Pushing the Limits of Electronic Music Composition with Mocean Worker
By Annie Young Frisbie
Adam Dorn, aka Mocean
Worker, began his career assisting Marcus Miller,
a bassist and producer who’s worked with such giants
as Miles Davis and Luther Vandross, before entering into
collaborations with musicians from the jazz and rock/pop
worlds, including Brian Eno and U2’s The Edge. He’s
released four albums as Mocean Worker, the most recent
being Enter the MOWO! which he released on his
own Mocean Worker label.
Dorn’s work has been licensed for use in many high
profile feature films and television shows, from Six
Feet Under and CSI to big budget action films
like The Bourne Supremacy and Mr. and Mrs.
Smith, among others. His work’s even been
heard in lighter fare like Bewitched and The
O.C. He’s also scored several films, including
Wim Wenders’s Million
Dollar Hotel and the HBO documentary Telling
Nicholas.
Dorn creates and records his music electronically in his
home studio, and he talked with Zoom In about
his creative process as well as his learning curve in developing
his current setup.
You’ve done your own composing and producing, and
you’ve also worked for other people. What do
you look for when you’re considering a work for hire
job?
There is one constant --be it for a remix, score work
or anything: If I don’t have something happening
rather quickly in terms of a groove or a melodic hook,
there is a good shot it’s not going to come out right,
and I’m going to lose interest quickly. I tend to
work on things I can get a bead on and hit the ground running
with right away. I’m not a fan of trying to
push my way into any kind of gig where it's not my thing
or I’m not comfortable with the task at hand. Nothing
is worse than talking your way into something only to ultimately
realize you aren’t the right person for the job and
the work you are doing isn’t top notch.
What do you mean by “something happening quickly”? At
what point in the process do you decide that things aren’t
working? And how do you extricate yourself if need
be?
I mean that I have the arrangement or groove pretty much
put together within the first hour, whether it’s
a scene in a film or a remix for another artist or even
a composition of my own. I don’t struggle with stuff – if
it’s not coming together quickly, I either walk away
from it and come back a couple of days later. Or I stop.
I know this sounds weird, but the fact of the matter for
me is I usually work on projects I really know what to
do with. By the time I start the work the music is already
done in my head and I just execute it. If it isn’t
working out, I have to admit, I’m not the most flexible
person on earth. I usually have only a couple of directions
I can take something, then I’m done.
I recently did a remix where I really liked what I did,
and, at first, so did the artist. I thought it was finished,
with the remix only needing a final mix since everyone
was so happy about it. Then, to my surprise I got an email
saying, “We don’t like it. Can you do
another version?” I was sort of flummoxed,
and I have to admit I didn’t have anything else for
them. I had given the tune the arrangement I had
in my head. So I told them, “I like what I
gave you, and I don’t have anything else up my sleeve.” From
time to time you run into projects like this. To use a
baseball analogy, you can’t go out on the mound every
5 days and pitch a 2 hit shutout. Sometimes you lose.
In this case, I still liked my work; I just couldn’t
give them what they wanted. I walked away.
From an artistic point of view, this certainly
makes sense. But do you ever think, “I should
take this job, even though it doesn’t inspire me,
for the money or exposure—or other benefits?”
I look at it this way. I don’t take a gig at this
point unless I know it’s either a great challenge
and something great can come out of it, or I can knock
it out of the park on the first take. I don’t have
enough time to try too many different things at this point. I
like working on projects that are fun and creative. I really
cringe when something turns into "work", when
too many A+R guys start over-thinking or ad people start
asking for things like "make it more GREEN." I’m
already gone.
Do you collaborate with others? If so, how
does that work?
Sometimes, especially with musicians who live overseas
or have decent home studios at their disposal, I will send
a Pro Tools session for them to record into and I just
have them send me parts in return. On my latest album guitarist
Bill Frisell recorded 12 complete takes of a track for
me at his studio and sent me back a CD-ROM with 12 consolidated
tracks that I simply imported into my Pro Tools session
and chopped up as I needed.
Technology really makes it easy for musicians to collaborate
with each other without having to go into a specific studio.
Being able to record in the comfort of your own home and
either email or post the outcome to an FTP site is an incredible
luxury.
How do you deliver work to your client or label?
