We make music with computers, Pegboard Nerds AMA

Explain this please. http://i.imgur.com/abojQbi.png

we also do some acting on the side :-)

What is your favourite type of synthesis? (Additive, FM, Granular etc)

Also, ^{Do you love me?}

Subtractive and YES!

What happened to your collab with Savant? Was really looking forward to that but haven't heard anything in a while.

As it looks now, that is not going to happen

Is there something with Knife Party in the works? They seem to like you a lot. To be Rob Swire approved is kinda much an honor haha.

Haha yes it is an honor :) No tracks with KP in the works though!

What was it like working with Krewella?

And who's the hotter sister in person?

It was great! They are talented and fun to work with.

Both :)

How do you come up with song titles? Also, how did you originally sign with Monstercat?

Songtitles just pop to mind really. We got signed with a track called Gunpoint via a mutual friend in Australia.(JD4D)

How do you soften the thought of carrying coffins?

That is hard.. Life goes on!

Just wanted to say Disconnected was the reason I found out about Monstercat.

My question is, what has been the largest change in the way you produce music over the past 2 years, since you started with MCM?

Well, we have been producing for a very very long time, so we haven't really changed the way much the past 2 years.

Here's some production questions for you!

1. What are your favorite mixdown techniques?
2. What frequency do you usually cut your synths/basses at?
3. What VST do you use the most?
4. What are the best budget studio monitors you would recommend?

Hi!

1. We mix through buses, in this way:

BD+SD - kick and snare go here, through a limiter with 3-4dB attenuation. HATS - hihats, lighter stuff. No limiting. Slight compression maybe. Highpass! PERC - percussion..

These three go trough a DRUMS bus for easy level adjustment of all the drums, and maybe slight compression.

DRUMS - bd+sd, hats and perc busses go through here, as specified. KEYS - Lighter instruments, pads, supersaws, etc.. Most of them will be highpassed at source. Limiter. Sidechain. BASS - Heavier midrange synths, this bus is highpassed between 150-200hz. Limiter. Sidechain. VOX - Vocals go here.. FX - Impacts, sweeps, risers, downlifters etc.. RETURNS - all the send tracks output to this bus, so you can sidechain

All of the above buses (with the exception of bd+sd, hats and perc that go through drums) go through a final bus we call "premaster", where we have our quite simple master chain. It's just an EQ and a limiter. Once our mixes reach this point it is more or less done and just needs to be crushed a little bit.

The degree of sidechaining on the various buses vary with what kind of song you are making. Sometimes you want heavy sidechaining, sometimes you want light sidechaining (especially on lighter elements), and sometimes you even want to automate the degree of sidechaining depending on what section of the song.

PREMASTER - final bus where everything comes together.

The reason for using a premaster for your master chain and not put the plugins on the actual master channel is that you can have reference tunes in your session on tracks that are muted. So say for the drop, you could line up various drops from reference tunes, and quickly solo them to A/B your sound with a reference tune. It's really quick and easy.

!!!EDIT: Finally, the sub. It just goes straight to the premaster, usually just a sinewave, maybe with a little bit of tri blended in, or a filtered down saw to add some harmonics to it. Sidechained and/or faded in waveform aligned with the tail of the kick to avoid phasing issues and amplitude dips.. Makes it sound tight!

1. We usually route our pads and "lighter" synths to a "KEYS" bus that doesn't necessarily get highpassed any higher than 40-50hz (to allow for potential deep pads to come through in breakdowns) but most of the "keys" instruments will be highpassed fairly high, like 200-500hz, you just gotta set up a highpass, then sweep it upwards until you feel the sound starts to lose its body, then back down a little bit.

2. NI Massive and FM8, Nexus, Fabfilter Pro Q, Soundtoys native bundle, Valhalla Ubermod, Shimmer, Room.. We don't really use that many plugins! We also use a few distortion plugins like Ohmicide, Trash..

3. Dynaudio BM5A MK2 :) Or whatever, really. More importantly, use reference tunes, get to know how they sound on your particular monitors and in your particular room. This takes time. Buying en expensive-ass set of monitors will not help you make good songs or good music..

4. We will start with whatever brings an idea to our minds.. It's kinda hard to explain, but we'll try. Say for instance you're away from your computer, and you get a random melody in your head. You try to capture that and make that into a song.

