Interview: Making Waves with Electron Odyssey

Electron Odyssey is Jeff Spoonhower, an award-winning musician, composer, and producer. His retrowave music is inspired by 80s synth-driven pop, progressive rock, synthwave, and soundtracks. His latest album, Citizen Generator, is released today on all of the major streaming platforms, including Bandcamp, Spotify, and Apple Music.

Jeff's debut full-length album, Your Future Awaits, was featured on Bandcamp’s front-page New and Notable editorial section, reached #2 on the electro and synthwave sales charts, and earned him the Best Electro Artist of 2021 Award by the popular UK radio station, Radio Wigwam. His sophomore album, Liquid Crystal Daydreams, released in August 2022 to critical acclaim. Jeff is a featured artist for Cherry Audio, showcasing our virtual instruments through demo tracks and promo videos, a musician for the curated licensing platform Thematic, and a freelance media composer and sound designer.

Jeff's music has been featured on Astral Throb, The ‘80s Guy, Virtua Waves, Forged in Neon, Synth Zone, Nightride FM, Beyond Synth, Pure Synthwave, Glitch Tape, The Electroscape, Forever Synth, Retrofuturism 101, Revival Synth, The HomeBrew Electronica Show, In The Moog, Radio Wigwam, Indie Radio YFM, Orange Hat Radio, Fresh on the Net, Eagle's Nest Radio, RadioCoolio, and many more outlets.

For the past 22 years, Jeff has worked full-time as a professional art director, cinematic designer, animator, and sound designer in the video game industry on critically-acclaimed titles in the BioShock, Uncharted, Borderlands, Saints Row series, and more. Jeff worked for 10 years as a professor at the University of Notre Dame, mentoring students and teaching new courses in animation production, digital cinema production, sound design, and animation history.

You can follow Electron Odyssey on social media and listen to his music at hyperfollow.com/electronodyssey. We sincerely thank Jeff for making time for this interview and sharing his enthusiasm with us!
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Q: You’ve got some genuine AAA video game titles to your credit. Can you tell us more about your work (sound and otherwise) on some of these projects? And how did you get started in the industry?

I started working in the video game industry in 2002 after graduating from the MFA program in Computer Animation at Rochester Institute of Technology. Around that time, game studios were hiring aggressively, as the industry was in the first years of the PS2/Xbox generation. It was a really exciting time to enter the industry! The first titles I worked on were the NFL Street games at Electronic Arts. I was hired as a gameplay animator but pretty quickly took on cinematic directing and animation work as well, as I enjoyed creating film-style content.

After working at EA, I took a job as the lead cinematic artist on the first Saints Row game at THQ - Volition. I ended up working on all four of the Saints Row games - the later three as a freelance animator and cinematic artist. The team at Volition was a really adventurous and funny bunch, so I had a blast working on these titles.

Over the years, I worked on and off as a freelance cinematic director and animator for Sony - Bend Studio, working on just about all of their games (Syphon Filter: Logan's Shadow, Resistance: Retribution, Uncharted: Golden Abyss, Days Gone). On these projects, I worked alone or with a small team of artists and technicians and learned a lot about time management and creative leadership.

In 2009, I took a job as senior animator and video editor at 2K Games and had the opportunity to work on some amazing projects like BioShock 2, Mafia II, Spec Ops: The Line, and Borderlands 2. This position was with the publication arm of 2K, so I got to work with marketing managers, PR specialists, social media managers, as well as the actual development teams themselves. It was an invaluable experience to be able to work on some big games from that vantage point.

My current role is senior cinematic designer at 2K - Cloud Chamber, working with an amazing team on the new top-secret BioShock game. I get to collaborate with writers, game designers, animators, sound designers, and VFX artists in the creation of the story moments in the game. I've had a great run in the games industry, and I feel very fortunate to have worked with some of the most kind and talented people in the world.

Q: Can you talk specifically about your sound design work in the video game industry and the tools and platforms you use? How has it evolved?

I did a lot of sound design and music editing on cinematics and trailers when I worked for 2K Games publishing from 2009 - 2014. At the time, my main audio tools were Adobe Audition and Pro Tools, and I also worked with early versions of Unreal Engine a bit. The process of creating and implementing sounds for pre-rendered media (film, TV, trailers, etc) is quite a bit different than that of interactive games. On top of the skills required to design audio for pre-rendered media, designing audio for games requires an entire host of additional technical and creative skills. It's a fun and challenging process that takes years to learn and master.

