colleen

I worked for 14 months non-stop on this 8th album, 8 months have now elapsed since I finished it, so to say that sharing the first tracks with you fills me with joy is an understatement. It’s my first instrumental album since 2007’s Les ondes silencieuses, my first double album, clocking in at 58 minutes, my love letter to synthesis in the shape of my beloved Moog Grandmother, a love letter to music in general for helping me to navigate the waters of life’s complex, multifaceted reality: mine, yours, everyone’s.

I hope you will enjoy the 3 movements of “Subterranean”, named in reference to how deep the subconscious and our emotions run. The first movement made me feel like I was playing guitar in a rock band again, the second like I was almost making music for the dancefloor (*almost*) and the third like I was suddenly touching something very fragile, that might possibly break, and that was trying to come up to the surface.

You can read more about the album and preorder the gorgeous first vinyl edition (and the CD!) via the Thrill Jockey website (CAN SHIP FROM THE US OR GERMANY – PLEASE DISREGARD THE UK AND ROYAL MAIL MENTION AS THIS IS A WEBSITE ERROR) or Bandcamp (SHIPS FROM THE US ONLY!)

Words cannot convey how privileged I feel to have had a one-off collaboration between two immensely talented Mexican visual artists, Andrés Gómez Servín @gomez_servin_andres for the artwork and Daniel Castrejón @dnks_mx for the layout. Andrés did the artwork of my previous album The Tunnel and the Clearing and I knew I wanted to repeat the experience, but I have also long admired Daniel’s impeccable design for his Umor Rex label, so it is an honor that both accepted to work together on this, to produce this gatefold edition printed on reverse board, with full colour inner sleeves, with a very special first edition of metallic gold vinyl for the Jour (Day) sides and metallic silver for the Nuit (Night) sides.

Last but not least, incredibly for someone who had decided to stop playing live back in 2021, I am going to go on tour, starting in the US! Many European dates are still to be added, there will be updates very soon! Head over to my SONGKICK for all details and tickets.

It’s been such a long wait for me, but on 7th June you will finally be able to hear the first songs (literally the first, as it is the suite of 3 movements that opens the album) from my new double album Thrill Jockey Records

Expect a tour announcement pretty soon afterwards, with more dates to be added later in the year. Apart from the US where I will be doing a traditional “condensed” tour, the idea is to spread the dates over fall, winter and spring 2024 so that it’s not too hard for me physically and psychologically, and so that I don’t leave the kitties on their own too often and too long.

In the meantime, I have just made available on Bandcamp “Conditional”, the song I made to betatest Moog’s Moogerfooger plugins, as a free or pay what you want download.

On the new album I don’t sing, so this was a great opportunity to do something different and sing lyrics that hold a lot of meaning for me.

“Conditional” is about a deeply-seated psychological mechanism at work in almost everyone, myself included: the tendency to make one’s sense of “happiness” conditional on a particular desire being fulfilled. The idea that once you get a certain something, either material (objects – for musicians typically an instrument or piece of gear -, a house, a specific living place, a travel experience, etc) or immaterial (a relationship, a career or work achievement, a certain physical appearance, a physical ability, technical proficiency at a skill, perceived wisdom or intelligence or any other quality, etc), *then* you will be happy. Of course the wheel of life spins in a different way… Making this song was part of an attempt to both accept and overcome this very human aspect of myself.

Photo by Luis Torroja

PS: I make my own clothes: Grainline Studio Hadley top in Metermeter sanded cupro, self-drafted shorts.

Last month, after I posted the short reel introducing the song I had made to betatest the Moogerfooger plugins, “Conditional”, a couple of musician friends wrote to me privately to ask: “Seriously, between us… are they truly good?”, as if I’d be writing one thing about them online, but think something else, so here goes, as unbiased a review I can give, knowing that yes, I did get compensated for betatesting the plugins (more info on the plugins here) and creating a song with them, but no, I haven’t been asked to say anything about them, so both the tutorial on how I made the song and this review are entirely my own initiatives. 

