FIBRE! AMA 12/05/2019
AMA:
Q: What really got you into music?
I got into this type of music when I was really young, even though I didn’t really realize it. I first heard daft punk when I first came to the US, back in around 2003 when I was 5 years old. I distinctly remember hearing One More Time on the radio, back in the day Discovery had been out for 2 years already but it appeared on the radio every now and then. I loved that song so much, it felt like my calling from a very very young age. You know how people talk about finding your “calling?” It quite literally felt like that song was calling to me. I had never heard anything like that in my whole life. But I never knew that the song was or who wrote it, I was too young to understand who the artist was. It was stuck in my head until I was 13, completely unaware of who made I started getting into stuff other than top 40 music around that time, I started with stuff like the Beatles yknow lmao. But then I got to electronic music and heard Discovery. It immediately felt like my calling. I owe every piece of musical success and determination that I got from that album.
Q: When did you start to produce Music and Future Funk?
I started producing off and on when I was 12. I started seriously producing from when I was 13. A lot of people dont know this but FIBRE was originally a duo between my friend and I. The goal was to make better music and I was trying to teach him how to get up to the level that I was, which was at the time really not that advanced. So because I didn’t understand ableton enough to explain, he grew tired of the idea and FIBRE became a solo project. I started making future funk after finding that resurgence of funk based electronic music, around 2014 or so. I was already aware of it from 2012 onwards. It felt right to try to put my own twist on the genre, and as I am heavily influenced by the French House guys of the early 2000’s I tried to make my style of FF an effortful craft.
Q: Do you have any favorite drinks/booze? Doesn’t have to be alcohol.
I am actually not a big drinker! I actually did drink quite a lot last night but that was the first time in over a year and a half, aside from a few sips here and there. I am straight up a go to bed at 10 pm, wake up and do work, be productive, feel rewarded sorta person. But I do always love a great glass of rosé.
Q: If you had the ability to talk to your younger self what would you say?
I honestly don’t know! My expectations for the project have been more than what I ever expected. Maybe one thing I would say to myself is to not be too hard on myself. I am a hard worker and I tend to put myself down if I don’t meet my expectations. So I guess I would tell my younger self to chill out a bit. I’m still struggling with that, but I try my best.
Q: Do you see yourself as a Future Funk artist only, or do you see yourself branching to different genres in the future?
Absolutely not, I really do feel like Future Funk was just a gateway for what I can actually do. Since then I have made a lot of original works. I have a no bullshit standard for myself, if I don’t think it’s a high quality track I won’t put it out. I’ve relaxed my standards a bit just so I can still have fun with the project, but I’m very much a french house/Disco inspired artist. I do have side projects but I keep very lowkey about them. With FIBRE, although I still do whatever I want, I do have to also focus on giving my audience good music. So the pressure can be high as a college student. With my side projects I do a lot more genres, I just don’t talk about them as they’re a place where I can make music without any real judgement.
Q: Why did you choose the name Fibre?
The origin for FIBRE is actually really funny, I almost changed my name a few times because I used to really, really dislike how generic it sounded. A lot of my friends told me not to worry because it had a good ring to it. But basically, when I started my SoundCloud account around 2013 or so I ran a band name generator. But it was a rock band generator or something, so I got “Flight of the Avian” as a generated result. 13 year old me went “wow, that sounds dope!” but then I never wrote it down, and went to bed that night. The next day, my brain somehow twisted it into “Fiber of the Avian” and that was what the SoundCloud account was called for a week or so. Later on I thought the name sounded stupid, so it was originally “Fiber.” I switched it to “Fibre” because it had more of an European origin, I was born there anyways. The goal of the project as it went along was to show that yes, you can make good music with just a laptop. You don’t need to shell out big bucks to make a great record in this day and age, also I wanted Fibre to be associated to things that were electronic in nature, so it evened out well I think.
Q: What other Future Funk artists do you like to listen to, if any?
Yes actually, I used to listen to a lot more FF back when I was helping co-run Future Society Collective. I love ConsciousThoughts, Agrume, SEASON, Snowshoo and all of those other guys. I don’t have as close contact with a lot of them anymore, but my favorite artist right now in the FF scene is ev.exi. He REALLY inspires me on the daily to make great tunes and I really think that he’s at a skill level that’s beyond me right now haha.
Q: What was the greatest moment of your musical career?
