Musician, Producer, Massimo D'Ambra embodies what those who make music in 2016 should have in mind, personality, professionalism and humility.
From the transalpine stages as musical director of one of the most famous musicals in the world "jesus christ superstar" to the current Italian tour with the number one of the Italian rappers "Gue Pequeno".
From Naples to the heart of Europe Max managed to make his way through the difficult musical jungle.
We Meet Him Before one of the stages of the "True Tour", The concert, like all the others on the tour, is sold out ...
We take advantage of the end of the soundcheck to ask him some questions.
AC A musician "Playing" "at a Rap concert is rare, how did this type of connection come about?
MD Gue (Pequeno) was looking for an “Evolution” of his Live which has been growing from year to year; primarily only with the DJ DJAYK, one of the most talented and award-winning DJs, the second tour by taking over the drums (Carmine BDOG Landolfi) .. and for the VERO tour we tried even more, giving more substance and coherence to the concept of "live". We met, we talked about it, and we got to work, trying to keep faith with the arrangements but at the same time to have a punch that only "played" music can give you ..
Everything that happens musically is Live, it's “real”, as is the name of the tour.
AC How did you approach your role?
MD It was not easy, hip hop, mostly comes from the so-called "beat", cells of 4-8
Beats that repeat throughout the song are sometimes samples taken from old vinyls, sometimes a set of synths that create the mood of the song, so more than extricating myself between complex harmonies and tonal changes, in this case I tried to bring all this back to my instruments by doing a long work of sound designing and trying to reproduce the most the sounds that characterize the songs are faithfully possible. In other cases I have sampled and "broken up" them stems some sounds which I then reported on both Machine that on Komplete Kontrol – S.
AC How is your Live Set-up composed?
MD The Set up is designed in a very effective way, Yamaha Motif XF7, Korg Radias, NI Complete Kontrol – S 61 and Maschine Studio; I also use 2 Macbook pro: on the first we run the sequences, bass and various add ons and in addition a sinc track for the videos (which clearly start perfectly linked to my start) while the other macbook acts as an audio engine for both Maschine and at Komplete kontrol.
I manage the sequences with logic pro, in which I created an ad hoc session with a whole series of marker through which I move through a Korg nano control.
AC How is the Audio Stream managed?
MD Macbook on which the sequences "travel" uses a MOTU 828mkIII; using the separate outputs I give the engineer a stereo of Harmonic Add-Ons (Pads, Arpeggiators and other things that I preferred to stay on sequence), a stereo of Rhythmic Add-Ons (Loops, 808HH and various things that comparing me with Bdog we decided to leave), a Mono for the bass, an Out for the Sinc and an out for the Click.
My whole set (keyboards / masks) is pressed through a Yamaha mixer that I have behind my station, then my mix goes via a bus to the room mixer from which in turn the room engineer "gives me" a mix of the drums and a series of other signals such as the voice, the stereo of the DJ and Gue's voice, so that I can personally determine my listening balance. Also, always with groups, I have a separate management of both headphones (which I use mainly because many songs start with synth phrases or samples that I launch via Maschine, so I need a click), and my stereo wedge Monitors.
AC In your career you have also had great experiences as a sound engineer, what are in your opinion the difficulties that the sound engineer encounters on tour like this one?
MD The "Vero Tour" travels as they say with "half production", ie sound engineers, backliner lights, instrumentation and mixers are the "fixed" elements, while the PA, the monitors and the lighting park are found on the venue from time to time.
This means dealing not only with different clubs and therefore with different acoustics, but also with a different PA every night, this puts a strain on the sound engineer who must try to give his best to maintain dynamic impact and readability of the lyrics of Gue.
The biggest difficulty in my opinion is the poor acoustic treatment of some clubs. Often during the sound check prayers start in the hope that the jagged mass generated by the audience attenuates the reverberations which, despite the monitoring through headphones, make the listening not focused. Fortunately, in most cases, prayers are answered 😉
ACIs there a "Trick" to get by in "borderline" situations?
MD It depends a lot on the sound engineer's common sense, primarily the volumes!
When you arrive in a venue and try the system, you are used to shooting the system out of your mind
Which in some places also pays off, but in some contexts the secret is to dose the overall volume well. Let me explain: our ear "gets used" to the volumes, therefore on a scale from 1 a 10 where 10 means crazy reverberations and confusion, a 7 and have more control over the sound, without worrying about the "hit" .. the audience's ears will "tune" to that volume and will certainly enjoy more in terms of quality.
