TOKiMONSTA

(music: TOKiMONSTA – “Dusty Stars” / applause)

Emma Warren

Thank you. I think that was a very nice introduction to the next hour. So that’s from your record Desiderium that you just put out.

TOKiMONSTA

Yes, it is.

Emma Warren

I mean, we’re going to do a little bit of showing the sort of, under-the-hood shortly. But I thought before we start seeing actually how you made some of that, perhaps could you tell us what the starting point was for that record?

TOKiMONSTA

The record I just played… I mean, I can’t really remember at this point. I think I started off with the percussion and if you listen to the beginning there is this East Asian percussive sample, and from there I started to build chords around that and it just kind of built itself. Most of the songs I make are like that. They just build upon themselves without any specific direction.

Emma Warren

And then if you take it out wider, what was the starting point for the whole piece, the whole album?

TOKiMONSTA

I guess all my albums are collections of certain periods of my life and there was no specific, “I’m going to make an album and I want all these songs to sound like this and I’m going to go and make tracks towards this one goal.” I decided to make the album after I had made a bunch of tracks. All these songs reflected that point in my life where I chose to do certain things stylistically at that point and I learned certain tricks that I wanted to express in those songs and from there I just picked out the ones I really liked and turned it into an album.

Emma Warren

So it was more like the album came into being because you had a bunch of songs that suddenly felt like they could be the beginning of a collection.

TOKiMONSTA

Exactly.

Emma Warren

Is that a different way of working for you? With the other records that you’ve done, were they more like the result of a conscious decision, “Oh, I want to make an album and here’s some time and I’m going to make some tracks”? Is that a different way of doing it?

TOKiMONSTA

Not really. All of my albums were put together the same way. I had made a collection of song and decided, “I think I’m ready to put these together into an album.” Obviously, I’ve made more tracks than just what ended up on this album but I decided that these represented the best of what I did during this time and I just really wanted people to hear them. And I think that putting out a collection of music versus one song represents more. You can explain a fuller story, sort of like an anthology; you have all these little stories within one big book.

Emma Warren

Another thing that’s different on this record is you and your voice as an instrument is more present on it. Did you have to do any finding of your voice or did you always know how you sounded?

TOKiMONSTA

I don’t sound very good, I’ll say that. I can’t sing. But then, as a producer I’ve always enjoyed working with vocalists. When I’m making a track and I feel like I want to have a female vocal on it, at that time I’m right there, I’m a female vocal, it’s real easy for me to decide to do that.

Emma Warren

You’re not going to be late.

TOKiMONSTA

Exactly, and I know how to accomplish what I want for the track since it’s me working for me, if that makes sense. I’m very honest. I can’t sing. I sing really, really, really bad. OK, I’m not the worst singer. We can go to karaoke together and I can hold my own, but compared to some of the vocalists I choose to work with, I’m not as adequate as them to some extent. But then, as a producer, and the way that I decided to work with my vocals in the tracks, there are tools such as Melodyne and Auto-Tune, and I tend to pitch my vocals to achieve a goal so I want to treat my vocals more like an instrument than a focus.

Emma Warren

I wonder if it might be worth giving us a little bit of show and tell on something to do with what you did with your voice, like maybe an interesting way or trick you used or something. I’m not saying give away all your secrets, but perhaps is there an example of a way that you use your voice in an interesting way or why that pleased you.

TOKiMONSTA

Show a track?

Emma Warren

Yeah.

TOKiMONSTA

OK, let’s see. [uses laptop] This is a lot of pressure.

[laughter]

Emma Warren

You’re among friends.

TOKiMONSTA

I’ll play something older here, it’s good example.

(music: TOKiMONSTA – “Soul To Seoul Pt.2”)

For example, with a track like that the voice doesn’t sound too manipulated but it is. I doubled the voice and a lot of the harmonies on here are made from pitching in Ableton. I should show a better example. Let’s see. A trick I like to use a lot is making the pitch vocal sound artificial on purpose. Obviously, in Ableton you have the ability to do, or for those of you who do use Ableton and are aware, you can warp and pitch anything and make it sound fairly accurate. I tend to like to work with it in a way where I purposely make it sound stretched or chopped-up so the vocal sounds inauthentic, but on purpose. With the track that I just showed you as an example, where I’m trying to make it sound a little bit more accurate, but towards the end I start layering harmonies on top of each other. Let me see if I can find it.

[music continues]

[comments] So here you’ll be able to hear the vocal sounding a bit morphy, just pitched up.

[music continues]

I don’t know if it’s that easy for you guys to hear, but like the high vocals and low vocals are completely pitched. When the chorus comes back in again there’s even more vocals that end up creating a texture and that’s how I like to use my vocals in music. I don’t really want you to focus on the singing ability, more so than just how much the vocals create almost like a pad and make the songs sound thicker and create an environment. I don’t know if I just digress but there we go.

Emma Warren

Not at all. Not at all. I think that’s certainly what I asked and definitely what we want to know. We were going to have a look at a track that you’ve made as well maybe just as, again, everyone here has their own way of working but sometimes it’s useful to see what someone else does. What are we looking at and do you want to talk us through what you did?

TOKiMONSTA

OK, so this is a track called “Steal My Attention.” This one also has a lot of examples of me pitching my vocals and I probably should show this one first. I don’t know why I didn’t, sorry. Let’s see. Can you guys see it okay from your side or is it a little too zoomed in? I can zoom it out. Alright. Let’s see. [music]Oops, not the right song. As you can tell I’m a professional. Oh, the wonders of technology. Sorry, you guys. OK, here we go. OK, so here’s the track.

