"It's a fantastic playground" - in conversation with Kirk Monteux

Having a label must be an entirely different experience. What is the name of yours?

The label was called mysoftmusic and was a pure online label, where I mainly sold my own productions as MP3 downloads.

 

Why the past tense?

Well later, people asked for playlists, to stream the material. This was impossible for me to realize, because in order to ensure worldwide trouble-free streaming, I would have had to invest in expensive server technology.

Even more years later, around 2016, no one could really deal with MP3 files anymore and the sale of MP3 files went to zero.

The label was mainly specialized in music for meditation and yoga, so in fact I already had a certain regular audience who had been working in the healing arts, massage, yoga studios environments and the like.

But even this clientele only wanted to work with playlists and streaming only.

I then closed the online shop and brought all my material to all streaming services.

The name, mysoftmusic, however, was not so suitable for an artist, because it sounded too much like a business. But since I already had some success under mysoftmusic, the name had to stay and so it is now called, Kirk Monteux mysoftmusic.

 

You also mentioned scoring for pictures! Any out-of-the-ordinary films that you scored?

I have to say correctly, I produced and composed music for commercials and for image films, so more on the corporate side. No, there was no art movie or anything like that with my music.

However, there was a very experimental indie theatre in the Frankfurt area, for which I made a lot of sound design and the like.

 

 

Composing music for installations, exhibitions is also a not-too-usual field, what got you into that? What are your most memorable projects in that field?

I had the honour of setting a performance of Danton's Death by Georg Büchner.

This staging was very gloomy, and so the sound design had a lot of freedom to experiment with all kinds of sounds.

There were also some musical inserts, but packing the brutality and the dark period of the French revolution into sound collages was quite a great task.

 

 

One of my most important questions: how did you get into the audio field?

Growing up in a family of musicians, I of course sat at the piano as a five-year-old and then trained as a classical guitarist.

As a child I always had a very technical interest such as amateur radio (callsign: DO3KI) and I dreamed of working as a sound engineer in a large broadcaster.

As a 19-year-old, I moved to Berlin and came into contact with many people from the electronics scene there. That moved me to build my first own recording studio to produce music partly acoustically and electronically myself.

It must've been such a vibrant time and place, to get into electronic music in Berlin at such a young age. Tell us about the impact it made!

At that time I had actually only played my guitar: classic, a little flamenco, jazz and a lot of improvisation.

A friend of mine, who at the time worked as a sound engineer at the Tangerine Dream studio, invited me to his private home studio to record my guitar playing. He had one of the first Akai samplers. I think it was an S600 with which he then recorded small phrases from my guitar, and then later cut them with Steinberg 24 in all possible clips.

I have to admit, I was somewhat shocked at the time, I had a feeling of deception, because I was a pure instrumentalist. But I quickly recognised the creative possibilities of such a setup and my friend Thomas had moved me very significantly in this direction with a lot of music that I had never heard before and my interest in electronic production grew.

Of course, I always had the acoustic instrument in mind. I think that's why I'm at home in both worlds today.

 

 

What are the styles you prefer working on in the studio?

In my childhood, I was almost exclusively surrounded by classical music. But since I was also a child of the eighties, I also heard something like Level 42, Genesis and the like.

My musical taste is very diverse from classical to jazz-fusion, rock-jazz, etc.

All these genres have always inspired me. In the meantime, my musical work is more focused on ambient and meditation music.

I worked as a DJ for over 25 years and basically played all genres from all decades for my audience as a service provider. This gave me a great experience in these different music decades, which helped me to compose and produce commissioned productions for film and advertising for all target groups and tastes.

 

And what about the time you started working in the studio?

In my first own studio I was very pop-oriented with my music productions. With my partner Brian Cornell we have produced very song-structured music with vocals and a very tight arrangement. The A&R managers at the time expected the hook line to be heard after 1 minute at the latest.

One of our highlights was the song "Sing It".

With a fantastic singer we could even land a dancefloor club hit, and had radio airplay throughout Germany, Switzerland and Austria. It was the nineties and the established structures to be played on the radio actually aspired to me inside and I had already known at the time that I’m actually into pure instrumental music.

With pure instrumental production in the field of ambient music and New Age I feel very liberated and can do a lot according to my own flow.

Lately, a song may not be longer than 3 minutes to land on Spotify playlists. This is now again such a restriction that frustrates me.

But all in all, it's a fantastic playground and I'm glad I've evolved into it and I think I'll stay there.

