Hello music people 👋

Today in the spotlight, Dan Fur

If you want to be in the music business, his interview could be your plan. He has had his hands on movie/series productions of Disney and Netflix. Sound design, mixing, mastering, mentorships, he does it all 🎶

Read Time: 4 minutes 📰

The Setup

Gear List

• Modular synth - 104hp Intellijel Performance Case

• Dave Smith - Prophet Rev 2

• Roland - TR-8

• Roland - JX8P

• Novation - Circuit

• Studiologic - Sledge

• Novation - Bass station

• Novation - SL Mk3

• Korg - MS20 Mini

Who are you and what is your relationship with music?

My name is Paul Blandford and I go by the moniker Dan Fur.

I always loved music as a kid, played bass in jazz band, and played guitar. Music was always something I just enjoyed doing for fun. Never much more than that.

When I graduated from high school I took a bit of a hiatus from music until I really discovered electronic music and learned what a synthesizer actually was. Wow, was that a big eureka moment, Instantly I was able to finally understand what it was that was making all those other worldly sounds I would hear in Pink Floyd and Phil Collins songs growing up. Instantly so many things made sense and I knew I had to learn what this instrument was, and where I could take it.

It wasn’t long before I started producing in some free software, eventually moving up to DAWs and getting my own hardware. I even started posting little synth jams on Instagram.

The more immersed in synthesis and sound I got, the more it became obvious this was what I wanted to do in some way or another. So I managed to track down a local studio owner with some real credits and experience, paid for lots of mentorship and just hung around and provided as much value as I could to the studio, to try and In turn learn as much as I possibly could.

Flash forward several years since that moment and I haven’t looked back. I’ve developed a great relationship with the studio that mentored me, Precursor Productions, and through them I’ve been able to work some life altering opportunities over the past year, such as running a few ADR sessions for some episodes of Disney's Ms Marvel and the Netflix series Stranger Things. Produced for and with other artists.

I’ve had opportunities to use my synths to do sound design for commercials, short animated films and various shows and movies. I've been able to open up my own studio offering mixing, mastering and mentorship for electronic musicians, where I’ve been fortunate enough to share some of the insight and info that I was able to learn through my years of mentorship.

So essentially music has changed my life.

I never thought I would make it where I am at this point, but ever since discovering sound design and learning what a synthesizer is. I stopped looking at music as music, and started looking at music as sound. It opened up my world to a whole new set of possibilities I couldn’t have imagined.

Music and my journey into sound has changed my view of what is possible if you just put yourself out there again and again.

What's the one thing in your studio you can't live without?

Decent speakers in a good sounding room.

To me there's nothing quite like actually jamming out and creating while you can actually enjoy the sound-waves bouncing around. There doesn't need to be a anything massive, but having a decent set of speakers to hear and feel the music is crucial for me. Headphones work great for fine tune checking and whatnot, but I just cant for the life of me get into a creative headspace when I have to rely on only headphones.

I like to feel the sound waves and understand how they react with each other.

What's your process?

Process is something I focus on a lot.

I find that when the process is set up correctly, the right ideas flow much more effectively. The best way to try to come up with a new sound, is to change up your creative process! So for that reason I actually try to change up my process somewhat regularly.

Creative limitation is something I think about a LOT when it comes to setting up a process. Less can often be more! It forces you to do things in unconventional ways, which can lead to exciting results.

For me, my process usually follows something like this. I often start off with a live looping jam. How I have my room set up is that when I hit play on Ableton, it sends clock to all my hardware. So I can easily use a mix of hardware and software to kinda just play around in sync without ever having to look at a computer. I find that removing the computer at the early stage of production is very helpful for me. I can very easily get into a mixing mindset and lose musical ideas if i spend too much time "mixing" in the early stages, so i try to avoid this.

During this live looping creating part, I create a few rough ideas and sounds to get a basic structure of what might be a song. Then I'll record the basic structure into Ableton, mark everything out section by section and get a feel for what the key elements of each part should be, as well as what seems to be lacking. Then I kinda just fill in the gaps and clean it up within the DAW. After that, I go on to mixing and mastering on another day after a rest of the ears.

No matter what my process may be, or how i change it, each stage of the process has a clear purpose and goal. Making it easy to know when I'm done one each stage, and on to the next.

How would you explain your style?

My style ranges a lot these days.

While the original roots stem from a blend of things like Trip Hop, Tech House, and a blend of 80s Synth. These days I've been influenced a lot by bass music, and some Deep Dark House and a bit of Psytrance. Not too sure where my music lies in between there, but id really like to go deeper into the Fusion Downtempo Bass Music, midtempo Psy Bass kinda stuff.

Has this journey of building a hardware setup changed the way you think about music or life in general?

Completely.

Most specifically modular synthesis.

The approach to designing sounds that work musically is just so much different than any other synth/instrument I've used, and it really forces you to interact with the sound, and almost have a conversation with the instrument, rather than making decisions for an instrument like i always used to feel.

Now i can take that concept to any instrument really and it was a big insight to learn.

What’s your ONE tip on music-production or creativity?

Focus as much time on sound design as you do on arrangement.

In electronic music the lines between arranging, mixing and sound design become very blurred. So make sure your spending time focusing on fine tuning the sounds you've used to make sure the timing of the envelopes and decay tails are snappy and on beat with the timing of your song! Spending that extra few minutes making sure your nailed in the exact timing on all the elements will allow for a much sharper final product.

How can people find you?

Instagram

Website

Spotify

For jams, knob-twists and pad hitting videos go to G.A.S. Instagram

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Gianni @gianni.kampiotis

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