[Ableton recording software plays onscreen]

I’ll pause right there, so an example of something else I like to do. Let’s start it from here. [plays vocal sample] Right here, obviously, we have the way that you can choose to warp tracks in Ableton so if I want to I can do pretty complex sounds. [plays vocal sample] I chose to go by beats. I can make it sound choppy. [plays chopped up vocal sample] These are just small things. I mean, it’s probably not rocket science, you guys probably already know how to do this kind of stuff anyways but it’s little things like this in Ableton or when I produce it I enjoy, in terms of creating glitchy sounds that are a bit more manual. I mean, obviously there’s a lot of VSTs that exist now that can twist and rewind and do things like that but this way I can see the audio and treat the audio, and also print it like this and I can do this effect on top of that audio. I guess here, let me show you one track.

(music: TOKiMONSTA – “Steal My Attention”)

The song keeps going on and on. I don’t want to bore you guys, but you can see obviously, there’s some audio... I record into a lot of my tracks using synths just from an audio interface. I do like still using bits of samples but don’t call me out on it online, please. [laughs] Just little beats but I think it’s for integrity. Obviously, a lot of times now I don’t try to sample things that I’ll get in trouble for. I usually try to re-sing it how someone else re-sings something, especially if I use pitched vocals, just because, you know... Yeah, I still use a lot of MIDI. As long as Ableton won’t crash I usually like to keep it MIDI. I mean, I can freeze tracks as well just to lower the amount of pressure it puts on my hard drive, but it’s really basic, I’m not using anything too crazy. As far as a lot of VSTs I like to use, Massive is a big one. I think I layered my kicks for those.

[music continues]

For something like with programming basslines, sometimes I’ll choose to use analog synths like a Moog or something like that, like Little Phatty or Sub Phatty. Sometimes it’s just easier for me to use a VST [Virtual Studio Technology] because I’m traveling a lot when I make tracks and then once I get home I’m cool with it. I don’t feel the need to be super nerdy and elitist and have to rerecord everything with a synth, I think. You can accomplish a lot just using VSTs. An example here, one line of the bass is more for sub and the second line is more for punch. Yeah, I mean, I don’t know what else I could tell you guys. When I program drums, another thing is I like to tap them in. One component of my music that I think is really strong is to swing the drums a little bit, and that’s all according to feelings, so however you like to swing your drums or if you like to keep your drums really quantized. I think even if you make other types of electronic music like house or techno, it still lends itself to have a human element to how you program your drums. I mean, that’s just my opinion, but it’s a cool way to have an interesting sound signature to your music.

Emma Warren

OK, that’s a pretty thorough breakdown of what one track and I guess if anyone’s got any more specific questions then you can save them up and ask at the end. You just mentioned something about a human touch; I wondered if we could talk a bit about some of the humans that you worked with on the record. Also, what makes a good collaboration for you?

TOKiMONSTA

I guess on this record, I worked with three different people. It was Arama, who is an amazing singer, and another guy named Anderson .Paak and a third, lovely woman named Joyce Wrice. All of three who are not super well known yet. I think they have the potential to become great and for me to work with someone, I don’t need them to be famous. I don’t care about that stuff. I care about talents, and how well we work together and how much I admire them for what they are regardless of if they’re making it or they’re songwriting for big artists. All that stuff is meaningless to me. As long as I understand the person, we get along, and they understand me too, that’s really important. As far as a lot of these collaborations with the track with Arama, I had never met her in person. The first time I met her was last week in New York and then we made this track maybe two or three months ago. We live in a modern age where it’s not important to actually meet the person in person. You can build strong bonds with people. You can become someone’s best friend just through the internet and I think that’s amazing and it’s great that it’s not as stigmatized because a while ago it was weird to be like, “I have this friend I met online,” kind of creepy...

Emma Warren

You mean you don’t really know them.

TOKiMONSTA

Yeah, exactly. Now, I can make full songs with people I’ve never met in person and she was lovely when I met her. That was great. Even just communicating via email and Dropbox and these things, we were able to work on a song that was really collaborative.

Emma Warren

You said that you want people who sound great. I guess we all hear greatness in different ways, don’t we? Do you know what it is about someone’s vocal quality that sounds great to you?

TOKiMONSTA

I have no idea. Generally, if I hear someone’s work and it resonates with me, that’s all it takes. I don’t think I can quantify or list down qualities of this is what sounds great to me because it can change. I work with so many different types of people and I don’t know one characteristic that’s common between all of them.

Emma Warren

Anderson .Paak is someone you mentioned and someone that you’re producing as well, as an artist. What is it about him that you like?

TOKiMONSTA

He’s amazing. I don’t even know. I’ve worked with so many people and they’re all amazing in their own way, but I don’t know what it is, he’s like a genius to me. I’ve seen him song-write, I’ve written tons of songs with him already and I can’t explain what it is. I feel like somehow everyone has overlooked him to a certain point. Now he’s getting a lot more attention but he’s an amazing vocalist, great singer, a writer, he can rap but I think the quality maybe that is common between all the people I like to work with is that they’re soulful. They have a heart. Their music isn’t cold. There’s something about the quality that’s very authentic and meaningful.

Emma Warren

Can we hear something from him?

TOKiMONSTA

Yes.

Emma Warren

Where did you guys meet by the way?

TOKiMONSTA

We met through a mutual friend. His name is Dumbfoundead and Anderson .Paak has been living in LA for quite a while and he recently changed his name. His name before was Breezy Lovejoy. Yeah, I guess he decided to rebrand and rename or start a new path, but yeah, I just think he’s great.

