J. Auer is Joseph Auer, an electronic musician living in Tokyo, Japan. He has releases on Boltfish, Rednetic, LacedMilk & IVDT, to name a few labels, and is sharply carving his own resting place within the scene. Now, in an attempt to get to know him and his music a little better, we asked him the following 12 questions.

I started learning piano when I was 5. I started choral singing at 11. I briefly tried classical guitar for about 1/2 year around 15. It was when I was 17 that I heard LFO's 'LFO' and decided to just drop my formal classical music training and re-join the electro-funk roots of my childhood (Soul Train!). Basically, that's when I began to consider making my own music. However, I did not seriously make anything of note until I was 23. That was when Mark (Zainetica), Myself, Len Massey and Martin (session bass player) started regularly doing jam session work at Len's in Newport, Wales.

Hmmm, I guess I find it hard to believe I have a specific "my" sound. However, the J. Auer project is more-or-less an experimental-ish take on the more overtly Detroit Techno and Chicago House musical statements released under my real name: Joseph Auer.

1 PC workstation; 1 laptop (In need of repair!); 1 piano; 3 music-boxes. In the past I have had the pleasure of using other friends equipment and studio set-ups which consisted of the following:

Atari ST (running Q-Base); ART Effects Studio Rack; Alesis Multi-verb (very nice mid-range rack unit with 16bit pseudo-stereo quality); Amiga 550 running Pro-Tracker; Casio RZ-1; various Boss guitar affects pedals; ARP Odyssey; Len's (our studio man), Analogue Korg synthesizer with 12 VCOs capable of 64 polyphonic tones and finally Len's long lost but always highly cherished Yamaha CX-5 (!). Quite a few of my tracks contain jam-session samples using variations of the above set-ups.

My Imagination. My SOUL. FL Studio; Buzz Effects Machines and Sourceforge are pretty mandatory software studio kits for me. Also, finally having a piano again to play with is invaluable. A lot of the new tracks I have been making all originally had their "planning" done on our family piano.

A J. Auer track often will have it's "roots" with some digital synthesis affects I am "playing" with off either FL Studio or Soundforge. So, the basis of a J. Auer track starts heavily grounded in the "digital realm". This means also that pads will be currently generated from VST synths or from an "open source" synth generator. Having done this I may spend a few days coming back and forth to this base and focusing on making sure that there are not too many "reflections" generated by the delay and chorus affects (if present). Reflections tend to create some type of audio feedback. This will really hurt you later so better to stop it sooner rather than later. Once satisfied I then start "dropping" in either the jam session samples or available open source samples. I almost always start with percussion first. Pads are almost always added last. However, I never set anything in stone.

In the past I used to do all this stuff with help from friends in the jam sessions we did via the 4 track; mixers and digital affect rack units we had. However, with the modern day desktop studio we no longer have to go through the "pain" of audio channel separation to avoid frequencies interfering with each other. Instead something like FL Studio will have the separate mix channels where you can then assign the EQ units to reside. I assign a EQ unit to each channel. Then I "build" the track around this basic foundation. Now, comes the "easy" part: the track itself.

By now you might be a little jaded - thinking: another "laptop" producer - blaaah. So, I need to do a little explaining here. The above may seem incredibly easy. However, if I make it sound obvious and easy it is only because I went through a lot of studio and production sessions with just a few musicians running "analog" kit with minimal digital affects running out of 1 EQ unit and a 4 tracker. From these sessions I learnt a lot about audio-frequency behaviour that you just will never get going straight to a purely digital setup (an example: It was always funny to hear the British Techno stuff because what people may not know is that a lot of the studios used SYMPTE to ensure samples with hugely different attacks and velocities would fit together. Great, accept we could not afford the SYMPTE devices so we had to use our knowledge of guessing a sample's frequency and time signature then run the output of the sample to the 4 track via one of the three analogue Korg synths we had available using AC/DC to get our "SYMPTE" affect! Getting something to really work could take anything from 5 mins to 4 hours. It is from experiences like the above that I think allow me to bring something a bit different to the digital production table).

Ok, back to the track, in the jam sessions we usually were quite strict with time. A "session" would last anywhere from 4 - 6 hours. We shared a common view that, unless it was felt that there was something worth preserving from the session, there should be no reason to go with a track beyond 6 hours. You should know after 6 hours whether a track or tracks is/are going to work. And, until recently, that is how I have generally framed a track's start and end point in terms of time spent on the track. Now, I already am relatively ok about my affects setup so it really is play time. Recently, though I have now added the practice of sitting in front of the piano for about a week - knocking out chords and melodies - then putting that info into an FL Studio soft-synth. Once, satisfied I will "mix-down" then render the track in WAV format to listen to off-and-on for maybe 2 weeks to a month (doing the invariable "little tweaks"). Finally, if I am happy I will then send the track around to friends and ask for their opinions. If good then maybe the track will be released.

