Why We Bleep Podcast with Nick Batt/Sonic State

[@petersirca223]

For the uninitiated among us - are you allowed to post the link to this Tom's diner mix ? Google returns a lot of different results and I am not sure which one had Nick Batt involvement ..

[@mylarmelodies]

Good call!! It’s kzbin.info/www/bejne/oGXNpXx6lsqUjas

[@sonicstate]

Thanks for this mate, was great fun though I feel older after listening to this!

[@X-101]

Did you hear Shut up and Dance 10 pound to get in which samples toms diner ? from what i remember it came out before yours but i looked it up and they seemed to have come out at the same time

[@EannaButler]

Great episode! Great insights and honesty, as we come to expect... Thanks both!

[@7177YT]

@sonicstate love your work, the channel is a institution! Lovely glimpse behind yhe curtain! Thank you!

[@nigeltedbury5805]

Great stuff. Two of my favourite synth KZbinrs chatting. 🤓

[@techlab7]

agreed!

[@DivKid]

Always an absolutely pleasure talking to and hearing from Nick. Cheers to you both.

[@electronictiger]

Thanks, this was fun! I hope Yoad Nevo makes an appearance here as well someday.

[@SRDhain]

Nick's solid. I met him years ago at the Roundhouse, where I went to as I had some free time to attend a festival that was being run in collaboration with Mute Records ( I think it was called Short Circuit). I bought him a beer, and we had a short chinwag. I think he was doing back to back interviews and might have just interviewed Flood (the producer). I saw Flood later, and he did a lengthy and fun breakdown of some of the Depeche Mode Violator stems in one of the rooms. I can also remember that prior to that, he featured my early KZbin videos of my old system 100 on sonic state, so I rang him up, and did a track for a Web based video channel they were going to start (this was before KZbin really took off), just using a multi tracked roland system 100. I have videos on my KZbin channel using a newer (and in better condition) system 100, which I did again when I had a block of time earlier this year. I still watch Nick's reviews when I can, and for all the other brilliant synth channels out there, he's still the gold standard in my book. Thank you for uploading 🌅

[@robertreid8241]

Respect for Bruno Brooks, im sure he played Humanoid on Radio 1, then said, i wanna hear that again and replayed it! Brian Dougans of Humanoid and FSOL was also an Atari user. Great interview, gotta love Nick

[@BrailleSounds]

Legend! 🎉

[@MrKrisstain]

You interrupted Nick a couple times too much ❤

[@vinylarchaeologist]

So cool to finally hear Nick talk about "Tom's Diner". As with probably most of us, I first became aware of him through his Sonic State reviews and all the PWM memes, and my jaw dropped when I much later realised that he had done that remix and had a huge hit with it in the early 1990s.

[@Mumbojumbo20]

Asking users to beta test is common across tech not just synths. Always buy a product for what it is, not what it promises to be.

[@Dogboy73]

Everyone knows Nick Batt doesn't bleep. He pulse wave manipulates!

[@neonmelk]

Super nice. ...Also what a glorious sync 15:59

[@Hrotti]

Nick Batt is the ultimate strict machine lover

[@gabrielmanzanedo]

This is great. It made my day watching it! Thanks.

[@DoctorRevers]

Now I don’t know which I like more..Nick as a guest or interviewer. Great on both sides.

[@dansimco]

My visits to signalsounds are approaching 1:1 ratio to Why We Bleep episodes..

[@QuentinLamerand]

Ho wow I didn't know that the awesome Nick "PWM" Batt was half of DNA!

[@WoodyPianoShack]

fab interview with the goat, puzzled about the old school sample pitchbend timing trick, wouldn't that also make the vocals go out of tune?

[@mylarmelodies]

Thanks - He was doing the PBs in the gaps! To adjust the timing of each phrase

[@ProckGnosis]

When I saw the title, for about 2 seconds I thought the topic was going to be why you bleep out stuff like f-bombs and other profanity in videos. Then I realized it was much more likely, "AH synths guys talking about bleepy stuff like synths..." Great interview and discussion...thanks for the post. Cheers!

