The Music Production Of VAPERROR
An Interview with Jeff Cardinal at 100% Electronicon

Last Edited: Mon, 2020 Aug 31

1 2020 August 31 Foreword

This interview was done exactly a year ago. Note that this was just a few months before VAPERROR's release of Saccharine Synergy.

After the interview, I got in touch with Private Suite Magazine, and it seemed like this interview was going to be published there. Due to some communication errors and me not being stubborn enough, this never happened. Now, finally, I am publishing it here on my own website. Not so spectacular as in a magazine, but here it is.

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Figure 2: Jeff (right) and me (left) after the interview.

2 The Interview

Berber
The first question I almost hate to ask.

On a technical, musical level, and philosophically, what makes your music vaporwave?

Jeff
I like to pull in elements of jazz music and video game music a lot, and I think that at least the video game music part will draw a lot of nostalgia from people. I have released other vaporwave albums under the name SPORTSGIRLスポーツ少女⍟, which are kind of more traditional vaporwave music albums, and then I have also collaborated with telepath, and that was our take on "original" vaporwave music where we resampled our own music. We recorded some tracks and we applied the "vaporwave formula", you could say, we slowed down the track and applied reverb, delay and phaser effects, and then that's how that came to fruition.
Berber
A big thing in vaporwave are concept albums. On that topic of keeping a theme going on in an album, I have heard about your workflow: You create a master file in Ableton, and you derive all songs for the album from that file. Could you go into a little more detail on that?
Jeff
This is going back to Mana Pool. Creating an album and having a cohesive sound throughout, which I have struggled with before, like with rock bands and such and other electronic music projects I have had before VAPERROR. What I will do is I'll sketch out just a bunch of chords, melodies, drum beats, and they will all be in an Ableton project file. It all lives there until I get to a point where I want to take a section and bump it out into a new project file. The tracks all spawn from the original file. That is how I get a cohesive sound out of my albums; I feel like that is the best strategy for me. Also, I don't have to remember which patch I used for a particular synth since a lot of it is reused. I don't think there is any problem with reusing a patch, I feel that isn't really a great criticism of artists.
Berber
How do you make your sounds? Do you synthesize them yourself? If so, how?
Jeff
Alright, let's talk about it. A lot of the drums I use are classic Roland sound sets, like the TR-707, TR-909, TR-808, very recognizable classic sounds. It's way too expensive to buy these original machines, and there are so many high quality samples, so it just kind of makes sense to use what samples are already available. I haven't done a lot of drum synthesis on my own and used it in an album, but I have messed around with it on my Korg minilogue xd, which I am using on the next album. I love FM synthesis. I have been using a lot of ROMpler sounds, I bought a Roland SC-88, which I have used a few times on the new album along with the minilogue xd. There are some great preset patches there that you could of course just manipulate however you want and get it to sounding just right. A lot of the patches I have made myself though, and it is really a great synth. Some of the oscialltors in the patches I have made in the patches for the new album include some synthesizer oscillator that I have programmed in C++ using the Korg logue SDK, which makes the developement of the this DSP oscillator shit so much easier and accessible, so I have loved working with it. There are a lot of disadvantages to using some of the SDK's functions though, it is kind of like a "naive" way to do things with the functions that provide, so it is not going to sound exactly perfect, so I blend in another analog signal with it as well as to kind of mask some of the intricate abnormalities of the oscillator, at higher frequences especially.
Berber
An inbetween question, you are a computer scientist, right?
Jeff
Yes.
Berber
Vim or Emacs?
Jeff
Vim.
Berber
Do you think you would be doing the music the way you do if you weren't a computer scientist or didn't code outside of music?
Jeff
You can. You don't need a formal education or software career to code. The logue SDK is pretty accessible. Grishka Ekart's YouTube series has really helped me out in programming this oscillator, and it made Korg's code more accessible to me. There is a little bit of documentation for the SDK, but it isn't extensive, I suppose. You kind of have to know what you are doing to get into it. I don't know if I could say that I would or would not have messed around with code if I were not a programmer. I have tried making games when I was a small kid, like 13 years old, I was using Game Maker, back when it was being sold for only 10 dollars.
Berber