I'd say that the tools used and the fundamental skills required to record, mix, and master audio for media hasn't changed too much over the years. You still use similar digital recording gear and mics to record sounds, and DAWs to edit and process them. You need to have a strong ear for creative sound design and an understanding of both audio and visual storytelling techniques. Virtual instruments and effects plugins have improved dramatically though, and a much larger number of high-quality, production-ready sound effects libraries are available for use now as well.

Something else that has changed quite a bit over the years are the tools used to integrate audio and music in games. Game engines like Unity and Unreal and extremely powerful and complex platforms for integrating amazing soundscapes into interactive experiences. Dynamic, evolving sound and music systems are becoming more commonplace these days, requiring larger, specialized audio teams at studios. Middleware tools like Wwise and FMOD have also become very powerful and useful for game audio designers. It's crazy how huge and complex games have become, and how high audience expectations are for the games they play.

Q: It’s been just over three years since the release of your first EO singles leading up to the August 2021 release of your debut album, Your Future Awaits. Was Electron Odyssey your first jump into producing and releasing your music, and can you tell us what led up to that?

Yes, the singles from early 2021 and the YFA album were the first music I created. It was quite a learning process, to say the least, as I had never composed or produced music before. I was basically clueless about every step of the process! Before releasing any of my tracks, I reached out to quite a few artists and producers I respected (L'Avenue, Timecop1983, Mitch Murder, Jasper De Ceuster, Nightflyer, Ninjoi - thanks guys!) and they graciously replied with notes on mixing, mastering, navigating release strategies, social media management, and much more. Their advice was invaluable in helping me to get started on my musical journey.

As far as my background in music, I grew up as a brass player, performing in jazz bands, wind ensembles, marching bands, and drum corps from grade school through college. I didn't go to music school or take any formal classes in music theory or composition. Once I started working full-time and raising a family, active involvement in music sort of fell out of my life for over a decade. After many years, I felt like I wanted to get back into music again, in some way, outside of picking up my horn again and joining a band.

As I did more sound design work in my professional career, I gradually started becoming interested in how certain musical sounds were created - specifically synthesized music. I grew up as a kid listening to Rush, Genesis, The Police, The Cars, Steve Winwood, and lots of other 80s and 90s bands that featured synths and electronic sounds, and I started to research how they made their music - tools, instruments, mixing, etc. This curiosity eventually led me to buy my first synth.

Q: What was your first experience with a synthesizer (hardware or software) and what kind of impact did it make on you?

In 2015 I bought my first synthesizer, the virtual analog Roland SYSTEM-1. At the time, I really had no idea how synthesizers, or synthesis in general, worked. I had a great time exploring the synth, making crazy sound effects, and generally just playing around with it and learning a lot. I didn't make any music with it directly, but ended up connecting it to my computer and using it as a MIDI keyboard.

The SYSTEM-1 also included a piece of paper in the box with a free license to Ableton Live Lite 9. I had no idea what Ableton was at the time, nor any other music production DAWs or tools for that matter. Out of curiosity, I installed the software, and was instantly blown away with the possibilities of making music on a computer. The first soft synth I bought was OP-X Pro, the Oberheim emulator. It sounded (and still sounds) phenomenal. I also bought Impact Soundworks' Super Audio Cart, and started dipping my toes into composition by writing very basic 4- or 5-part chiptune style songs. Over the course of a year or so, I slowly started to improve my songwriting skills, learning about instrumentation, song structure, and more by writing simple NES chiptune songs.

As time went on, I bought more soft synths and virtual instruments, started writing more complex and interesting songs, and built up my confidence as a producer and composer. Four or five years later, I had a batch of songs that actually sounded like real music! I was encouraged by the progress I'd made, and decided in late 2019 to seriously commit to making and releasing my first full-length album. That became Your Future Awaits in the summer of 2021.

Q: What's your current studio setup like?

I work on a custom Windows 10 PC that I built a few years ago. For the techies - it has a 12-core AMD CPU, 128 GB of RAM, an RTX 2060 GPU, and a bunch of NVME drives. It is super stable and I've never had any issues with it (knock on wood).

