Three Questions With Tim Hecker

Next up in the 3Qs series is musician, producer, composer, and sound artist, Tim Hecker.

Hecker has released numerous EPs and albums in addition to composing a number of film scores and collaborating with artists like Arca, Ben Frost, Jóhann Jóhannsson, Daniel Lopatin, and Aidan Baker.

His latest, Shards, is a collection of pieces originally written for various film and TV soundtracks he has scored over the last half decade, including Brandon Cronenberg’s Infinity Pool, The North Water on BBC 2, Peter Brunner’s Luzifer, and Guillaume Nicloux’s La Tour. Link.

Without further ado...

TIm Hecker in his studio.

Synth History: What are a few of your current go-tos in the studio?

Tim Hecker: I've dabbled with modular synthesis a lot over the past 10 or so years. Often it just sits ignored in the corner gathering dust until I need some kind of tepid oscillator drone and then I patch it in. Having spent most of my adult life using the computer and instruments as the main way to express myself, the modular has often been in this awkward nowhere space - potentially amazing, completely chaotic and unrecallable, but for me dubiously musical. So my recent dabbling has made me realize digital synthesis via computers and Max/MSP, with its almost infinite possibilities, combined with great conversion, using beautiful expressive instruments going into those platforms, is for me still the path to beat.

I'd have to say still Max/MSP, outboard effects from the 80s like the Eventide H3000 and some character saturation boxes are still my go-tos. It doesn't matter what goes into that, a mic'd piano, a synth, guitar, whatever. There's an irony that the power of technology for DSP compute opens so many musical possibilities at the same time that a societal malaise around general AI suggests–wrongly?–that all of this is futile.

Tim Hecker's gear.

Synth History: You’ve collaborated with a number of musicians. What do you think the most important thing to keep in mind is when it comes to collaboration?

Tim Hecker: It's great to collaborate, energetic and revitalizing even. I think it's a tricky thing where one should stay super open to things manifesting in a way that you don't expect. Such that having some kind of preordained vision of a collaboration isn't always the fruit that it bears. It's kind of a soul connection with another person that takes time, openness, vulnerability.

Finding people that don't really duplicate what you bring to the table also helps a lot so there's no phase cancellation, for example, with two keyboard virtuosos or something like that! At least I don't ever have to worry about that personally though.

Synth History: What are three albums you think everyone should listen to at least once in their lifetime?

Tim Hecker: I'd go with something like Brahms 4th - Carlos Kleiber recording. This one affects me in a special way. There's something about orchestral recordings including a lot of the ECM approaches to recording large ensembles that brings an airy power that I think electronic music can learn from, post loudness wars.

Alice Coltrane - Turiya Sings. I had this recording via a cassette dub about 10 years ago and it really does something, especially the lower quality tape version with the tuning of the keys. There's something about the tuning of the keys and synths on this devotional recording that has an eerie early 80s California cult-like afterglow of some time and place I can only project into. It's not ambient or new age, maybe some kind of futuristic prayer. Picking three is impossible, but my third, off the top of my head, would be something on the nose like the Beatles - White Album. I don't even know what to say about it, but if you take the amount of musicality and output of the late stage Beatles second half of the 1960s, there's very few peers in the past century to something like that run of creation and skill, even if a record like this was often recorded during periods of personal disagreement and avoiding each other tracking their parts in isolation.

Synth History: How important do you think effects – like reverb, compression, delay, and so on – are when it comes to creating music, and do you have any tips on utilizing effects?

Tim Hecker: I think they're huge and evergreen. Reverb comes and goes in vogue, but its potential effect when used creatively is completely altering anything you send into it.

My only tip would be to try to go crazy with effects to the point where you no longer understand what is happening, where the source material separates from the process of the signal treatment and it becomes some kind of manifestation of a dream state. Part of the trick is to lose yourself and not control it. Signal chains that have three delays, a bunch of compressors, reverbs, etc. Compression into expansion. Short room verbs into massive caverns. Then pitch that down an octave and you're somewhere different.

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Photos provided by Tim Hecker.