[@Bezz_Jeens]

OK, this is wild, I was like, "Oh, I've never heard this Tom's Diner remix, they're saying it charted and stuff, and I've heard that song plenty on the radio, but never the remix", but oh my god it turns out I've ONLY heard the remix!!! I didn't even know that there was any other version this entire time, I just thought that was the song and thought it was really good, and was confused that I wasn't really a fan of Suzanne Vega's other music. Absolutely nuts that Nick Batt made one of those special, beautiful remix tracks that gets so popular that casual listeners think it's the original. A rare and coveted achievement.

[@sub-jec-tiv]

Always a pleasure to hear from Nick, and great fun to witness him speaking about himself. 👏 He’s so well-liked because he’s such a good dude who isn’t caustic or combative.

[@TheFatdust]

vector synth is by beatlecrab, sam guys behind tempera. i got both, and it is bloody amazing , but it took me few weeks to cklick with it. but it is experience second to none

[@compucorder64]

I could imagine a situation where we get eurorack hardware modules that are more like a common platform. Sort of like the Droid, or Noise Engineering. But that developers write software/firmware for, maybe with etched faceplates. Something like that could be a good compromise between the ease of software development, especially if there was good tools, and the immediacy of hardware. And would allow smaller developers to not have to deal with the complexity of getting hardware designed and built. Because even before the pandemic, relatively prominent hardware synthesizer makers like Mutable Instruments were really struggling with how difficult that was. The stress of all the moving parts is not fun.

[@adeevision1297]

That was really interesting .

[@johnmeroney2007]

All the Gold Frapp albums are solid. Please listen to Felt Mountain. It is beautiful.

[@eubique]

N. Batt is t'Goat. I wonder what Nick thinks of Egyptian singer Simone's 1991 cover of their version of Tom's Diner? kzbin.info/www/bejne/jpOZd2uke9KioJY Pretty darn charming in its own right I think.

[@johncarter2741]

Loved this. Learning Nicks background was fascinating

[@kirkegodfrey414]

OMFG, im so old i remember doing that pitch wheel 'flick' to try to sync vocals in my S900 and Atari! (SO SO OLD).

[@ahorseinahospital]

Cheers for another great episode ♥ 1:26:20 I feel like the relative popularity of shorter demos has less to do with the supposedly diminishing attention span, and more with the fact that they allow people to judge quicker whether the product interests them at all or not. I personally only watch longer demos either if I'm already interested in the product, or if I expect that particular person's takes/skills to make it worth the while regardless of what they're demoing. KZbin is full of multiple-hour-long videos with millions of views after all, so maybe it's rather about our consumer habits adjusting idk

[@FileTransferProtocol]

Fantastic episode! Thanks for doing this. Really interesting section on 0-day reviews. I wonder if they can have an over-saturation effect at times, and negatively impact brand perception. A synth company that I (and MANY others) love, has taken that direction with a few products lately, and even though I love the company, I find myself rolling my eyes and scrolling past when I look at my feed and see 8 different videos on the same instrument from 8 different KZbinrs. I wonder if it’s just me, or if the KZbinrs see an impact on metrics, as well?

[@mylarmelodies]

I think irrespective of what we may think of day 0 reviews/demos, there are some general truths: That interest is generally broadest right at launch, so to be there on day 1 is to have access to the biggest and most open minded audience that will probably exist for that thing (for the most part). And that youtube is a meritocracy - the best videos generally will do the best. Oh and another one - youtube is incredibly important, I would go so far as to say THE most important asset in having a successful audio product launch - so to have less different takes, less videos at launch, is that going to help people form better opinions, or make it harder to decide on a new product? And by extension harder for the company who just sunk a ton of money into developing a product into recoup their losses?

