Oleg Shpudeiko

Electronic Music Composer and Sound Artist, Recently released is new album "Iridescent", @Oleg Shpudeiko is this month SoundGym Hero!

So how long have you been on SoundGym? 

Since Mr Soundman... I joined SoundGym sometime around 2016.

You already were featured on our MusicSpot a few months back, excited to be this month's SoundGym hero? 

Absolutely! Thank you guys very much for the feature.

What was your first connection to music?

I listened to a lot of music when I was a kid. Though I think I formed my music listener identity later, in my teens, when I discovered a lot of weird music that blew my mind thanks to mixtape CDRs from my friends. Back then, it was nearly impossible to get non-mainstream music in Ukraine in music stores, so we were exchanging our collections on CD-Rs and tapes. Bands and projects like Coil, Throbbing Gristle, Nurse With Wound, Nine Inch Nails, Sal Solaris, Current 93, Reutoff, the Sisters of Mercy, Aphex Twin, Kazumoto Endo and many many more names that changed the way I thought about music and profoundly influenced both my listener and artistic identities. 

DId you get a formal Sound/Production education?

No, I'm self-taught. Back when I started I didn't even know the difference between high and low frequencies.

Tell us all about how your journey as Heinali started?  

It started in 2003. I've been curious about music production, but knew nothing about it, though I was well versed with software because of my background in computer science. A friend of mine recommended me to try Jeskola Buzz tracker since it wasn't rooted in traditional music theory as much as other DAWs and would probably feel intuitive to an IT person with no musical training. And it actually worked. I recorded my first tracks in August 2003 and switched to Cubase later in 2004. Initially, music was just something fun to do, then it gradually became a hobby and then gradually became a profession, in a span of the first 10 years.

You recently released your Album "Iridescent," Tall as about the production process and struggles along the way?

The production process is a consequence of struggles I had at the time. Due to circumstances, I couldn't work for long periods of time in the studio, so I had to completely rethink my process and switch from long composition sessions to swift and raw improvisation sessions. It correlated with the ongoing changes in my live setup as well. It was the time when I've been performing a switch from the laptop to all hardware setup, and then, gradually to a modular setup. I recorded around 50 sessions, each one lasting 20-45 minutes, then took fragments that I liked and picked the ones that would work in the context of LP. So most of Iridescent LP is just raw recordings of modular synth improvisations. I worried about the sound quality, since most of them were mixed in a synth approaching the fly, and recorded on one track in a DAW, but Taylor Deupree did a fantastic mastering. I'm very grateful to him. 

And now I have to rely on mixing and mastering specialists even more since I partially lost my hearing in July because of idiopathic SSHL in the right ear. It was severe initially, with approximately -70 dB from 250 Hz to 2500 Hz, so I basically could hear with my left ear only, but it partially recovered to moderate/mild -20 dB in the same frequency range, so the stereo image has returned. It's far from perfect, but I can do mixing, though I would prefer other professional to at least check it. Of course, I can no longer do mastering, so sound engineer's role gained even more importance in my musical practice.

What has been your most significant musical influence?

If I had to point one just one, I would name Nine Inch Nails. Not because I still feel Trent Reznor's strong influence (though I must admit, his recent works as a film music composer are something!), but because it was music I listened to the most in my teens (especially Downward Spiral and Fragile), so it became an intrinsic part of me that I wouldn't be able to get rid of it even if I wanted to.

As for now, my most significant musical influences are, probably, John Luther Adams, J.S. Bach and Tim Hecker, in terms of music, and Ryuichi Sakamoto in terms of the whole thing — he manages to stay strong and produce fantastic meaningful works in both experimental and mainstream (as a film composer) musical scenes, not compromising neither his identity nor ideology. He communicates his quite complex ideas, though a very well developed vocabulary, to a wide audience, in an understandable way. For me currently, it's a sort of an unattainable ideal I'm trying to do my best to get closer to.

Tell us about some cool music collaborations or project you worked on?

I currently have an ongoing collaboration with a tap dancer, Volodymyr Shpudeiko, called SynthTap. It's a choreographic performance that fuses modular synth and tap dance. The synth is patched in a certain way that allows dance to generate music and/or process the sound of it. We already did a number of successful shows in Ukraine and currently working on expanding to other countries.