Ableton Live is my DAW of choice. I have a single 32" 4K LG screen and a pair of Yamaha HS8 monitors, which I love. I use a Rode NT1 mic for vocals and a Focusrite Scarlett 4i4 as my audio interface. My MIDI keyboard is an Arturia Keylab 49 Mk II.

While my music is created almost entirely using software synths, instruments, and effects, I do have a bunch of hardware instruments that I love such as the Novation Summit, Sequential Pro-3, Arturia Polybrute, and several of the Behringers (Pro-800, K-2, MS-1, Edge, Poly-D). I mainly enjoy experimenting with the hardware and creating more organic sounds and sequences that I can later edit together into music. Making finished tracks in-the-box (ITB), for me, is much more intuitive, flexible, and efficient than using hardware synths. That said, I do want to take more time to learn my hardware better and create an EP using them. I also have a few other exciting projects in the works that will utilize a hardware workflow.

Q: Who is you favorite artist in the synthwave/retrowave scene?

Too many to mention! Lately though, I've been listening to a lot of Jasper De Ceuster, Duett, Luxury Elite, and Droid Bishop.

Q: Who is your favorite non-synthwave artist?

Rush.

Q: That CD rack in the photo is full of movie soundtracks. Which is your favorite movie or television score?

Now you're really killing me. (Rotates head toward CD tower full of John Williams and Jerry Goldsmith CDs). I'm going to have to say Jerry Goldsmith's score to "Total Recall" (1990).

Q: Tell us about some of your favorite music tools.

Well, of course, all of Cherry Audio's releases are amazing! I've used just about all of CA's instruments on my albums - they sound fantastic, are laid out well, and are fun to use. They also ship with a ton of excellent presets that are very usable. YOU GUYS ROCK.

I use lots of other software synths as well, including: U-he Diva and Repro, Arturia V Collection and Analog Lab, UVI Vintage Vault, IK Multimedia Syntronik 2, GForce Imposcar, Korg Collection, Softube Model 72/82/84, Omnisphere, Synapse Audio The Legend and Obsession, and OP-X Pro II.

For drums, I like: IK Multimedia Modo Drum, UVI BeatBox Anthology, UJAM drums, Zenhiser 80s Retro Drummer and Ultra 80s Drum Kit samples, Project SAM True Strike, Impact Soundworks Shreddage Drums, and the Native Instruments' Abbey Road Drummer series. IK's Modo Drum physically modeled drums, in particular, sound great.

I use lots of other instruments from a variety of companies too. Native Instruments' Komplete Ultimate is excellent - it ships with so many great libraries that can be used for a variety of styles of music. I am a big fan of Cinesamples, Spitfire, and Project Sam's orchestral libraries. The electric guitars made by Impact Soundworks and Orange Tree Samples are fantastic as well. I've used them on all of my albums.

On the effects/mixing/mastering side of things, I use: Arturia FX Collection, Izotope Ozone, IK Multimedia T-Racks, and many other plugins from Baby Audio, Waves, AudioThing, Sound Toys, Waves Factory, and XLN. There are hundreds of reverb plugins available, but I am a fan of Native Instruments' Raum.

Q: Tell us about your new release, Citizen Generator; how soon after Liquid Crystal Daydreams did you start work on it?

I started working on Citizen Generator a few months after wrapping up and releasing Liquid Crystal Daydreams in August 2022. When you release an album, you inevitably have to spend a lot of time trying to get people to listen to it. This includes emailing playlist curators, YouTube channels, college radio stations, podcast show hosts, and more. For me at least, it's easily the most frustrating and discouraging part of making music these days. The market is oversaturated with artists releasing music, and music influencers and curators receive too many emails and DMs to read or reply to. Knowing this ahead of time, I still do my due diligence and reach out letting folks know about my new music. Setting expectations low on the outreach front is something I have to do, just to keep my sanity in check. When I do receive replies, it's a nice surprise.

Citizen Generator is mostly new material with the inclusion of a few existing songs from earlier albums that I didn't release initially. I ended up revisiting and improving these earlier songs significantly for inclusion on CG. CG is a 10-track LP, but I actually wrote 13 songs for the album. I ended up pulling three songs from the album and I plan to include them in whatever album comes next. I'll most likely return to them later and make some changes and improvements. That's the beauty of working in an ITB music environment: full project recall and the flexibility to make changes at any point in the production process! From start to finish, CG took around 1.5 years to complete. I mostly worked on it during early mornings, late nights, and on weekends in-between my full time job and family obligations.

