Armin Van Burrens setup

[CHRIS]

Not content with being one of the most celebrated DJs in the world, Armin Van Buuren has also had a string of club and chart hits. We asked him to talk us through the production of a top-notch trance anthem.

Spoiler: image 

___8220;Imake what they call underground dance music,___8221; remarks Armin Van Buuren, as we talk in a hotel prior to his set at London___8217;s Ministry Of Sound. You___8217;d be forgiven for raising an eyebrow at the ___8216;underground___8217; part of that description. After all, this is a man who has been at pole position in DJ magazine___8217;s list of the top 100 DJs since 2007, and has produced a string of hits since bursting onto the scene with his track ___8216;Blue Fear___8217; in 1995. His popular weekly radio show, A State Of Trance, also recently celebrated its 400th episode, so it___8217;s probably fair to say that Armin___8217;s particular brand of ___8216;underground___8217; is about as well concealed as London Transport___8217;s.
Unlike the Tube, though, Armin shows no sign of stopping. A variety of new remix and production activity is continuing apace at a newly constructed studio in his home town of Leiden in the Netherlands, where he frequently works alongside his studio partner Benno De Goeij, half of the production duo Rank 1. To begin with, I asked him how he typically sets about putting together a track from scratch; unsurprisingly, it___8217;s his wide knowledge of the music scene, built up through his DJ___8217;ing, that informs the process from the earliest stages. ___8220;Usually we start by listening to other records. There___8217;s a few records around at any given time that have this hype around them, so all the producers listen to these records. A little while ago you had Deadmau5, with his sound, then you had people copying Deadmau5. We were listening to Deadmau5 as well, so our sound was a little influenced by that. And you can clearly feel the whole dance community shifting in response to the best new records.
___8220;I___8217;m a trance DJ, that___8217;s what people know me for, but I try to follow the trends as well. The bpm over the last couple of years went down, for example, and productions have a lot of influences from minimal and electro percussion right now. If we___8217;re making a track or a remix, we listen to the current sound a lot. You have to go on iTunes and listen to a lot of other records. That___8217;s really, really essential. You___8217;re not copying them, you___8217;re being inspired by them. The Beatles listened to Bob Dylan ___8212; it___8217;s that kind of thing. You kind of go with the flow. DJs won___8217;t play your record if it doesn___8217;t sound enough like the other records, because they___8217;re building a set and they___8217;ve got to rock the crowd. So no matter how many hours of production you put into it, if it doesn___8217;t sound a little like the previous record or the record after it, then it___8217;s not going to fit, and they___8217;re not going to play it because it___8217;ll make their set sound really weird. So doing research is extremely important.___8221;

Theme & Variations
Despite the presence of a Toft analogue desk and plenty of other hardware, Logic and its bundled soft synths now dominate Armin Van Buuren___8217;s music.

The genesis of a new track is frequently a single main theme. ___8220;Usually we start with an eight-bar main theme, with maybe a piano melody or some strings, and drums and a bass line going. In the studio we___8217;ve sync___8217;ed up the main Mac via MIDIoverLAN, which is a really quick way of working. I can be sitting behind the keys making a melody, and my sequencer___8217;s running, sending out a MIDI clock to Ableton or Logic. Benno, with the headphones on, can have a laptop connected to the system making loops, while I___8217;m making a bass line or melody, and it___8217;s always in tempo. It saves us a lot of time because two people can be creative at the same time; sometimes we make a track in half an hour! In fact, the strange thing is that all my biggest tracks were written in under two hours.___8221;
If the main eight-bar theme is showing enough promise, the producers will create variations on it, as a precursor to building a longer arrangement. ___8220;We___8217;ll copy the drums to a new eight-bar section, and that___8217;ll be where the bass line is more straight, almost like a ___8216;verse___8217;. So we have eight bars of ___8216;verse___8217; and eight bars of ___8216;chorus___8217;, and then we try to make some interludes for it, to make it interesting ___8212; we copy the drum track again and start doing some freaky stuff to make the build-up to the ___8216;chorus___8217; more interesting. Once I___8217;ve created those three sections, I can start building from there, and the good thing about that is that you don___8217;t forget how you want the ___8216;verses___8217; to sound and you don___8217;t forget how you want the climax to sound. I___8217;ll then give the track four, five, six different sections, deciding where I want it to go in each section, and that___8217;s when I start arranging.___8221;
The arrangement and writing approach remains pretty fluid, though, especially when Armin___8217;s working with vocalists, as he did so successfully on the recent album Imagine and is continuing to do while developing new material. ___8220;For my new album, right now I___8217;ve got eight ideas going. Some are ideas where my brother comes into the studio and plays some guitar stuff, and I just put some Chicane chords and some drums on it, and spend 10-15 minutes if it___8217;s a nice melody. Then I___8217;ll MP3 a two-minute clip and send it to a couple of vocalists. That___8217;s how I did most of Imagine. Just send them random melodies ___8212; they___8217;re not even tracks yet, they___8217;re not even demos yet. Usually every singer will send back a vocal idea which inspires me again to go into the studio and maybe drop the guitar, add in a bass line, and mix the vocal on top before sending it back again. Then she writes the chorus.___8221;

