Everyday Life
One of the many lessons Federico has learned from working with Kanye is how much benefit can come from the luxury such an artist has to spend time (and, necessarily, money) considering multiple options. Eventually, Federico notes, you start to see how malleable music is. He recalls a similar example from when he worked with Coldplay on their 2019 album Everyday Life. There was a song where Chris Martin and the band felt they still hadn’t nailed the string sound they wanted for it.
Another eclectic selection of instruments! From top: Behringer Neutron, Pro One, Model D and Wasp Deluxe synths; Moog Slim Phatty module; Arturia Keystep Pro controller; ARP Omni MkII string machine and (left) Makenoise Strega and 0 Coast modules.“We spent a few days looking for that string sound. OK, sampled strings? Well, not so good. Real strings? Still not there yet. Oh, Oberheim strings? Ah, almost there. Eventually, I played this sound, and I think it must have been the simplest sound I’ve ever done — like a filter saw wave pad with a very long attack, so it sucked into the sound, ver‑oomph. I added some street noise on top of that, and the street noise had the same envelope as the saw wave, giving the impression like when you reverse a sound. And Chris was saying, ‘Oh, that’s the sound!’ He loved it.”
Then came what Federico describes as the genius moment. “Chris took that sound and wrote a whole other song with it! And the original song, the one we were looking for the string sound, never even made it to the album. The new song he wrote with the sound was ‘Everyday Life’, which actually gave the name to the album. It just shows how these genius people — like Kayne, like Chris — can work creatively in a far less structured way than most people.”
Forward Planning
Federico had come to Coldplay through Timbaland, who’d worked with the band before. Federico and Angel Lopez went into a studio in Malibu with Chris, expecting Tim to turn up, but he was sick and couldn’t make it. “Chris said ‘OK, I guess it’s just the three of us today. Let’s try to make something.’ And it was magical,” Federico says. “We kept on working for a few days, then Tim came in and did a few days, too, then went back to Miami. At the beginning it was mostly writing stuff with Chris, and then eventually he said he had this new Coldplay record they were doing, and he wanted to see if we could hear anything.”
There followed sessions where Chris opened up the working versions of songs, and they would add sounds, change things around, try different approaches. “A few songs made the album where the first versions had been jams that we did together, like ‘Champion Of The World’ and ‘Orphans’,” Federico remembers.
He was impressed with Chris’s ability to think well ahead. During the first few days they worked together, Federico was playing him some of the sounds he’d prepared in advance, a system he uses regularly. “For me, Coldplay was ambient, pads, big sounds, big drums, certain guitar sounds, things I know they use, so I prepared literally hundreds of sounds ready for these sessions. One of my sounds I played, Chris was like, ‘That’s it! That’s going to open the album after this one!’ I’m like, What? Why are you thinking about two albums from now? And this to me was another genius move, right there, to be able to think so far in advance.” Federico says the result is due to become a short introductory piece opening Coldplay’s forthcoming album, Music Of The Spheres, due for release later in 2021.
It’s important to let yourself go, because it brings new ideas, it brings unexpected results. And I’ve become friends with the unexpected.
For the sound in question, he drew upon techniques he’s developed over the years, particularly exploiting Ableton Live, his prime working environment, and what he calls its modular‑like qualities. “I can use all kinds of MIDI sources to modify any parameter on anything I’m doing — a kind of sound‑design dream. For this sound in particular, I was assigning Ableton’s key tracking, so the higher or the lower you play on a keyboard, that will control something, in this case delay time. So if I played a higher chord, it’s going to move my delay, and that created a crazy wobble in the delay, because I’m changing the time and changing the pitch. And it’s interesting because it does this depending on what I play.”
He estimates that 85 or 90 percent of his work today takes place in Ableton, with maybe a little Pro Tools and some Logic. “Sometimes I’ll even use FL Studio. I like to change things up — it makes you think differently. Once I learn how to do something, and I feel really comfortable and like I’m mastering something, it’s almost like, well, I’m never gonna do that again! Let’s go to an uncomfortable place.”
Outside The Comfort Zone
When we speak, Federico is preparing sounds for some sessions with the Mexican pop duo Jesse & Joy. The songs are all written, so he’s working on his palette of sounds ready to present at the studio. “I do find it’s good to separate your sound‑design and sound‑searching days from your music‑making days,” he says. “When I make music, I don’t want to be searching for sounds. I want to have everything ready to go. So when I’m bored and I feel I’m not able to do anything good musically, I go into that mode of sound‑searching, maybe downloading new plug‑ins, or going to my synths to record some stuff.” His current faves from a large collection of synths are his Moog Grandmother, a reissue Prophet, and some of the Make Noise modular stuff.
Federico Vindver does much of his work in Ableton Live. Softube’s Console 1 and Console 1 Fader control surfaces sit above his controller keyboard, with his beloved Moog Grandmother to the right.
He tells me about another of the curveballs Kanye West threw into the studio one day. “Kanye said he wanted to record a choir of 500,000 kids. And he was serious, too. I thought to myself, well, getting 500,000 kids is not going to be that easy. But this kind of thing makes you think! It’s almost like a Zen riddle. What’s he trying to do, you know? Eventually you find your way around it. But I love that he really takes you out of your comfort zone. Whatever is easy, he will not do it. And the lesson to be learned is that living outside the comfort zone will bring unexpected results, that it will push the limits of what you can do.”
Federico works hard to push those limits. It can be important, he says, to let your subconscious mind take over. “And that’s what’s hard in producing. I’m big into ergonomics. When I work in my studio at home, which unfortunately doesn’t happen too often, I try to carry that philosophy. I have a MIDI Fighter set up so when I hit one of its buttons, it will do something I do often — for example open a reverb, maybe, or perhaps open a delay — so I don’t have to go looking for a plug‑in when I’m working.”
This circles back to his youthful jazz studies and performances. “I like to improvise when I’m creating,” he says, “I like to feel like I’m playing an instrument. If it’s going too slow, if I have to go on the computer and edit things, it’s not going to work for me. I have to feel the immediacy. All my synths, all my drum machines, everything is plugged in, everything is ready to go. I have it set so it’s automatic — my hand hits a button and it brings what I want.”
He reckons that most of the time, he’ll go with the first thing he does. “If I love it, I keep it. If not, I go to another sound or another idea. I love to keep that energy, that thing of not really being sure what I’m doing — but we’ll see. It’s important to let yourself go, because it brings new ideas, it brings unexpected results. And I’ve become friends with the unexpected.”
Kitchen Church
At one point during the production of the 2019 Jesus Is Born album by Sunday Service, Kanye’s gospel group, Federico Vindver found himself in a cabin in Wyoming — the successful producer’s life is never dull — pondering a problem with a recording of a live gospel choir that Kanye wanted to use. Try as he might, Federico couldn’t get it to sound as if the choir was in a small church, the intention for its use on ‘Sweet Grace’.
His solution was to put two C414s in the cabin’s kitchen, blast the recording through some speakers, and resample it. “And surprisingly, with all that kitchen reverb, it came out great! It gave that reverb sound I just couldn’t get with a plug‑in. On ‘Sweet Grace’ you hear the drums and everything, and a big part of it was going through these 414s to get that ambient sound — and then the Sunday Service gospel choir recorded on top of that, too. More proof that you have to resource whatever you can to make things sound the way you want them.”