It's different than sitting down and trying to play something to generate an idea, but we do that too obviously. It's all about getting a concept, a melody, something that you can relate to, and then build off of that. It's usually based around a sample or a melody. We start building various disconnected sections of the song, say the drop, a breakdown, an intro.. After a while you can start piecing them together and make interesting and cohesive transitions. We rarely start by making the intro, then the verse, then the breakdown, then the drop etc.. It's a back-and-forth process, changing things, discarding things you thought you'd use, and using things you never though you would. Hope this helps! :)

What is your favorite VST and why is it the Sausage Fattener?

so you already know ;-) it just works.... simple as that!

I'm T-Mass. Can I please work with you? I swear I don't suck and have been on UKF and stuff like that

Hi T-Mass! Congrats on getting on UKF. We are not looking into collabs at this point, but thanks for asking! Keep it up :)

Completely unrelated to production or EDM - what's your guys' favourite non-alcoholic drink?

Pepsi!

Hello, I have two questions for you:

1. Who were you listening to growing up?

2. (This is directed more to Michael) Was High Roller influenced by a mid-life crisis in any way?

Hi, 1. A lot of 80s hiphop, rap, hip house and house music. And eurodance and trance in the early 90´s 2. no not really:-)

Hi guys! Hope you're doing well! A few questions then:

1. Have you got a new EP/LP in the works?
2. Are there any collabs that you are working on/have finished that are getting released in the near future?
3. Are there any collabs you would consider doing? (psssst, Rogue, Savant, Kill Paris, Protostar and Haywyre would be my choices!)

Hi! We are fine thanks!

1. Sort of an EP. You'll see!
2. We are working on mostly original material at the moment! Vocal tracks in particular.
3. We actually went in the studio with Cash Cash here in LA the other day. It's turning out real nice! :)

1. What do you feel when creating new music and how does it affect the final outcome?

2. What were your major inspirations?

3. How do you feel about your musical experimentation in Trap and will you consider making more trap music? Why or why not?

1. we feel good and inspired, you can't make music if you are not inspired.
2. everything from a movie to a simple conversation and even dreams.
3. we like all kinds of music, not just one genre. We flirted with trap a few times. If we will do more? no one knows. depends on our inspiration.

How the hell are your synths so chrispy

a good basic sound and then some multiband compression and eq´ing

Hey guys, love your music. My question is, where do you see yourselves in 5 years?

Thank you! Making the best songs we can, playing the best shows we can! We just want to keep this up and take it as far as we can.

I'm not sure why there are so many downvotes going around, but here goes.

A while back, I watched this video of you guys playing live and entirely fell in love with your "Haunted House" track. Will that ever be released? I would REALLY like a copy

Hi! Not sure what that's about :) Um Haunted House was sort of a tribute to the fact that we were supporting Knife Party on their Haunted House tour. The track is not likely to see a release, unfortunately! Thanks though :)

How did the Coffins collab come about?

That was the work of our new management, Th3rdbrain.

favorite monstercat release (not by you fellas)? also keep up the incredible work!

LetsBeFriends

what was it like when you got discovered by krewella

is mike darlington as sexy as everyone says

what are some collabs we can expect in the future

thanks guys ily disconnected was one of the songs that got me into monstercat

Well Monstercat approached us and asked if we would like to remix either Alive or Killin It. We chose Alive, and didn't really know it would get so big.. But it was fun! Fun working on and fun seeing how it has done :)

Mike is sexy AF. He's right here.

Cash cash probably, beyond that is anyone's guess

Thank you! Glad to hear that! :)

How did you guys come up with the name Pegboard Nerds?

It's an anagram of our last names :)

Hi guys, I have a question, how do you see your future in music? and also, what are the countries that you want to travel? I'm from Chile and I and all my freaking friends would be amazed if you come ñ_ñ

Hey! We just want to make the best music we can, constantly improve and play shows for our fans. We would love to come to Chile! Tell your local promoters about us so that they can book us! <3

Any plans to release something similar to Disconnected? It would be great to see your style progress into something a bit more House-y.

it will come :-)

First off, thanks for doing this AMA. Love your music. So here are my questions...