Q: How do you distinguish your evolution from Your Future Awaits, to Liquid Crystal Daydreams, and now with Citizen Generator?

When I first started making music, I really was completely in the dark with my technical, composition, and production skills. I had nothing to go on except sheer curiosity and the joy of learning. I was a total "noob" on all fronts! Three albums in, I feel like I've got a solid process in place now for making music. I know what I need to do to make music that I'm happy with and proud to share with the world.

When I start a project these days, I have a fairly clear understanding of how to approach the production process from start to finish - from having a "blank slate" to putting the final touches on a finished, mastered album. I've also learned a lot about mixing over the past few years, and improved my mixing skills to the point where my newer music sounds better compared to my earlier work. The fun in making music, for me at least, is the act of learning and discovery. It's the feeling of not knowing where a song (or an album) will go until I start playing around, trying out different instruments and chord progressions, rhythms, etc and just being open to trying different things until I get inspired and excited. I've found that working on a song for a few days, and then walking away from it for weeks (or months) allows me to come back to it later on with fresh ears, and a sense of renewed excitement to make it even better. I need time to allow my songs to evolve and grow into their final forms.

I've also come to an understanding and acceptance that it will take a lot of patience and determination to finish my musical projects due to my busy career and family life.

Q: Can you tell us about your use of Cherry Audio instruments on this latest release?

I loved the sound of Cherry Audio's PS-3300 so much that I ended up using it for all of the synth sounds on the track Elastic Holographic. There are around 9 different synth layers in this song, each one fulfilling a specific musical role like brass, pads, bass, arps, etc. For example, the main "brass stab" sound that opens the song is based on the preset "Brass on Wheels" with some tweaks to the filter and envelopes. The stacked pad chord sound that serves as the song's melody is based on the preset "PS Velo Keys." The gritty, distorted bass sound I used was a slightly tweaked version of the preset "Nasal Bass." The reverberant, tape-delayed bell sound heard throughout is based on "Glassy Velo Keys."  The tracks Our Time and Radiationing almost exclusively use Cherry Audio's Octave Cat and Harmonia instruments. The presets included with all of Cherry's synths sound so good that they really helped me to get up and running quickly as I started to work out the musical ideas on the album.

Q: As a creator, do you have a hot take yet on AI as to how it relates (if at all) to your work or your plans, both in graphic and animated arts and music creation?

I don't really plan to use any broad AI tools to help me write my music - i.e. "press button to generate song." I don't use assistive tools like MIDI chord packs, chord progression generators, instrumental loops, vocal samples, or musical construction kits in my productions. I enjoy the process of playing all of my instrumental parts by hand, contributing vocals, using my own musical skills and instincts, and struggling a bit throughout the creative process. I'm not interested in churning out music as quickly as possible, using whatever means necessary, in order to appease the musical algorithm Gods.

As far as AI goes with regards to my professional game development work, only time will tell how these new technologies will impact the creation process and the quality of the finished games. I think that adoption of AI will largely be driven from the top-down at studios, as a way for companies to reduce costs and ship games more quickly. Unfortunately, that will likely mean the loss of real human jobs at these studios. I hope that AI will ultimately be used to assist in the production process - to aid in human creative and technical efforts - rather than to replace human workers.

Q: What would be your future dream creative project or collaboration?

I'm interested in writing soundtrack/score music where I can combine hardware and software synth sounds, experimental sound design elements, and traditional symphonic orchestral elements. I remember listening to Wendy Carlos' score to Tron for the first time, as a kid, and being completely enamored with her use of Moog synthesizers and a large-scale scoring orchestra. I'd love to be able to work on projects that allow me to combine my interests in electronic and symphonic music.

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Thank you again, Jeff, for taking the time for this interview and sharing your great story. You can follow Electron Odyssey on social media and listen to his music at hyperfollow.com/electronodyssey. His latest album, Citizen Generator, is released today on all of the major streaming platforms, including Bandcamp, Spotify, and Apple Music.