SeamlessR

Hello SeamlessR! Welcome to the site. Let's do a little introduction here just to get that out of the way. Tell us a little about yourself and your EDM project.

SeamlessR - "Hi! I'm SeamlessR (The 'R' is silent). I started producing back in 2004 with a copy of FL 3 that I got from my high school, PVPA (Pioneer Valley Performing Arts). It didn't start out as anything serious. I had a background in piano from lessons as a child so I figured I'd give it a shot. I would mess around with it and ensuing versions of FL (my mother purchased for me my own copy of FL 4) for a number of years but it wouldn't become a serious thing until 2010 when I formed my band Krakatoa with some friends. Really, they formed it, and then suggested I join. Through Krakatoa I learned a lot about metal producing, band recording, and all sorts of other stuff. At the time I was also really into drum and bass, all sorts of it from super dense Noisia stuff to more poppy Pendulum stuff. But now metal was entering and quickly becoming the focus.

I would have remained a metal producer if it were not for Harmor, Image Line's additive synthesizer plugin for FL Studio. A year or so after it came out I fiddled around with bass resynthesis and discovered I could use that technique to make sounds I'd always wanted to make but couldn't from the DnB years. I was so excited that I just had to tell people, so I made a tutorial about it. It also happened to be a slow news day for Image Line so when they saw it posted on their forums, they blogged it on their FB page which resulted in serious attention to the video I'd made. That was when I realized that I could actually make videos about this stuff.

So began the "How To Bass" tutorial series on my channel. The videos started out as being cool things that I would figure out and then tell people about. I also figured out FM synthesis around this time, now 2012, and this furthered my ability to bass. Pretty soon I'd actually began to focus on building a name via tutorials much more than I was focusing on anything else music related. Now, that's essentially my main gig. Making tutorials, giving lessons, and generally educating producers about the possibilities of sound design."

Now, from what I've noticed about yourself, though you do have a respectable following and quite a positive reception within the electronic community for making tutorials, you've so far only released two EPs from what I've seen on FiXT. Do you have any plans on making a full length album soon, or would you rather stick with shorter EPs?

SeamlessR - "Like I said the tutorials are definitely my main gig. I wouldn't be opposed to the idea of a full-length but a lot of questions have to be answered before I go into something like that. Things like what do I need to do to have time to focus on something like that freely, how much time can I give to something like this? Are full-lengths even relevant anymore? My style of production isn't really limited to any single genre. So a full-length would have all sorts of seemingly unrelated content. Not to mention, I'm really not a fan of finishing a work and then waiting a year for enough other work to come with it to be put out. I feel like a lot of decisions about making full lengths have more to do with economics than the art itself. I would certainly care more about that if I were mainly doing music, but as tutorials are indeed my main gig, I can afford to ask those kinds of questions."

And, through your YouTube channel, your presence was made aware to BT, who contacted to regarding a sort of collaboration. I read that you didn't really know who he was, but you soon found out how big the guy really was. How did you feel when being contacted by BT after you found out who he was?

SeamlessR - "I was pretty excited when I finally understood the scope of what it meant that BT contacted me to collaborate on sound design. The guy invented so many things that are staples of what it means to make certain kinds of music now. The idea that someone so accomplished, and so knowledgeable about sound design and synthesis and was also around back in the day when a lot of this stuff was being created in their earliest form, it was pretty epic feeling. I tried not to let it go to my head."

I'm not really sure how, but one way or the other you came underneath the FiXT label. Was it after the remix you worked on for Celldweller that you were asked to join the label's roster?

SeamlessR - "I guess it could be considered during the remix. I was introduced to FiXT by BT, he suggested to us that there may be some shared interest. Turns out he was right."

And, your first, and debut release under the label was "Momentum" back in March of 2014. Did you really ever feel as if you would get this far with your music career? Or was it all sort of something that you knew was going to happen someday?

SeamlessR - "I actually made a calculated decision that my music career wouldn't get this far. It was one of the major reasons why I shifted focus to the tutorials. In simple marketing terms, the market for music is saturated super hard. But the market for the kinds of tutorials that I'm known for is wide open with very little competition. I haven't cornered the tutorial market by any means, but my own niche of high end complex bass sound design is far more profitable and secure than trying to fight the music industry fight. At least, that was my line of thinking. Turns out people like my stuff way more than I thought they would."

