Interview With Micah Frank, Founder Of Puremagnetik
This is an interview we had with the founder and owner of Puremagnetik, a leading sound design company. You may not know it, but Puremagnetik's work finds its way to many producers' hard drives along with the installation of Ableton Live or Native Instruments' products. Here's the man behind the sound...
What made you get into sound design?
It was an accident really. I wanted to be a rock star drummer. I bought a synthesizer when I was in music school and quickly became hooked on synths and computers. My direction changed rapidly after that. Its probably a good thing because I don't think I had much of a future as a rock star drummer.
For some years I worked in audio post, then as an engineer and then as a composer. The whole time I was building my own sound libraries and programming synth patches. I've always avoided presets and preferred to program patches from the ground up so I learned subtractive and FM synthesis that way. About 5 years ago I met some of the guys at Ableton and my first commercially available sounds were released with Ableton's Operator synth. Around that time I also began working with Native Instruments and have been involved in sound design ever since.
You make different instruments for soft samplers, from drums to guitars to analogue synths, but you also design effects. What is so special about sound design that drives you in your work and allows you to produce such a diverse array of instruments?
From my perspective it's all part of the same process. A sound is a culmination of the raw audio, the programming, the structure of the host and any time based or signal processing effects. For Live we can create standalone effects because of the structure variable. Live can support that while many other hosts cannot. KORE can do this well but we haven't begun developing for that yet. We're at the point now where sound design and software are self contained systems such as you see with the Spectrasonics stuff - it's hard to tell where the software and GUI ends and the audio data begins. That's a good thing because you are approaching the instrument as a whole rather than its individual components.
Sound design isn't just about programming presets for instruments. It's about creating an inspiring user experience. The Puremagnetik catalog is an experience on the Live platform. Each pack has its own unique character and components that can either be used as is or easily rearranged as a powerful modular sound creation system.
Where do you draw your inspirations for work? Other sound designers? Musicians? Software/hardware? Other areas of life?
I have always loved Native Instruments' sound programming. When I opened Generator (a precursor to Reaktor) back in 1999 I knew that there was a niche for me in sound development. I was also a big fan of those first Spectrasonics disks like Distorted Reality. I would listen to those like albums. So yes, I am inspired by presets even though I never use them myself. These days I am more intrigued by new creation processes that are birthed through developments in technology. This includes music software and hardware but also other things that you can interact with - Wii, iPhone, Twitter. What does your Twitter RSS feed sound like?
What is your typical work setup? Do you produce alone or in collaboration with someone?
I ran Puremagnetik completely on my own for the first year. Now there's a quite few of us involved. I run all the day-to-day operations and sound design. Brian Cass is a part time sound developer and he's produced many of the latest packs. He's a great engineer and brings a unique skill set that complements mine. We work with session musicians and artists from all over. I flew down to Washington DC to record our Mellotron library with an excellent engineer down there. We also have some contributing studios up in the Boston area and often bounce sessions around with studio musicians to record MIDI or audio clips. We have an enormous network of resources here in the NYC area and I feel very fortunate to have these assets. We can usually find any type of synth or drum machine or talent that we can conceive of.
What are your plans for the near and far future?
We have some interesting new sounds coming out soon. The next installment of our Mellotron library should be out this summer and we are very eager to begin exploring the new Ableton "share" feature and Max for Live.
Looking ahead, I have been developing and conceptualizing a physical computing sound design environment that I hope to have prototyped by 2010. It is essentially a reactive environment that won't respond to conventional input and outputs a universe of sound depending on many factors. It will be awesome!
Thank you, Micah.
If you want to see more Puremagnetik in action, check out their YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/puremagnetik (Opens in a new window)
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