Oneohtrix Point Never

Q: Every time I've seen you play, you're using a [Roland] Juno-60. Is that your bedrock?

A: "It was my dad's. He bought it in 1983, when I was one year old. He bought the Juno because he couldn't afford the Yamaha DX-7, which was like the pop synth at the time."

Q: And you just inherited it at some point?

A: "Yeah, I really loved it as a child—it looked like a cockpit dashboard. I think it made me resent the Samick piano upstairs. Like, the Juno was in the dark, in a cold basement under a plastic sheet, and the Samick was upstairs and it signified MOM BEATDOWNS. She was my teacher, strict Russian-style, but she let me quit piano, so she wasn't really that strict. Anyway, I started using the Juno in high school. I was in a jam band with my best friends. We wanted to sound like Herbie Hancock Thrust. "

Q: Do you use the computer to generate any of your sounds per se, or is it strictly a way for you to edit and arrange?

A: "Not really. I use YouTube a lot. I use some other synths. But I don't use any sound-generating software."

and later in the interview:

Q: Do you think of YouTube as an instrument?

A: "Well, I was, but post-working with Antony [Hegarty, on a piano-and-voice version of "Returnal"], I'm into the piano again. My mom and dad will be on the next record, you can bet that."

Q: It's interesting because you have YouTube, this very abstract and impersonal thing, next to this synthesizer you've known since you were one year old. It's a divide.

A: "Well, I feel like any analysis of our generation has to start with the idea that we're linkmasters between centralized and decentralized cultures. Before Prodigy, through Prodigy, through Navigator, and now, Tube. What that means is that we're primed to be cyber-anthropologists and make "discoveries," but we still remember a time when we'd go to Newbury Comics and check out the staff picks. It's such an important part of the psychological makeup of our generation. It's just my social and familial reality. It's really heavy for me, but when I step back and look at all of it, it makes perfect sense."

"Yeah, I mean I'm not out there with a DR680 getting all Nat Geo in the field. I just use a Roland SP-404."

"I got inspired by this particular plugin called Serum. It's just a software synthesizer"

"I love [u-he] Zebra and used it extensively on this record."

"Cubase was a pretty short-lived love affair. I had a good handle on Pro Tools before Ableton, but it seemed to me to be no longer necessary."

"The lead vocals are a software synthesizer called Chipspeech. I like this sort of saccharin, cartoony, ridiculous voice"

"I have the Juno-60 that I mentioned, an Alesis Andromeda, which is very popular these days. Everybody's putting out analogue synths again and the Andromeda is a late 90s synth but all analogue. It's probably somewhat anachronistic today because there's so much around like it now, but I love how it sounds. I have a Waldorf Microwave XTC that I worship and control with a software editor called Monstrum XT that allows me to randomise its parameters, as I'm not very good at programming synths. I've also got an Elektron Analog Four, but the rest of the stuff's been decommissioned. If I'm not using something, I tend to sell it and move on, so I'm not too sentimental about hardware synths."

Daniel has an MPK Mini, an SP-404 sampler, and, and a Macbook in this image of his live setup.

"That was a synth called Enzyme, and It was like a really buggy synth that crashed all the time, but it was the most corrosive, gray, poisonous sound."

"I have the Juno-60 that I mentioned, an Alesis Andromeda, which is very popular these days. Everybody's putting out analogue synths again and the Andromeda is a late 90s synth but all analogue. It's probably somewhat anachronistic today because there's so much around like it now, but I love how it sounds. I have a Waldorf Microwave XTC that I worship and control with a software editor called Monstrum XT that allows me to randomise its parameters, as I'm not very good at programming synths. I've also got an Elektron Analog Four, but the rest of the stuff's been decommissioned. If I'm not using something, I tend to sell it and move on, so I'm not too sentimental about hardware synths."

Mentioned on Reverb and sold through OPN's official store in late April, 2021.

The OB-6, meanwhile, is a punchy, sinister-sounding synth with a cinematic bent. "When I think of Oberheim, I instantly think of cold and glassy '80s slasher sfx, but it can do triumphant Van Halen / Rush power chord stuff as well, which I enjoy."

He says it wound up on Magic on "Lost But Never Alone," as well as on Uncut Gems. Matt Cohn, Lopatin's go-to engineer and mixer says, "I feel like the 'Fountain' cue from Uncut Gems was a particularly exemplary use of it."

"I have the Juno-60 that I mentioned, an Alesis Andromeda, which is very popular these days. Everybody's putting out analogue synths again and the Andromeda is a late 90s synth but all analogue. It's probably somewhat anachronistic today because there's so much around like it now, but I love how it sounds. I have a Waldorf Microwave XTC that I worship and control with a software editor called Monstrum XT that allows me to randomise its parameters, as I'm not very good at programming synths. I've also got an Elektron Analog Four, but the rest of the stuff's been decommissioned. If I'm not using something, I tend to sell it and move on, so I'm not too sentimental about hardware synths."

This was the only real loop-based track on the album. I think Joel and Dan came up with a bed while syncing together the MPC and D-50.

“Black Snow” breaks into a climax buttressed by retro synth arpeggios, it pauses for a solo on the Daxophone. https://pitchfork.com/reviews/tracks/oneohtrix-point-never-black-snow/

"No Good" is the last track on the record, and it's held together by this sample from a piece of music by Hans Reichel, a German guitarist and inventor of the daxophone. I used his sample, wrote the vocal melody around it, and added a stoner-metal riff in the second half of the tune." https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/wnydbx/oneohtrix-point-never-told-us-the-story-behind-every-single-track-on-garden-of-delete

"I like a lot of iZotope stuff for processing. Their EQs are great, but their spectral sampling synth, Iris, is really good too, so props to them for that."

OPN talking about the track Sleep Dealer from Replica: "A lot of the low end on the record was Al processing the main sampler track through a Sherman Filterbank."

Al Carson talking about the track 'Explain' from Replica: "Think there was also some Juno 60 and Memory Man mixed in there."

OPN's SL-20 can be seen behind the SP-404 at 6:44 in this video.

OPN's Headrush 2 can be seen at 6:50 in this video.

"We got a good koto sound in Omnisphere and distorted that through tape."

@ 1:15 He describes how he made "Ballad of Howie Bling" with patches off the Moog One

"I use Spectrasonics Trilian a lot for the Chapman Stick-style stuff, and on the previous record I used Omnisphere a lot for choir sounds, but that's not news - everybody knows that."

OPN's Memory Man can be seen in the bottom left corner of the image at 2:14 in this video.

OPN's MSQ can be seen at 6:43 in this video.

"Cubase was a pretty short-lived love affair. I had a good handle on Pro Tools before Ableton, but it seemed to me to be no longer necessary."

"The vocals on [Lift] are these chopped up and processed, preset EDM vocals that I found on this rompler software VST called reFX Nexus, which is basically purchasing finished music to play with your hands."

OPN talking about the track 'Power of Persuasion' from Replica; "The Yamaha CS-01 was a keyboard I got on suggestion from Robert Lowe (Lichens) and it’s a tiny monosynth from the early 80s that shreds, and we got it to sound like trumpets."

In this article from Reverb, OPN is qouted as having a Kijimi in his studio: "After the last shop, Lopatin and Cohn used the proceeds to build out a studio where they do a lot of their work these days. Though a small room, it has a good sound, they tell us, with all the gear they need ready at hand, including a Moog One and the Black Corporation Kjimi."

"Cubase was a pretty short-lived love affair. I had a good handle on Pro Tools before Ableton, but it seemed to me to be no longer necessary."