Apogee, Logic Pro Captures Unique Analog Sound Of Pole
Stefan Betke has maintained the alias Pole since the mid to late nineties. His first three albums, a trilogy of self-titled albums, helped push the boundaries of how stripped-down ambient dub could get.
Coming from an audio engineering background, Betke maintains a studio in Berlin with Barbara Preisinger. While producing albums for artists like T. Raumschmiere, he maintains a recording space that allows him full freedom to experiment with the makeup of sound.
His setup is made up of classic analog synthesizers and multi-effects units all run through an Apogee interface and into Logic Pro Audio. Check out the full interview to see Stefan talk about his working method, and where he sees music distribution heading in the near future.
BILL HOLLAND: Welcome back to Gearwire.Com. I'm Bill Holland, and we're here live at Movement 2007 in Detroit, and I'm here with Stefan Betke from Pole here from Berlin, and he's going to talk about what he uses to produce. Now, what's your setup like? What type of computer or software do you use?
STEFAN BETKE: In the studio, I mainly use Logic Audio and some Apogee audio interfaces and I have an analog mixing board. Everything that I do is mainly analog in the studio. I have a bunch of different synthesizers and some effect units and EQs, compressor, and all that. Kind of vintage style.
BILL HOLLAND: What about your live setup? When you perform live, do you use Ableton or are you using another product?
STEFAN BETKE: When I play live I -- it's mainly the same setup, an analog mixing board plus a lot of multi-effect units but for live I use Ableton to play.
BILL HOLLAND: So do you use a lot of analog live as well you said? What type of things are you using?
STEFAN BETKE: Well, I use little effect units like guitar pedal stuff and a lot like the reverb system, Dr. Scientist from -- It's handmade stuff from Montreal. I use that effects a lot or Electro-Harmonix, this kind of stuff.
BILL HOLLAND: Okay. Great. Now, I also want to know I got your album online digitally through beat -- I believe it was at Beatport. I can't remember exactly though. Are you releasing a physical copy of the album or are you mainly going digital? And where do you see things going in terms of the digital market? Do you think analog copies like vinyl are going to be outdated or you think people will still keep using those?
STEFAN BETKE: I mean so far, we still release CD, vinyl plus online distribution so it's that this new format is adding for us at the moment. Since we're not really 100% focused on DJ music, people still buy more CD copies and vinyl copies than they would download my album actually. For the future, I'm not really sure. I really hope that vinyl will stay on the market actually because I think for a certain type of music, vinyl simply sounds the best. But of course I see that the progression that online sales would definitely go up which is not a bad thing so long as artists get paid off by it so then it's all fine so. What I'm absolutely against is this illegal sharing and peer-to-peer sharing and all that. People have to thing about that they ruin the life of artists. We are not Madonna or something. We start with a few thousand copies and try to make a living out of that and try out festivals and try to support the audience as good as we can so why don't they support us then?
BILL HOLLAND: All right. Well thank you so much for coming. I appreciate you talking to us, and we'll see you hopefully next year.
STEFAN BETKE: Hopefully. Thanks for having me here.
BILL HOLLAND: I'm Bill Holland for Gearwire.Com and we look forward to seeing you at the next episode from Movement 2007 in Detroit.
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