Q-Burns Abstract Message:
Blurring the Lines
Back when radio stations spun vinyl, popular records were physically “played out.” To find the beginning of a song, DJs pulled the vinyl backwards and forwards under the needle, scrubbing the sound right off the track. The first few seconds of a song would be marred by static. They called the phenomenon “cue burn.”
When Michael Donaldson became a DJ, he called himself Q-Burns Abstract Message. He’s been living up to the name ever since. The DJ/producer is prolific, spinning vinyl and cranking out remixes almost nonstop, carving his own groove into the dance music scene. He has toured with Fatboy Slim, Josh Wink, Chemical Brothers, Gus Gus, and Lo Fidelity All-Stars. He’s remixed tracks for The Supreme Beings of Leisure, Faith No More, Rabbit In The Moon, and Britney Spears. He was a featured artist on quirky neo-cowboy Jim White’s album “No Such Place.” He’s also released an army of his own tracks and two full-length albums.
Donaldson is known for mashing the acoustic with the electric, weaving his own guitar licks and drum fills with synthesizer beats and haunting vocals. He uses anything to get the sound he wants — MIDI instruments, classical guitars, 4-track tape decks, and tube amplifiers. Now he’s added Logic Pro to the mix, using it to compose and remix tracks.
Creative Games
“I like blurring the lines between what’s electronic and what’s acoustic,” says Donaldson. “Part of my style is using acoustic instruments and live instruments and sort of manipulating them in a way to match the electronic — you can’t really tell what’s electronic and what’s me playing.”
Donaldson’s fascination with melding the electric with the acoustic began when he was 15. Armed with a guitar and a Juno 106 Synthesizer, he launched a punk rock band. The band didn’t last, but Donaldson kept making music. He joined another band, where he programmed drum loops in lieu of a live drummer. The experience gave him a lot of chops with a sampler and a synth. During it all, he worked with tape and reel-to-reel decks to augment sounds. Put it all together and you’ve got the Q-Burns sound.
“One of my real aspirations was doing sound design for film,” he says. “So I kind of have a sound design mentality. I like making sounds jump around, reversing them, cutting them up, bringing them in a strange order. When you bring that together with the purely digital side, you’re creating a music that’s not really defined as straight-ahead electronic. When those two things collide, sounds collide and concepts collide. That’s when you create the potential for something new.”
One of Donaldson’s most recent collisions can be found on Jim White’s album “No Such Place.” “He’s sort of a psychedelic, twisted country guy,” says Donaldson. “He wanted to work with electronic music producers to see what would happen when this weird country music was mixed with electronic beats.” It was a perfect match. Donaldson was able to use his knack for combining the electric and the acoustic to create three tracks for White’s album.
The collaboration was electric for Donaldson, but he’d like to focus on his own projects. His last album was released in 2001 and he’s developed a lot of ideas. How does he plan to get it all out? “I’m really into creative games,” says Donaldson. “I’m going to do a song a day for a two- or three-week period. There’s not going to be any pressure to finish a song — I’m just going to start a new one the next day. In the end of the two-week period I’m going to go back and listen to what I did with fresh ears. The songs I like best are the ones I’ll flesh out.”
Working with Logic
Donaldson plans to pound out his new album on Logic Pro. He’ll use the same experimental mish-mashing that has garnered him so much acclaim in electronic music circles. “I like to discover new things,” he says. “I just discovered the EVOC about a month ago and I was going crazy, just having a lot of fun with it. That’s one thing I like about Logic. There’s just so much to discover, especially in the sound manipulation and plug-in world. When I started playing with the Space Designer, it was a revelation. One thing I’m really into is creating space, and Space Designer has been really helpful.”
The producer thrives on options, but he also needs speed. When inspiration strikes, the synthesizer, sampler, or program shouldn’t get in the way. Learning how to use the equipment should be simple and quick. “I judge a program on how fast I can be,” says Donaldson. “I’m one of those intuitive producers — I’m not very technical. I cannot take the time to read manuals. I just skim them and then try to figure it out myself.”
Donaldson loves outboard gear. Nothing makes him happier than a chain of synthesizers, samplers, and drum machines all working in harmony. Now, however, all his outboard gear can be simulated within Logic Pro, which makes him even faster. “I’m a huge fan of outboard gear and I’m very hands on,” he says. “I’m a knob guy. I’m still mixing on a 40-channel mixing board. In fact, it was difficult for me to embrace the soft-synth features in Logic, mixing internally. But in the last two projects I’ve done, I’ve noticed that I’ve been doing internal mixing and working with soft-synths, totally unconsciously. It’s almost like Logic drew me into it.”
Logic Pro has also allowed Donaldson to pull off some of his old tape-deck tricks. “It’s been great for editing digital audio,” he says. “I take the audio I record and sort of twist it around, do little tricks with it. I like to take acoustic things and make them sound electronic and the sound editing features of Logic are very good for that.”
Donaldson will use Logic Pro to stitch his new album together. Like his previous two full-length albums, it will feature jams and grooves that are honed for home listening, not the dance floor. “I like the idea of creating albums for listening, creating sort of a head journey,” he says. The producer plans to release his new album by the end of 2006.