Mastery Of Sound




The vocal booth in Van Buuren___8217;s new studio: increasingly, he is working with vocalists to develop new material.

Of course, the quality and inventiveness of the sounds a producer uses is also crucial in this particular musical sphere. ___8220;You almost have to be a sound designer right now, just as much as you have to be good at writing themes or good at producing beats. I come from the MIDI age, where you___8217;d have a big mixer with all the S3000s and a big Atari running in the middle, but now everything___8217;s changed. You really have to know what you___8217;re doing.
___8220;I can think in terms of arrangements because I___8217;m a DJ, whereas Benno is a sound guy, he can think in sounds. The guy___8217;s crazy: if he hears a particular sound in a record that I really like, he knows how to make that sound. Let me tell you something: ES2 in Logic can make almost any sound you want. Maybe there___8217;s a few analogue things it can___8217;t do, but you can always emulate those in other ways. Benno has proved to me that you can make 95 percent of any synth sound you want with ES2. You don___8217;t really need more than one synthesizer if you invest some time in learning how to work it. I know it___8217;s really boring, but read some articles or buy a book about synthesis. It___8217;s even good to go into your synth___8217;s presets and see how they___8217;re built. Is it one oscillator or two? What does unison do? FM? Distortion? If I draw the envelope differently, what effect does it have? Listen to a record you really like and try to recreate the main lead. How did they make it? Is it a saw wave? Is a little detune going on? Why does it sound so wide?
___8220;One of my biggest tips would be to restrict your gear choice, because there___8217;s so much out there; restriction is good! The technological possibilities available are humungous, and they___8217;re actually too big for your own good. Twenty years ago your Juno 106 had just 32 presets, so you had to be much more creative with what you had. Right now you can buy a Virus TI with 16 oscillators and 12 distortions, so you can press one note and it goes ___8216;Reeeoh___8217; and arpeggios are going everywhere, but it can actually very much limit your creativity. If I really look at the essential stuff that we use, it___8217;s all about ES1, ES2 and EXS24, and that___8217;s it! It___8217;s so amazing what you can do with stuff like that. I___8217;m lucky enough to have a lot of other synthesizers here, but those are just for inspiration. Just as it was in the hardware MIDI days, you really have to invest time in knowing your equipment, so choose your plug-ins carefully and don___8217;t buy too much. Every day I___8217;m still learning, and I always read the Logic section in Sound On Sound. I___8217;m just starting to use groups after reading one of the articles recently, for instance ___8212; I___8217;d never used groups!___8221;
Despite the practical advantages of keeping a certain sonic consistency between a each new track and the stylistic flavours of the month, Armin warns against simply duplicating settings between tracks. ___8220;You don___8217;t want to make the same record every time, which is what you hear a lot of successful producers doing. It___8217;s sort of sad when people have just one bass drum they rely on and they use it for every track. Fair enough, you know it works, so don___8217;t touch it; that___8217;s one way to go. But the other way to go is to solve the problem differently. For example, if you decide to use a different bass line, and it doesn___8217;t have the nice warm low end you need, just use a sine wave and put it underneath, layering it so that it sounds as warm as your other bass lines. That way the impact of the bass line is the same, but it___8217;s not the same bass line.