(music: TOKiMONSTA feat. Anderson .Paak – “Realla” / applause)

Emma Warren

When will we be hearing that lovely voice again?

TOKiMONSTA

Soon. Not sure yet. Not good with dates but we’re working on stuff actively.

Emma Warren

Any little sneak tasters, or ideas of what will be coming?

TOKiMONSTA

Not yet. [laughs]

Emma Warren

OK, we’re not going to get anything else out of her right now. Maybe later we can ask for a little listen. I wanted to ask you about another couple of collaborations that you’ve had or will be having and the first really was with Sakamoto.

TOKiMONSTA

Yes.

Emma Warren

Can you tell us what the collaboration was and how it came about?

TOKiMONSTA

I’ve collaborated with him on a couple of occasions. I’m not sure which one you’re referring to.

Emma Warren

I was actually talking about the one where the track that he was introduced to you by Shing02.

TOKiMONSTA

Yes.

Emma Warren

Where they talk about Fukushima.

TOKiMONSTA

Yes. I had met Ryuichi Sakamoto beforehand. He’s a really amazing musician and that he’s always been on the forefront of technology. He’s always been about thinking forward and not backwards. He actually discovered my music through Shingo and contacted me directly a long time ago on MySpace, [laughter] if you want to gauge exactly in terms of date. At first I was like, “I don’t know who this…” I think he had a pseudonym or something else and I’m like, “I don’t know who this dude is.” Then later on Shing02 was, “Ryuichi Sakamoto was trying to contact you and let you know...” I was like, “Wow, that’s really cool.” Since then I’ve been able to speak with him and I can say he’s someone that is almost a friend of mine, someone I look up to very dearly. Me, Shingo and Ryuichi Sakamoto worked on a track together. They asked me to help contribute and it was about the Fukushima nuclear power plants and I don’t speak Japanese that well so I didn’t really understand the words but I understand how powerful it is. They’ve both been on the forefront against nuclear power. Everyone has their own opinion on such matters but what they’re going for really meant a lot to me and the way that they explained it to me as well as just in general how they view our future. And he just approached me about contributing to the instrumental and to the beat, and originally it was just found sounds and I was able to produce it out.

Emma Warren

When you say you’re almost friends, I suppose, or friends of some kind; what kind of things would you to talk about?

TOKiMONSTA

I guess a lot of things. It was interesting. Once I was sitting in a cafe with him in New York and he was asking me about the musical climate. It’s different, when his career started people bought music. I don’t know when the last time you guys bought music was but it’s been a while for me. I mean, I buy music but it’s not like how people used to. This was maybe three years ago or something, he was asking me about that and I will say yeah, a musician’s way of subsisting now is not like how it used to be. You couldn’t make a lot of money or you could before survive on record sales. Now, especially as an independent artist, I think most of my income honestly comes from touring and doing all these other things. Not a significant amount comes from music, that’s why, in my opinion, I almost just want people to hear the music more then to pay, though it’s cool if you guys pay, I don’t mind that either. Yeah, that was really interesting, the generational perception of music and living off music and music business. I’m sure he feels that more now because he’s been releasing on such cool labels like Ghostly and all these things. Yeah, I mean that was something that I felt was very insightful in terms of him actually having a different grasp on that than I did because I fully know what it’s like to make music in this generation.

Emma Warren

What’s the other collaboration you’ve done with him then?

TOKiMONSTA

I have a track on my recent record and I named the track after him and I used some pieces of piano from him and – I asked him, I didn’t like, sample-jack him, you can’t steal from your friend – I asked him if it was okay and I really hope one day to grow up and be a musician like him, that’s still very rooted in classical thoughts but so future-minded. It sounds weird to say that but respectful of change. And a lot of people from older generations are a little resistant to change, not everyone, but I hope that I always stay supportive of change, good change, bad change, everything. I can show a little bit of that track.

Emma Warren

Yes, please.

TOKiMONSTA

Or iTunes can quit. Hold on.

(music: TOKiMONSTA – “Sakamoto’s Spring”)

Yeah, I don’t want to bore you guys by playing everything out. That was great, so I sampled those first few chords from him or he played those first few chords, and then all the other pieces of piano are actually from me so I was able to take the root chords and basically build whole songs around them. It’s really fun to be able to do stuff like that, and to build songs, like re- appropriating, or appropriating songs into new songs.

Emma Warren

I guess building on songs.

TOKiMONSTA

Yeah, building, exactly.

Emma Warren

You play piano. You play piano, properly, and obviously, you use the piano as an instrument, as a source for your music but if you’re just sitting in front a piano to play for yourself, what do you like to play?

TOKiMONSTA

I’ll say this. I’ve taken piano for a very long time. When I was younger I took lessons for, I don’t know, ten years. I never amounted to being much of a pianist in my opinion. Other people who have taken piano for that length of time could go on to become proper pianists, but the way that I used to work with pieces when I was younger is that I would only play parts of pieces that I liked. [laughter] Why did I have to play the whole song if I didn’t like the whole song? The running joke in my family was that I couldn’t play the piano, is that I couldn’t play an entire piece from start to finish. I had to explain to them that I didn’t want to because I didn’t like the whole song so I didn’t have to play it. Now I call that classical sampling; I basically only played the parts that I like and I think that really was an early indicator of the kind of musician I would become. I only want to take the best parts. Who wants to play the sh---y parts? No one. Well no, people do but… Sorry. A whole piano piece is beautiful but then I was eight and I had the attention span of a goldfish and I didn’t want to play stuff that I didn’t have fun playing and that was what was important to me with the piano. I wanted to have fun. I didn’t want it to be structured. I understand that I have really poor posture and I know piano it’s really good to have posture. I didn’t care about any of that stuff.