To give you a bit of background on where I stand on the hardware vs software spectrum… I worked with both plugins and physical effects on my first 6 albums (2003-2017), but around 2018 stopped using plugins altogether (no plugins on my 7th album  from 2021) because I’m now fully committed to hardware gear. I own 5 physical Moogerfoogers, so my aim with this review is to take a balanced view and point out what the plugins bring to the table, and end with where I feel they fall short (but as you’ll see, the pros clearly outweigh the cons…).

In any case I hope this review is useful for those of you wondering whether you should take the plunge…

INTRO 

Let’s get the following out of the way first: 

– the hardware Moogerfoogers were discontinued in late 2017. With Moog now concentrating on releasing new synths, making a return to production for the Foogers quite unlikely,  anyone who did not acquire Moogerfoogers back in their production days now has two options 1) buying second-hand already used units at sometimes outrageous prices 2) buying these plugins 

– A plugin is never going to give you the hands-on experience and feel of a hardware unit. We all agree on this. Instead, it gives you *another* type of experience, and in the case of these plugins, going beyond the hardware vs software “feel” dichotomy is well worth it in terms of creativity.

THE SOUND

I honestly think that if I recorded the same song with the physical units and then compared it with the plugin version in a blind test, I wouldn’t know the difference. A sound engineer might, but I think most humans won’t, because the plugins sound so similar to the original units – even more so since the introduction of the MF-109S Saturator. The Foogers have a very characteristic drive and it wasn’t easy at first for me to find the Input sweet spot, but when I tested the MF-109S (which sadly I wasn’t able to use in my song, because it hadn’t been developed yet), I thought that they brilliantly solved the issue.

EASE OF USE IN TERMS OF ROUTING AND MIXING 

I dedicated my tutorial to how I set up my session with Sends and Returns so that I have each Moogerfooger on its own separate track, as opposed to just adding the FX as an insert and chaining FX. You end up with complete control over routing and mixing, and – not a detail if your work is on the minimal side like mine – you end up with way more tracks to mix!

The ease of sending one Fooger into another and  trying different options at the speed of a click is a huge plus in terms of sound design possibilities. In my song, I stuck to a maximum of 2 consecutive Sends and 3 Sends from one sound source in total, but the possibilities are just endless.

AUTOMATION.

This is where the plugins really shine. Absolutely every parameter can be automated, CV control included, which means that you are able to do things you’d never be able to do with your 2 hands on a physical unit. Obviously, familiarity with the way your DAW handles automation will pay off, and if you use a Sends and Returns approach, you will have all of your automation action neatly laid out on a single track for each Fooger instance.

Also, if like me you were always intrigued about CV control but never dared go for it because you were afraid  you might “fry” your unit, this is your chance to do so risk-free.

MULTIPLE INSTANCES

Having multiples of the same Fooger allows you to blend from one preset or setting to the next on a single track or sound source, and have different settings of the same Fooger for different sound sources.

SPECIAL FEATURES 

The plugins offer many more options in terms of output and tone than the originals. I won’t go into details here as other reviews have done so and the manuals are also very clear in this respect, but this means they are more versatile tonally than the originals. 

I also didn’t have the time to look into the MuRF pattern editor, but can imagine the rabbit hole this could be…

PRESETS

The presets are an invaluable resource: it takes time to truly learn how each Fooger works, and the settings that give best results will vary drastically depending on your sound source: not just the instrument, but the way you play it, the pitch range you use, etc… The presets are incredibly useful *and* usable as they are or as a starting point. They can even be used as a resource by those owning the physical units.

STABILITY

My DAW Reaper kept up with multiple Fooger use (9 instances) without any problem and I did not experience any single bug even at betatesting stage. I did not “print” anything while working, as I felt that being able to tinker with levels until rendering was an ideal scenario.

