INTERVIEW: Aqeel Aadam (Ridgewalk) (Patreon)

Exclusive Interview with the man behind Ridgewalk and Weeping Wall!

I recently had the opportunity to check out the new micro looper / granular plugin "Ridgewalk" and I thought it would not only be cool to make a video about it, but sit down and ask the developer a few questions! The following is an interview conducted recently with Aqeel Aadam, a musician, sound designer, and developer behind "Ridgewalk" the new plugin for Windows, Mac, and iOS.

If you'd like to check out Ridgewalk and Weeping Wall there will be links down below. You can also check out the video I just made for Ridgewalk as well. Interviews like this are only possible with your support on Patreon. Cheers and enjoy!

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1.) What was your thought process behind Ridgewalk and what drove you to create this style of effect? Were you influenced by a particular plugin or hardware device?

My plug-ins are mainly based on convoluted eurorack patches or hardware techniques that I've cobbled together over the years to aid my compositions. In particular, I've found this technique of creating granular pads really valuable to my composition style, and can add a lot of depth to a piece of music. I've had a few frustrations with this process on my own though, which I set out to improve with Ridgewalk.

I often found that I needed to start with an "atmosphere" and then compose against it, as opposed to working in some atmosphere later once I had a composition that I liked. This meant that it was hard to bring a specific theme to life when composing for a film or game. With Ridgewalk, my goal was to make something that felt equally useful whether you were looking for initial inspiration or a finishing touch to a piece.

I've found that a lot of loopers don't really have an overdubbing process that makes sense to me (and few granular tools have overdubbing at all, as far as I know). I wanted to make something that "just worked" and continued to update in a natural way as you fed it more audio. In that way, your "atmosphere" can evolve as you move between sections of a piece, as you improvise different melodies and chords, etc. I wanted Ridgewalk to sort of provide that experience of jamming in a band, where your bandmate might hear you play something interesting and start riffing on it.

2.) Can you tell us what's actually happening with the samples and sample layers after they've been recorded? Is there any kind of magic happening that might not be visible on the surface?

There's not a ton of processing going on to be honest - I wanted to keep things barebones and let people sculpt the sound however they want (especially in a DAW environment, where it's trivial to pull up an EQ, compressor, etc). My goal with Ridgewalk was to make sure that it was just a really solid looper under the surface that behaved in the ways that you'd expect, and preserved your sound, whether you're throwing long attack pads at it, or sharper piano sounds, or percussion, or whatever else.

The most "magical" part is probably the overdubbing and clickless transitioning between the different recorded layers. Each looper (up to 7) is addressed to a specific layer. When a looper completes a loop, it decides which layer it should play from next. If you're not recording, the layer is determined via the Layer control. If you are recording, loopers can and will start playing from the newest recording as soon as possible.

3.) Your other plugin "Weeping Wall" seems like the perfect companion to Ridgewalk. What did you learn while creating both of these plugins? 

Weeping Wall was my first plug-in and is a bit simpler than Ridgewalk (though it has quite a few tricks up its sleeve). The concept is fairly straightforward, and it gave me a lot of experience with designing how I wanted the plug-in experience to feel at a more abstract level. With both plug-ins, I try to maintain a pretty open mind - I have opinions on what I think the core user experience should be, but I'm always interested to hear ideas from users as well, and quite a few subsequent updates came from user suggestions. :) I think the long and short answer is that I learned that it's important to maintain a simple experience of "who cares! Let's make some cool sounds!" while also allowing users to go as deep as they want, which I think is a balance that Ridgewalk strikes nicely.

4.) Do you have any tips or tricks for new users looking to use Ridgewalk? Perhaps there are some interesting uses for Ridgewalk or ways to use the plugin that haven't been discovered yet.

For folks who work with hardware instruments or effects, it's a common experience to search for "happy accidents" and inspiration - sort of letting the machine do something until it spits out something cool that you find interesting. I think this experience is a little less common when working totally in the DAW, which is something I wanted to help promote for in-the-box users. So, I would suggest maybe coming to Ridgewalk with some sort of "thesis" - something like "I'm feeling like using a choral sound" or "I want something in Phrygian" - and noodle around with it until you find something that sparks inspiration for a more intricate piece of music.

5.) Your plugins are very ambient-focused and encourage experimentation. Do you have any plans for the future or any direction for future projects that you can talk about?

Exploration is absolutely a core tenet of Aqeel Aadam Sound and always will be! With whatever I'm building, I want to encourage experimentation and provide people with tools that feel like collaborators rather than just, well, tools. I've got some more stuff in the pipeline that I'm really excited about - instruments (VSTi's), more effects, and a force multiplier that will tie everything together and provide even more power to AAS plug-ins. I'm still one person working as fast as I can, and I don't want to reveal too much, since plans can always change and projects might mutate as they come to life, but I hope people will find these ideas as exciting as I do.

GET RIDGEWALK: https://bit.ly/46Ob7Dc

S1GNS VIDEO PREMIERE: https://youtu.be/9jPhr40svgs