Emma Warren

Just out of interest, what are the best parts?

TOKiMONSTA

The parts I had the most fun playing. The ones that sounded the best but also when I think about it now, I think the pieces I like the most were rhythmic. They had a lot of staccato notes or had some elements that were really fun to play. I mean, haven’t played the piano, sat down and read a piece of music for quite a while, but yeah, if I look back at it, those were the best for me.

Emma Warren

Any pieces of music in particular that come to mind? I know I’m asking you to cast your mind back a very long way.

TOKiMONSTA

[laughs] Oh, crap. Let’s see. I don’t know. I really can’t think. I’d have to Google it and find it, but I mean, even playing something like “Für Elise” the reason why it’s fun to play, or the reason why I like to play it, is because it was fun to play and there were so many ways that you can express yourself without being overly complicated. I have really clumsy fingers so if I try to play Chopin or something it turns into a jumbled little mess. I literally haven’t sat down at the piano for a while and even then, most of the piano pieces were in a language I did not speak and so I don’t remember.

Emma Warren

OK, then, so…

TOKiMONSTA

Sorry.

Emma Warren

No, no, no. Don’t apologize because that’s... Of course, that’s fine. What I wonder though is that musicality which you’ve had through your lessons as a kid, obviously, it stays with you in some shape or form and I wondered what you got from knowing some of that basic stuff. How did that musicality show through in what you do now?

TOKiMONSTA

Basically, piano helped me learn how to build melodies. I think if I hadn’t taken piano I wouldn’t know how to build chords in the background like a lead melody on top and strings and horns, and... I like the orchestral quality of classical music and how things build and tell a story. That’s something that I find is very prominent in my music. I always want the ending to be very grand and powerful, and a lot of classical pieces have that, they have the storyline. It will build and becomes suspenseful or something. It will reach its apex and then calm down and then reach its apex again and these things I think are very important. That’s why I don’t have too many songs of mine that are just loops. It’s a popular quality or common quality of a lot of beat makers, quote unquote, but I just always have to do something, it has to build in some way that is… I can build songs that are linear but in a lot of ways I like stories that touch back to earlier parts of the song.

Emma Warren

You like the orchestral sweep.

TOKiMONSTA

Yes.

Emma Warren

I was quite intrigued by the fact that you use a violin but not necessarily in a straightforward way, that you use it to make sounds.

TOKiMONSTA

Yes.

Emma Warren

How are you making sounds from the violin in your studio?

TOKiMONSTA

I don’t know how to play the violin and I tried once and it’s very hard. If I can play one note on key and then another note on key and another note I’ll just layer them all three together and create my own symphonic sound. That’s a good quality about being a producer, you just cut and patch and tape things together and it sounds kind of half decent. The great thing about violin or any string instruments is that you can get so many strange sounds out of it as well, so just plucking it and distorting it or using the bow in a way you’re not supposed to, I find that it’s intriguing. Real instruments are really intriguing, the ways you can use them in a non-traditional way.

Emma Warren

A sort of cool thing, actually recently, where this band was playing and they were like a strange folk band and the violinist was playing but then the percussionist was standing at the neck of the violin and playing the neck of the violin to get beats out of it. Yeah, it was pretty cool. Apparently, most violin players are pretty precious about their instruments though so this must have been quite cool.

TOKiMONSTA

Exactly. The violin I have right now is technically not mine so I hope my friend never sees this and knows that I’ve been playing. When she gets it back it will still look normal. I’ll tune it or something.

Emma Warren

We talked about a collaboration that you’ve done in the past and then spoken about this but I wondered if we could talk about a collaboration that’s coming up, one with Kelly Rowland.

TOKiMONSTA

Yes. I have a project coming out with Kelly Rowland, also from Destiny’s Child, also sounds really random, right? I guess me being so, I don’t like using the term underground, but I’m so below the surface in a lot of ways and even though I think I’ve grown over the years I still consider myself not an above-the-surface kind of artist. The way I perceive these big pop acts is that they don’t know about us, they don’t listen to music. They only listen to what they make or what the studio tells them to listen to. There’s so many misconceptions and that’s not true. She loves music. She loves all sorts of music. She loves my music and I was like, “Wow! That is really unexpected,” and music from my peers and music that even I don’t know about.

Emma Warren

Like who?

TOKiMONSTA

She was working on a track with Giorgio Moroder. That’s not an example of someone I don’t know but then that was still an example of someone I was very surprised by. I was like, “Really? That’s kind of tight.” I think that her taste in music is more sophisticated than I would have thought because there’s only so much that we know. We think we know so much about these people via TMZ or Us magazine or whatever your national equivalent to trashy magazines are. But, I still respect her. I mean, I grew up listening to Destiny’s Child. They’re awesome. It’s the thing. They’re just all super talented and she’s someone I always followed. She was my favorite. Everyone likes Beyoncé, I like Kelly Rowland, it’s one of those things. Yeah, we started working on some tracks together and... It was just amazing, for her to listen to my stuff and be like, “I want us to make a track to this one beat,” and it’s one of my most esoteric strange beats. I’m like, “How do you want to do this?” but we’ll make it happen.

Emma Warren

So when you’re working with Kelly, where does that happen?