I am the label for my Mocean Worker releases, so I’m
really, really fastidious about archiving everything as
neatly as possible. For example, the current album resides
in its entirety on 2 Firewire drives and is also backed
up on a combination of 30 DVD's. Furthermore, after
mastering was completed the album was also backed up onto
hexabyte data format, and I have a bunch of redundant back
ups of all of my Pro Tools sessions. It’s also important
to note that all of the plug-ins that appear on tracks
within the sessions have also been bounced to disk. The
main reason for that is you never know 5 - 10 years down
the line what software will still work with Pro Tools or
not, so it’s better to be safe than sorry. Take
the time and bounce everything to disk. You'd certainly
hate to try to open a session from Pro Tools 5 down the
line in Pro Tools 9.x only to find out none of the plug-ins
work anymore. When I work for someone else either
as a re-mixer or a producer, I always deliver the final
session files on the drives they were recorded on and I
also back up everything to DVD-ROMs.
“Bounce to disk" means exporting
files from one piece of software (like Pro Tools) for use in another
application, or for listening purposes. Often times the bounced
file is a stereo mix that is then burned to disc for listening on a CD
player, but bouncing encompasses a variety of file conversions for all
kinds of uses.
Besides your turntables and synthesizers, what
are the three pieces of equipment that you can't live
without and why?
To a certain extent, I rely on old snippets of audio to
make new music. Like a lot of producers and re-mixers,
I use samples to create new compositions – not exclusively
so, but enough so that I need a couple of things to make
life easier for myself in creating new music. I try as
hard as I can to make the samples as small and unrecognizable
as possible. Basically, I record pieces of audio
into Pro Tools from my turntable, edit those pieces and
export them to Recycle, which enables me to slice and dice
the bigger pieces of audio into tiny pieces that I then
export into Reason, which is a composition/virtual studio
tool.
For example, I might take a loop everyone might recognize
but I'll pull out the snare or a hi hat or one guitar stab. I
then use Reason to play back the pieces in a totally different
order via a midi controller – or maybe I don’t
play all of the pieces of the "known" loop back. I
may just use the snare from that loop with some other sounds
to create a new drum set altogether. This way I create
a completely new piece of music in a different pitch in
a different tempo without any single way of identifying
the original audio. This is the furthest extension of electronic
and hip-hop production. Sample based music without using
samples everyone knows or without using them in a way that’s
obvious (not that there's anything wrong with that- that
production style also has its upsides).
Why is the equipment you just described important to your
creative approach?
I need these tools both to help me write music and to
do the remixes I do. For example, I recently did a remix
for an album called Motown Remixed. My remix was
of a tune called I Just Want to Celebrate by Rare
Earth. I managed to do the entire remix on my laptop inside
of Reason and Recycle, which to me is amazing. I
did it as a challenge to myself to see if I could get away
with doing a project on that level without using the big
toys in my studio and I was very pleasantly surprised to
see that I only needed to go to Pro Tools for a final mix
down. So, maybe my "must have" list will
shrink in the next year or so. Who knows? It’s fun
finding new ways to do the same thing, but for the time
being I’d say my turntable, Pro Tools, Reason and
Recycle can’t be taken out of the equation.
What surprises did you encounter as you built your studio,
and what did you learn along the way?
The current version of my studio is a perfect example
of what not to do! I got lazy with my upgrade path with
my Pro Tools software. My business and the amount of work
I was doing exploded, and I essentially ran out of processing
power and gear to actually do any work at all. So what
did I do? I bought a new computer, upgraded Pro Tools hardware
and software, bought new speakers, and new synths, built
patch bays, bought road cases and wiring (which, by the
way is a fortune and something everyone should know about-
it’s the one huge hidden expense in building a room)
and I also bought a new workspace (desk and furniture).
Simply put, I built a place from the ground up while still
working with my older rig; unfortunately, I had to do it
based on the work that was coming in, but the main mistake
was that I overdid it. I went from a comfortable situation
to total chaos. I will never do that again. I lost
my mind for about 3 months. I still have little problems
with my room based on the sheer amount of work that was
done [in such a compressed amount of time.]
What made your studio rebuild so excruciating,
exactly?
I added too much gear at once, and the wiring --which
I thought was top notch-- had some problems that lead to
sonic problems. I’m sure you can tell by the
photos of my studio that I get a lot out of a little amount
of gear. It’s not like I was building the new Hit
Factory in my room. I just didn’t know enough
about what was really about to happen, what was being built,
how the patch bays would work, how the gear would be routed
and hard wired into Pro Tools, etc. Plus I didn’t
get any help from the guy that built my place. He knew
I would find problems down the road but he high tailed
it out of there and I ended up fixing things myself or
having folks help me out. I was busy with other stuff and
couldn’t manage things, and he just sort of did it
and left.