CONS

Some sounds that come from physical switches cannot be replicated by plugins: the sound of switching from Short to Long setting and back on the MF104M is one of my favorite things in the world, and indeed, the plugin cannot give you that sound.

I do regret that the MF104S does not offer a Delay Out output as in the original: panning the Mix Out and Delay Out is my favorite way of treating signals with that delay. The Stereo does sound beautiful and I ended up not missing my favorite trick that much, and by duplicating the plugin you can achieve a similar effect by setting your Mix settings to fully wet on one of the duplicates, but if you start automating then this workaround gets messy.

If you want to take your work to a live setting, then that will involve having a computer on stage with you, which – granted – is a lot of performers’ choice these days, but if like me you have a computer-free live show, this could be a problem.

From Moog:

Tutorial: How to create a complete song using five Moogerfooger Effects Plug-ins and just two external audio sources!

Inside her DAW of choice, French musician Cécile Schott (@colleenplays) details how to replicate a hardware gear workflow with sends and returns using nine instances of the plug-ins (more info on the plugins here), treating each effect as its own instrument. From the artist:
 
“I have a pretty intimate knowledge of the MF-104M Analog Delay, MF105 MIDIMuRF and MF-101 Lowpass Filter, so I was curious to hear the effects’ digital replica and try the other two I didn’t know, especially the MF-107S Freqbox, which I fell in love with madly (it is responsible for the song’s impossibly crunchy rhythm!).
 
I purposefully used a very minimal sound source – the Hammond of the Yamaha Reface-YC – as a blank canvas to showcase what makes the Moogerfoogers truly unique: their ability to radically transform sound and impart a sense of motion, making them closer to a synth module than an effect pedal. Having just finished a fully instrumental album, I actually really felt like singing the lyrics to a song which I had to discard, allowing me to also showcase the MF-104M as an awesome vocal processor.”

“Conditional” is a song on making your sense of happiness dependent on obtaining something or someone.

When Moog contacted me last September to betatest their Moogerfooger plugins, it was a resounding YES on my part, even though I was on a tight deadline to finish my forthcoming 8^th album: the Moogerfoogers were my introduction to the analog world in 2014, the MF-104M is still *the* effect I reach for the most, and back in 2017 I had the honor of recording a session at the Moog Sound Lab in Asheville to mark the end of their physical production (A Flame Variations EP), at the end of which they kindly gifted me not 1, not 2, but 3 Moogerfoogers!!!

I have a pretty intimate knowledge of the MF-104M Analog Delay, MF105 MIDIMuRF and MF-101 Lowpass Filter, so I was curious to hear the effects’ digital replica and try the other two I didn’t know, especially the MF-107S Freqbox, which I fell in love with madly (it is responsible for the song’s impossibly crunchy rhythm!)

I purposefully used a very minimal sound source – the Hammond of the Yamaha Reface-YC – as a blank canvas to showcase what makes the Moogerfoogers truly unique: their ability to radically transform sound and impart a sense of motion, making them closer to a synth module than an effect pedal. Having just finished a fully instrumental album, I actually really felt like singing the lyrics to a song which I had to discard, allowing me to also showcase the MF-104M as an awesome vocal processor.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by colleen – Cécile Schott, musician (@colleenplays)

Headphones or amp connected to speakers recommended (lots of stereo love).  Will write a couple of posts on the nitty-gritty of how I produced the song (so many bussing options + CV automation) and my thoughts on the plugins vs physical units experience.

Sound sources: Yamaha Reface YC, vocals.

Processed with: MF-101S Lowpass Filter, MF-103S Phaser, MF-104S Analog Delay, MF105S MIDIMuRF, MF-107S Freqbox. No other processing apart from ReaEQ on vocals.

DAW: Reaper.

A truly massive thank you Moog Music for their trust and support, with special thanks to Jason Daniello, Claire Ginn and Geert Bevin.