Interview: Luftrum (English)

 How did you start in sounddesign?

Luftrum: I started back with Reason 4 and Thor synth which – beside being a great entry level synthesizer – is an amazing and underestimated synth. It’s intuitive and can really recreate those early Eno pads. I created some patches for my own music, experimental pads and drones. After some 20 patches I thought „why not release them, maybe others will find them useful?“ and so I did. I made around 50+ patches and asked Mirko from Deepspace (brilliant ambient artist from Brisbane) to contribute with a few signature patches and Luftrum 1 was born. It became quite popular – far more than expected. Together with it’s sequel in Luftrum 2, they formed a strong team of patches and became the de facto standard of ambient pads for Thor. That’s how it all started I guess.

 What sort of music are you producing?

Luftrum: I am experimenting with the more avantgarde side of electronica. Ambient and drone music, but also down tempo IDM, glitch, click’n’cuts etc. but I’m a better sound designer than music producer.

How came it to the cooperation with Camel Audio?

Luftrum: Camel Audio contacted me after I released Luftrum 4 consisting of 20 free ambient pads for Alchemy. I think I was one of the first to release any 3rd party presets for Alchemy. Camel Audio heard the presets and asked me if I wanted to do some official presets for their factory soundbank. That’s how I got in contact with them in the first place.

 How went the production of Luftrum Library?

Luftrum: Well, the work flow designing 150 presets involves a good amount of organizing and structuring. Each preset goes through several steps before it’s saved as a final preset. It may not seem so when looking at a preset but there is a lot of sweat and hard labour behind each. I spent approximately 1.5 hours in average per Alchemy preset – from idea to final result. Some of the presets have more than 5 hours in the making.

Let’s look at the preset Complex Orchestra from the Sound Effects section. I was playing with Lego with my oldest daughter. We were building a house. Suddenly, this one inch Lego door bell appeared, it looked like this one:

It made a subtle ‚cling‘ when pushed and another ‚clong‘ when released, the inspiration came promptly. I kept pushing the Lego piece and ideas began to form. I recorded a session with my Zoom H2 a few hours later. Pushing the button, holding it, releasing it and shifting tempo doing both. I now had myself a handful of subtle sounds filled with harmonics. Next step was to import the (rather long) sample into my host to edit the sound – taking the best parts out of the sample and gluing them into one good piece. I amplified the sound and saved it.

Sound-Demo

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