All effects are presets, all notes are quantized and most panning is purely accidental (laid out in the presets themselves). With 2014’s Industry-the accompaniment to his book on presets-the German techno producer created an album not only entirely from presets, but specifically, “obscure factory presets from three obsolete 1990s Japanese workstation synths. More recently, John Cage’s work with indeterminate music in the early 1950s – especially his chance-controlled compositions written using the ancient Chinese divination text, the I Ching – sought to remove his own taste from the music.
Historically, self-imposed constraints have been used to shake things up in Western music since at least the 18th century’s musical dice games – the most famous of which was attributed to Mozart – in which composers literally rolled the dice to choose a predetermined option for a given measure. He also encourages the inclusion and development of accidents – his label is called Accidental Records, after all – for a new kind of compositional liberation found within a non-traditional musical system. As he explained, the set of rules – including the prohibition of synths, drum machines, presets, and sampling other music, for example – have guided his practice since 2005, serving to upend assumptions and help him avoid entrenched practices. At his 2015 Loop talk, Matthew Herbert presented his manifesto for making music.
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