As a Digital Workstation (DAW) I’ve always used Abelton. My main keyboard is a Studio Logic 88 MIDI controller with weighted keys, and a number of external audio effects, including my favorites, Hologram MicroCosm and EMP Reverb. The audio interfaces I use are from Universal Audio. I love minimalism and squeeze the full potential from just a few useful tools such as with my Zoom F6. This compositional method I’ve created, „The Purity of Noise“, where noise becomes a musical instrument and helps me to compose an entire soundtrack, is the method I teach in academies both in Italy and around the world. Everything starts from the noise and the infinite possibilities it can give me. I isolate frequencies that I consider important and characteristic, and I start the composition.Īt other times I find myself looking for a certain sound and therefore already know that in the composition, I will have to find a sound component that can be transformed into a piano, or a violin, or a bass line or a drum. When I am in the studio, I listen to all the samples again, to rediscover the emotion of the moment.

I have two approaches to my composition process: one more irrational and one more conscious. What’s your workflow for transforming the sounds you record into musical ideas?

Using specially created, tiny and sensitive microphones for my other Zoom F6 field recorder, I composed the real time soundtrack of each visitor, starting from their skin, as they journeyed through the sensation rooms. In an experimental audio installation for Nivea, I created a soundtrack from the sampled sound of skin, subjected to different stimulations, such as cold, heat, water. The soundtrack I composed has become the official music of Swatch stores around the world, and also of the Venice Biennale, one of the most prestigious cultural institutions in the world. I sampled over 2400 raw sounds from different watches, using my Zoom H6. I applied for, and won, a much sought-after artistic residency in Shanghai, moving there from Milan.ĭuring that time that I started to create the first sound project for the Swatch brand.

The moment that changed everything for me though was in 2013. Like many sound designers, my first work experiences were in cinema and advertising. I studied as an audio engineer specializing in musical cognition at Berklee College of Music. What professional opportunity as a sound designer most impacted your development?

3d drum set creator