[@FileTransferProtocol]

@@mylarmelodies​​⁠oh, I’m not saying it’s a bad thing. I’m an owner of a very small eurorack company (FlatSix Modular) and I know first-hand what it’s like to sink my hopes and dreams (and finances) into a new product and then try to recover it through marketing. I’m just Interested in brand impact and data. Before I launched my company this year, I was president of an ad agency and I know firsthand how a brand can go from being perceived as a beloved “hero of the people” to a “corporate giant” from over-saturation. It’s a very delicate balance, and would be a fascinating case study.

[@AnthonyDunstan]

FANTASTIC. love you both. peace.

[@mclarensmps]

Nick, the OG! Loved this, thank you so much :)

[@LUGER97]

Nice to learn about the developement of Sonic State.

[@dalelaushman8749]

Thanks, fellas. Great interview!

[@synthsamuraiproductions]

Great show!!! Cheers fellas

[@wolfdesk]

Nick is a legend and the lord of PWM.

[@ArkaHtun]

korg m500 preset is badass ....

[@InkyDaCaT]

Thank you😁

[@jumpstar9000]

❤

[@ArkaHtun]

how about the gear makers pay the people with KZbin presence to do some r and d for them , you fire them back your moans and groans , and they sort them out , before the public get the units and have to get frustrated waiting for the firmwares ,, or the YT people give an honest review , before the thing comes out , and then let the interested potential buyers give their thoughts on a forum .. then the gear sellers could pick people who were prepared to help them develop it to a finished working product ..

[@mylarmelodies]

This happens already quite a bit! eg. Folks reviewing things will flag issues they spot to manufacturers which then (hopefully) get addressed.

[@chitlun]

Nice one fellas, a genuine treat and very enjoyable stuff to have playing while I work! I still have my Atari 1040 and the seemingly radioactive SM124 monitor, although I’ve not used them for years… I had a killer setup in t’ 90s using that with a cracked copy of Cubase 3, Tascam 238 8-Track, an XRI Systems XR03 SMPTE/Midi Synchroniser, Emax II, Waldorf Pulse, a Boss DR660 drum machine and various rack FX (Quadraverb, Boss SE-50 & Digitech Studio Quad). This was, without question, my most productive time and I was producing all manner of different choons… Whereas now, I have limitless options in the shape of amazing DAWs, VSTs and soft-synths, Terrabytes of samples/loops, coupled with a bunch of hardware synths/modular and I generally just dick about making ambient tosh!

[@mylarmelodies]

It’s a question isn’t it? I had a dodgy Cubase on a Windows PC and A4000, RM1x and some other bits, and did loads with it. It’s a tale as old as time! But then time is what we had wasn’t it

[@chitlun]

@@mylarmelodies Aye! To be fair, I was also in my late 20s/early 30s, not working full time and brimming full of ideas… I’m now almost 60, work Mon-fri full time and simply don’t have the time or impetus to spend three days programming drums. Aah, fond memories of the Cubase drum map... Still unrivalled in its exquisitely simple user interface.

[@attichatchsound-bobkowal5328]

This was a treat, thanks!

[@CactusTeether]

Thank You gentlemen. Delightful. Also, thank you Nick for the Inca Roads steer. Holy Hell...

[@brianbrill]

Wow, check it...Professor of Rock just a day later than this vid was posted featured Tom's Diner w/ DNA. It includes an interview with Suzanne and a shoutout to Nick.

[@MarkLoweLowebrau]

My two favourite synth nerds, whom I turn to every time I'm thinking of purchasing another mistake, finally having a chat. Amazing.

[@Cyborchone]

Thanks for this great conversation! I was reshuffling my small modular rack while listening, and I was there in the 90's and very aware of the remix since I had been listening to Susan Vega. I aprecciate both of your work a lot, thanks for doing what you're doing

[@jasonbeatty831]

Other folks might get their synth reviews in before Nick, but no one does it better. Nick never sounds rushed, always explains faults in a synth, hidden gems that you may have never thought of, he’s def informed my opinion about several purchases of mine. My one complaint Nick; do more fun Fridays!

[@mikegeary8056]

Nick rules

[@djgocatgo]

Really great conversation thanks ❤

[@Radar23]

More poly means longer release times

[@mylarmelodies]

now you’re darn tootin