TOKiMONSTA

In the studio. It’s kind of interesting; I’m only used to producing at home. I can’t produce in big studios. I can tweak mixes, I can cut vocals, those type of things but I kinda have to work from home. I usually bring a lot of beats in advance so I’ll have ten tracks and be like, “Any of these speak to you, let me know. We can start writing to these songs.” She’ll go through and listen and, of course, I’ll make edits to the beats. They’re all open. When I anticipate vocals on tracks I’ll leave them a little bare which is a little difficult for me because I’m used to making tracks with just so much stuff in them but yeah, I’ll just have all these songs. A lot of these tracks I made just for this project. I didn’t change anything for her, but I just made new tracks. That’s the biggest thing, too, is I didn’t want to sacrifice my artistic integrity just because I was working with some big pop star or something like that and she’s respectful of that too. She worked with me because she knows what kind of music I make and yeah.

Emma Warren

I guess she wouldn’t want you to come as something different because what she wants is what you’ve got.

TOKiMONSTA

You never know. I could be the next... I don’t want to say anything.

Emma Warren

It’s interesting because that ability to totally be in the realm that you’re in but also be very comfortable working on a bigger level also applies to your live self as well. I wondered if you could tell us how different you might approach a kind of a club show to something where you’re on a much bigger stage with much bigger names.

TOKiMONSTA

I try not to really change my set too much. I figure that if I’m on some kind of bill, people are there to see me, and all I have to offer. Though if I’m playing, let’s say, at a quote-unquote EDM stage, these things are very conflicting towards me because I’m like, “I don’t know how I can do this,” but it’s weird how that whole realm has shifted and become wider. What was once... I don’t like that phrase, I definitely don’t think I qualify that, even from like a press perspective, but it’s sort of widened. Now the stuff that I make usually can still make people excited on the stage while I’m playing next to someone like Skrillex or Diplo or whatever and that’s been fortunate. Yeah, when I play own club shows I’m definitely going to play stuff I think is going to cater to those people that came to this small intimate show just to see me.

Emma Warren

Do you have to prepare differently for one of those shows? Do you bring different kit with you?

TOKiMONSTA

Not really. When I play I use Ableton and I always have a skeleton so these tracks I know I’m always going to play, usually stuff of my own. I started filling the meat in between on the fly, so the meat changes when I play. Larger show, I’ll play certain other songs versus other songs I’ll play for a club show. I try to make the bulk of my set consistent through both because I don’t want to be wishy washy. I might feel like a daytime set versus a nighttime set, I might play something different.

Emma Warren

If you were to cast your mind back to your very first shows... Can you remember actually the first show you did?

TOKiMONSTA

Yes. It was really bad. Where was it? I was so nervous. I think it was… OK, there’s two. I don’t know which one was first but I remember playing in a weird small venue and I had to set up all my gear on top of turntables and play this wonky set where I was like playing on the side. I didn’t really know how to use my controller, because I bought a controller just to use with [Ableton] Live, and I’m so used to just being a producer that I didn’t know what I was doing. A couple songs would stop and then I was like, “Oh crap. The song stopped.” No one really cared. It was okay. I think people were fairly forgiving, or whatever. But things like that happen now too but when something stops I know how to play it off like, “Ooh, yeah, I did that on purpose.” [laughter] Back then when something stops, it was more like, “Oh sh--, what did I do?” And everyone knows that I really messed up and I’d be like, “Oh no, crap.” But I learn from it and I appreciate all those moments. It’s definitely also taught me to be more resilient and tougher, because things happen when you play live, and things happen when you perform. Even now, shows can be not what I expect and now I don’t care, I just smile and be like, whatever.

Emma Warren

Where did you learn your performance chops like in LA, in the local clubs?

TOKiMONSTA

Yeah, probably playing in places like Low End Theory, which is a club in Los Angeles. Yeah, just having the opportunity to play there and it’s a skill that’s developed over time and I’m still perfecting it. I think live performing is very different to me than producing. But that’s why I use Ableton because it’s easier for me to perform live because it’s more similar to producing. I wasn’t an artist, I started off DJing and decided to become a producer. I started off producing and learned how to DJ and perform after.

Emma Warren

What kind of things have you finessed about how you perform over the years between those early, nervous, panic gigs and what you’re doing now?

TOKiMONSTA

I mostly learned to take the pressure off myself. I think before I used to make myself so nervous before I perform that I just couldn’t concentrate on what I should be doing. The more relaxed I am, the better I am at finessing through my set, but also learning to be more active. If it’s just me in front of a computer and a controller, that’s pretty boring. There’s not much to do. I will be honest. It’s not that exciting, but I think there’s a charisma that’s necessarily to perform live. I’m a very awkward person if you haven’t realized that right now. I think just to be able to be more on free on stage. It’s not being theatrical. I was never very theatrical. I wasn’t like a drama kid who like took Shakespeare, I was too nervous to do that kind of stuff. Now I’ve learned to become on stage and just disregard the crowd and just enjoy myself. That sounds weird. Enjoy the act of just playing music for myself. If everyone in the audience is happy, they’re happy with me, and if they’re not, at least I’m still having fun.

Emma Warren

I guess moving away from live a little bit and talking a bit about the way you release your music. I thought it was interesting that was one of the tracks from Desiderium, you just put it out without telling anybody. The Twitter message was like, “Oh, everyone’s going to be annoyed about this but it’s my music and I don’t care. It’s just I’m going to put something out.” How important it is for you to be in control of the timing of your releases?