It’s honestly hard to pinpoint what is the greatest moment of my career… but honestly, if you made me pick only one it was probably when Alan from Coraspect helped to put 810 Deluxe out on vinyl. The first vinyl record I bought was Daft Punk’s Discovery, and I distinctly remember getting the Amazon package and opening it back then. When I first saw the record, I thought to myself: “Wow, I swear that one day, I’ll have a record just like this.” And this year, it happened. It showed me that if I push forward, with just enough skill and practice, you can fulfill your dreams.
Admittedly, I reached the goal I wanted the most. But it didn’t go the way that I expected it to. Back then, I thought that being put on wax meant that you were famous or something, that you had a huge team to help you and you were touring around the world. I remember looking at tracks with 1k plays way back and thinking “Damn, these people must be superstars.” But reaching the vinyl goal was way different, I did all of the artwork, mixing mastering myself. I was very heavily involved in the creative direction and the manufacturing process. No one aside from Alan helped with that. It’s just funny to think that I manifested that goal in a way that I completely didn’t see coming.
Q: If you can collab with anyone or any group, from any time period but with todays technology, who would it be?
Hmm… see, the thing is that I would love to collab with a bunch of cool, famous people. But aside from maybe Billboard (fantastic French Touch musician who produced Kesha’s Cannibal and a few Britney Spears tracks) I honestly only have goals to collaborate in this scene at the moment. My producer friends are truly the main inspiration I pull from every day and I’m very thankful for them.
Q: What are your “goals” as far as music production and playing music. Aka what would be a plateau for you, in your early music career.
I think that the plateau that I’m already starting to face is that while I can make original tracks, I do mostly every single song by ear. I do play guitar and some very basic piano but it’s all by ear. I know basic music theory but never really use it. I just kinda hear music in my head, and I put it in my DAW. But that was something that took years upon years of practice. I think that the way to fix that would be to really start taking my instrumentation skills more seriously. I know I’m more than capable of picking up and improving on instruments. After all, a DAW is just a very advanced instrument (depending on the way you use it, of course)
Q: I noticed ~2 years ago that you were giving tips about music production on your Instagram or Twitter, i don’t remember. Are you still doing it? And will you be available to teach some people more about it, like a masterclass in the future?
I used to do that partially because I was busy transforming my IG account into a mixing/mastering/production services account. I was very tight on money back then, but since then I do a lot of side gigs that help me pay off my tuition. I stopped doing it because I realized that I am an artist first, not someone who just offers artistry as a service. You may have heard a lot of albums from other FF artists that I have mixed and mastered for. I did the first 2 Barbwalters albums, I did the Pad Chennington album, I did ev.exi Remember on vinyl too.
I would love to do some type of tutorial channel or masterclass for people, but the issue is that with my busy college schedule I barely have the time to put in any work towards my music. That’s why my 2nd EP is quite literally 100% done on my hard drive, but I can’t release it cause finals are kicking my ass haha.
Soon I will though. I always wanted to help people learn and hopefully my schedule becomes clear enough to do something of that nature.
Q: Where are you from and how old are you?
I am 20 years old, I was born in Brasov, Romania but I have been living in the US, since I was 3 years old!
Q: How does it feel to manage your music career and your irl life with school and other issues ?
It’s very difficult. I sometimes still have trouble managing it. The main reason why Montaime, my label is currently inactive and not pumping out singles (and vinyl releases wink wink) is because of school. I work a part time job, have a double major, run my label, have my own personal and social life, help my family out with their business etc. It can get hard to manage, but I try my absolute best to do it all!
Of course, sometimes I have to sit back and tell myself to chill out. Cause honestly, no one can manage all of that constantly. Breaks are crucial, taking care of yourself is a must.
Q: What does your IRL friends think about FF and Fibre?
Well, when I was in early high school a lot of people found out and I kinda got picked on for it. I usually kept quiet about it. Now my current friends in college and my girlfriend are super super super supportive. I sometimes avoid talking about the project because I don’t want it to seem like I am showing off, for example I was hesitant to celebrate 810 Deluxe selling out. But they are always super positive about it and a lot of them listen to my stuff, and enjoy it! So I’m very thankful for that.
A lot of them don’t know about FF as a whole tho.
Q: Any plans to move Montaime forward towards more mainstream audiences?
Yes, that is eventually the goal. For now we want to focus on the community that always gives back to us, you guys! I am too ambitious of a person to leave Montaime as a small underdog label though. The goal of the label is to treat my artists right, and to give them great opportunities so they can expand their careers. Helping other people is why I made the label in the first place!
Q: How do you see the Future Funk scene in 5, 10, 15 years?
