Max Cooper: "The way I work is more like a sculptor than a musician" - Studio tour and interview 

Big props for his honesty about his knowledge gaps in compression! 👍 We all learn much faster and better if we don't pretend to know everything :) Way too many people on RU-vid spread their half gained knowledge, often subjective and steered towards their own style and genre. It works for them, because they're not conscious of their whole process yet, so they teach only what they have learned, missing what they do by feeling and the fact that it is pretty much completely unique to themselves. It takes at least a decade of experience to be able to teach the principals, instead of only your own way of getting to the achieved results. A good teacher will know the goal and everything around it, so he sees unlimited amounts of ways. He's able to show a way for everyone individually, from where they stand.

This man is a legends, thanks for opening your studio to us

It's always nice and refreshing to see how humble and honest (some of) the greatest musicians are when showing off their studio and talking about their artistic process.

Strange he calls the juno an fm synth... And the summit an analog synth...

A brilliant creator!!!🙏

One of the very best! Love having a look in his kitchen

I enjoyed every minute of this video. Thank you!

Would have been good to hear a little more about Max's life, his trajectory, upbringing, formative youth years - always good to have a peak into the studio, but the artist is usually much more interesting than the equipment. For diy musicians that are interested in this type of content, wouldn't it be nice if there was some perspective on what's different about them as a person and their experience, rather than whats different about their gear. Really enjoyed this but as ever, i am left with the same questions - is my approach less productive and why? How do my favorite musicians afford to spend $30k on gear? If their sound is typified by their gear then what came first and how did that come about? Where did the work ethic come from? How did the artist manage to switch into doing music full time? How did the first live performances go and what was the prep work for instrumentalising parts made in the box ? How risky was it for an artist to sacrifice more conventional career progression in favour of follow the dream? Most people have no safety net and its difficult to follow a passion at great financial expense with zero guarantees of that investment ever paying itself off in actual money, not to mention the amount of time that has to be spent to make progress as an artist. I have so many more similar questions and im always begging to hear successful artists explain these more personal and difficult questions, without skipping over the hard facts (often socio-economic background stuff), or speaking of success retroactively in idioms like 'i couldnt have done anything other than this' - yeah nah you could, thats what 99% of people who engage with this content are doing. Max is an incredible artist and hes done more than three of my lifetimes 'spare time' could allow whilst being only 7 years older than me. This is all meant with love, no negativity towards successful creatives or the channel, i just hope im typing what a lot of people are thinking. Keep at it everybody! Thank you for being, thank you for doing, its not always easy, and you wouldnt bother if it was. All love,

Max and Amon are the two producers whose music excites me the most. I've been craving this kind of insight from Max for a long time. Thank you. Please do a similar thing with Amon. Both of their collaborative visual creations are often exquisite and it'd be interesting to learn about how they both communicate their ideas with those who create the visual art that seems to perfectly accompany their music and the processes that are involved.

Max is such an incredible artist I was excited to watch this. This interview was insightful but was hoping for a lot more. I like listening to him talk but hopefully in the future videos a little more is put in to producing an engaging interview and studio tour that goes a little deeper in to the processes and workflows and magic that Max makes beyond gear descriptions.

GREAT! Thx guys

Seen Max multiple times & even met him in a bar once. super inspiring guy, his work & shows just always leave you mind blown.

Great interview. Interesting musician.

Appreciate your music, sonic approach and wide collaboration with videomakers

Dr. Cooper is awesome !!!!

Max was the soundtrack during the early days of Lockdown, I will always be forever grateful for his records. ...on a positive note, did everyone else just get like 10% smarter listening to him speak?

I remember seeing him DJ just a week before Covid had hit the Netherlands and the lockdown slowly came. It was the last party I went to…

Thank you very much for the interview and specially features of the last two amazing guests (Tourist and Max Cooper) very inspiring. A dream to see and hear the next guest Jon Hopkins ) but I think it's almost impossible..

Makes such interesting music, loved his early releases on Sasha’s label.

At last, a look into the creative space, thank you MusicRadar and thank you Max for doing this. I can't wait to get my hands on a few pieces of kit mentioned here....Not the Moog One though, way out of my league, price-wise. There is a question that is burning me up here though, Max (if you're reading this), when you go ahead and play/record stuff and then put it through your effects/dynamics chains, do you end up recording the result down to audio files, or do you save as much as is possible through MIDI routing so as to be able to play it again later during a track and re-modify it for a final mix? Or do you do a hybrid of both?

Found this so interesting and always thought Max would love the Pro 3 which i love ,is paraphonic though but the patching is so easy

How many accents has this man got? He's from everywhere

any idea how(what) are the three mini screens connected to the Mac?

Does anyone know the brand of the computer display monitor he's using?

What is the plugin that pops up at 23:21 ?

ahaha THE Max Cooper has stock Ableton limiter on the master, my mind has just expanded beyond this universe. there is truly no magic sauce except for the artists themselves :)

We def have the same cable management haha

what is the name of this kontakt instrument at 23:00?

So the Summit is analog and the Juno a FM synth? Right.

Wait, he called the summit analog and the Juno 6 “classic fm”? Does this guy know what he’s talking about?

Why speaker behind screen ?

Idk why he’d use tap tempo on the microcosm lol it has midi 🤷🏻‍♀️

“How can I set up a system that has a life of its own?”

@ 3:40 the “famous” space echo 😆 tried UAD’s emulation of it, sounded like a delay…. 👍🤓 heard much cooler and more capable with other companies

Absolutely torture to hear an electronic master talk about the wonderful sounds a synth or pedal makes without letting us hear examples. It could have been so great but it ended up being so boring. Like somebody telling you all about last night's dream.

Maybe you had limited time with him but basic content illustrates what it describes...where are the sounds? Dull without, sorry

Public school boy