AC We know of your endorsing relationship with Native Instruments, how did it start?
MD A few years ago I decided to approach the world of Maschine, I was looking for a tool that would give me a different approach both in the studio production phase and in live performances, so I met Giuseppe Isgrò (marketing manager for Italy of midi music, Italian distributor Native instruments, Spectrasonics etc ..), with whom a good relationship of human and professional esteem was born immediately.
Native instruments Komplete Kontrol S was about to launch on the market and I was officially commissioned both as an endorser and as a demonstrator / product specialist; from there a series of demos throughout Italy in which I tried to bring out a new concept of Performance that can be obtained with these tools that increasingly stimulate my creativity.
AC Let's talk about Productions ...
Well in fact it is my "core business" ...
I have toured for years, but my main passion remains production. I have my own studio, the MDA Recording Studio, in which I give life to my works. The basic set up is very minimal and in tune with my way of conceiving music.
My idea is to base the construction of a song on something that is "rememberable"
A sound, an effect, a pause ... two notes, but which determine my "signature" .. my style.
I am currently very involved in the hip hop scene and therefore I am dedicating myself to the conception of new beats that you will soon hear in the tracklists of some Italian rap stars ..
We do not reveal the names yet ...
AC How is your studio organized?
MD The heart is obviously the DAW, which in my case it is Logic pro Motu 828mk3, MOTU 8pre, Universal Audio 4-710d, a Euphonix MC Control and 2 MC Mixes; regarding the ratings I am a loyalist of mine Genelec 8020 , although a collaboration with ADAM, and I must say that the A77X are, in my opinion, one of the best quality / price ratio studio monitors on the market.
AC It seems strange to see you on stage playing hip hop knowing some of your projects like "just for fun" which instead are much more intricate musically, what changes in the approach?
MD I don't know, music is music, made of notes, of groove time. I never assume that a song is easy even if it has 2 notes and only 3 chords; to maintain its "magic", its "mood", it must be played and / or produced having the right competence of the genre in question.
Many "musicians" underestimate some genres such as rap because maybe at first glance they may seem too elementary or obvious, but behind there is a careful choice of sounds, grooves and musical taste that makes the difference. At the same time many pseudo producers of the latest generation believe they can create a song or a so-called "beat" by downloading the latest library trap and sequencing a few notes on Fruity loops...
Unfortunately for them, and fortunately for me and for those like me who do this job with knowledge of the facts, this is not the case.
AC Plans for the future?
At the end of the tour I will dedicate myself to setting up another studio in Milan, now the nerve center of music production in Italy, where I already have a series of collaborations ready to carry out, in the spring big news coming from Native Instruments that will see me protagonist of a new round of Demo performances, and for this summer there will most likely be a resumption of the “Vero Tour”.
In short, there is no shortage of activities, the important thing is to always put passion, love and dedication into it.
Stay tuned!
Musician, Producer, Massimo D'Ambra embodies what those who make music in 2016 should have in mind, personality, professionalism and humility.
Form the stages of all Europe as music director for one of the most famous musicals in the world “jesus christ superstar” to the current Italian tour with italian rap star Gue Pequeno.
From Naples to the heart of Europe Max has managed to make his way in the music jungle with hard work and sacrifice.
We meet him during the sound check of one of the Vero Tour concerts, just another sold out gig.
AC It's a really rare thing to see real musicians play at a rap concert, how did this type of connection happen?
MD After adding a drummer (Carmine BDOG Landolfi) to the basic lineup including the award-winning DJ DJAYK, Gue (Pequeno) was looking to evolve these year's show giving more substance and coherence to the concept of “live”. We met, talked, and set to work. The goal was to keep the arrangements as similar as possible to the recorded versions, but at the same time try to add the punch that only live playing can give.
Everything that happens is musically Live, is “vero” (Italian word for: true), as the name of the tour.
AC How did you prepare your performance?
MD Well, hip hop is basically based on 4/8 bars cells repeating through the song, sometimes based on old vinyl samples, other times based on synth textures creating the mood of the song. In this type of context the biggest part of my “homework” was to recreate loops, samples and textures that will be played live with my setup. The sound design work included re-creating the tones and the sounds with my synths, but also re-sampling sounds form stems and making them playable using Machine and Komplete Kontrol – S.