TOKiMONSTA

I think it’s fairly important. I’ve come to this point now where, traditionally when you release an album with a label they need lead-in time. So that means time for them to get the proper press, to make sure they have distributors, and to get your billboard up, or make sure they… All these things that they think are really important but in my mind, the most important thing is the music, and in the age that we live in now, when’s the next time you guys are going to pick up a magazine and judge an album on the magazine? Buy the album because the magazine said it was good. I’m pretty sure you guys will all go... Maybe you’ll see the article but you guys will go online and listen to it and then decide for yourself if you guys like it. For me, I think that getting the music out there is more important. Also, as a musician like in the past, by the time my album comes out, I’m already past it. I’m already like, “Uh, I’m not really like that proud of it now because now I’m doing this new stuff and I think this new stuff is way better than the old stuff.” Not to say I don’t appreciate my old work but with me being able to control how I release my music I can put it out as soon as I think it should come out. Like it’s relevant now, I want it to come out now. I don’t want my music to come out six months from now when I don’t think it’s relevant anymore, because six months from now all the things I did that I thought were really cutting-edge or really interesting, it won’t be the same way. It won’t have that impact. I’m also very impatient, and I just hate that idea where I put out an album and the songs I’m making at the time when the album releases I think is more advanced than the album itself and I have to go and live with this old piece of work that I did.

Emma Warren

How kind of fully indie or not are you now?

TOKiMONSTA

I think I’m more indie than I’ve ever been since I released my own record and I’ve never actually done that before but at the same time my reach is the furthest it’s ever been. These labels are kind of silly now, saying you’re indie, you’re underground or mainstream or pop, because pop used to describe a sound but pop also means popular but now you have indie artists that are paving the way in super-pop music, but it’s still indie. And then, what’s indie if it’s not underground but it’s on a label? But indie labels are now also bigger than they were before. It’s contrived and annoying so I’m just like, “I’m just a musician that makes music in the middle ground,” I don’t know.

Emma Warren

Is this something that you think you’ll be doing more of just, releasing stuff yourself, it’s Young Art [Records] isn’t it, your label?

TOKiMONSTA

Yes.

Emma Warren

Is that the kind of route for you for the next little while?

TOKiMONSTA

Not necessarily, actually. I’ve created the label as a platform for artists that I believe in, and I want to be really active on my label. You know, I don’t want to have my label but then myself release on other labels. I think that I want to pave the way for my artists that I choose. It’s not a money-making venture at all. I just really want people to hear music and music that I believe in and hopefully other people believe in as well. If I feel like I want to release a new EP on Brainfeeder I can just hit up Flying Lotus, it’d be like, “Do you want to release this?” He’ll be like, “Yeah, cool, whatever,” and I’ll release it. I think a lot of this label stuff is just about, you know, if I make an album for Brainfeeder again, it’s going to have a sound that I think fits them well and if I do it on another label... I mean it’s all weird and stuff, but yeah. Just release on whoever I want to as long as I have creative control.

Emma Warren

I guess in the time that we’ve got now, there’s lots of stuff we’re not going to be able to talk about and you guys can ask questions when you want, when it’s time I guess... Whenever you want, jump in! But I did want to ask you about, because you had a brief period working for a video game company.

TOKiMONSTA

Yes.

Emma Warren

What were you doing with them?

TOKiMONSTA

When I was working at the video game company, I was working in production and business development. I just sat in the office and helped all the producers of the video games with stuff. I was more active on that side than with the licensing side. But I got to sit down and play video games for fun. That wasn’t actually a part of my job, it’s something I was able to do. [laughter] But yeah, I got to see how video games are made from a producer side, not a developer side, and that was pretty cool. It’s also really stressful to be a video game producer is what I’ve also learned.

Emma Warren

Were you involved in the music at all for, was it Mortal Kombat?

TOKiMONSTA

I wasn’t actually that involved in the music side though I had an appreciation and everyone who worked on the office on that side was such a big fan of music. I even had a co-worker from my former company play guitar on my EP for Brainfeeder so we all just had this really deep love for music. We’d used our company file-sharing thing to drop music into each other’s folders. They would tell me all about like the guy who developed the music for Final Fantasy, how he was just a guy that worked at the company, he ended up scoring all the video games. It’s pretty neat.

Emma Warren

I guess, actually something else that would be nice to ask you about then is the kind of anime composers or music for anime. It feels like the people that made the music for video games are getting the recognition that they deserve now to some extent. But I wondered whether or not anime music had influenced what you did or if you had any thoughts about those kind of composers, any particular favorites maybe?

TOKiMONSTA

It’s interesting the idea of anime culture, anime music because now it’s so much more mainstream than it was. Because I’m Asian-American, it’s kind of more instilled, it’s very normal to watch anime, growing up it’s on TV. But then from a Western perspective it was always this “Otaku” [geeky], like different, like all the anime kids were like their own thing. They’d go to anime expo, and yet now everyone enjoys anime. You don’t have to be this kid that dresses up in cosplay. People have an appreciation for watching, I don’t know, whatever it might be that you’re into. There’s just so many great ones. As well as anime as a film genre which, is different than it as a cartoon. But, now I see producers that are adopting anime music as a style, like a stylistic quality that they really enjoy. Like Anamanaguchi, these people that take eight-bit sounds from video games and anime, but obviously they’re composing completely original music with that element involved. It’s cool. I love it. I’m a big nerd so I think it’s amazing to hear this kind of music become more mainstream, the sort of “Kawaii” [cute] nature of video game and anime music; but then, it also crosses over to the other side, because with someone like Shing02 who worked with Nujabes, they brought hip-hop into Samurai Champloo which was a very prominent anime here in Japan. It kind of goes both way like anime music is building outside of being super sparkly and bubbly and then you have the outside music becoming more of that. People like Kyary Pamyu Pamyu who’s like crazy from an art perspective but very J-pop at the same time, it’s really cool how music is becoming more global without intending to be. It’s just becoming that way.