That’s a very hard question because I honestly don’t know what will happen. I will say this though- the more popular that FF gets, the more careful we will have to be about uncleared samples. I am aware that many Japanese sublabels are quickly starting to relicense their old, obscure JFunk tracks. These people are aware of our scene and the profit that can come from it. Which is why I think for the next 5 years, we have to be very careful about how FF is made. This is not to scare people out of sampling, but I’ve already seen C&D’s sent to some of my friends that sampled tracks without permission.
The JFunk saturation bubble in the scene is concerning because that’s where most of the legal action seems to be gearing up to be. I really hope that FF can continue to be a genre which smaller artists can start making music and become something great.
Q: When will you release 2014–2016 on vinyl?
Very soon. We are still trying to sell tapes, I think the quantity on the tapes sold right now is 150 since I am a smaller artist. The more tapes that NCR sells, is the quicker it will come out. The amount of 200–250 is also important because it will dictate the demand for vinyl that we put out. Keep that in mind!
Q: Any production advice on transitions / arrangement?
I would say that the most important thing that helped me is taking a song that you like, and dissecting it to see where the intro starts and ends, alongside the hook, chorus, outro etc. I would do that with Justice tracks and see how many bars each individual part of the arrangement was, and sometimes I would copy those arrangements for some of my old songs! Doing that really helped me figure out arrangement better, and gave me better insight on arrangement variation and patterns.
Q: Do your parents appreciate your music?
They do actually. My parents come from Romania so when I started, they did believe it was nothing more than a distraction. I used to do less than exceptional early on in school, before I got older and matured a bit more. They thought that music was just kinda distracting me from everything that was important, but I understand why as they specifically immigrated to the US to try to give me a better life that I would’ve had back home. By the time I was in college, my parents were really proud of the project because they saw that it was not only helping me out financially, but that I was motivated by it and that it helped me keep my sanity in check when I needed it the most.
Q: What do you think of Flammy’s project Flaminghosts?
I’m aware of it! The Fibre / Old Town Road one cracked me up. The original photo on SoundCloud inspired me to photoshop a similar pic. They always say yee haw but never ask you haw yee.
Q: What is your favourite boba/bubble tea flavour?
Thai Milk Tea with Black Boba.
Q: On a similar path like Skylar Spence, do you plan on taking your musical journey to more leaps and bounds than just Future Funk and French House?
Yes I definitely do. I have been getting especially inspired by Lenno and Nu-disco tracks that have a pop flavour to them. I also really love the style of fusq. He is one of my top inspirations. It’s very electro inspired but also fun to listen to and has a cute vibe to it.
Q: What is your go to sample album?
Commercially? Has to be a tie between Discovery or Justice’s Cross. Within my own friend group? PROUX — Back By Popular Demand. That man is absolutely crazy. I am so blessed he was interested in Montaime back when it was practically nothing, and that he remixed 810.
Q: How did your album 810 impact your musical journey?
810 was very important to me, it was my first ever EP release. I’ve talked about this on twitter but the single and EP “810” is based off of my birthday, August 10. I finished the single and therefore the full EP on my 18th birthday, back in 2016. I very much believe it was a beginning taste of adulthood and the experiences and pressures that would come with it.
My 2nd upcoming EP Rendezvous is darker but still fun to dance to, mostly original tracks with some microsampling. All of the tracks took total about 3 years to polish and refine into what they are today. It is very much an album about mental health and it is the first EP I’ve done that speaks to more than just a personal story or experience of mine. The process to make Rendezvous was grueling though, with school in the way. Many times I really thought I would never finish it. I hope people enjoy it when its out this summer.
Q: What are your key plugins for Future Funk?
To basically go over everything I use in a nutshell, I’ve been using Ableton since the very beginning. Its sample manipulation is fantastic. For original stuff, it’s also fine.
My drums used to mostly be processed DMX and 707 drum machine drums. Nowadays I use mostly processed 505 snares and a mix between DMX and 707 kicks. The 505 is very cheap sounding but it can but sound massive if you process them correctly. I layer a lot of acoustic elements over the drums and process specific bands individually before gluing them together and rendering.
Plugins wise, I use a lot of the stock Ableton stuff for processing samples. For synths, it is mostly just u-he’s Diva (my TOP plugin of all time, hands down), Serum, some Kontakt libraries for Rhodes/Piano and Lounge Lizard. I used to use Ominsphere too but it broke and I’ve been too lazy to fix the library hah. I would love to get Keyscape and Trillian soon though!