Are you into modular synthensizers or software modular synths?
Jeff
I have seen a lot of fucking great stuff like Richard Devine's modular setup. That stuff is fucking great. But I think it is a little too expensive for me and it has a large footprint. I have been buying more rack synths to expand my collection. I have a lot of VSTs at the moment as well, I'm using Kontakt to pull in a lot sound libraries and synths and such, like Super Audio Cart. That stuff has no footprint, but I love working with hardware now.
Berber
What laptop do you use for your live shows?
Jeff
The ThinkPad T420s.
Berber
With Ableton on Windows?
Jeff
That ThinkPad is basically just for DJing. I make all of my stuff on a Windows desktop that I built in 2016 and have been upgrading as I go. I'm running Ableton, I have used Reason a few times, but I like the workflow of Ableton despite its quirks. My projects can get dense, and Ableton can slow to a crawl on my machine because it doesn't have the best multi-thread support in the industry. I have some latency with the hardware stuff when recording, but on playback it's perfect to my ears.
Berber
Changing topics: How did you get invited to appear on DJ Vlad's Hardvapour mixtape and how did that work out? It is interesting that there is a VAPERROR track on that album.
Jeff
I was friends with those guys for a while and he said something like "Hey you know I would love to have your music on there" and so I made a track called Supernova. I had it as a bonus track on Bludhoney's Acid Arcadia vinyl and cassette release, I think it was made just after that, so it was kind of still in that head space.
Berber
What is the process of producing music in a collaboration project, like with telepath and COCAINEJESUS?
Jeff
We basically send stems in MIDI back and forth, to give a boring answer. COCAINEJESUS, in particular, would send me a bunch of MIDI and I would just completely flip it. He did a great job on the new album Scared of the Dark, it was a completely different vibe from our first, XXX. For the telepath stuff, we're going to be using MIDI for the next album, strictly MIDI, and then I am going to use the SC-88, and we're going to pick up a Roland D-05, which was used tonight, a great classic synth. Hopefully we're going to squeeze some classic sounds out of it, and bring a "mid-fi" aesthetic to the album. If you compare all of the albums side by side, one, two and three, you're going to see a progression of growth in clarity of the albums. It's going to come to the surface, I guess you could say. So I'm excited to see the next episode.
Berber
What is the relationship between VAPERROR and DJ CAMGIRL? What is the story behind DJ CAMGIRL?
Jeff
DJ CAMGIRL is kind of a musical shitpost, and it was my shot at making annoying sounds musical, if that makes sense. That took direct inspiration from – and I guess it's even my take on – Machine Girl's WLFGRL album. That was basically what I wanted to emulate, that was the driving factor behind to make DJ CAMGIRL. It is a fun project. I have another album in the back pocket. I want to do something for it and make a kind of special release, it has just been on the backburner for a while, but I played a few tracks from that tonight.
Berber
Is the juke back?
Jeff
Yes. I don't think it ever went away.
Berber
I guess the juke didn't go away, but VAPERROR was gone for a while, the last release was the smaller Illumina EP and before that, Acid Arcadia was from 2016.
Jeff
Yes! I have been working on this next album for 3 years. Life gets in the way, right? But I have released some Love Potion stuff and some other side projects, and I finished a SPORTSGIRLスポーツ少女⍟ and a DJ CAMGIRL album. Those have been in the works for so long. I'm ready to release some music now.
Berber
I guess my question should have been: Is VAPERROR back?
Jeff
Oh definitely. I've always been around, it's just been, you know… I work full time now, I'm trying to run a label and make a game. So a lot on my plate, but I'd love to release some stuff soon. It's logistically a pain, as well: You've got to make the artwork, you've got to order the vinyl, wait two months for the vinyl to come in and it's been kind of like a daunting task, but things need to get rolling. This night has been extremely inspiring and energizing, so I'll be right at it. I would also mention that I am a perfectionist when it comes to my music, I think a lot of people are. That holds me back from releasing stuff, and even working on stuff, because I don't think it's good. But, at the same time, I have periods of time where I listen almost exclusively to my own music. I don't know, I feel like almost obsessed with my own music. I'm trying to make it the best it can be, so that's why I listen to it a lot. But I've been getting into other music lately. I want to purchase a Spotify membership, even though I really don't love streaming services and paying for them, but I should be paying for the content I consume, right?
Berber
Just before releasing Polychromatic Compiler, you mentioned as musical influences: Aphex Twin, the Blank Banshee 0 album, telepath and the Banjo-Tooie soundtrack.