1. If you could create a supergroup with anyone, who would it be and what would you name the group?

2. What was your favorite song to work on and why?

3. Are there any genres that you are interested in exploring? Dancehall, Glitch-Hop, Moombah, etc.

4. Do you have any great stories that you would be willing to share? Maybe about working with someone, or something from a show or a party? :P

That's it for now, thanks again for doing this!

BTW I am going to start my own electronic music group named Peg Jocks. Our first hit single will be called, "High-altitude Baker," and we will be featured on the label, Angeldog. Let the battle begin.

1. Hans Zimmer, Dr.Dre and Rob Swire, groupname New World Order.
2. All of them, but to name one, We are one. We were jumping around the studio hugging each other.
3. basically we like all genres of music and eventually we will try them all. 4.We were playing in France with Knife Party and we partied hard in Paris, then the next day in Reims, Alex asked the crowd "Paris,how you feelin´?"

Bring it on:-)

Hey guys! I must ask you both, where do you see Pegboard Nerds headed as far as sound, and even success goes? I've noticed you guys have had a lot of trap influence in your music as of late, and I like it quite much. I'd like to see what you guys try out next.

We wanna try and challenge ourselves and get out of all the pigeon holing. People always want to put a genre label to acts, which is kind of annoying. We just wanna make music that we feel is good and not think about it has to fit the beatport top 10. We will definitely try new things.

in your opinion, do new electronic producers starting this year have any chance at success or is the industry totally full? will record labels listen to demos from no namers?

Its never too late to start. The penetration on the market is low, but quality always find its way through. so get to work :-)

Do You Guys Check /r/monstercat?

Most of our time is focused on producing and doing shows, so our time online is a bit limited unfortunately.. We check in from time to time and try to respond to as much as we can on our social media!

Where do you get your inspiration from?

Who has been your favorite DJ(s) to collaborate with?

I started following your music about a year ago and I love it all. I just wanted to say thank you and keep disrupting the system!

We get inspiration from music, movies, everyday life, like simple conversations and even dreams. So far we only did one Collab, with Tristam.

Thanks for liking our music

1. Most Used/Favorite VST Plugin
2. Have you guys considered a 20k VIP Mix?
3. Why does Casanovan '13 have little views? It's only on two YouTube channels (as far as I know) with a combined amount of around 8,000 views? I absolutely loved it :3 EDIT: I really want to see you guys work with Barely Alive, I think it'd turn out amazing.

1. NI Massive and FM8, Nexus, Fabfilter etc
2. We did make a vip for personal use only :-)
3. Cassanovan was a fun track to do, a happy tune. it has never been released officially. its actually a norwegian russ track. Barely Alive, why not :-)

How big are your pixelated penises?

Depends on the resolution

First Question, If you could, would you do a collab with Muzzy? Dnb Dubstep Electro etc? Second Question, Have you attempted to make a Nu Disco track? I'd REALLY WANT TO HEAR IT!!!!!!!!

We get a lot of questions about collabs. If each day had 48 hours, maybe we could realize some of them. But right now we want to focus on original material form ourselves.

Hey, I'm personal friends with the guys from Splitbreed . I love your collab We Are One.

What was it like working with them?

That was a lot of fun, even though we haven't met personally. thank god for the internet

Are you planning on making more music with a hardstyle-y feel to it like your remix of Live for the Night?

yeah why not, we like all kinds of styles.

1. How did you guys come up with names such as Razor Sharp and Pressure Cooker?

2. Are you guys planning on doing a collab with Savant? This would be the best thing ever. Edit: Or any collabs in general?

3. And the most generic question of all, will you guys be visiting Holland this year?

1. Razor sharp was Tristam's idea.. It was kind of a play off of "Knife Party".. Pressure cooker was because of the high pitched intense lead.. Often times the work title ends up being the final title haha!

My question is:

• When are you guys coming back to Denver?

My friends and I saw you when you came to Beta and you KILLED IT! Everyone loves you here. Pleaaaaaase come back!

LIC feb 22nd ;-)

If you were to collab with any "mainstream" EDM artist(s) (Skrillex, Zomboy, Wolfgang Gartner, Avicci, etc.), who would it be and why? Also, Breaking Bad or Walking Dead? Favorite character on both? (edit: to both nerds)

Skrillex, beacuse he is GOOOOOD. Definately Breaking Bad and Mr.White

Was there ever a point in your careers' together where you thought you two should split up?

