On 24th September we are kicking off the autumn season in Playground Club. For this first occasion we are hosting the extremely talented Distilled Noise from Italy, with whom Dóra Popovics did an interview. Francesco’s world of music is fitting Fidull perfectly, that is why his tracks are played in all our events.
Have fun reading it and we hope to get you in the mood for our first foreign artist Fidull, event HERE. 🙂
Hey Francesco, thanks for taking the time for this interview. There is a lot of content you create on the web, but not much material about you personally. So I hope we can dig a bit deeper to your daily and long term operation as well.
Hiii, I am very good! Just came back from a short surfing trip in Lanzarote, so I am recharged and ready to go back to work and music 🙂
Let’s go back to the start: how old were you when you first encountered music? Your first instrument was the guitar, right? What other instruments do you play?
I started playing guitar at 9 but in my family everybody plays something or sings so I have always been surrounded by music. I mainly play guitar but I also learned by myself a bit of drums, bass guitar and piano (but very poorly ahah)
You’ve been involved with blues and rock n’ roll (if my sources are correct). What made you shift towards electronic music? Does your background as such inspire or influence your work as a producer?
Yes, I have played in a band for several years, playing gigs in pubs and other little venues around where I live. I came in contact with electronic music when I listened to Digitalism album “Idealism” back in 2009, which is still one of my favorite electronic music albums (the album was released in 2007 though) and then I really got interested in production when dubstep became mainstream and decided to try to mess around with Logic 9. The thing I liked about production was that I could decide about every musical instrument, without having to deal with the other members of the band, having different tastes. For sure, my background really helps me, first for some musical theory knowledge, but most of all for how my ear and my taste got trained in the years, allowing me to develop my groove and style. I also recorded my guitar on some of my tracks 🙂
You are a very interactive personality of the scene: you have your blog, youtube channel, you create music, sample packs, DJ at parties etc. Do you also have a civil job? Or music fills up all your time?
I also have a “daytime” job. I am an acoustic consultant, which consists of doing environmental noise assessments and building acoustics design, such as noise insulation, room treatments, etcetera. Basically everything related to noise (not music, unfortunately). So far it’s been 75% daytime job, 25% music, but I hope percentages will be reversed one day 🙂
What’s people’s reaction to your contribution of content on social media? Is there any other producer who gave you feedback and you were surprised/honored?
Yessss! At the beginning I was scared that bigger producers weren’t happy with me sharing production tips. But then I realized many of them actually watched my videos and some of them also told me I was doing a good job so I was super happy and motivated by that. I had nice feedback from Nu Zau, Silat Beksi, Hector Couto, Josh Baker, Mihai Pol, Prichindel and many more I met or texted with 🙂
You mentioned once that you got started because it was hard to find tutorials and you enjoy sharing your knowledge. What other factors motivate you in the long run to keep creating tutorials?
I like seeing progress from the people who watch my videos or from those I do 1to1 sessions with.
Seeing them improving is my main drive.
Also sharing videos allowed me to get my music heard, I can’t hide it was a big boost for me as a music producer. Another reason is that sharing also helps me to keep improving and learning new things. I have learned so much since I started the channel. Last but not least I am super happy of the community of producers that is growing on my Patreon. People there are very keen to help each other with tips, feedbacks and sharing music, and I think this is what music is about.
A community driven by the same passion. Now that all this started and is growing, I can’t stop being motivated and keep going.
It is still a lot of work and time in the background: you have to know about video editing, about psychology and best practices so people click on it and watch it, you have to have a good equipment to make quality videos etc. How does the process look like for a tutorial from the idea till publishing? How many working hours does it take?
Since I mentioned Patreon, I have to distinguish between YouTube and Patreon. On Patreon I have paying members, they want the best and most in depth content. So I focus less on entertaining and more on delivering very in depth videos.
On YouTube, people might have a lower attention span, and so I want to make the videos move a bit faster and be a bit funnier, but I still try to help producers with interesting tips or inspirational videos. In both cases, I write down ideas for videos on my notebook or phone and when I have a cool idea I write a step by step script which will guide me in the making of the video. A lot of times, ideas come to me when I am working on my own music.
I shoot with a Lumix camera and edit videos on Premiere Pro. It depends but sometimes between the idea and the final exported video there can be 10-15 hours of work, sometimes more.
We have a certain angle from the videos of your (studio) room, how does your working environment/set up actually look like? Do you have neighbors? 🙂
ahah, well in the very first videos I was trying to hide my bed. Then I moved my bedroom to another room and the videos from the last 2 years (the ones where you can see the acoustic treatment in the back) are shot in the same room, which is now dedicated only to the studio. It is my parents house and it’s in the countryside so I luckily had no neighbors. However I recently moved out to Padova, and I am building my new studio in the apartment. I have neighbors and I will have to deal with that, wish me luck! At the time I am writing this, I haven’t made any YT videos in the new studio yet.
You use classic instruments, modulars, and other plug-ins. What is your favorite/most challenging gear at the moment?
At the moment I am working 100% in the box. I have been using external gear and I love the jamming side of it, and also it inspired me to make some nice tracks, but at the moment I feel I have everything I need in my laptop. The amount of instruments and sounds I can have with softwares is unlimited, and more importantly, my workflow is way faster when I don’t have to record external audio, with all the related issues.
So to answer your question, I think I can mention some of my favorite plug-ins: SubboomBass by Rob Papen for bass lines, Arturia V collection instruments for pretty much everything, for percussions and backgrounds I use many ensembles for Kontakt by Native Instruments such as Sequis, Action Strikes, Rev by Output, and my favorite over all Guitar Rig 6, which can change any sound into a new thing.
The challenge at the moment is learning where to find the sounds I need quickly and move faster with the production, in order to close more tracks.
What is your plan for the future?
My plan for now is making more tracks and growing as a DJ by digging into other artists’ music, especially from the past, in order to have a set which is a mix of older house music and new music from myself and friends/artists from the scene.
Speaking of the scene: how do you see the situation of the scene in (Northern) Italy?
I can only speak for my area cause I didn’t have the chance to travel around Italy to discover the scene, unfortunately. In my area we have 2 amazing clubs: one is called Veniceberg and it’s in Verona, the other one is After Caposile, near Venice, which I think is well known all around Europe. After Caposile in particular managed to well recover after Covid and they keep planning parties with amazing guests, from upcoming artists up to the biggest ones, like Apollonia trio and Praslesh duo.
How did pandemic affect audience/artist attitude?
I think after Covid, resident djs got appreciated by the audience more and more. I can see they have a big part in the growth of a club. Artists focused a lot more on productions during Covid and I noticed the quality of music from some artists I follow very closely grew a lot. Lot of artists also got into the teaching field, and some of them lasted also after the pandemic, which is pretty cool cause every artist has his/her own style and techniques and learning from them will surely make the level of music from new producers higher. My dream is to arrive at a point where the demos I receive are always good but more than everything, original, unique; and to achieve this, young producers need to learn from many different teachers and then develop their own style. I feel like we are on a good path, and this process got faster after the pandemic.
Thanks for having me guys, I have really appreciated your questions.
Hugs,
Francesco
https://www.facebook.com/distillednoise/
https://soundcloud.com/distillednoiselovesyou/
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCm_74Rl49ZpWgxduBo9yKCw
https://www.instagram.com/distilled_noise/
https://distillednoise.bandcamp.com/
https://distillednoise.com/