So you’d definitely advise active involvement
in any studio design or redesign, in order to forestall
problems down the road.
I got a lot of new gear, hired someone to wire it all
together, upgraded Pro Tools and had to learn the new system,
had 3-4 other projects going on, and I didn’t really
talk with anyone else who had been through this, so I messed
up. I could have had an easier time.
It was chaos in there because I’m really resistant
to change and I broke every rule I have concerning change. Instead
of doing one thing at a time, I went for it all, and I
spazzed a bit. Next time, I’m going to buy one synth
and call it a day. Then I’ll come back in a
month and buy some new guitar strings. Take it really
slow; maybe change my career while I’m at it!
That’ll be the day. All that said, I’m
sure you do have some studio modifications in line, beyond
replacing your guitar strings. What’s down
the road?
I’m going to reduce the size of my rig. I want to
have less gear in the studio and no longer have things
piled all over the place --in my way-- as I write. It has
a certain charm [the way it is today, with all my new toys]
but that charm is lost when gear is actually getting in
the way of your speakers!
With the advent of so much new emulation software, and
more powerful processors on desktops, I can start saving
space and making more room for more records and CDs. Since
my studio is a very good project studio, but not a good
mixing room or live room, my goal is to have only the gear
that I need without too many bells and whistles to confuse
me or slow down the creative process. I will always have
certain “meat and potatoes" pieces of gear on
hand such as a great mic, like the Avalon
737 for vocals and recording instruments with a direct
signal and at least one or two all purpose rackmount synth
workstations (Roland
XV-5080, Nord
Lead) .
I once got great advice from a friend of mine named Gene
Paul, a legendary recording engineer and now an equally
accomplished mastering engineer. He told me, "Get
just a couple of pieces of gear and get everything you
possibly can out of them. Push them to the edges
of their ability and you'll be amazed with the results" It’s
good advice. A common mistake people make when building
or maintaining a room is constantly buying new gear without
really learning the gear they already have. So, I take
this advice very seriously and only add something new when
I know I’m about to obsess over what it can do for
me. There is a lot less clutter when software is
in a neat set of folders on your computer as opposed to
having hardware all over the place in your studio. It’s
important to be mindful of your space and work conditions.
What new hardware or software products or innovations
are you most looking forward to?
It’s hard to say. I’ve enjoyed watching
what Apple has done with Logic, especially with the 7.0
release. I’m a Pro Tools user so I’d love to
see them get to version 7.0 as well, just to see what kinds
of changes they'll be bringing to the table.
At the end of the day, my real favorite software and tool
is Reason 3.0 by Propellerheads
Software. It's such a great piece of gear and it’s
so easy to use. I get ideas going really quickly
with Reason, and I’m always excited about their updates
and new ideas.
If someone out there could develop a virtual version of
an AKAI MPC 3000 I’d go bonkers, because it’s
just such an awesome machine. I’m sure software
emulation could be developed pretty easily. I’d buy
the first 50 copies of that software.
It is also a lot of fun watching desktop and laptop
computers get more and more powerful. I can’t wait
to see how powerful computers can get so making music just
gets easier and easier. What can I say? I’m a lazy
bastard!
Listen to Mocean Worker's
Audio Samples!
"Chick a Boom
Boom"
...from the Mocean Worker
album Enter the MOWO! as heard in 13
Going On 30, KIA Motors Spectra car commercial,
and Six Feet Under
"Express
Yourself" (Mocean Worker Remix)
...by Charles Wright from the
album Warner Brothers Remixed, featured
in Mr. and Mrs. Smith
"Intothinair"
...from the Mocean Worker album Aural
and Hearty, licensed for use in The
Bourne Supremacy
"I Just Want to Celebrate" (Mocean
Worker Remix)
...by Rare Earth, from the album Motown
Remixed, which was featured in the series
finale of Six Feet Under
"Right
Now"
...from the Mocean Worker album Enter
the MOWO! was used in The O.C. and Queer
Eye for the Straight Guy, and in ads for
Starbucks, Williams Sonoma, and Ultra Chilled
Pushing the Limits of Electronic Music Composition with Mocean Worker