And, as far as reception goes, how did the first EP play out overall? Did you get positive feedback or negative or a bit of both?

SeamlessR - "The first EP was pretty positive. It was a bit of a unique situation as I had been putting music out up until then, but just for free on my own Soundcloud and YouTube. So I had a little bit of a following, but I mostly interpreted my following as mostly other producers who were mostly interested in the "how" rather than the "what". Since my EP was also accompanied by tutorials and making ofs, it was relevant to them on many levels."

And later on in the year is when you released "The R is Silent". This seven track EP apparently did not stop your progress not one bit; how would you say this EP differed in sound from your debut?

SeamlessR - "What I mentioned earlier about finishing a track then waiting a year for it to come out makes these two EPs very interesting in a chronological sense. For example, the track Deathblow that I did featuring Celldweller's vocals was written around the same time that I wrote Steel Core. And yet, those two songs not only came out at least a year after they were written, but almost 9 months or something like that apart. Listeners will intemperate 'The 'R' Is Silent' as being the 'newer' music, but really there are tracks on there that are older than tracks on Momentum. Which is to say that, really, the sound averages out."

And, now that that EP is done, where are you heading next with your project? I may be repeating myself from earlier, but is there a new album in the works? A collaboration perhaps?

SeamlessR - "I have a lot of plans for a lot of things. Most of them are related to my channel, live streaming, sample packs, and yes, new music. But for now it's mostly at the experimental stages."

Are you currently performing live at all right now? And, if so, what dates are set for which locations? And, if not, do you plan on playing live anytime soon?

SeamlessR - "I am not currently playing live. But I am building something that may be quite epic. More on that as information becomes available."

And, your YouTube channel is fairly popular with those looking to either get in the EDM producing field or those who are looking to learn more to add into their blend of sound and performance. When did you notice your channel really began to kick off with viewers?

SeamlessR - "I actually made my YouTube channel back in 2008. Back then I was doing mostly gaming related videos and getting absolutely zero traction. Pretty much ever since Image Line blogged my first bass tutorial it's been a pretty steady climb up with some peaks mostly attributed to new music, or that one video about a modulator. That's when it started, but I didn't really believe it would just keep going like that for a while after that. I assumed there was a ceiling to the interest in such content. I'm sure there is, but I haven't hit it yet."

I know that despite your tutorials, you also offer private lessons for those looking to create EDM. What do your private lessons offer that the YouTube tutorials do not?

SeamlessR - "The private lessons are mostly for people who aren't good at absorbing information the way that I present them in the videos. The information is the same, and there is some stuff I don't talk about as much in the videos like drum processing or mastering, but that's only because I can only talk about that stuff in specific terms about specific works. So I leave that up to making ofs for tracks or tracks from scratch. The lessons are a more efficient way of giving a producer the information they want, especially if they didn't know they wanted it because I'm there to make decisions based on my own knowledge where as on their own, with the videos, they might not know what to look for."

And, how do you really decide about making fresh tutorials/content for the channel? Do you just go off what's new and evolving in the scene regarding sound, or do you just stumble around until you figure something out that's pretty cool that you want to share with the world?

SeamlessR - "Sometimes I try to do something relevant. But for the most part most super popular genres and producers don't do things complicated enough that a tutorial is necessary to most. Most of the time I try to stick to a theme, but yeah it's a lot of experimentation until I come up with a technique or a concept that's really cool."

Is there any other additional information we may have not covered that you wish to spout out now?

SeamlessR - "Hm, I mean, I'm up to something like 760ish videos. That's a lot of info. I suppose I have never said officially how important it is to protect your hearing. Wear earplugs at shows, don't monitor too loud. If you lose you hearing, even a little, you're damaging your ability to be an effective mixing engineer. You can compensate, but it's better not to have to."

Lastly, I would like to thank you for your time and wish you the best of luck for the future.

SeamlessR - "Thank you for the interview!"