Play around! Seriously. On a more practical note: avoid using compression across all your mixing channels when doing the final "mix down" of a track. I always try to leave the chords and hi-hats alone. Also, for me anyway, try to avoid overdrive affects like Exciters. For me, there is nothing more grating than hearing yet another "dope hip-hop joint" having the final mix down "bathed" in an Exciter (or worse: exciters). To me an exciter is just there to show you have a lack of EQ-ing knowledge. It also "muddies" the individual instruments'"natural" harmonics.

That is a good question. I have no idea. I may stop making music for awhile so I can just get back to focusing on my piano playing as well as my daughter's musical studies. Seriously, there are too many time-wasters and clones in Japan to be asked with. I know this may sound strange but Tokyo is really a depressing place if you are a artist. There is little diversity in music cultures here - people are very "cut-throat" here so artists are pretty much complete media whores. This is where I really miss London.

Dam-Funk; VOL_TRON; 80s "underground" soul music; Ron Trent and my daughter singing the whole of 'Cats' - the musical.

Nowadays my daughter DEMANDS! all of my attention. As some of the people whom read this might know: my daughter is currently enrolled at the prestigious Kunitachi Music School Kindergarten (it is directly affiliated with Julliard, so it should give you some idea of the "snob" quotient). She has a prelim elementary school exam in 2007. In this "exam" she will play in front of the whole Kunitachi Music College a piano piece (it's a Japanese composition with a variation on "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" - the good news is she can already do this). She will just have turned 4 years when she does this "exam". My daughter has been actively in school since about 9 months of age. She genuinely loves learning and she genuinely loves music. So, I think I am blessed that our household lives and breathes music of one sort or another simple and purely every day.

Besides her formal schooling and her natural love for Opera (DIVAS !!!), I try to make sure that she is exposed to as many different musics as possible. Each week I try to expose her to Jazz (Miles Davis and Pat Metheny Group get high rotation in this house); Reggae / Dub; Polynesian Music (Tahiti bias); ABBA; Breakcore; Bossa Nova; House / Garage music (She loves the Nu Groove stuff); Detroit Techno (it's been a heartbreak to see she is not a big fan of it - ahh the struggle continues as they say) and Electro-Funk. I try to explain to her the music theories and historical backgrounds of the the above musics.

I will take care of our daughter for the weekend so my wife can have some well deserved rest (she has the harder job for the week - taking care of Maiya!). I try to make sure we do some studying (Reading, Writing and Maths), even if I have to "slyly" inject the study into our play. Quite often we will take a day out somewhere in or around Tokyo. I imagine it must seem quite boring to most people. Not to me though.

Ahhh, my opinion of Tokyo is highly different that most people's it would seem. I think Tokyo is quite musically poor - especially compared to London. Things are extremely faddish here. I don't feel a sense of "soul" here so much. The result is you probably have a better selection of music choice made with greater community, love and quality than what is sold here. Sorry, cannot recommend anything here (I have heard about Amoeba in LA - from what I have seen and heard from Mark about this place it pisses, from a very great height, on anything Tokyo has to offer). I spend alot of time in the "bargain bins" of the Disk Union record store in Kunitachi as I now realize that Hip-Hop and Trance music have brainwashed the entire populace of the surrounding area into discarding quality music from innovators like Larry Heard (my music hero!).

If you really feel you have to go to a Tokyo music store I would suggest going to Shibuya's NHK area where you will find Cisco Techno, Quintrix and Warzawa music stores. Nothing great though.

For live stuff. Again, no real idea here. Tokyo is like any other "western city" in that there are plenty of live venues in and around the city. One's that come off the top of my head are Heavy Sick Zero (Nakano), Super Deluxe (Rappongi / Rappongi Hills) and Unit / Module (Shibuya area). Be aware though, the Japanese seem to have an "unnatural" aversion to BASS! So far every club and record store I have been to in Tokyo is so treble biased in the EQs it's frightening.

Ok, now for the side of Japan I love. I love Japanese food; Sashimi (prepared raw fish), is my number 1 food. Kimchi (a favourite Korean dish), is my second favourite food. To enjoy both these fine dishes at their finest I recommend going to Ginza and forking out the dosh to any one of the restraunts in this area - you will not be disappointed.

More information on J. Auer & his music can be found at:
http://jauer.ivdt.net & http://myspace.com/jauer