___8220;We consciously do not want to use the same sounds all the time, and while I can understand that SOS readers want to know how I work and want to have some guidance on how to work, if you just recreate a track that___8217;s already there, you___8217;re not helping the scene. You___8217;ve got to try and make a little difference, even if 90 percent of it is copies of other people___8217;s ideas.___8221;

Spoiler: image 

At The Mix

Although Armin Van Buuren is at pains to point out that none of them is actually necessary to his production process, his studio still boasts a wealth of hardware synths.

After the writing process is complete, mixing is typically tackled as a separate stage, stripping the track back to drums and bass and building from there. However, Armin stresses that much of the success at mixdown hinges on careful selection and arrangement of the sounds during the writing process. ___8220;Everything you do in your life is all about choices, and that goes for making tracks as well. You have to be conscious of the fact that you are making a choice ___8212; choosing that kick drum, choosing that bass line ___8212; and that you should make the right one at every stage. If you___8217;re cooking in the kitchen, you___8217;ve got to use the right blend of ingredients. The individual ingredients you have might be perfect, but when you put them together the dish may taste awful. It___8217;s all about finding the ideal combination of sounds. It___8217;s pretty boring to go through over 1000 kick drums and over 1000 bass lines, but it___8217;s definitely worth it, and although we do get into side-chaining the bass line from the kick drum, that won___8217;t necessarily make the kick itself any better. Sometimes people want to try to cram too much in, as well. Stick to one idea and finish that. Don___8217;t try to put four or five ideas in one track.___8221;
One of the hallmarks of Armin___8217;s productions is openness and clarity, despite the lush synth textures and extensive delay and reverb effects, so I was keen to find out how he dealt with this mixing challenge. ___8220;How do you get your mix to sound open? Use your EQ. You don___8217;t want to know how many Channel EQs we___8217;ve got going on, cutting bits away! Only use the sounds in the frequency ranges you want them to be active in. For example, you obviously want the kick drum to be at around 60-70 Hz with a little top ___8216;tick___8217; going on. You can get rid of the other bits, even if it seems to make the kick drum nothing more than a hint of a kick drum. Delays as well: they work best in the mids and highs. Everything that goes on at lower frequencies, just filter it out.
___8220;Likewise, a hi-hat should be a hi-hat, not a mid-hi-hat, or it will clog up your main melody. A lot of people love Kid Cudi vs Crookers___8217; ___8216;Day & Nite___8217; at the moment, but it has a breakbeat that comes in which I can___8217;t stand because it___8217;s at the same frequency as the main vocal. You can___8217;t hear what he___8217;s singing any more, especially when a multi-band compressor starts working on it. I would never do that. I want to hear what the vocalist is singing.___8221;
Listening to Armin___8217;s latest album in particular, it___8217;s striking how the textures constantly shift from moment to moment, continually revealing subtle new programming details which help draw you into the track. ___8220;We do add a lot of hidden elements, because it___8217;s all about layers, especially with trance music. In Logic 8 you can create a new track with duplicate settings, which is great. For example, if you have a bass line going, you can have the same track going underneath it and then increase the attack slider a little bit so it makes it seem like a reverse effect, or put a little Noise Gate on it. That___8217;s what we do with a lot of things ___8212; just duplicate a track and adjust it so that for a different section it sounds more interesting. No part of the track can sound the same. Everything has to grow. We also use a lot of automation; it___8217;s essential.___8221;
Distortion is also becoming an increasingly popular processing choice. ___8220;It___8217;s a little bit the sound of ___8216;now___8217;. Trance used to be very much about the sound of Roland___8217;s JP8080 ___8212; the very clean Super Saw, a little detune, a little delay, that was it. Right now it___8217;s all about distortion and the harmonics you create when you distort something. We use Logic___8217;s Guitar Amp a lot for that, even on bass lines.___8221;

Monster Monitors



While a lot of home producers aspire to Armin Van Buuren___8217;s production values, few actually succeed. Why? Well, judging by the frequency with which the subject arises during our conversation together, a major factor has got to be the seriousness with which Armin approaches the subject of monitoring. ___8220;What a lot of the dance music guys do is set up their own studio in their mum___8217;s attic and then go to the music store and buy monitors, and the crucial thing I found out while making my last record is that that approach is completely wrong. Here I___8217;ve been able to build my studio completely from the ground up, and while everything was still on the drawing board we got the monitor builder Mischa Jacobi in with us to design the speakers for that room. And it___8217;s completely changed my life, because now I can finally hear what I___8217;m doing!