AC What's included in your live setup?
MD My setup is very effective, Motif XF7 Yamaha, Korg Radias, NI Komplete Kontrol –S 61, Maschine Studio and my two Macbook pros. The first one controls sequences, synth bass and a sync track for videos everything runs under Logic with markers controlled by a Korg nano kontrol. Computer number two is completely dedicated to Machine and complete control.
AC How does your audio flow runs?
MD Macbook number two is connected to me MOTU 828mkIII, using its separate outputs I use one stereo out for Harmonic add-ons (including Pads, Arpeggiators) ; one stereo out for Rhythmics add.ons (Loops , 808HH and stuff that the drummer will not play live), one mono line for bass tracks, one for sync track and the last one for the drummer's click track.
One stage I also have a Yamaha mixer to pre-mix my keyboard/synth setup and send the stereo mix to David Bisetti the sound engineer. The Yamaha miser is also used to receive monitor lines for main vocals, Dj stereo line, and drums so that I can mix my own personal monitor line and control headphones or wedge Monitors.
AC You have worked a lot also as a sound engineer, what are, according to you the main difficulties for a sound man in a tour like this one?
MD Vero Tour is a half production tour, that means that sounds engineers, back liners, light designers travel with us, while PA, monitors, and lights are provided by the venue.
That means dealing every night with different acoustic responses, different pa's and that's a big challenge for a sound man if the goal is to keep the same punch and dynamics for the whole tour. From my point of view one of the biggest problems is the bad acoustic treatment in Music clubs, a lot of times the hope is that filling the place with people will attenuate reverberations and fortunately most of the times “people work”.
AC Is there a secret trick to face extremely difficult situations?
MD It depends a lot on common sense, first of all volume levels!
On a new venue we're tempted to test the pa at it's maximum level, that doesn't seem to be the best thing always. The secret is to keep a little volume headroom to be able to control the overall sound and reverberation. Even if the sound pressure is a little less louder, the overall performance will sound better in terms of quality.
AC You've been endorsing Native instruments from a long time now, how did it start?
MD A few years ago I decided to approach the world of Maschine, I was looking for a tool that would give me a different approach both in studio production and live performances, I met Giuseppe Isgrò (Midimusic, Italian distributor Native Instruments, Spectrasonics etc..) and we started a beautiful relationship of human and professional respect.
In that year Native Instruments was about to launch the Kontrol S on the market and I was appointed to endorse the brand and work as demonstrator / product specialist. These instruments are capable of bringing new life and possibilities to the whole concept of performance both live that in the Music production process.
AC Let's talk about productions…
MD That's my “core business” …
I've been touring for years, but my main passion remains Music production. I have my own studio MDA Recording Studio where I give life to my work.
My studio setup is very minimal and in line with my way of thinking about music. My idea is to base the structure of a song on something that is easy to remember: a sound, an effect a break … two notes, but that is my "signature", my style.
At the moment I'm a lot into the hip hop scene, producing beats for major Italian rap stars…but no names revealed jet.
AC How's the studio organized?
MD The beeting heart is my DAW, Logic pro
AC It seems strange to see you on stage playing hip hop after listening to some of your projects as “just for fun” which are far more intricate musically, what changes in the approach?
MD I don't know, music is music, notes, groove, I don't ever assume that it is easy. even if a song has 2 and 3 chords, it must be played and / or produced with the right expertise in order to keep its “magic”, his “mood”.
Many “musicians” underestimate certain genres like rap because maybe at first glance they may seem too elementary or easy to play, maybe ignoring the careful selection of sounds, grooves and musical taste that makes the difference.
From the other side of the coin, there's a lot of pseudo-producers believing they can make a song by downloading the latest library and sequencing a bit 'of notes of fruity loops.
Unfortunately for them, and fortunately for me and people like me, it doesn't.
AC Plans for the future?
MD At the end of tour I will open a new studio in Milan, that city is the core of Italy's music production.
In spring there will be a new demo tour for Native Instruments latest productions,
and most likely there will be other concerts of the “Vero Tour”, thanks God there's always a lot to do it's important to always put passion, love and dedication into it.
Stay tuned!