Another ongoing collaboration is with Alexey Shmurak, a classically trained music composer from Kyiv. We started with various audiovisual performances with poets, VJs, artists, focusing on interdisciplinarity and gradually shifted to sound art and complex site-specific projects, like the one we did recently at the local post-soviet balneological clinic here in Kyiv, called 'Nightingale'. It had two parts, the first one is a site-specific performance in one of the clinic's halls, that didn't change much from the Soviet era, where the sound sources always moved and there was no 'right' listening position. The music material was based on a Hungarian folk song — during the project development we found out that one of the clinic's administrators is Hungarian and sings in a local Hungarian folk ensemble, so integrated her song (which became a foundation for our polyphonic composition) and her singing in the performance. The second part is a sound art installation in the balneological clinic's baths, any listener could take one and listen to a specific part from the earlier performance separately while taking an oxygen bath in the clinic.

I'm also currently working on the next Heinali and Matt Finney album, it's a long term collaboration with an American poet Matt Finney, that features his spoken word performance and a heavier, often guitar-based sound. Our latest How We Lived LP was released on The Flenser in 2017. 

Have you made music today?

Yes, tried a couple of new patch ideas on a modular synth.

Tell us a bit about your workflow at the studio?

My workflow fully depends on the type of project I'm working on. If it's commercial/production music, I often start with a Cubase scoring template and/or piano. When I find a specific idea that I like I begin to gradually arrange it. It's mostly done in the box, especially if there's a short deadline. It's a traditional approach that I find works the best when it comes to conventional music and effective time management.

Though when it comes to my own stuff, it nearly always starts with building patches/synth improvisations, making mistakes and being ineffective. I guess I'm trying to find a specific state in sound that would deeply resonate with me. In this way, it really hasn't changed much from my first experiments with Jeskola Buzz in 2003, it was always about discovering this thing that I'm not able to describe, through experimentation. It's not like it's completely off the hook though, for example, I've been interested lately in polyphonic texture in the modular synthesis and generative counterpoint. So there will be a certain initial idea I would base my patch on, but in the end, it's not the realisation of an initial idea that I'm looking for, but something completely different. 

Any habits you have before starting a session?

Coffee. Was it Max Richter who said his coffee machine was the most important piece of hardware in the studio? 

One Free plugin that you recommend?

Luftikus EQ by lkjb. This is the software fixed band EQ I keep using the most for colouration and subtle cuts, no matter how many new EQs I keep getting. It has 10hz and 40khz bands that sometimes do wonders, especially when used sparingly — in my personal experience, it works the best when used in 1-3 dB range.

Which three plug-ins you can't live without?

Fabfilter Pro-Q as a general/surgical EQ with minimal colouration. Soundhack bundle by Tom Erbe, as a sound design suite. Galaxy Vintage D as a default piano library.  

Favorite hardware synthesizer/softsynth and why?

For commercial work, it's Access Virus Ti2 Polar, because of Total Integration, it's good sounding (I'm not an analogue purist), can be used as a VST so it's really convenient and has a huge presets library that comes in handy when you have to work as fast and as effectively as possible or just feel lazy.

For my own stuff, it's definitely my modular synth. It's a 2x104 hp eurorack system mostly based on Make Noise modules. In gradually built it during the last two years, starting with Make Noise System Concrète.

What does the future hold for Oleg Shpudeiko in the music industry?

Apart from ongoing projects and collaboration I talked about earlier, I want to focus on articulation of my ideas to a wider audience. I already had such opportunity when I composed a score for Bound videogame for PlayStation 4, and I feel like my personal musical vocabulary has advanced since then thanks to numerous local niche/experimental projects as well as my own practice. I feel like now is the time to work on the adaptation of it, making sure it communicates well enough. 

Last question, What is your favorite SoundGym Feature and why?

I think I love all the games almost equally, so it's probably Olympics.  In my personal experience, competitions are highly motivating, it's just so much easier and more fun to keep yourself going and stick to a schedule when you compete with other people.


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