If that would have ever happened what would you call yourselves individually?

Thanks guys, love your stuff!

Not until now, luckily :-) who knows what we would be called, maybe Nerd 1 and Nerd 2

will you ever try to do music with a blender? or a printer?

Hmm.. Maybe!

Saw you guys at the bass stage at paradiso festival this last summer, gonna see you again in a couple weeks in Portland OR. Why the name pegboard nerds?

Love all your guys stuff, keep that 110 sound going, it hits!

Thanks for liking our music.

our name is an anagram of our last names "Odden" and "Parsberg".

When are you releasing your tour dates? Also what has been your favorite release? Last question though would you ever come visit Rhode Island? P.S. it's really cool that you're Danish

Tourdates are up tomorrow. we like all our releases but we do have our individual favorites. We would love to come to Rhode Island, anytime. We are Norwegian and Danish (Scandinavian Vikings)

What happened to this?

EDIT: I thought of another question. Is there an original mix for Gunpoint and Revenge of the Nerds?

EDIT 2: Gunpoint's original mix is on iTunes. Thank you /u/swiggs98!

The Clara Sofie track will not see a release, unfortunately! Label issues.. Sort of! We decided not to release that because of the way the drop sounds..

Thanks!

First, you guys are amazing and I am a huge fan. Was truly lucky enough to see you guys at the Electric Zoo warehouse show, and you guys absolutely killed it. Thank you for being so incredible at what you do, and thank you so much for this AMA.

With formalities out of the way...

Are you coming to New York in your Bassline Kickin' tour? If so, where? May I suggest the Webster Hall Bassment? It's hosted by Subset, one of the DJs from that awesome night, and is a perfect venue for your rage-inducing dance music.

Are there any collaborations in the works, or something as incredible as, say, an EP or album? :D

Who is your favorite artist that you've worked with? Every Krewella track you've touched so far is absolute gold, and it's actually how I found you guys. Alive? Holy shit, hearing that live was life-changing.

What is your favorite video game, and are you Nintendo, Sony, or Xbox fan boys?

We would love to play NY again, we had so much fun at the warehouse. Hot as hell. We are working on some new tracks coming out soon;-) Thanks a lot for liking our music. We have so much fun working with all the tracks and artists, so its not easy to pick one out. Alex is into Nintendo, Im a playstation guy.

Any chance of you two coming to Uk London in 2014? Desperate to hear Self Destruct in real life!

working on it, but we are coming to the UK, tour dates soon to be announced.

First off, I'm a huge fan! I made this reddit account just now so that I could join the AMA. :) My questions are who are some of your favourite artists and songs and what was your favourite song to make and why? Stay awesome! :D

Thank you! Glad to have you :) There are a lot of artists and genres of music we like.. It all depends on the mood and setting, you know! We like a lot of the current Edm stuff (except for the regurgitated big room house songs). Then there's hip hop, rock, 80s, 90s, trance, house..

We really get into every song we make, so whichever is the current song, really.. In retrospect I think we have favorite sections of each song, rather than favorite songs.

What's up guys?

Tell everyone that:

DR BASTARD HUSTLES HARDEST!

hows the stripper pole treating you?

Sorry to fangirl here but you guys are literally my inspiration. ..

Ok how did you guys start? Whats the story behind pegboard nerds?

And what kind of tips could you give to someone who wants to make music production and djing there career?

Thank you! We have been working with music for many many years doing remixes and productions for other artists and on eday we just looked at each other and said, NO more. Lets do something that we both like and would want to play out as dj´s. the best tip is, never give up! If you really want this, it will happen its just a matter of time.

What are you guys' guilty pleasures when it comes to music?

80s scandinavian folkpop

What's the story behind your name?

It is an anagram of our last names :)

what is your favorite song you have made?

all of them, but we do have our personal favorites

Where is your favorite place to visit and why?

We love it here in LA actually.. Our whole team is here and we are working hard together these days :) Other than that.. Any city we get to go to to play shows is amazing!

