SOPHIE made much of her early music on an Elektron Monomachine, and she said she wrote the BIPP bassline on a Yamaha Motif before recreating it in Native Instruments Razor. She recorded her pitched-up vocals with Logic's varispeed, moved to Ableton Live with Ableton Push, and kept a Clavia Nord Rack and an Akai AX60 in her studio.
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“After a few years of really using the Monomachine a lot, I stopped even looking at it. I can just close my eyes and start synthesizing sounds.”
“I had the Nord from when I was very young. It was my first ever synthesizer and I kept it around.”
“I found this synthesizer in the backroom of a club in Berlin with my old band.”
“I wrote the "BIPP" bassline on the Motif then recreated it in Razor, which is what you hear at the beginning.”
“I saw Razor as one of the final ingredients I needed to make this, sort of, SOPHIE-sounding music that I had in my mind.”
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“After a few years of really using the Monomachine a lot, I stopped even looking at it. I can just close my eyes and start synthesizing sounds.”
“I had the Nord from when I was very young. It was my first ever synthesizer and I kept it around.”
“I found this synthesizer in the backroom of a club in Berlin with my old band.”
“I wrote the "BIPP" bassline on the Motif then recreated it in Razor, which is what you hear at the beginning.”
“I saw Razor as one of the final ingredients I needed to make this, sort of, SOPHIE-sounding music that I had in my mind.”
“Logic has a varispeed function that allows you to change the speed and pitch of your whole project, like a turntable.”
“I then found that Ableton, along with, Ableton Push would allow me to make music in a way that comes naturally to me”
“With Ableton and Push, I had this one quite portable machine with which I could design any sounds I wanted”
“I think it really is my favorite music to listen to”
Above all the Elektron Monomachine: she said she could close her eyes and synthesize sounds on it. She also kept a Clavia Nord Rack, her first synth, an Akai AX60 she bought for 50 euros in Berlin, and a Yamaha Motif workstation.
SOPHIE said she wrote the BIPP bassline on the Yamaha Motif and then recreated it in Native Instruments Razor, which is what you hear at the start. MusicRadar notes the track was produced mainly on the Monomachine.
She described using Logic's varispeed to record her sped-up vocals, playing the track 12 percent slower and returning it to speed. Later she moved to Ableton Live with Ableton Push to recreate the Monomachine's step-sequencer workflow, live and in the studio.
In a 2019 conversation with Nabihah Iqbal she called Autechre her favourite music to listen to, describing how their tracks morph over time like organic creatures.
SOPHIE (Sophie Xeon, 1986 to 2021) was the Glasgow-born producer behind BIPP, LEMONADE, PRODUCT and Oil of Every Pearl's Un-Insides, and a collaborator of PC Music, Charli XCX and Madonna. This guide covers the synths, software and controller she described in interviews, and a record she called her favourite music.
truerecs put this guide together from public videos, interviews and posts. Each item says how we know and links to the source. SOPHIE didn't write it or choose anything on it. How we source gear guides.
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