Emma Warren

I guess just by the nature of things.

TOKiMONSTA

Yes.

Emma Warren

It’s happening.

TOKiMONSTA

Is that internet? I don’t know.

Emma Warren

That internet. OK, I guess one final thing before we open up to you guys, is there anything that you’ve got coming up that you could tell us about or maybe some music that you could play or some stuff that’s nearly with us?

TOKiMONSTA

The only thing that I’m working on right now that’s coming up soon is a project for Gavin Turek and she’s a wonderful singer who had a couple of tracks on my Creature Dreams EP on Brainfeeder and so I’ll be releasing her on Young Art as well. I do have a track, but it’s not mixed, and it’s with her on it, but we’ll see. Hopefully, you guys don’t mind that it sounds a little rough.

(music: Gavin Turek – unknown)

[applause]

Yeah, that’s really rough but I think you guys get the idea.

Emma Warren

Most definitely. Questions from the floor, where’s the microphone, who’s got the first question?

Audience Member

Hello.

TOKiMONSTA

Yes.

Audience Member

Thank you so much for this talk. I wanted to hear like one of the first tracks you’ve made of your own. There was this like very floating pads in the background. I just wanted to know if you could say a bit about how like you got to that song, like what reverb were you using?

TOKiMONSTA

Ah yes, that one’s a good one. It’s like the basic, basic most default sound on Absynth [music production software]. I didn’t really have to do anything. I do like using reverb with a very long decay and, well, I guess a long decay but not too long. Make sure you EQ out like the bottom, like the low end of the EQ and the high end. Also panning is really important but it, I mean, it doesn’t take that long to find a sound that you like. It’s just about finding it, right? You can get the same sound on a Nord [synth] if you want to, I just found it on Absynth. Literally, when you open the VST, that’s the sound that pops out. I always think it’s really silly when people overcomplicate patches. Another great though is to press mutate, so if you don’t want to just go for the regular pad-like default songs that they have, Absynth has a great mutate button that will just mutate the sound until it turns into some weird, crazy thing. Sometimes it will just end up mutating into nothing, but it’s a cool feature to use.

Audience Member

Were you singing that yourself?

TOKiMONSTA

Singing on that track?

Audience Member

Yeah, like the pad, it sounds like it’s a vocal sample.

TOKiMONSTA

Wait, wait. Are you talking about the very first track I made or I showed you guys?

Audience Member

It’s like really floating, in the background it has this very behind something more upfront vocal stuff.

TOKiMONSTA

Did it have the percussion in it? Is that the one that have like the East Asian percussion thing?

Audience Member

Maybe.

TOKiMONSTA

Here, wait. I’ll be able to explain it better if I know what song you’re talking about? Was it this one or that one?

[music]

Audience Member

No.

TOKiMONSTA

No, OK. Then disregard everything I just said because it wasn’t relevant to the song that I thought you’re talking about. Were you talking about the one where I was singing?

Audience Member

Yeah, I think so.

TOKiMONSTA

Yeah. This one? Is it that one?

[music]

Audience Member

Yes.

TOKiMONSTA

OK, there we go. Yeah, the background of that is vocals. Just vocals with a long decay, just harmonized on top of each other. It’s always good to double or triple vocals, even the harmonies too, it makes for a very thick sound. Especially if you’re going to use it textually like that in the background because you’re referring to like the howling sort of sound, right?

Audience Member

What reverb were you using?

TOKiMONSTA

That one, I was either using... It’s like a Max patch, they have a reverb that comes in there, like the pack that comes with it, or it’s a convolution reverb, or it’s just the Ableton reverb. Which everyone, if you guys use that, make sure you set it, set the quality to high because everyone always leaves it on eco and it sounds like crap. So, yeah.

Audience Member

Thank you.

Emma Warren

OK, where’s the microphone going? To the front.

Audience Member

I was just wondering when you work with vocalists, do you write with them?

TOKiMONSTA

Yes and no, it depends. Some of them I’ll write it with like the track I just showed with Gavin, I sat down and helped to write it.

Audience Member

The last one?

TOKiMONSTA

Yeah, the last one I played before we went into questions. I don’t like stepping on a vocalist’s toes. One quality I really admire from vocalists is their ability to write, but sometimes I have a track on my new album where I wrote the entire thing and someone else sang it. Because that’s fun for me to be able to sort of sing vicariously through someone else who can sing, because I can’t sing. But yeah, sometimes when I’m with singers I’ll just help them maybe format the song or help build harmonies with them, but I don’t try to tell them how to write a poem. I’ll let them do their thing.

Audience Member

Not even as much for the lyrics but for the vocal melodies?

TOKiMONSTA

Vocal melodies, it kind of depends on the person. Some people are really touchy so I just know not to. Other ones I’ll bring in a suggestion and be like, “Oh, it’s starting to sound repetitive, what about if we change the melody at the end, at the turnaround so the influx is higher or the note goes up at the end or down?” It’s very varying levels, because some people I will contribute a lot, like most of the songs is written by me, and they just say, “Maybe we should do something here or there.” Sometimes they write the majority and then I’ll chime in every now and then. Sometimes it’s very 50/50. I like that process though, just knowing how much to work on something with someone and how much you want them to shine and let them do their own thing.