___8220;People send me tracks where they say, ___8216;I don___8217;t know what to do. I___8217;ve done this mix a thousand times!___8221;, and I can just grab an EQ and the whole problem___8217;s gone, because I can hear what I___8217;m doing here. The problem is that a lot of these kids work not only with wrong monitors but they work in an environment that___8217;s completely wrong too. It___8217;s like if you decide to take a holiday to Paris, but you decide to go by bicycle rather than by plane, and then you don___8217;t take a map, so you don___8217;t know where you___8217;re going!
___8220;Working with my music on NS10s doesn___8217;t really make sense either. A lot of pop records are obviously made for radio, but if you make dance music, 50 percent of what you___8217;re doing is actually supposed to be for clubs, so it___8217;s about low end.___8221; However, although pride of place in his mix room now goes to enormous custom-built 200kg Royal Sound Systems monitors, I notice that he still has a familiar pair of off-the-shelf active monitors up on stands too. He laughs: ___8220;I___8217;ve mixed for years on the Mackie HR824s, so I still have them here. They have way too much low end, but, hate ___8216;em or love ___8216;em, they just sound really good and you sort of get used to them!___8221;

Armin Van Buuren___8217;s latest project is the trance compilation A State Of Trance 2009.

So how did Armin judge the low end of his mixes before he had such a precision system? ___8220;Trial and error! For bass levels there___8217;s the ___8216;feel your woofer___8217; trick. If it comes out too far you can feel it. Listen to your record on as many different systems as you can. It should sound good on your mum___8217;s kitchen stereo, it should sound amazing in the club, and it should sound good in your studio. At one point we were car-testing constantly: we___8217;d make a quick two-minute bounce, burn it onto CD, hop into the car, and listen to it there. A/B___8217;ing with other records can also help, especially for club music. I compare a lot with other tracks in iTunes, and we have a special folder called ___8216;This is how we want our records to sound___8217;. That___8217;s how you do it ___8212; just use your ears.___8221;
Advancing Trance
Speaking with Armin about his work, it___8217;s clear that he has taken an extremely patient and methodical approach to building his now formidable production skills, but as work on his new album continues he still seems keen to absorb fresh new ideas through collaboration with other musicians. ___8220;Every human being works in a different way. No matter who I___8217;ve worked with, we___8217;ve always learnt stuff from each other. There___8217;s always something to learn from someone else.___8221;
And for the rest of us, there___8217;s a lot to learn from Armin Van Buuren.

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Mastering & Compression

According to Armin Van Buuren, the outboard in his new studio is deliberately located a long way from the mix position, and only used where there___8217;s a need for a specific preset. The Rosendahl Nanoclock (top left) provides a digital reference for the entire studio.

Although a lot of electronic music producers seem tempted to master their own tracks, Armin is cagey about following this trend. ___8220;I___8217;m too insecure about it,___8221; he admits, ___8220;so I leave it up to a mastering engineer.___8221; He___8217;s also disinclined to mix through mastering-style multi-band processors. ___8220;The problem with multi-band compression over the main outputs is that it usually clogs up the mix very fast. I get sent lots of promos, and now all these kids are using multi-band compression to get their music to sound like my radio show. But that goes through a broadcast compressor, and if you heard it that way in a club you___8217;d walk out of the club a half hour later screaming because there___8217;s no dynamics in there. It___8217;s really important to have some dynamics left.
___8220;So we don___8217;t really use compression in that way. If we use a compressor we use it for sound design rather than for the overall mix. For example, I really like the Wave Arts multi-band dynamics plug-in ___8212; you can put some little noise in there and it really pulls out a lot of information. Using compression to create the ducking effect on a bass line is really important too, to give the kick drum and the bass space. We do a lot of side-chaining.___8221;

