Richard Devine Is Living the Dream

Dec 1, 2009 12:00 PM, By Geary Yelton

           
 

FORGING NEW TIMBRAL TERRITORY, ONE WAVEFORM AT A TIME

Arturia is another company I've started working with. I did sound design on the Origin synth, and that's a beautiful instrument. I've also worked extensively on the Virus TI Series from Access. I did my signature artist patch bank for them in 2007. That was hugely successful. I started doing work with other software companies that were coming out with synthesizers, people who had never heard a single note of my music.

You learn a few things with each company. With Korg, for instance, I got graded on my sounds. It was like being in a college class. The Japanese developers would grade you on how well the sound played. How expressive is it? How musical is it? How much animation does the sound have? How much is going on? Can you hold down one key and it tells a story? With each project, I learned new things that I applied on the next project with another company, or with a new piece of technology.

How did that lead to television commercials?

In 2001, I got a cold call from an old friend of mine in high school. She said, “Hey, Rich, I'm working at this advertising agency in New York. Did you put this record out on Warp? Wow, my creative director wants to really meet you.” It just all sparked from there, and we ended up doing two TV spots for Nike, which was my first commercial gig. Most people start local and work their way up. I just started at the top, which was kind of crazy. I did two spots for this agency called Wieden+Kennedy, and they won a couple of awards with some of the advertising.

That helped your reputation, I'm sure.

Wieden+Kennedy were one of the top advertising agencies that you could work with, and they still are. They're a huge account. It was kind of a wakeup call for me. I didn't realize that my services as a sound designer or a composer doing this strange music I'd been doing could be applied in this area. Since that point, I've gotten calls from all sorts of other agencies because the sound design was so unique. Just being different and going in my own direction opens doors. Somehow it just kept on going, and now I'm doing really crazy stuff.

Such as?

Anything from Microsoft's startup sound for their mobile phones to working with companies like Apple developing sounds for people to use all over the world. I was just a person in my house listening to Morton Subotnick and [Karlheinz] Stockhausen records and wanting to make weird noises, and now here I am designing sounds for these big companies. It's been an exciting journey. I find myself the scientist of sound, constantly researching.

It's really weird how I'll hear all these things pop up. The other night, we were watching the BBC, and [when] the BBC's logo comes up, I can hear my Absynth patch. I hear my stuff in all sorts of places. I'll hear somebody's ringtone or TV commercial — “Oh, I did that.” It's just an amazing feeling that you've created all these little things that affect people on this universal level.

So you've been really busy. Is that one reason it's been so long since your last CD?

Yes, since I started doing a lot of the commercial sound-design work. I've actually been doing a lot of remixes, too, so it's been harder for me to be back in the studio working on projects where I've been doing my own stuff. I just finished a remix for an artist named Kiyo; he's an electronic artist from Japan. I did a remix for Ryuichi Sakamoto. I also did a remix for Maynard James Keenan from Tool and A Perfect Circle for his new project, Puscifer.

And you do all that here, in your home studio?

I do it all here, yeah. And recently I finished a remix for Sound Tribe Sector 9. I helped them produce their new Peaceblaster album last year. Earlier this year, I completed a remix for BT for his new EP. We've worked on a couple of projects together. I'm currently wrapping up a project I started with Telefon Tel Aviv that will be released on Ghostly International once it's finished.

I understand your next musical release will be a surround DVD.

It's a collection of compositions I've been working on over the past two-and-a-half years, very electroacoustic. I played some of this stuff at [UC] Berkeley two years ago when I was invited to lecture about making music in surround sound. I think people are going to find it a little different than some of the stuff I've done in the past.

With electroacoustic music in particular, almost any sound could be a viable source as an instrument, whether it be glass breaking or impacts, dynamic movement sounds, voices. I love how open the palette can be. There's no defined format that you have to stick it in, like with traditional electronic or dance music where it's all based on beats and bars. This is almost like a liquid, gestural painting that you could throw at the listeners. Some of it's kind of scary, I will admit.