Q: You have to make a track with no samples or plugins. What is your first port of call?
Ableton’s Operator. Generate a very low sinewave and bounce it down. Generate whitenoise, bounce it for the high end of a kick, a snare and hi-hat. Use a higher pitched sine filtered down for the midrange of the kick and snare.
Use Operator and Wavetable interchangeably to make practically any sound I want.
Record any extra percussion or drum layering elements using my microphone.
Q: First off, how are you today? Secondly, will you ever do more recreation stuff again?
I’m doing pretty good, thanks for asking!
Yeah, I would love to but I am simply too busy to work on tutorials / breakdowns right now. (Please see Q: I noticed ~2 years ago that you were giving tips about music production on your Instagram…)
Q: Will you join Sailor Team one day?
I dunno… if the opportunity comes to me I would consider it. It sounds like a lot of fun and in the end, music is music. I would like to make the same effortful music I’m known for right now and that will never change.
I know the guys are very selective about who they let in. I’m probably too much of a loudmouth to join… I know a lot of people know me to be someone who has been critical of practices in FF that are considered on the lazier side before. That’s absolutely not to say that there aren’t amazing artists on Sailor Team, and I respect each and every one of the artists equally. They’re people after all, just trying to live out their dreams! I can’t hate on that at all.
Q: What do you use for your bass?
The original future funk FIBRE bass everyone knows about is actually a JX-3P patch made by VANTAGE! He sent over a bounce of that patch to Tendencies and I years ago, I ended up making an Ableton instrument out of it and added an effects rack. That’s the bass you hear on pretty much every single track like Nouvel Elan, Echoplex, 810, even the collab I did with SUPERSEX420. A lot of tracks I made use that exact same bass patch!
Nowadays it can depend, sometimes I just make a sine bass in Serum and layer it with a higher octave bass made in something like Diva. The characteristic FH bass can be made using something like a bass slap sample, lowpassed and with a resonance notch at 300–400 hz. You can do the same on a sine bass in Serum too, the midrange boost is the most important part.
Sometimes I just use good old slap bass or processed bass samples. It honestly depends on the track’s context.
Q: Linn or DMX, and why?
It depends on what you’re making. DMX probably for higher energy house tracks. Linn definitely works better on more funk influenced, Disco based tracks. Context matters!
Q: Any plans to make music outside your current genres?
I do actively make music outside current genres, I’ve tried my hand at a bunch of genres before. The only ones I’m actively making right now is French House, Future Funk, Instrumental Hip-Hop and the occasional Lofi stuff. I sometimes sample, sometimes I don’t. It just depends on how I’m feeling that day.
Q: You’ve got a great reputation in the community as someone with top mastering and production abilities. With that in mind, is music already something you see as a profession, or something you aspire to make a living from? Or do you consider it a hobby?
The short answer is it’s not a full career but it’s also not just a random hobby. I put a lot of time and dedication into what I do. It would be amazing to make a living off of it one day, but I don’t exclusively bank on my music to help me get by.
When I started off, I was motivated by the idea of fame+fortune just like every kid. I obviously had no idea what I was wishing for as I didn’t know how toxic the music industry can be. But as I grew older, that mentality of making it my main job started to seem less feasible to me. I favored stability over the cliche rockstar dream. That’s not to say that I haven’t been able to make some stable profit selling my music.
I was already good at tech based work since I was a kid, that was one of my first passions, so why not major in Computer Science? Yes, it sucks into my time as a musician, but I want to get to a point where I’m making steady money so I can invest it into FIBRE and the label, make more passive income and fuel my own passions alongside others. If I were to become a career musician, I would be in fear of financial instability constantly. Plus, I can always rely on music and label as my “”escape””, that’s part of how I relax and take my mind off of college stress. I know it’ll always be a part of my life no matter what.
Q: Any last words?
Keep an eye out for music this year from me and the Montaime boys. You can expect the EP this summer, but expect a full singles album sometime by the end of the year. I’m talking at least 9–10 NEW singles that people haven’t been heard before. FIBRE 2016–2018 is also something I’m considering as a compilation, but it’ll depend on how my schedule will be!
Montaime will also be doing physical releases soon. We are working hard to try to curate some quality releases from some well known people. We will be doing our usual style but we’re not afraid to put out some Future Funk stuff every once in a while.
Thanks for the opportunity!
This AMA was held in the Future Funk Subreddit Discord. Join it here: https://discord.gg/guF4qvU