Entertainment Is Not Analogue Or Digital
___8220;In my new studio I can use my outboard gear now as well within Logic, which is heaven. Heaven! But ___8212; and this is going to sound really bad to the analogue freaks ___8212; I___8217;m otherwise mixing internally now, because it___8217;s easy and you___8217;ve got total recall. Computers are fast enough now, finally. If people want an analogue mix, I have a Toft mixer and I can still do an analogue mix. Sometimes I still do, but I___8217;d really say 95 percent of the people I___8217;m playing for do not care if it___8217;s mixed analogue or digital. Songs are much more important. I don___8217;t even hear the difference between a 192kbps and a 320kbps MP3, to be brutally honest with you! What matters is the music, your ideas ___8212; you___8217;re an entertainer.___8221;

Armin___8217;s Home Studio
Armin Van Buuren___8217;s rise and rise in the DJ field has allowed him to finance the building of his own dream home studio, and he has strong views about creating a workspace that encourages and allows him to concentrate on the creative aspects of the production process. ___8220;This studio is built more for sound and comfort than it is for the equipment. In reality the rack effects are way too far from the mixing position to actually use them. I just use them if I want to use a preset that I made before. That___8217;s why I___8217;ve put them that far away. There___8217;s a lot of daylight in my studio as well, which I find really important. Creating your own working environment is essential. Switch off your phone! Don___8217;t install email on your studio computer; put that on a computer in your house so you___8217;re not distracted.___8221;
Other infrastructure also helps maintain the smooth running of the studio. ___8220;We have climate control and complete acoustic isolation, because if you___8217;re irritated about the fact that you can___8217;t go really loud or that you don___8217;t hear your low end, you feel less free to be creative. Plus, everywhere in the studio I___8217;ve built these little boxes, which have MIDI, audio, Ethernet and mains connectors. I put all my old synths on the wall in my attic, so if I want to have a tweak with those I can pull one down, have power immediately and can get the audio from it. I___8217;m not restricted by having to unplug other synths in the studio to make room. A digital clock unit is so important too, because it___8217;s great that I don___8217;t have to worry about clicks and ticks any more, and I always have a RAID storage system going now ___8212; I___8217;ve lost so many tracks just because of crashed hard disks. The factories that make hard drives get bigger and bigger, but the drives themselves aren___8217;t becoming better and better.___8221;
You can see pictures of Armin___8217;s new studio in this very article, but the man himself sounds a cautionary note to anyone examining his synth collection too closely: ___8220;I was a little bit in doubt about whether I should give you pictures of my new studio, because people will think ___8216;He___8217;s got a V-Synth! He___8217;s got... He___8217;s got... I need to buy that!___8217; No, you don___8217;t need to buy it. I mean, it looks really cool, but usually we have two or three things in analogue at best. Plus it___8217;s just great to have knobs to use sometimes, for creativity. I love the TR909, for example. I know I could sample it, I know the hi-hat even is a sample, but I keep it there for the sake of having it and for fooling around. But you don___8217;t really need it.___8221;
That said, Armin clearly keeps each of his hardware synths for specific reasons, and passes on some of his experiences: ___8220;I___8217;ve used the Moog a lot for creating bass ideas. The JD800 isn___8217;t necessarily a very good synth, but I___8217;ve created a lot of my own sounds in there, and it___8217;s very hands-on. The Alesis Andromeda sounds amazing, but that thing can go a lot further than the presets tell you. If you look on the Internet now you___8217;ll find a lot of amazing stuff as MIDI SysEx files. The TX81 is the one I used for ___8216;Blue Fear___8217; ___8212; I got it from my Mum and Dad, when I was about 12, I think! The FS1R is great for strings, and I love that Roland 2080; a lot of producers have that still.___8221;

[electronomist]

Was this from Future music mag? Read it on the plane to Ibiza in the summer. Good article! Oh to have the funds for a studio like that eh!

[Arctic]

Wicked setup, pity he doesnt use it to effect anymore, his own productions are very poor of late, bordering on house. Wheres the euphoria?

[Valhalla]

now thats a setup to kill for!

[sLaV]

*drools* WHAT AN AWESOME SETUP :p:p:p:grin: