"Puremagnetik is one of the most essential tutorials showing what Live really has got going on under the hood and what can be achieved with all its routing capabilities, not to mention some great sound design."

-John Tejada

Palette Recordings (www.paletterecordings.com )

Normally associated with his peers in techno from Detroit, Europe and elsewhere, John Tejada has embraced electronic music as a personal frontier, expanding on his resume as a techno recording artist as producer, remixer, DJ, and label owner. Known for crafting a brand of subtle, musical techno, his recorded output ranges across tempo and genre lines, from chilled out affairs with spacious arrangements to pulsating, densely layered, deeply energetic tracks that work magnificently in the hands of DJs as well as on the home stereo.

PM: How has your production process changed and evolved over the past few years? What role does Ableton Live play in your process?

JT: I first started experimenting with techno and electronic music back in 91. Back then there were no plug ins and sequencers only did MIDI. Putting expansion RAM in your sampler to give you say 30 seconds of sampling time was an amazing thing i remember. So things have changed quite drastically. But as much as technology changes i think the basis for good music is a good idea. I find these days having too many options to get something done kind of gets in the way. Even though things on the hardware front have changed as much as they have i find myself buying monophonic analog synthesizers. So in a way things stay the same.

After trying every DAW on the market i keep going back to Ableton Live. The ease and modular routing and things you can do with clips, legato etc, is just so much more creative, and with the new version I really don't find it necessary to open another DAW anymore. But those things change every 6 months don't they.

PM: What are you currently using for your live shows? Do you usually find a good method and stick with it or do you like to change things up?

JT: I enjoy changing things up time to time as everything evolves. For a bit over 2 years i was using Elektron gear with small effects and another small synth plugged into a mixer. I think i will still continue this when i play with collaborators Arian Leviste or Justin Maxwell. I found however my machines were breaking apart which i guess happens on the road, so I recently got into using a Monome and have been trying that out and i really like it. In a way it's similar to using hardware with patterns because it's a lot of memorizing where everything is. I also like it because even though a computer is involved again, it's off to the side and i hardly have to look at it. So at the moment it's a Monome with a version of the MLR patch, 8 outs into a mixer and effects.

PM: Your recordings always have very unique spacial relationships between sounds. How do you approach your palette of sounds and their place in the mix?

JT: I've just bee trying to figure that out as time goes. There's always so much to learn. I've just been trying to pick up tips here and there and pay more attention to the sounds themselves instead of trying to fix them later.

PM: You play drums in I'm Not a Gun. Can you tell us some more about that? Do your projects ever bleed into one another?

JT: I have a project with a friend Takeshi Nishimoto called I'm Not A Gun. I do the electronic programming and play live drums. I used to do bass and more guitar on our older albums but I've decided that Takeshi should be the main and only guitarist.

Personally i feel the projects are very much the same. Both this project and my electronic work are based on the same principals, melody, rhythm, arrangement. The difference between an electronic drum and acoustic drum, or guitar and synth melody aren't that different to me. I would say the only difference with I'm Not A Gun is we are trying to capture a well played performance. But apart from that the process is the same.

As far as using more acoustic sounds in my own productions, I've done it a bit here and there, but it just depends if the sound fits for me.
We've actually completed a 4th album recently which will be titled Mirror. Due for an early fall release.

PM: You have a full length album coming out this summer. Can you tell us a little bit about that and your production approach for this release?

JT: In late June my new album titled "Where" will be released on my own Palette Recordings label. This time it didn't come out of wanting to make a new album, but soon i realized i had been having fun with some new ideas and had half an album done and decided to keep going. I prefer whole albums to singles. I was also able to include a collaboration with singer Nicolette.

Productions wise it was pretty similar to the last album. Using hardware synths, sequencers and drums tracking into Live or Logic and mixing from there.  Once it's tracked into the DAW it comes out again through my summing box and compressor.

PM: Anything else you would like to tell Puremagnetik readers?

JT: If you'd like to get any info on any future projects please get on the info list at www.paletterecordings.com. We only send out info about once every two months and occasionally give away free download goodies.