of up to 5000Hz. This results in extremely fast envelopes and ultra-fast LFOs that can run with a speed of up to 2500Hz. Oscillators - those are real models of analog oscillators, resulting in a very fat bass sound even when you listen to them without filters or effects. They behave exactly like their analog counterparts and they were modelled after the analog oscillators of our Waldorf Pulse synthesizer. Filters - those are also real models, not only algorithms as found in almost all other VAs. This means that they can self-oscillate and allow FM. They are modelled after something in-between the Curtis filters from the Microwave 1 and our discretely built Waldorf Pulse four-pole filter. Arpeggiator - it's probably the most complex arpeggiator ever done in a synthesizer. It allows you to change lengths, accents, glides and note selection per step and you can even activate chords only on selected steps (not only on or off for all steps). SONIK : How do you approach programming your sounds? WOLFRAM : In almost 100% of my sounds I start from scratch with an initial patch. I ask myself what type of sound I want - a Pad, a Bass, a Sequencer sound or the like. Also, I think about what character it should have, weary, deep, hollow, brilliant, cheesy, and so on. From there on, there's no real method, say, if I start with tuning the oscillators, changing the filters, applying LFOs or adjusting the envelopes. I just do all the things that lead me into the direction I want to go for that sound. When the basic structure is done, I start to fine-tune the sound by changing tunings, adjusting mixer levels, tweaking cutoff and resonance, applying modulations and adding effects. This process might last a single minute or half an hour, up to the point where I think that this is the sound to store. Often it is a different sound than I originally wanted, not because I couldn't do it better but because the final result is more interesting than the original idea. SONIK : Does serendipity ever play a part in your sound programming? WOLFRAM : Yes, that happens quite often. I always start with an initial sound when programming and most of the time I have an idea what kind of sound I want to program. But during the programming I often notice that the original idea isn't as spectacular as I thought and I go on further to see what happens. And when I come to an interesting setting, I store the sound and fine-tune it afterwards. A lot of sounds are done in that way. SONIK : How do you feel when you hear your sound patches used by artists in their work? WOLFRAM : Shortly after Waldorf released my first sounds, I was very proud to hear them in songs of that time. But during the years I've heard my sounds quite often so that it's not that surprising for me anymore. But sometimes I'm still surprised when I hear a sound in a production where I wouldn't have thought that the band would use a Waldorf instrument. This happened recently when I saw a live concert by A-ha on TV that was filmed two months ago. They had a blue Q on stage and played the typical melodies on it from "Take On Me", "Sun Always Shines On TV" and "Hunting High And Low". I know that they used the PPG Wave for those melodies at that time but to take a Q nowadays instead of a Microwave XTk (which still has all the PPG Wavetables on board) was a little strange to me. But I was proud that the Q was the main master keyboard of Mats, one of the A-ha members (they had an additional keyboard player who played some Yamaha keyboards, for the orchestral and sampled sounds). SONIK : Are there any other works which feature your sound patches that come to mind? WOLFRAM : Sure. Some well-known productions: Annie Lennox "Why" - the synthetic choir sound that goes through the whole track, the preset is called "Vox Humanum" and is in the factory sets of the Microwave 1 and the Wave. The "Diva" album was produced by Stephen Lipson (you know, the second best producer in the world) who owns probably all Waldorf instruments. This production is from 1992, so he must have taken the sound from the Microwave I. Annie Lennox' "Medusa" album was produced a couple of years later and you can hear hundreds of Waldorf Wave sounds throughout all tracks. The Simple Minds album that followed the "Street Fighting Years" album. I don't know its name because I only had a tape of it at that time. It was also produced by Stephen Lipson and he used the Microwave a lot. Especially in one 6/8 track where he used the Microwave 1 sound "Hammer" as a bass sound. Almost all "Seal" records. Especially the latest one which is full of Microwave XT sounds. The latest "Art Of Noise" record "Seduction Of Claude Debussy". Contains a lot of Microwave XT sounds and a couple of presets I did. Snap - the last album they released, I think in 1995. Shortly before they started this album they got two Waves and so the album is almost exclusively done with the Wave. They used a lot of presets including a resynthesis of a drum loop sample I originally did for demoing the sample-to-wavetable analysis feature. Also, here and in a lot of other recordings you can hear the Chorus2 wavetable sounds that found their way in the Wave, the Microwave II/XT and even the Q. I did the Chorus2 wavetable with only one choir sample from my Roland S-750 sampler where the original sample was pitched to F 1. The Wave analyzed it with formant shifting so that the resulting wavetable can be played on the whole keyboard without "Mickey Mouse effect". Sven Väth recordings produced by Ralf Hildenbeutel. Ralf is a big fan of the Microwave I and he used a couple of presets from me besides his own sounds. Hans Zimmer's soundtracks. Whenever he makes synthetic tracks, he uses the Wave or one of our later synths. I've heard a couple of presets I did but cannot remember where or which at the moment. "Martial Law" series soundtrack. Don't know who does it but I can hear a lot of Microwave XT sounds including some of mine. There are probably many others but I never kept track of them. I only grin when I hear a sound from me! SONIK : I have all the Snap albums and the one prior to the album you mention has a note on the CD cover thanking Waldorf for 'the fattest bass money can buy'? WOLFRAM : Yes, the Snap guys are big fans and good friends of ours. They have all of our machines, I think at some point they even had up to 6 Waves in total. They are really nice guys! SONIK : Who have been your musical influences? WOLFRAM : I'm a child of the 80's. Propaganda, Frankie Goes To Hollywood, Art Of Noise and all the other stuff produced by the fabulous Trevor Horn influenced me most. I also love A-ha, Tears For Fears, Robert Palmer, Thomas Dolby, Nik Kershaw and all the other great musicians and bands from the 80's. I also like some good 70's bands like ABBA and ELO, or the 60's Beatles and Beach Boys. But most of the music I listen to is from the 80's because it just sounded the most interesting - maybe because they all used the PPG! SONIK : What CD's would we find in your collection? WOLFRAM : Very interesting stuff: SONIK : Are there any cultural reasons why your fellow countrymen have had a very significant influence on the evolution of 'electronic' music in both an artistic and engineering sense? WOLFRAM : You probably speak of Kraftwerk, Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schulze, and all the Techno music that was produced in Germany over the last 15 years. Yes, there probably is a reason. Germans like to have things in order and with precision. We want to do things by 100% and we want to make it good. I think that's the biggest reason for this repetitive and strict music. Also, Germans like to invent and to create, and the best way is to do that by yourself without involving other people. Electronic music instruments provide that, or at least the illusion of it, because one person has full control over a lot of aspects of the music. On the other hand Germans don't see themselves as "stars" and so it's hard to find "front men" for bands. And a big keyboard setup helps you hide yourself behind it! SONIK : Kraftwerk indeed had a significant influence on many musicians worldwide. WOLFRAM : They also influenced me a lot. Not TD or Klaus Schulze, but definitely Kraftwerk! We've had a number of interesting electronic music artists here, especially in the so-called NDW era ("Neue Deutsche Welle") in the early 80's. But from this era you probably only know "Falco" and "Nena" who both were successful e.g. in the US and maybe 'Down Under' at that time? SONIK : Yes, Falco and Nena enjoyed popular success but there were probably other influential artists at that stage whose great work did not receive mainstream attention outside Europe? WOLFRAM : I still like "Spliff" a lot. They all were very good musicians and the resulting music is very complex. Herwig Mitteregger, who played the drums, was one of the best German drummers and he was a god on the Simmons SDS-5 drums. Reinhold Heil played the keyboards and he had a Yamaha CS-1, the first FM synthesizer. Furthermore, he's also responsible for the great keyboards and the whole production of Nena!! Anete Humpe and her sister Inga Humpe did, and still do, a lot of good music. Anete founded the band "Ideal" making quite raw music with complex drum and guitar arrangements. Inga was one of the two main singers of the "Neon Babies" that were produced by Anete. Both later formed a duo called "Humpe Sisters". As far as I know, Inga doesn't make music anymore but Anete is still among the "most wanted" producers in Germany. She creates a very unique sound, wide and airy. The Humpe Sisters album "Swimming With Sharks" is a good example and worth buying. Anete and Inga used to sing the background choirs of most of their recordings together and their voices alone are worth listening to their music. Michael Cretu did a lot of NDW productions, e.g. Hubert Kah, and you might know one later non-NDW production from him: Enigma. He's married with the German singer Sandra who he had produced at that time, too. This was also not NDW but shortly after that time. All the above were mainstream productions. But there was a big avantgarde NDW scene, too, with bands experimenting with the first samplers (PPG Waveterms, for sure!) and modular synthesizers. One "hit single" which was not intended to sound popular was by "Zaza" called "Zauberstab". A production without any reverb effect, synthetic drums, ring modulation sounds, a one-note slap bass and a single violin playing strange melodies. This track was really psychedelic and I still like to listen to it. Although it is not easy to find on CD, I bought a 4 CD pack just to get this track! SONIK : So what music are you listening to at present? WOLFRAM : During the last week I listened to albums by Hall & Oates, Bauhaus, Propaganda, Frankie Goes To Hollywood, Swing Out Sister, Wham, Thomas Dolby, Annie Lennox (because of this interview), Lenny Kravitz, Pete Namlook, Nik Kershaw, Henry Mancini, New Order, Human League, 10cc and Prefab Sprout. Furthermore I listened to a number of compilation CD's which contain tracks by Blancmange, Picnic At The Whitehouse, Kate Bush, Re-Flex (Politics Of Dancing, a great PPG track), Duran Duran, Gary Numan, Sandra, Chaka Khan, Godley & Creme, Kajagoogoo, Pat Benatar, Robbie Nevil, Scritti Politti, Talking Heads, Arcadia, Deborah Harry, Eighth Wonder, Bill Sharpe, Killing Joke, Nu Shooz, Psychedelic Furs, Roxy Music, Savage Progress (My Soul Unwraps Tonight, another great PPG track), Talk Talk, Climie Fisher, Dusty Springfield, Howard Jones, Princess, Robert Palmer, The Romantics, Yes, Mel & Kim, Siouxie and the Banshees and The Nits. Even Aussies were on the CDs: Enough said? SONIK : Are you a fan of Kylie and Jason or is it more a case of the Stock, Aitken and Waterman 'sound' of the eighties which you find appealing? WOLFRAM : In the 80's I found the S.A.&W. tracks quite boring because the sound was always the same. But Stock, Aitken and Waterman did a couple of songs that are really outstanding, also in the way they were mixed. Songs which come to mind: Princess "Say I'm Your Number One" - One of the greatest "Simmons SDS-5 Demo" track I know. Great music, great voice, great mixing and great sounds. Samantha Fox "Nothing's Gonna Stop Me Now" - great harmonies and melodies, quite complex but very organic and pleasant to the ear. Mel & Kim "Respectable" and "Showing Out" - Both tracks really show how detailed S, A & W could produce if they had fun with a song. S, A & W "Paparazzi" - an acid track with a very good production and good music. They released it under their own name, which was a good decision, I think. It's not that well known but I know it and love it. And now I come to Kylie Minogue and Jason Donovan. I never liked the songs they sung alone but there's one track where they sing together that stands out by far, "Especially For You". Okay, it has the typical S, A & W sound but in my opinion it's among the best pop songs ever written. The harmonies are unbelievable, the melodies are great, the arrangement with the choir and the strings is just perfect. And it sounds so familiar that it fits perfect into the every-day pop charts and that you never notice the quality of the track until you really take time to listen to it carefully. SONIK : What instruments do you have in your home studio? WOLFRAM : 1 Waldorf Q Software: Waldorf Attack - certainly, huh? SONIK : What synthesizers do you think will be historically viewed as legendary and groundbreaking? WOLFRAM : At first thought, all of our synthesizers! No, seriously, that's a difficult question. But there are highlights that come to mind instantly like the Moog Model 55 as the first synth that used a voltage controlled filter, the MiniMoog as the first commercial, portable, reliable and affordable performance instrument, the Prophet 5 as the first commercial polyphonic synth, the PPG Wave as the first commercial digital synth (actually not the Wave itself but its predecessors from the Wavecomputer series), the DX7 as the first commercial FM synth, the D-50 as the first synth with samples on board and the Korg M-1 as the first full sample-based synth. On the sampler side, the Fairlight Series 1 as the first real sampler (not sure if the Emulator 1 can be counted as such), the Synclavier for its high-quality sample recording, the PPG Waveterm for making sampling affordable and the Emulator 2 for being reliable enough to use it on stage. On the soft-synth side, it's difficult because the scene is so new. But I would count in Rebirth, Reaktor, LM-4, Pro-5 and our PPG Wave 2.V. Others certainly will follow but those started it all. SONIK : Having solved the problem of digital filter self-oscillation, who else do you respect for their digital filters ? WOLFRAM : Yamaha comes to mind and, furthermore, good-sounding digital filters can be found in the Access Virus and in TC Works' Mercury-1. The rest of the digital filters I've heard are not really impressive. I'd also like to mention the Roland D-50 which had a very interesting filter sound, not analog at all, but with a certain sound that I like. SONIK : What does a typical day at work for you entail? WOLFRAM : Because I'm working at home, the days differ greatly. It's very nice to work at home because you are only disturbed by someone with important things and you can manage your time freely. When I'm too tired to code I just have a nap and when I come up with a great idea I can go to the computer at any time I like - I'm writing this paragraph at 2:07 in the morning! This is not good when you're married and have children but as I am and have not, it's perfect for me. Usually I first check my e-mails and afterwards I start coding. That's what I do most of the days. On other days, I prepare UI layouts or concepts for our plug-ins or hardware synthesizers, sometimes I drive to the Schloss Ahrenthal for a meeting or I do demo songs or preset sounds. SONIK : Do you have any favorite websites? WOLFRAM : I don't browse a lot. When I'm in the Internet, I try to find things like either shareware or freeware programs, documents about synthesis or to download updates. Waldorf was one of the first commercial companies in the world that were connected to the Internet and so it's not that spectacular for me anymore. I got my Internet access sometimes in September 1992 (whew, almost 10 years ago) and I started browsing the web with an early beta of NCSA Mosaic, kind of 0.7 or 0.8, which was bought by Microsoft in 1995 and became the well-known Internet Explorer. SONIK : What do you envisage you might have been doing if you weren't designing and programming synthesizers? WOLFRAM : I would make music and try to sell it. But if I hadn't learned the art of making music I would probably have tried to get into the film business. When I was young, I always wanted to become a director and make films. Sometimes I think, making music is just a very small version of making a film - you're the director, producer, actor and score composer as one person and the result is for the ears only instead of being for the ears and the eyes. SONIK : Many thanks for a very enlightening and enjoyable interview. WOLFRAM : It was a pleasure! August 2001 |
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