 

We see this case a lot, that a professional at one point in his/her life works as a DJ. Any other takeaways from those years?

It was very unexpected circumstances that made me work as a DJ. Until then, I had some experience with live music on stage, in a duet or solo on the acoustic guitar.

These performances, however, were always quite a torture for me, because I had suffered unbelievably from stage fright. Then fate came and gave me a push in a completely different direction.

I had an accident and lost part of a fingertip, so that playing the guitar on stage had already become completely impossible. It was still good to make recordings in the studio, but live music was simply no longer possible. Nevertheless, I wanted to go to the audience and be on stage.

Despite the stage fright, it pulled me to the stage again and again, and so I discovered DJing, and as a big surprise I didn't have stage fright at all as a DJ, quite the contrary.

It was the best thing that could happen to me. I had a lot of fun.

 

And what are the projects you're most proud of?

There were some projects in my musical creation that I am very proud of.

In addition to the dancefloor hit "Sing It" that I had already told you about, there was another big project that my partner Brian Cornell and I had worked on.

Under the stage name S&K we composed and produced about 20 tracks for the Konami game "Dance Dance Revolution" (DDR).

Originally introduced in the arcades of Japan, this game was then ported to the Sony PlayStation.

There were then countless sound carriers and DDR versions. One of the tracks that had the greatest success was "Get Up 'n Move".

 

 

Currently, I am very proud that I have taken the step of converting my studio into a complete Dolby Atmos studio, which also brings me on completely new paths musically and compositionally. It is a super stimulation to work with this new technique.

 

With Dolby Atmos gaining more and more popularity, how did it change your approach?

The New Age Ambient music I'm making now fits perfectly with the sound clouds and atmospheres for immersive listening. In the beginning I had composed and mixed normally on stereo, and then mixed it later in Dolby Atmos.

But after a few productions I realised that it is much more efficient and creative to work in Dolby Atmos right away with the composition process.

 

Which type of Buso desk are you using, and what brought you to that decision?

I had helped a friend to build the Artist Classic and got to know the concept, the workmanship and the materials. Until then I had a kind of self-built facility in my studio, which was extremely heavy and massive and since I often move, it was always quite a burden to transport it.

I had then decided on the Studio XL, which perfectly suited my needs. Starting with the height-adjustable, split table, with which I could then bring my monitor to perfect height and not least with the heavy duty rails I was finally able to integrate an 88 full weighted keyboard into my studio.

 

 

Who are the artists that influenced your works the most?

As I said, there are many different genres of music in my life. But as far as technical quality and innovation are concerned, artists such as Tangerine Dream or Andreas Vollenweider were certainly decisive.

 

Any other influences from the audio field?

There is one producer that I particularly admire, and that is Trevor Horn.

 

Let's talk gear! Looking at your studio, I can imagine you have a lot to share about that!

In my first studio there was of course almost exclusively analogue gear. A Tascam M600 console, a Fostex 1/2 inch 16 track machine and the usual Atari stuff. Later came Pro Tools. In 2000 came a new digital console, a Sony DMX R100.

From about 2008 I only worked in the box, which did not inspire me in the long run, so that I came back to hardware instruments. The actual music creation comes almost exclusively from hardware. However, the sound processing still takes place with very high-quality plugins.

Today my studio is based on UAD Apollo interfaces.

 

We often hear our community saying that working exclusively in-the-box can be uninspiring. Can you tell us about your work process?

Workflow is extremely important to me; with one switch and two clicks the whole studio is ready for use. There are also various work scenarios such as stereo production, Dolby Atmos production, photo work and video editing.

Everything is united in one workplace. The Studio XL offers so much space and possibilities to lay cables and to connect devices.

All devices, all controllers, Stream Decks etc. are within easy reach and the whole thing on a compact footprint. I am extremely satisfied with the current structure and workflow.

 

Going back a little bit to the previous topic, I always ask our customers to reflect on the analogue v. digital debate. What's your take?

Simply put, I work with the best of both worlds. For creative work such as making music, I have now returned to analogue and digital hardware. The haptics and the relationship to a real instrument gives me the best inspiration. On the other hand, the sound processing possibilities of digital technology are now so mature and so innovative that most analog devices simply can no longer keep up.

Last but not least, the reproducibility is the total recall of plugins, especially if you are working on many different projects at the same time, simply the best choice in terms of workflow.

 

Thank you so much Kirk for your time! And as usual, now is the time, when we ask you to contribute one song to our Buso playlist!

As a closing note, what could work better, than some healing music :)