How do you guys choose your name?

its an anagram of our last names, "Odden" and "Parsberg"

As someone going to The Gathering this year, I was wondering if you had planned on going there again? I was there for your performance last year as well and it was awesome and without a doubt one of the highlights of TG. :)

We are not booked at The Gathering this year, and we will be in America at the time, so unfortunately not this year! Glad you liked it last year though! :)

Yo, thanks for the AMA, how did the two of you guys meet and come to making music together? did you guys make any music individually? or did you guys start making music as pegboard nerds? *edit/sidenote if I play your music at the next school event, what song do you guys want me to play :3?

We met 10 years ago, we were producing individually back then. We think you should play your favorite.

Hey guys :D I got a chance to write an article about you both a while back for Ragetracks.com and you actually responded! It seriously made my day, thank you!

• How does America compare to other countries with the concert atmosphere?

• What's new for PGN in 2014 that I can look forward to?

thank you for writing about us. America is really cool, people here rage really hard which is a lot of fun. So its definitely one of the best countries we played in so far. We are working hard to make some new tunes before our tour starts.

How did you guys learn everything you know? Any tutorial videos you would recommend?

when we started making music there was no youtube, no tutorials, no computers. We used hardware synths and sequencers. So we had to learn it the hard way. There are a lot of tutorials out there but the best is your own mistakes. It might help help you make something somebody else already did, and that is not gonna take you anywhere. But it might help getting to know the tricks that can make it easier for you to get started.

When you write/produce your music do you have it all planned out or do you come up with it along the way?

most of the times the initial idea/melody feeds the ideas for the rest of the song as we go along

What's each of your guys' favourite video game/s? You know, when you're not making killer beats ;)

Alex : Megaman Michael : pong

How did you come up with the name 'Pegboard Nerds'? Edit: realised someone already asked that, so I'll change my question: Who has been your favourite artist to collab with so far? Thanks guys!

It is an anagram of our last names :)

Tristam

I have one incredibly important question:

CAN I HAVE YOUR WONDROUS BABIES PLEASE?

always!

what car do you two drive?

Toyota and Ford

how did you guys meet up and start making music together?

Alex won a Above and Beyond remix contest back in 2004 and I contacted him to do a remix of one my projects, Safri Duo. And we have been working together ever since.

You guys have started branching to different genres, which is cool. What genre(s) do you guys still want to cover?

Any one we find entertaining and interesting! I know that is vague, but it varies over time, really! We will always try and make it fresh and interesting though :)

What is your guys' process for making the bassline sit nicely with the kick drum?

multiband compression, eq´ing and sc compression.

Few questions... What do you guys use to master your tracks? Helpful tips/advice(production and djing)? Promo Email? Upcoming stuff your working on(collars, what kind of genres, etc) Best ways to get your name out there

We answered this question in detail in another post earlier, please check it out! Once our tracks hit the master we don't really do that much - just subtle eq'ing (highpass the side signal at 150hz ish), maybe a slight dip at 300hz, slight high end boost... Anything more than that we have to go back to the source to fix the problem.. Best way to get your name out there is to start making amazing music, put it out there.. Find blogs that want to support you and build slowly.. :)

I don't know if you been asked this Pegboard Nerds but is it possible to see you at Electric Forest 2014?

if we get booked yes:-)

Which genre, (within EDM or otherwise) do you like producing the most?

We like to do different stuff for all of our releases, change it up.. So whatever we release is what we enjoyed at the time! :)

First of I love your guys' work.
* How do you guys make your music? * Would you ever release an album? * Any tips for up and coming producers? Thanks for the AMA guys, you're my favorite musicians.

thanks for liking our music. We use Ableton live, some plug ins and a lot of time. Album, maybe at a later time. Best tip is keep working, make lots and lots of mistakes, that the only way to learn. We probably made 200 bad productions and learned from it.

What's your favourite Monstercat song?

The one by Lets be friends

very difficult to answer. there are so many

What artists will you be collaborating with in the future?

We just started a collab with Cash cash, beyond that it is anyone's guess!

Who are your inspirations for your music?

Tough question! All kinds of music. We try and draw inspiration from the outside of EDM too, like rock, classical, little things here and there. You can also draw inspiration from outside of music in general. Experiences from life. Moods you go through.. Make sense?