Do you have anything to add to that list now, 4 years later? What are your current influences?

Jeff
I love the soundtrack from Earthbound, the composers Keiichi Suzuki and Hirokazu Tanaka are incredible influences, and I also liked the soundtrack from Mother 3. I'm loving the stuff that Equip has been putting out as well and that type of glistening RPG style is so cool to me. I didn't know he was so talented until I heard his first album, and I was just blown away. He has been recommending me synths as well, and that has been really fun. I think we're going to have a similar setup pretty soon, and the advantage of that is that maybe I can send him some MIDI some time, and he could fuck with it. I would love to have him on the game.
Berber
Where is the red "!!!"???
Jeff
Like the band Chk Chk Chk, is that what you are referring to?
Berber
No. When you scrolled down on the old PLUS100 records bandcamp page, you saw three red exclamation marks.
Jeff
Oh, I know what you are talking about, it's gone?
Berber
Yeah it's gone, it's not on the new PLUS100 records page.
Jeff
Oh ok so we ported it to Shopify, and I just never updated that background, I guess.
Berber
Yeah it was a fun easter egg. Put the "!!!" somewhere!
Jeff
You know what, you are right. I need to get on that, thank you for reminding me!
Berber
Do you do you artwork yourself, and if yes, how do you do it?
Jeff
I do a lot of artwork myself, I use Cinema 4D to do 3D models and such, and I'll use Photoshop to draw simple shapes and geometric designs. I love working with those two programs. To make a recommendation to those that want to get into modelling, I would say Blender probably has the upper hand at the moment because it's free and there are a lot more good tutorials and resources for it. Glaciære/Stevia Sphere uses Blender, and she is really good with that. She sent me her .obj files and then I'll plop it into Cinema 4D and I did texture work on it to complete the artwork. So it's been fun working that way, and she is really good at 3D modeling, so I can just make it look pretty.
Berber
What video games do you enjoy playing?
Jeff
The next game that I'm going to buy is probably Dragon Quest XI on the Nintendo Switch. I just finished up Final Fantasy VII. Well, spoiler alert, I actually didn't beat it. I'm on the final boss, I can't do it, it's too hard The game is set up so that if you level up, the bosses also level up as well. I feel I got the full experience of it. Feel free to call me a scrub for not beating Final Fantasy VII. I like the Banjo series, I've mentioned Earthbound and Mother 3, I love the Super Mario games like Super Mario Odyssey. I had some Super Mario 64 in the visuals tonight, Tales of Symphonia was also on there. I played through Tales of Vesperia, the "Tales" series is our favorite series. I grew up with the Nintendo 64 and Pokemon games, so those are perhaps the most influential.

From here the interview faded into us talking about video games and me asking questions about if I correctly heard from which video games certain samples were from. Maybe I will also release this part. Maybe even the audio file.

3 Notes About This Interview

I will just list things here.

  • This is my first interview of this kind.
  • It was done somewhat for me. This could be interpreted as me "scamming" him into talking to me, but I think it is fair. I asked him about it, I gave him a short description of the time it will take and apporximately what I would ask him about, and I do think the questions that interest me might be interesting for others, I did intend to publish the interview from the very beginning, even if I focused on what I personally wanted to know.
  • As suggested in the point above, the questions are not very classical. I tried to give insight about the way he produces in the context of vaprwave.
  • This interview was approved, overseen, and edited by Jeff Cardinal. The interview also takes a few "artistic liberties".

4 Info

Contact me at contact@zmberber.com.