Ryan Elder

Quoted on the official product page.

“Frontier Studio Monitors are the perfect combination of amazing sound and fantastic design. Output and Barefoot paid meticulous attention to detail both sonically and physically.”

Mentioned and pictured in this May 2019 Sound on Sound interview.

As it turned out, the variety that a commercial music house offered was a good training ground for the diversity of music that Rick And Morty would demand. It also put him in Hollywood's post-production milieu where, in 2006, he met Justin Roiland, who, with partner Dan Harmon, was developing various animation series. One of those, Dog World, needed a theme song, and Elder concocted one, using his growing collection of synths, including a Korg Prologue and Microkorg, Moog Rogue and Yamaha DX7 and DX100, as well as Native Instruments Kontakt libraries.

Mentioned and pictured in this May 2019 Sound on Sound interview.

As it turned out, the variety that a commercial music house offered was a good training ground for the diversity of music that Rick And Morty would demand. It also put him in Hollywood's post-production milieu where, in 2006, he met Justin Roiland, who, with partner Dan Harmon, was developing various animation series. One of those, Dog World, needed a theme song, and Elder concocted one, using his growing collection of synths, including a Korg Prologue and Microkorg, Moog Rogue and Yamaha DX7 and DX100, as well as Native Instruments Kontakt libraries.

Mentioned in this May 2019 Sound on Sound interview.

As it turned out, the variety that a commercial music house offered was a good training ground for the diversity of music that Rick And Morty would demand. It also put him in Hollywood's post-production milieu where, in 2006, he met Justin Roiland, who, with partner Dan Harmon, was developing various animation series. One of those, Dog World, needed a theme song, and Elder concocted one, using his growing collection of synths, including a Korg Prologue and Microkorg, Moog Rogue and Yamaha DX7 and DX100, as well as Native Instruments Kontakt libraries.

Mentioned in this May 2019 Sound on Sound interview.

As it turned out, the variety that a commercial music house offered was a good training ground for the diversity of music that Rick And Morty would demand. It also put him in Hollywood's post-production milieu where, in 2006, he met Justin Roiland, who, with partner Dan Harmon, was developing various animation series. One of those, Dog World, needed a theme song, and Elder concocted one, using his growing collection of synths, including a Korg Prologue and Microkorg, Moog Rogue and Yamaha DX7 and DX100, as well as Native Instruments Kontakt libraries.

Mentioned in this May 2019 Sound on Sound interview.

As it turned out, the variety that a commercial music house offered was a good training ground for the diversity of music that Rick And Morty would demand. It also put him in Hollywood's post-production milieu where, in 2006, he met Justin Roiland, who, with partner Dan Harmon, was developing various animation series. One of those, Dog World, needed a theme song, and Elder concocted one, using his growing collection of synths, including a Korg Prologue and Microkorg, Moog Rogue and Yamaha DX7 and DX100, as well as Native Instruments Kontakt libraries.

Mentioned in this May 2019 Sound on Sound interview.

Ryan Elder has learned to wring a lot out of a little, digging deeply into the software to find what he wants. "These sample libraries are extremely powerful; you can utilise basically every knob on your keyboard. A lot of them have keyswitches where you can change articulation. So, say I've got my cellos playing an arco [bowed] section, very long notes. Then, I'll use C1 to trigger the long notes. Then I need to do a short section, I'll use C#1, which triggers the short articulation. So you get a lot of power and flexibility out of these libraries by using these keyswitches and then using the mod wheel for dynamics and swells. The dynamics are important, as is the actual recording of the instruments playing [at different volumes], which makes it sound more real. The expression wheel adds a secondary dynamic layer.

"Some of [the sample libraries] are just absolutely spectacular and have a lot of the sort of textures and sounds and the ability to manipulate them in a way that is original to whatever I'm creating. In particular, some of the ones I use a lot are made by Project SAM. They have several libraries called Symphobia, which have a lot of the textures and kind of orchestral palette that I use. All the Project SAM stuff works really well together because it's all recorded on the same stage with the same mics and the same reverb and other processing, so it blends well together. Then, there's other libraries I really like — Cinematic Strings is really good for the strings; CineBrass for the brass is really good. They have a lot of the instruments and all the articulations that you would want.

"In the mix, I'll put an Altiverb [reverb] on a bus and I'll bus each individual orchestral element to a different level until it blends nicely. I use the Massey L2007 plug-in as my hard limiter for mastering. For Rick And Morty, a lot of the orchestral stuff sounds so good just right out of the sampler that I don't tend to use too much EQ on the individual instruments themselves. But if I need to make something pop, or I need a little more rosin on the bow, I tend to go to the Focusrite EQ plug-in a lot, just because I know it pretty well."

Mentioned in this May 2019 Sound on Sound interview.