Audience Member

Also just one other question: With the Kelly Rowland track, were you all thinking about her image when you were making the song? It reminded me of “Motivation,” how it’s like super sexy, and I think that’s something she does a lot. Were you thinking about that or did it just happen?

TOKiMONSTA

We weren’t really thinking about that. I think Anderson wanted to write about that. I think as a guy he was explaining to me that he likes to write about things that he thinks about a lot and so I guess as a guy he just thinks about sex a lot, I don’t know.

[laughter]

Audience Member

He wasn’t even writing it from her perspective.

TOKiMONSTA

I mean, he had to write it a little bit from her perspective because he’s a dude and he doesn’t want to write it like he’s a guy because then it just won’t make sense from a girl. In the writing process for her, I really encouraged making the song sound less specific. I wanted it to sound like it’s from her, but I wanted it to sound like it applies to anyone.

Audience Member

Totally.

TOKiMONSTA

That track is one that we wrote to, and it’s also one that she liked, because we wrote a bunch of tracks and she really liked it.

Audience Member

It totally makes sense for her.

TOKiMONSTA

She’s really into sexy stuff.

Audience Member

You were talking about that technology allows you to work with people that are from other places and stuff. I know it can be like Skype or anything but how’s like the dynamics of working with some people? I don’t know if it’s a long call but three hours talking and sharing the monitor or something like that, can you tell us about the process of working to do something like that through the internet?

TOKiMONSTA

It kind of depends. With the track with Arama, I sent her an instrumental and I just wanted to be like, “Why don’t you just do whatever you want on it, I’m not going to give you direction,” because I wanted to feature her and by featuring her I wanted her to make a song she was happy with not a song where I’m like, “Why don’t you make it sound like this song and this song combined and try not to sing like yourself because I don’t like how you sound.” I don’t collaborate with people for those reasons. I sent her the track first and she recorded some vocals and then sent them back to me, and I’m like, “Oh yeah, these are cool. Maybe we should try doing this or that?” Or, “I think this part should be the hook and then we should move the verse around.” It’s actually really simple with her, because she sent me a track that I was almost 100% on, and I made some changes and then it came back 100%. With production it’s a little different, in that I’ll just do a collect-all and save it to Dropbox so me and the other person would be able to collaborate on the production together and we can just chat about it online and be like, “Oh, I’m going to go in and change this, if that’s okay with you.” Maybe I’ll write a synth line and the other person is like, “Mm, I think I want to change the sound.” So they’ll keep mine, just in case we want to stick with that idea, and write something on top, and we’ll edit, but I think at some point it’s helpful to sit down with someone to work on stuff. But yeah, I don’t know. With vocalists, I’m really good as just letting them do... Express themselves as they like.

Audience Member

Hi. Sorry, I got another technical question for you. I noticed in your productions a lot of times that are really earthy, sort of organic feel to them. I know you already elaborated a bit on swing, but specifically, like for example on your “2 On” remix when the bass first comes in and stuff, a really nice earthy feeling, so can you elaborate a bit on how you do that?

TOKiMONSTA

The bassline as in the sound or the rhythm?

Audience Member

Definitely from the sound design.

TOKiMONSTA

OK. I struggled with that so, so, so, so much because the bassline was so aggressive and I had to use, like... On the master I really had to control the bass with a multi-band compression. I think we used the Waves one but... That song, everything is so overdriven. Like, the drums are super loud, the bass is really loud, and... I had to do a lot of EQing and compressing and stuff to make sure that it would come through in the mix without just hiding everything else. As far as the sound itself... I’m not sure, which one did I use? I think I used the microKORG on that and then from there, I recorded the microKORG into Ableton. I used multi-band compression within there, the Ableton one. I don’t think I used any low pass filters but using their… Sh--! I wish I had the session, I would just show you but it’s on a different computer. I mean, as far as getting the earthy sound, a lot of it is just like making things super thick because the reality is if you want to program drums that sound like the MPC, you can’t make it sound perfect but there are ways to manipulate the drums to sound like that; especially depends on the sample you’re using. Like, if it comes from an organic source, like I record the synth for that, a bass synth from an actual synth then it will be easier to get that earthy sound but I don’t think it’s necessary.

Audience Member

Thank you. Sorry, I got…

TOKiMONSTA

That’s okay.

Audience Member

But to get that thickness with the bass do you utilize reverb at all?

TOKiMONSTA

No, there’s no reverb on that one. Actually, with bass sounds, I try not to use reverb because of the way it affects the rest of the mix unless you want to EQ. Like, if you do a send reverb and then you decide to EQ the reverb on the send channel that helps a lot too. I mean, I might do that sometimes; if I have a bass, it’s sort of a traditional way, to just keep the bass in the center. If I have another bassline, but it’s more for texture like I’ll EQ all the low end and just have the highs of the some like... Let’s say it’s a buzzy bass synth, I’ll EQ out the bottom. I might stereo pan the higher frequencies while keeping the subs still on the center and that’s a really cool effect. I sometimes do that on kick drums too.

Audience Member

It’s sub in mono and then stereo...

TOKiMONSTA

Yeah.

Audience Member

OK, cool.

TOKiMONSTA

But it depends too, because if you plan to play some of this stuff out at the club, most club speakers are summed, so then if you’re going to have phasing it might be a problem. But there’s good VSTs to avoid that too.

Audience Member

Thank you so much.

TOKiMONSTA

No problem.

Emma Warren

Any more questions? Or are we going to go for the informal ones afterwards. In which case, I think we should all say a very big thank you to TOKiMONSTA. Thank you.

[applause]

TOKiMONSTA

Thank you guys.