Ryan Elder has learned to wring a lot out of a little, digging deeply into the software to find what he wants. "These sample libraries are extremely powerful; you can utilise basically every knob on your keyboard. A lot of them have keyswitches where you can change articulation. So, say I've got my cellos playing an arco [bowed] section, very long notes. Then, I'll use C1 to trigger the long notes. Then I need to do a short section, I'll use C#1, which triggers the short articulation. So you get a lot of power and flexibility out of these libraries by using these keyswitches and then using the mod wheel for dynamics and swells. The dynamics are important, as is the actual recording of the instruments playing [at different volumes], which makes it sound more real. The expression wheel adds a secondary dynamic layer.

"Some of [the sample libraries] are just absolutely spectacular and have a lot of the sort of textures and sounds and the ability to manipulate them in a way that is original to whatever I'm creating. In particular, some of the ones I use a lot are made by Project SAM. They have several libraries called Symphobia, which have a lot of the textures and kind of orchestral palette that I use. All the Project SAM stuff works really well together because it's all recorded on the same stage with the same mics and the same reverb and other processing, so it blends well together. Then, there's other libraries I really like — Cinematic Strings is really good for the strings; CineBrass for the brass is really good. They have a lot of the instruments and all the articulations that you would want.

"In the mix, I'll put an Altiverb [reverb] on a bus and I'll bus each individual orchestral element to a different level until it blends nicely. I use the Massey L2007 plug-in as my hard limiter for mastering. For Rick And Morty, a lot of the orchestral stuff sounds so good just right out of the sampler that I don't tend to use too much EQ on the individual instruments themselves. But if I need to make something pop, or I need a little more rosin on the bow, I tend to go to the Focusrite EQ plug-in a lot, just because I know it pretty well."

Mentioned and pictured in this May 2019 Sound on Sound interview.

As it turned out, the variety that a commercial music house offered was a good training ground for the diversity of music that Rick And Morty would demand. It also put him in Hollywood's post-production milieu where, in 2006, he met Justin Roiland, who, with partner Dan Harmon, was developing various animation series. One of those, Dog World, needed a theme song, and Elder concocted one, using his growing collection of synths, including a Korg Prologue and Microkorg, Moog Rogue and Yamaha DX7 and DX100, as well as Native Instruments Kontakt libraries.

Mentioned and pictured in this May 2019 Sound on Sound interview.

Like Rick's spaceship, Elder's recording space is pretty utilitarian, with a Native Instruments Komplete Kontrol S61 keyboard controller and screens for his Pro Tools 12 HD rig at the centre of the system.

Pro Tools 12 HD is mentioned and pictured in this May 2019 Sound on Sound interview.

Like Rick's spaceship, Elder's recording space is pretty utilitarian, with a Native Instruments Komplete Kontrol S61 keyboard controller and screens for his Pro Tools 12 HD rig at the centre of the system.

Mentioned and pictured in this May 2019 Sound on Sound interview.

The design aesthetic of Elder's home studio could be characterised as dorm-room chic: a few posters and a couple of decorated skateboards hang on the walls, with guitars, basses and a cello near at hand. But otherwise, it's pretty utilitarian, with a Native Instruments Komplete Kontrol S61 keyboard controller and screens for his Pro Tools 12 HD system, and a couple of favourite outboard pieces in a rack, including a Universal Audio LA-610 MkII preamp/compressor.

Mentioned and pictured in this May 2019 Sound on Sound interview.

Virtually all of the recording is done direct; for the occasional acoustic instrument, Elder will pull out either an AKG C451B or C414 B-ULS microphone. There's no acoustical treatment to speak of, but Elder feels that none is necessary, really; he can reduce the contribution of the room by leaning in on his Mackie HR824 studio monitors or remove it by listening on his Beyer DT770 and Sennheiser IE 80S headphones.

Mentioned and pictured in this May 2019 Sound on Sound interview.

Virtually all of the recording is done direct; for the occasional acoustic instrument, Elder will pull out either an AKG C451B or C414 B-ULS microphone. There's no acoustical treatment to speak of, but Elder feels that none is necessary, really; he can reduce the contribution of the room by leaning in on his Mackie HR824 studio monitors or remove it by listening on his Beyer DT770 and Sennheiser IE 80S headphones.

Mentioned and pictured in this May 2019 Sound on Sound interview.

Virtually all of the recording is done direct; for the occasional acoustic instrument, Elder will pull out either an AKG C451B or C414 B-ULS microphone. There's no acoustical treatment to speak of, but Elder feels that none is necessary, really; he can reduce the contribution of the room by leaning in on his Mackie HR824 studio monitors or remove it by listening on his Beyer DT770 and Sennheiser IE 80S headphones.

Mentioned and pictured in this May 2019 Sound on Sound interview.

Virtually all of the recording is done direct; for the occasional acoustic instrument, Elder will pull out either an AKG C451B or C414 B-ULS microphone. There's no acoustical treatment to speak of, but Elder feels that none is necessary, really; he can reduce the contribution of the room by leaning in on his Mackie HR824 studio monitors or remove it by listening on his Beyer DT770 and Sennheiser IE 80S headphones.

Pictured in this May 2019 Sound on Sound interview.

Pictured in this May 2019 Sound on Sound interview.

Pictured in this May 2019 Sound on Sound interview.